Whiteout

by Adriana Anders

  “He planned this,” she finally said.

  “Who?”

  “Bradley Sampson was the leader, I think, though he mentioned higher-ups or the powers that be or something. Kept talking about some payload they were after.” And then, because she couldn’t be the only one to know this, she said, “I watched him shoot…” Air. Breathe. “Alex. In the head.”

  Beneath her ear, Ford’s heartbeat picked up speed, but he didn’t respond.

  And, honestly, what was there to say?

  Her nose, pressed into him, couldn’t help but take him in. And it was good. Everything about him was more human than she’d have guessed from a man who’d seemed stone cold: the smell, the heat, the give of his flesh.

  “Bastard didn’t get me.”

  “Good,” he whispered, arms tightening, head low, voice terrible in its intensity. “Good.”

  “Why do you keep hugging me?”

  “It’s not a hug. I’m sharing body heat. To keep you warm.” His voice rumbled against her ear. She could feel it in her bones, as comforting as a purring cat.

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “What?”

  “Talk again.”

  “Excuse me?” He cleared his throat, tried to shift away, probably to look down at her, but she wouldn’t let him. He felt too good. “You want me to—”

  “Like that.” It was the rumble of his voice that calmed her, echoing through muscle and bone. It was comfort, home. His deep, slow words flashed her back to a time when she was just Papa’s little girl. No responsibilities, no pressure. No evil murderers chasing her through frozen tunnels. “More. Say more.”

  “You…” He cleared his throat again, more awkward this time. But she didn’t care. That awkwardness made him real when, before today, he’d been the stiffest, chilliest, hardest-ass prick she’d ever met. She knew secrets about him now: he was warm. And he smelled good. “Want me to talk?”

  She nodded, getting in another clandestine rub.

  “I’ll, uh, tell you about ice, I guess?” He paused and she made a sound of assent. “Ahem. Um. So, the thing is, ice is like amber, or fossils. Except better. So cold, pristine, and untouched that it’s the perfect receptacle for trapped data.”

  “What kind of data?”

  “History. The history of the world. Everything from soot to bacteria, with layers that perfectly delineate eras, changes, shifts in temperature, climate…major events, disasters. The ice and every air bubble inside it is a time capsule.”

  “I didn’t realize that.” He’d never used this many words in her presence before. And his voice, though almost painfully rough, felt good against her ear. She needed him to keep talking. “So. You study ice.”

  “Mostly. Glaciers. Movement, cycles, patterns…”

  She closed her eyes and pictured layer upon layer of ice. “Are they different colors?”

  “What?”

  “The ice layers.”

  “Sometimes. It’s actually quite beautiful. Volcanic ash, for example, is black or gray, which makes dating and identification easy when we know of an event.”

  “Sounds like an opera.”

  “What?”

  “Pastry. Layered buttercream, coffee cream, almond cake, chocolate… All paper thin.” She swallowed back a mouthful of saliva. “It’s complex and, when done right, amazing.”

  He didn’t respond, which wasn’t a surprise, since before today, the man had never strung more than a couple words together. Not for her.

  It was disappointing, though, that he’d shut up.

  She arched back enough to look up and had to curl right down again when the sight of him hit her.

  This suddenly felt an awful lot like a morning after—or even worse, the moments after. She lay, limbs heavy and used up, in the arms of a man who was uncomfortably sexy.

  And the worst part was that even that hesitant, building excitement in his voice when he talked about ice was appealing. He made it interesting. To a woman who’d never gotten better than a C- in science, that was saying something.

  She swallowed back discomfort at this unexpected closeness and asked the first question that came to mind. “What do you go out there for every day?”

  “You really wanna hear this?”

  She nodded.

  “Well. I have”—his jaw tightened—“had multiple sites, each equipped with a drill that bores down into the ice. Heat helps them slice right into it. The technology’s great because it avoids contamination and—” Another throat-clearing rumble, followed by a gruff scoffing sound. “You don’t need to know the details.”

  “Go on.”

  “Um. I get ice core samples. From the drills. I collect these long cylindrical tubes of ice, which I examine initially and then send back to the States to be—”

  Something prickled through her. “Whoa. Hang on. Hang on.” She rolled away from him, groaning as her feet hit the frigid floor.

  “Sit, Angel.” He reached for her, but she stood and staggered just out of reach, noticing vaguely that she was wearing just her base layer. “There’s nothing we can—”

  “No, wait. Listen. They talked about you. Sampson said… Crap. What did he say?” She put a hand to her suddenly aching head. “Boy, he was pissed that you weren’t around.”

  “Why?” He stood.

  “They were yours.” She tilted her head back to meet his intelligent blue eyes. “They must have been. Those metal tubes, the uh, core thingies? You kept some in the supply arch?” Heart racing, she swayed and put out a hand to steady herself. It landed on his hot, heavy forearm. It took her a good three seconds to refocus.

  “Ice cores. Yes.”

  “That’s what they were after.” A slow smile curled her lips as she felt something other than a sick dread. “But there’s a chance they didn’t get them.”

