The steps pounded closer, someone breaking off to search the tool room, someone else another storage area. There was no time.
With shaking hands, she slid back the lock and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. Another pull, with both hands this time, and still no give. The door, her only escape, was frozen shut.
No, no, no.
A wild look over her shoulder showed them approaching, one flashlight carving through the darkness within a few feet of her. She’d seen the emotionless way they’d killed Alex. Ten more steps and she was as good as dead.
No time to be quiet.
She tightened her hands on the door and heaved.
It flew open, smashing her nose in the process. It took every bit of control she had not to cry out. Quickly, blindly, she stepped in, pulled the door closed behind her, and waited. No, no waiting. She had to lock it, somehow, to keep them from following her in.
Oh God, was there even a lock on the inside?
Breath coming in hot and hard, she scrabbled at her pockets until she came up with her Maglite. Wait. If they hadn’t already heard her, then it was best not to alert them to her presence. But they’d figure out eventually that she was here. They’d think to search the tunnel, right? And the place was so unfamiliar, she needed a quick look. It was worth the risk.
She turned it on, blinked twice, then immediately slammed her eyes shut. They burned from the light and the cold, but mostly—oh, please no—they burned from what she’d just seen. In the split second after closing her eyes, she turned off the light again.
The image was seared into her corneas like a brand into skin. A body. A person, stretched out, frozen on the ice. Even now, on the backs of her lids, she couldn’t unsee the bright red Jackson Pollock-esque splashes and stains.
Jamie Cortez. Dead.
That man. That sweet, funny—
Stop. Think about it later. The important thing now was that there was no lock, no way to keep them out.
Something thumped just outside the door and her body went absolutely still. Only her eyes moved, along with her madly beating pulse—racing, racing, racing—until she pressed one gloved hand to the ice wall and forced herself forward. Each crunching step led her farther into the massive ice maze, like walking into a tomb. She counted out her own steps, heavy as death knells. One, two, three…
The door swung open behind her.
She lurched forward and around the first bend just as the light grazed her shoulder.
“Who is that? That you, Angel?” It was Sampson, his voice smooth and Southern, the charm as real as his bright-white smile. His light laugh made her curl in on herself. Or maybe that was the unbearable weight of his attention, after everything she’d witnessed.
Never had she felt so much like an animal. Prey, making itself as tiny as possible—playing dead and begging the hunter not to notice.
“That you, darlin’? Ford Cooper wouldn’t be down here hiding from me, would he? You guys are the only two we’re missing. Nah. Ain’t his style. It’s you, Angel. I can feel it. Heard you missed the plane.” He let out a low, sad sound. “Actually, word up there is that you decided to winter-over with the others.”
Slowly, she put a foot down on the hard-packed snow. Crunch. The sound was light, barely audible, yet too loud. Another step, another, each one painting a bigger, brighter target on her back. She had to get away or he’d kill her.
What was down this way? Impossible to remember after just one visit.
Didn’t matter. She had to move, now.
With Sampson’s slowly oscillating flashlight to show her the way, she forged ahead, doing her best to remember the layout. There were holes, lots of them, cut from the ice like false starts; tunnels that were never meant to be. Some were altars that Poleys from previous years had set up as odes to their experiences working at Pole. But most were small and high and impossible to get into.
Sampson’s light drew closer and she picked up the pace, almost running down the seemingly endless white tunnel, until the darkness ahead revealed three passages. Shit, which way? Which way?
Right.
Another crossroads. She went right again. Not thinking. Not waiting to consider. Not slowing to listen, just running, slipping over the ice, catching herself on the frozen walls.
Calm down. Breathe.
Wait, there! A shadow to the left.
Suddenly, everything got brighter, which meant Sampson’s light was closer. Too close. How? How were his steps so measured and still so fast?
She pushed herself. Her breaths came out in audible puffs, as if this fear were too strong to stay inside her. It had to be out in the open, vocalized, real. Never mind that he’d hear her if she couldn’t find a way to shut up and hide.
She turned another corner. Another hall. Darker. No way to tell how deep it was, but the steps behind her seemed to fade. Maybe she’d lost him.
With no choice now, she threw her hands out in front of her and sprinted, the sound of her feet on the ice like a dog chomping on bones.
She connected with something, hard, and almost went down, only managing to grab on at the last minute. A horizontal pillar or a pipe. A pipe. Okay. The piping that brought something to the living quarters… Heating? Hot water?
Who cares?
She put a hand on it and used it as a guide.
And then, headfirst, she crashed into a wall. Dead end.
Literally.
Why did she feel like giggling? She pushed the irrational impulse down and spun, hands out.
He wasn’t far; she could feel him. The prey instinct ratcheted unbearably high.
Desperate, she scrabbled at the walls. Stuck. Caught like a rat. In a maze, no less. She ran her hands up and down, to the ground. A sob had just crested her chest, about to break through her tight throat, when right above the floor, her gloved hand met nothing but air.
A hole. So low she almost hadn’t found it. Afraid to feel even a glimmer of relief, she dropped, just as the light hit the wall opposite, and backed into the pitch-black of an unknown void.
