On Thin Ice

He needed to figure out how to reach her, how to get close to her, and fast. If he didn’t, he’d never discover if she was the one the Feds were after. Or if she’d had a hand in Paddy O’Connor’s murder. The medic had called it a drowning accident. Not a chance. No one drowned in a reserve pit.

Seth decided to gamble and go for the truth. Part of it, at least. He had to get Lauren to trust him. If the truth failed, he’d try seduction. That always worked with women like her—cool corporate princesses out of their element, thrilled by a chance to drag the bottom for some rough company.

“Okay,” he said, flashing his eyes at her. “So the rock samples were just an excuse. I really wanted to talk to you.”

The gamble paid off, though he wasn’t sure if it was truth or the promise of seduction that roused her interest. All he knew was that her frosty stance softened, along with the hard look in her eyes. She nodded at the desk chair in the corner. “So talk.”

He sloughed off his jacket, set his hard hat on the counter, but ignored her offer to sit. She watched him like a hawk. Every move. He recognized the music now. The Chieftains. He liked this particular cut, in fact. “Nice music,” he said, and risked a smile.

Those warm brown eyes of hers instantly frosted over again. She snapped the CD player off and resumed her icy pose of a moment ago. “Paddy didn’t fall in that pit. And he didn’t drown. He was murdered.”

Her plain statement of the facts caught him completely off guard. For a split second he read something in her eyes, in the way she unconsciously bit her lip, that unnerved him. A feminine sort of fragility he wasn’t prepared for. A moment later it vanished, and her features hardened.

“You were out there,” she said.

“So were you.”

“You think I killed him?”

“Didn’t you?”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re joking, right?”

“Am I?” Now he was getting somewhere. He’d push her right to edge and see exactly what she was made of.

“You’re insane. Get out.” She turned away and gripped the edge of the counter. He could tell by the way she wavered on her feet that she was exhausted.

Sheer instinct drove him closer. Perhaps she was more of a mystery than he’d first suspected. He’d thought he had her figured out, but he wasn’t always good at reading people on first impressions.

“What did you and Paddy talk about?”

“Nothing. I left the camp to come out here and—” She spun toward him and shot him exactly the kind of condescending look his ex-wife had been famous for. “What business is it of yours?”

“I’m a witness. I saw Paddy come out here to your trailer, myself.”

“He did no such thing. After I left the camp I didn’t see him again until…” She looked away, her cheeks flushed.

“I saw you with his body. You were—”

“Trying to save him.”

“That’s not what it looked like.”

She pursed her lips and glared at him, deadly silent, her small hands fisted at her sides. He could tell from the fire in her eye that she was mentally counting to ten. He used the time to consider the facts.

Paddy O’Connor had been in damned good shape for a man pushing up against the far side of sixty. Someone as petite as Lauren could never have muscled him into that reserve pit against his will.

Seth hadn’t had the chance to check Paddy’s body for marks. He’d been too busy trying to revive him. Now it would be nearly impossible to confirm his suspicions. Wrapped in plastic sheeting, the body was sequestered away in the big freezer in the camp’s kitchen, which was open around the clock.

Lauren could have hit him with something, right here in the privacy of her trailer. Could have knocked him out cold, dragged him to the pit, shielded by the weather, then drowned him.

He glanced around the trailer at the neat stacks of papers, rock samples and supplies. Everything in order, neat as a pin. No blood. No signs of struggle, or obvious weapons in sight. Not even any mud on the floor, except for his own footprints. Lauren Fotheringay was either innocent, or very very good. Seth suspected the latter.

“I think you’d better leave.” She turned her back on him and shut down the microscope she’d been using when he’d arrived.

He wasn’t giving up that easily. He decided to try a different approach. “You knew Paddy pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. He was…” She paused, and for a moment he thought she might not continue. “He was my father’s best friend.” She swept some glass slides into a drawer and slammed it shut, her back rigid.

Four feet away he could feel her anger, and something more. A carefully shielded vulnerability evidenced by the way her hand shook as she again gripped the counter for support.