  * * *

  “You what?”

  “I took them back.” She looked excited. Not quite smiling, but satisfied, like a runner who’d just beaten out the competition in a close race.

  “The cores?” He pulled on a shirt, racing to catch up with her.

  “Yes.” She stepped into her boots.

  “Where are you going?”

  She blinked. “To get them.” Might as well tack an eye-roll and a duh onto the end of that.

  “Stay here. I’ll go.”

  He did get the eye-roll then, which sped his pulse up. Dammit, the woman was a loose cannon.

  She was already sliding into her coat, so he went to the door and opened it.

  “Where are they?” He grabbed his flashlight and baseball bat—because whatever was going on here was dangerous as hell even if he was fairly certain the people responsible were long gone—and led the way toward the arch. Even the way he walked had changed, he noted with detached interest. No more stomping across the ice, head in the clouds. As if the years had been stripped away, his situational awareness was back online, his muscles loose and ready, buzzing with that almost electric tension he associated with being outside the wire.

  “Under one of the food supply shelves. The rice.” He couldn’t see her face behind her glasses and gaiter, but something like worry had threaded its way into her voice. Which was good. Caution was good.

  Wait, was she limping?

  He opened his mouth to ask, but she spoke first. “Must be something pretty special in those tubes, huh?”

  Well, he thought they were special, but the normal ash or trapped air bubbles that got him riled up wouldn’t send anyone else into—

  He paused, an idea spinning brightly in his brain. Those samples he’d pulled a few weeks ago. They’d contained a different sort of finding.

  Suddenly, he had an idea of what Sampson and his team were after.

  They arrived at the still-open door to the arch, which sent him into hypervigilanc
e. “Stay here.”

  “I’ll come.” Breathing hard, she went on. “No way am I staying here alone.”

  He stared at her gloved hand clenching his arm, wondering if she felt the same thing—a memory from last night—the Skua’s Nest was worlds away now. Something a lot like shame washed over him before he shoved it far, far down.

  This wasn’t the time for such pointless emotion.

  After a few steps, she broke the silence. “I don’t think they saw me.”

  “What?” He turned to look at her. She was nothing but a darker shade of black.

  “I mean, if they saw me replacing them, then your ice tubes are gone, right?”

  “Right.” He walked on as he considered the ramifications. It would be very bad if those men had gotten ahold of certain ice cores. Because what they contained…well, their actions pretty much confirmed that it was dangerous.

  But if after all of this effort, they’d taken off with the wrong cores… His flashlight shone on a pile of heavy-looking white bags, hanging over the shelf like big, fat lolling tongues trying to lick the floor.

  Angel crouched. He bent beside her, focused the light, and let out a long, slow breath.

  “Still there,” she breathed. “I switched the date stickers but never got to one.”

  He pulled them out, eyeing them one at a time until he got to the one that still had its sticker on it. “I know what their payload was.”

  “What is it? What’s worth all these lives?”

  “I found something in a core a few weeks back. It looked like…” He shook his head, sure now. “Cortez has…had a colleague back in the UK. He sent her images and she confirmed that it’s—”

  Something heavy and dark rose up from his chest, stopped his air and cut off his voice.

  “What?” The word was less than a whisper.

  “Shit. It has to be linked. She died. House fire. Cortez was devastated when he found out.”

  Angel let out a sound—low and pained. Her eyes were massive in the dark. He couldn’t look away from them. Didn’t even try.

  “It’s a virus, Angel. A very old virus, buried deep in the ice.”

  “A virus? What do they want with that?”

  “I don’t know.” Even as he said the words, an idea occurred to him—the kind of worst-case scenario that couldn’t possibly be real and yet clicked right into place. All the deaths. The military precision. The warning scrawled in blood. “Maybe…maybe a bioweapon?” Shit. This was bad. Worse than bad. If his gut instinct was right, it was potentially catastrophic.

  “What can we do?”

  The tubes sat beside them, gleaming innocently in the dim light.

  He had an idea of what they could do—what they had to do—but he wasn’t quite ready to share it yet.

  “We’ll uh…figure it out.” He stood, heavy from the sudden weight of what lay ahead. He swallowed and shined the light up the long length of the arch. “Where did they—” There was too much crap in his throat. He tried again. “Alex. Where’d they kill him?”

  “Up there.” Her usually musical voice was no better off than his. “By the rest of the tubes.”

  He squinted. There was nothing there now.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.” Ah, there was the voice he knew. “Of course I’m—” She turned to look at the spot where he shone his flashlight. “Where is he?” She spun. “I swear he was—”

  He reached into his pocket, then grabbed her hand and slapped the 9mm bullet case he’d found into her gloved palm. “I believe you.” He leaned down, caught her eye, and held it. “Even without this, I’d believe you, Angel.”

  She stared at the object in her hand before looking up at him. “Okay. Okay, then.”

  He opened his mouth and closed it again, then headed toward the door.

  “What? What are you not saying?” She ran to keep up.