Chapter 9
Trapped in a slot no bigger than the space under a kid’s bed, Angel counted his footsteps, trying to remember how long this section of tunnel was. Ten steps? Thirty? She’d come too far, taken too many random turns to tell. She’d been running when she’d veered down this way, but Bradley Sampson walked at the pace of a Sunday stroll.
At some point, his footsteps interwove with her heartbeats, until suddenly, she couldn’t count anymore. Couldn’t tell what was him or her or the creaking of the ice around them.
Crunch…BOOM. Crunchboom. Crunch, crunch. Closer. Closer. Careful steps, carrying out a methodical search.
“I know you’re around here somewhere, Angel, darlin’.” Crunch boom. “Wanna know how?” A long, low chuckle that would have sent shivers down her spine if she wasn’t already a shuddering, spinning mass of goose bumps, suspended here waiting. “You’re bleeding.”
Was she? She almost shifted to check the place where the door had slammed into her nose, then stopped herself. There wasn’t room to move in this hole she’d stuffed herself into. It would scrape her coat against the ice and give her away.
Something clanged. “Ow. Fuck!”
Angel went very still. He’s right here.
Was her hood sticking out? Her hands? Would he trip over her? Breathing much too fast, she resisted the desire to ease back, to curl tighter. If she shifted now, he’d hear her.
Something tickled her nose. Blood, dripping out. It stopped almost immediately, froze on her upper lip. Just as she’d managed to ignore the itch, his voice cut through their shared silence.
“Followed her into the tunnels.”
She startled, her whole body jerking so hard that the scrape of knee and boot and glove to ice might as well have been an explosion. She was so sure, in that moment,
that the jig was up that she almost breathed a sigh of relief.
Almost.
But then she heard another sound, so ordinary, so completely out of place in this horror-movie moment that it almost didn’t register—the crinkle of a wrapper, followed by the crunch of a Life Savers in Sampson’s mouth. It was so clear, so loud, that she could have sworn she caught a puff of that telltale cinnamon flavor.
He was breathing hard, which struck her as almost funny. Here she was, quiet as a mouse, while he huffed and chewed and cussed his way around.
“You clean ’em up?” This time, when he spoke in that curt boss voice, she didn’t react. Didn’t move a muscle. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll be right there.”
There was a beat of silence, of stillness, and when Sampson spoke again, it sent a shiver down her spine. “Know you’re in here, Angel, darlin’. No place for you to go. No way out.” He released a long, annoyed hiss. “Why’n’t you come on out, huh? Promise I won’t hurt you.”
Yeah right. She knew better than to believe this psychopath.
“We’re about to take off and we could really use your skills where we’re going, so…” Sounding impatient, he went on. “Look. There’s no time to wait around for you to make up your mind.” His feet crunched slowly past, so close she could reach out and grab his ankle. The beam of his flashlight hurt her eyes.
“You either come with us now, or I lock you in and you’re de—” He muttered a curse under his breath, then louder, said, “Tell him to hold his horses.” Another pause, while he waited for the person on the other end to respond. “Fine, I’m coming up.” He exhaled loudly. Took a step. “Last chance, Angel.” There was a long silence this time—so complete that she held her breath with it, strained into it, hoping. Then, on a laugh, “Got you.”
Light and sound and pain ripped through her all at once.
One second, she’d almost made it; the next, he had her by the arm, dragging her out, his painful hold nothing compared to the angry backhand to her temple. She flew back, landed on her rump with a heavy oof sound, head ringing, vision strobing. Instinct pushed her into a few frantic crab-crawled steps, but he was on her, spewing curses, his hands grasping her like claws, tearing into her.
This was it. She shut her eyes, used every muscle in her body to pull away, to shrink back from his blows, only they didn’t come down. Instead, he shoved one hand into her hood, seized her ponytail, and pulled.
She screamed and grabbed on to his forearm, flailing to stay on her own feet as he dragged her back through one long hall after another.
The cursing had faded into grim silence by the time they made it back to the door. “Shit. Idiot said he’d cleaned up.” He tightened his grip, drawing her face close to his. “Don’t try anything or I’ll leave you down here to freeze to death.”
Abruptly, he dropped her like a sack of potatoes and turned to shove Jamie Cortez’s stiff body out into the arch. The fall knocked the air out of her but not her common sense. Fast. Faster than she’d moved in her life, she flipped to her stomach, pushed up onto hands and knees, then up to her feet, and ran.
She made it maybe ten feet before he realized she’d run. But it was enough. She’d seen something on the way back and had just enough time to take hold of it and dive around the corner before he came after her.
An axe. Or a hatchet, actually. Whatever it was called. The name didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that she had it and she wasn’t afraid to use it. While Sampson had quickly yanked Jamie Cortez’s body out into the arch, she’d make sure hers wasn’t so easy to clean up.
“You fucking bitch.” He was breathing hard. Good. He wanted a fight? She’d give him a fight. “I’ll—”
The second he appeared, she swung, wide and hard. He stumbled back, snarled, came at her again, and she retaliated with another attack, sending him around the corner into darkness.