Seth knew all about her father. Everyone here did. But he hadn’t known Paddy O’Connor had been Hatch Parker’s friend. The dossier Bledsoe had given him hadn’t included that fact.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and on impulse stepped toward her.

“That’s okay. I’m just…”

He looked down at her from behind as her knuckles turned white clutching the counter. Her shoulders shook almost imperceptibly, then her ragged breathing seemed to stop altogether. With a shock he realized she was crying.

“Hey, don’t.” Without thinking, he gripped her shoulders to steady her. By accident he grazed his lips across her hair, catching a whiff of herbal shampoo as he leaned down to whisper in her ear. “It’s okay.”

A fierce sort of compassion welled inside him. That wasn’t good. He was a federal agent, for Christ’s sake. Well, an ex-federal agent. Still, he was a cop, and he had a job to do. He was supposed to be questioning a suspect, not comforting a weeping woman.

She turned in his arms. As her feet twisted between his, she faltered and reached for him. He caught her up, and her arms snaked around his neck. A second later her face was buried in his chest. She worked to get a grip on herself, but gave up the fight as he gently massaged the tight muscles of her back.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, again, and stroked her soft auburn hair. “It’s good to cry. Get it all out.”

What the hell was he doing? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that she was warm and soft, and she needed him. Her father had been killed on this very rig, and now another man she’d been close to was dead, too.

He’d been too hasty, perhaps, in thinking her capable of murder. Selling proprietary corporate data was one thing. A nice, clean, white-collar crime. Lots of money involved, but no dirty work. And no one ended up dead. Lauren Fotheringay might be a criminal, but he sensed she wasn’t a murderer. Her anguish over Paddy O’Connor’s death was real.

Holding her close, feeling the soft weight of her breasts crushed against his chest, he thought about how long it had been since he’d really wanted a woman. Sure, he’d done his share of dating since he and his ex had split, but he hadn’t let himself get close to anyone again. Had never let his guard down.

As he stroked Lauren’s hair and soothed her with comforting words, he realized he was in danger of doing exactly that. His lips grazed her ear, her cheek. One more move and he’d be kissing her.

“Uh, sorry,” she said, and pushed against his chest.

He instantly backed off.

“I—I don’t know what came over me. I was just…” Her eyes darted away. She wouldn’t look at him. Her face flushed with embarrassment.

“Don’t worry about it.” He was embarrassed, too. As he turned to leave, she touched his arm.

“I stepped out of the trailer to grab some rock samples from the crate outside. That’s when I saw his hard hat.”

“Paddy’s?”

“Yes.” She gripped his arm tighter, her eyes locked on his. “I looked around but didn’t see him. That’s when I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“I wasn’t sure. I thought it was shouting, but the wind was so deafening, I couldn’t tell.”

“So you…” He nodded, urging her to continue.

“I picked up his hard hat and walked toward the sound. Over by the reserve pit.”

“Without a jacket, in this weather.”

She shrugged. “I know. Stupid. But that’s what I did.”

“And then?”

“As I got close, I saw something in the mud. When I realized it was Paddy…” She looked away again, struggling to keep her composure.

“You tried to save him.”

She nodded. “But he was already dead.”

He wanted to believe her. The thought of her killing someone bothered him more than he wanted to admit. On impulse he grasped her hand and squeezed it. “You’ll be okay out here?”

“Yes. I just need some sleep.”

He was halfway out the door, zipping his jacket, when she stopped him one last time.

“Thanks,” she said, and shot him a tiny smile.

“Any time.”

He stood there in the biting wind after she closed the door, wondering why he’d acted like a schoolboy in there instead of a cop. She was damned attractive, that was why. And not as tough as he’d first made her out to be.

Maybe she wasn’t the one he was after. He’d like to believe that. Hell, ten minutes with her and he half believed it already.

A flash of white shot across his field of view. “What the—?” Arctic fox. Two of them, racing across the yard in the direction of the camp. Seth knew exactly where they were headed. To the Dumpster behind the kitchen.

He jogged after them, fighting the wind and trying to forget how good Lauren Fotheringay had felt in his arms. A few minutes later his suspicions were confirmed. One of the cooks had left the heavy, metal Dumpster lid open again.