  “The ice cores.” He didn’t pause until they were back outside, on the bright, clean ice. “When they open up the dummies, it won’t take long for them to figure out that they’ve got the wrong ones.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “You think they’ll come back?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded without hesitation. “They’ll be back.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We leave.” He threw his head back to look at clear blue sky. “Now.”

  Chapter 12

  Coop went to work hurriedly gathering everything they’d need to survive a trek across the continent, while Angel prepared their food. He’d located skis, snowshoes, camp stoves and fuel, a tent, sleeping bags, and pads to protect their prone bodies from the ice. Most of this he amassed in the eerily empty living quarters, which added a layer of discomfort to his growing anxiety. Rooting through his friends’ private belongings while they were likely in trouble somewhere felt as dirty and wrong as looting the recently deserted homes of nuclear disaster victims.

  But it couldn’t be helped.

  The rest he found in the “skua” pile, named after the rapacious sea birds that plagued Antarctica’s coastal research stations. Thank God people dumped things they no longer needed when they left or Coop and Angel would have been out of luck. While Coop had skis and boots already, they’d been incredibly fortunate to find a pair that almost fit Angel. A little big, which they could compensate for with padding.

  The second he stepped out of the dorm, relief flooded him. There, on the horizon, were clouds. And while bad weather was usually a pain in the ass, today it would keep aircraft at a safe distance.

  Good.

  The stress inside him had coalesced into hatred now. It burned so hot he could have taken off his coat out here.

  Murdering bastards.

  What they’d done to the rest of the crew was anyone’s guess, but two people, at least, were dead. He’d taken a precious half hour to search the rest of the tunnels and arches and found no sign of either body, which meant those assholes had taken them, since you couldn’t hide that kind of evidence under the ice without time and a big-ass digger.

  Two lives snuffed out. Two preeminent researchers—gone. Friends, dammit. Men with futures, families. That wouldn’t go unnoticed, surely.

  He pictured those two planes taking off, maybe an hour apart. From what Angel’d told him, Sampson had said something about the summer people leaving on the first aircraft. He’d apparently wanted to bring her along on the second flight. Had they taken the winter-overs with them? Or evacuated them on the first plane?

  Why, damn it? He paused, shut his eyes, and pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyeballs, hard. Why do this? Why bring violence to the most peaceful continent on earth?

  No matter how he turned it over in his head, he couldn’t seem to come up with an answer.

  Though it was light out, it was the middle of the night when he shoved open the ancillary building door and got a faceful of heat—nothing like in the main building when the power worked, but better than the current exterior temps of -25 Fahrenheit. They were lucky it was sunny out.

  No point thinking about how low that temperature would drop out there on the ice when cloud cover could instantly lower it by twenty-five degrees.

  No point thinking about how alone they were. No point wondering what kind of spin this whole thing was getting in the outside world. Shit. Did the world even know?

  Angel sat at the table filling small baggies with easy-to-consume food rations. The fattiest, highest-calorie, lowest-weight items they could put together.

  He didn’t spare her a glance as he grabbed a protein bar and headed back out to unload the sled’s contents by the door. He was so caught up in his thoughts, with so much tension in his body, that when Angel appeared beside him, gloved and coated and prepared to help, he almost jumped out of his skin.

  “Thought you were kidding about this stuff.” She picked up a ma
ssive pack of butter that would need to be cut into bite-sized portions. “We seriously need this much fat?”

  He glanced at her and forced out a grunt, barely audible through the wind, then squatted to shift gear onto one of the expedition sleds he’d found.

  “How many calories?”

  He squinted up at her. “What?”

  “How many calories will we burn through in a day?” While she piled the butter by the door, he considered the sled, staring at it like it was a game of Tetris.

  “Six, seven thousand, more or less. The fat’ll help us pack in the calories more efficiently.”

  “Wow. Well, I’m pretty sure I don’t need it, Ford.”

  His scalp tingled at the use of his first name. Nobody but his brother called him that. “Need what?”

  “All this butter.” She stood up, rubbed her hands on her thighs, and yawned.

  “You will.”

  “Huh. Silver lining, I guess, ’cause I’m a fool for butter.”

  He threw her a confused look. “What?”

  “With all the trekking, maybe I’ll finally tone some of this.” He averted his eyes as she patted her hip, then turned again and squatted, unconsciously giving him the opportunity to check out her rear end. Which was perfect, as far as he was concerned, but then, her curves were none of his business.

  He searched the sky. No approaching aircraft. Good.

  “Almost done.”

  “Wow. Okay. Better get my knives.”

  “Knives?” He blinked. “What do you need those for?”

  “First, I’ll need something to cut all this butter into chunks. But also, you know that burning-building question? Like, what would I run back inside for?”

  He nodded.

  “My knives. That’s what I would grab.”

  “Why?”

  She cocked her head at him, squinting like he was of a different species. “They’re the tools of my trade.” Something in her face changed, as if she’d suddenly figured him out. “Like you and your drills.”

  Understanding hit him like a fist to the solar plexus. He stood up. “I’ll get them for you.”