There came deep breathing—powerful as a bellows—then his clipped voice as he growled into the other end of the line she couldn’t hear. “No, dammit, I don’t have her. Tell him to—Shit!” He sounded insane now. “Hold the goddamn door open! Be right there.”
When he spoke again, it was quieter, more venomous. Just for her. “You wanna die in here? Fine. Freeze to death.” Was he moving away? His steps seemed to fade, but it was so hard to tell. Hard to hear with the way her ears rang, hard to concentrate with her own fury running through her veins. Oh God, please let him leave. She’d rather face the cold than his anger. His final words drifted back to her from the doorway into the arch. “You missed your ride, Angel. Plane’s going wheels up in two minutes, so I’m gonna scoot. You stay here and become a Popsicle. They’ll find you here in the spring, you stupid, stupid c—”
The door slammed, muffling his last words, then the lock slid into place.
She half collapsed and gasped for air, the hatchet tightly gripped in one hand. For a few seconds, she could do nothing but blink into the darkness, suspended at the unfamiliar crossroads of adrenaline, relief, and absolute soul-deep terror.
She wallowed there for maybe ten seconds. And then, because there was still breath in her body, she stood up again, tightened her hold on the hatchet, and went back to the door.
* * *
Coop watched helplessly as the second LC-130 Hercules sliced through the air, its departure as loud and final as the telltale whistle of an IED. What was that second plane all about?
The first flight was normal, right on schedule, picking up the summer folks. But the second?
And what the hell awaited him at the station right now?
When he finally got close enough to see what had happened, the place looked remarkably innocuous—if he ignored the black smudge hanging overhead like a cartoon storm cloud.
He pulled up, shut off the engine—beyond wary—and did a quick scan of the place. Nothing. No sign of life and no movement, aside from the dark, noxious-looking smoke billowing from what used to be the power plant arch.
Not once in his decade coming here had he wished for a weapon. Until now.
Shit, he didn’t want to get out of the plow. Getting out meant going on the offensive and he was in no way prepared for that. But he didn’t exactly have a choice. Coop reached under his seat and pulled out a toolbox, which he yanked open. A wrench. Not much, but better than nothing.
He threw open the door and listened. Sounds reached him in phases—the ticking of the plow’s engine a baseline. Layered atop its steady rhythm came the ominous crackling of fire. An occasional bang added an off-key treble to the mix. What was that—was someone hammering?
Heartbeat keeping time with the uncanny symphony, he jumped down, crouched, and waited, taking in every possible detail. There, to the side, the door to a metal storage shed blew open and slammed shut in the wind.
The thriving research station he’d left this morning had become a ghost town and he couldn’t figure out why. What had turned the power plant into a burnt-out crater? And where the hell was everyone?
Staying low, he made his way to the first building—the living quarters. To the door, then on an inhale that was more Hail Mary than oxygen intake, through it. It was still warm here, but dark. He reached out and flipped the switch. Nothing. Backup generator wasn’t working. With eyes wide-open, limbs heavy and flush with adrenaline, he grabbed a Maglite from the vestibule, threw open the inner door, and slid inside, poised against the wall. Watching.
Nothing.
He shone the light methodically from right to left, down and up. Aside from the deep shadows and absolute silence, everything looked as it should. Well, mostly.
A few rooms stood open, letting a dull, grayish light into the long hall.
Cautiously, he made his way to the first door and kicked it all the way open. A glance inside showed an unholy mess, which was 100 percent Jameson. The guy lived like a freaking hoarder from one of those shows. Must have a
system, though, because when he needed something from his quarters, like magic he’d pop out with the item in his hand. A quick visual search didn’t reveal a radio or satellite phone or laptop.
He sucked in a breath and crossed the hall, opened the door, and looked into another room. This one was totally stripped, as if its occupant had moved out. That made sense, too, since he was pretty sure this one belonged to a couple summer folks who’d left today.
They’d have been on that plane.
Had everyone evacuated and left him behind? The wind picking up said bad weather could be on the way, which might very well have precipitated the flight’s early departure. Maybe with no power, the operations manager had called it, leaving the lone straggler to fend for himself.
That would be unlikely under normal circumstances, but given that the new manager, Bradley Sampson, had no experience at Pole, anything was possible. Jesus, it sure felt like he was alone here.
A search of the entire building showed more of the same—messy piles of belongings in some quarters, nothing in others. If they’d evacuated, then they’d done it fast, without grabbing anything personal.
And that felt wrong. He sniffed. No toxic leaks, as far as he could tell. But what the hell else could it be?
He returned to his door, which he’d saved for last, and pushed it open to find the same mess—someone had gone through his belongings.
Shit. His sat-phone charger was nowhere to be found. No computer, no wires or backup batteries. Not a scrap of electronics remained in any of the dorm rooms.
Definitely not an evacuation.
He checked the other buildings, where he found more of the same. All comms mysteriously…gone.
He opened every door, checked every bed and space he could think of. The place was as big and echoing as that hotel in The Shining, though not half as cozy. Frankly, he’d welcome just about any sign of life right now—“Here’s Johnny” with a butcher knife, creepy twins chanting “redrum,” Jack the freaking Ripper, hallways full of blood.
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