A half-dozen arctic foxes huddled around a black plastic trash bag that had blown off the overflowing pile of garbage. One of them had a glazed doughnut in his mouth. No wonder the EPA was all over these drilling companies.

Seth let out a whoop and the foxes scattered. What a mess. He reached for the open bag, then froze. “Son of a—”

He forced his eyes wide against the wind and blowing snow, not wanting to believe what he saw. The overhead yard lights lent a harsh reality to the blood-covered tool stashed amidst the frozen remnants of that day’s breakfast.

Its shaft was thick and sheathed in blue rubber, the head square. The claw end was like a pickax, long and curved to a single sharp point. Seth had seen plenty of them growing up to know exactly what he was looking at.

A geologist’s rock hammer.

Chapter 4

Where had these rock samples come from, the moon?

Lauren pushed back from the microscope and focused her eyes out the trailer window. Not that it helped. She couldn’t see a thing except blowing snow. The wind velocity had increased overnight to dangerous speeds. She’d woken with a start that morning when an empty fifty-five-gallon drum had blown up against the side of her trailer with a powerful thunk.

She grabbed her calculator and ran through the sequence one more time. “This can’t be right.” For the third time she checked the smudged label marking one of the small plastic sample bags littering her workstation.

Someone had clearly made a mistake.

As drilling progressed and the well got deeper, rock samples mixed with mud and fluids were sucked up from the bottom of the hole. At the surface they were collected and bagged by one of the Altex roustabouts. It was a dirty, thankless task, usually assigned to the lowest man on the totem pole. She wondered who among the Altex crew had been elected.

The Caribou Island well wasn’t at its target depth yet, so at this point Lauren didn’t expect to see anything out of the ordinary, like traces of oil, in the samples. And least of all rocks so unusual she was certain some mistake had been made.

She shut down the microscope and grabbed her jacket, then paused to consider her options. She wasn’t that anxious to make another appearance in camp. Earlier that morning she’d been bombarded with crew members’ questions—the same question, actually, over and over.

Are we going to keep drilling?

Didn’t they understand? They were so close to finishing the well, it didn’t make sense to shut it all down now. Tiger had invested a small fortune to get the data from Caribou Island. Her boss Bill Walters, the VPs—Crocker included—and Tiger’s CEO would be counting on her. On all of them.

And she wasn’t about to let them down.

Last night after she’d left the camp, Salvio had changed his mind about continuing the drilling. But only temporarily, he’d warned her this morning. Fine. She’d take whatever she could get. Once communications were up, they could let the bigwigs at corporate decide what to do. Until then, she wasn’t changing her position.

She breezed out the door, then locked it with her key. No one was touching these rock samples until she figured out who had screwed up. The bags were clearly mismarked. It was impossible for that kind of rock to exist at the Caribou Island location. She should know. She’d interpreted all the subsurface maps of the site herself, just last year.

There would be hell to pay with her boss if she didn’t get this mess sorted out. And fast. No way was she shipping mismarked samples back to Tiger’s lab in town. But with Paddy gone and all communications down, she wasn’t sure who exactly from Altex to talk to about it.

Adams, maybe.

Warmth washed over her as she recalled the feel of his arms around her last night in the lab. Strong, solid, comforting. When was the last time Crocker had held her that way? Stroked her back, soothed her? It dawned on her that she didn’t even know Adams’s first name.

The camp’s forklift rumbled past, jerking her from her thoughts. Sheesh. Forty below, winds screaming across the tundra like a banshee, and she was lost in some fantasy about a roughneck. Great. Just what she needed. To act like an idiot out here on the job.

A man was dead. Tiger’s operation was weeks behind schedule, and the biggest promotion of her career hung in the balance. She needed to focus, to do what was expected of someone in her position. Not break down like a crybaby and fall into the arms of one of the crew, for God’s sake.

It had taken her years to win the respect of her male peers, of Tiger’s senior personnel, not to mention the rough-and-tumble drilling crews, most of whom still believed women didn’t belong in the field.

She wasn’t about to throw it all away because the going got tough. Her father would have told her to buck up, meet the challenge. That’s exactly what she intended to do. She’d see Salvio right away about those samples.

Hand over hand, Lauren pulled herself along the rope that had been set up as a guide between her trailer and the main camp. The weather was the worst she’d ever experienced, and showed no signs of breaking. Visibility was a joke. It took her nearly five minutes fighting the wind to make it to camp.

Salvio wasn’t in his office.

“Damn.” She plopped down into his beat-up desk chair and raked her fingers through her half-frozen hair. Fine. She’d talk to him later. Until then, she’d ask around among the crew.

The first shift was on break, and she heard laughter coming from the kitchen. The greasy aroma of hamburgers sizzling on the grill and her growling stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten yet that day. Lunch sounded good. Maybe she’d grab a quick—

The thought vaporized as her eyes focused on the drilling stats blinking at her from one of the computer monitors on Salvio’s cluttered desk. She leaned closer and scanned the real-time drill depth readout.

“Fifteen two?” She blinked her eyes a couple of times to make sure she wasn’t reading it wrong. Fifteen thousand two hundred and six feet. That couldn’t be right. They were at nine thousand last night, nine two this morning. The top of the target zone for the Caribou Island well was nine thousand four hundred feet. Straight down. Easy as pie.

Altex had drilled dozens of oil exploration wells for Tiger, just like this one, over the past twenty-five years. Caribou Island should have been a routine operation, but Murphy’s Law seemed to be in full effect out here.

She hit the side of the monitor with the flat of her hand and watched the screen. The green numbers jumped, then blinked back at her. Fifteen two. “This is crazy.”

“Fotheringay!” Jack Salvio’s gravelly voice made her jump. He shot through the door, a nasty expression screwed into his face. “I’m having enough trouble with this frickin’ equipment as it is.”

“I was just—”

“Damned thing is always screwed up.” He leaned over her, typed some two-fingered gibberish into the keyboard and hit the Escape key. The monitor did a split-second reset, then flashed back to life.

Lauren focused in on the depth measurement. “Nine thousand three hundred feet.”

“There. It’s fixed.”

Frowning, she studied the blinking stats again. Everything seemed to be normal now. The drilling depth looked fine.

“Don’t touch it again, ya hear?”

“Sorry.” Lauren had never seen so much computer equipment in a company man’s office before. Personally, she’d opt for a sheet of paper, a pencil and a plain old calculator any day over all the fancy analytical instruments Tiger had insisted they install at Caribou Island.

Bill Walters, her boss, had insisted, actually. She remembered a presentation he’d given months ago on the financial return of using some new computerized drilling system. It was supposed to have made the job easier, and to have saved them money. Funny that Bill even considered the financial end of things. That had been a first. Shaking her head, she gave the numbers on the monitor a final glance. The new system was clearly junk. As soon as communications were restored she’d give Bill a call to let him know.

Salvio grabbed his hard hat from a hook on the wall and turned to leave.

“Oh, Jack—wait.” She’d almost forgotten why she’d come to see him in the first place. “Do you know which roustabout was assigned to collect rock samples here last Tuesday?” That was the date scribbled on the bags of samples left outside her lab, though the crate they’d been boxed in was missing its label.

“Beats me. Why do you want to know?”

“There were some really strange samples in front of my trailer when I arrived, and—”

Without a word, Salvio jammed his hard hat onto his head and stormed out the door.

What’s with him?

Ignoring his trademark rudeness, Lauren scanned the messy bulletin board on the wall over his desk. A second later she found what she was looking for—the crew manifest detailing who was on shift last week. Maybe now she’d find out which roustabout had—

“That’s odd.” The routine paperwork indicated a whole new crew had come in last Wednesday. Roughnecks, roustabouts, two cooks, the medic, the housekeeper, everybody.

There was always a lot of overlap on an operation this big. Eighty guys staggered on four-week shifts, for as long as it took to drill the well. They never all changed out at once. It was hardly possible, just given the logistics of getting everyone on and off the island.

Lauren shook her head.

Strange-looking rock samples, computer stats that weren’t possible given their operational plan, the worst weather in years, and a complete crew change just days before their toolpusher was killed in what Lauren knew in her gut was not an accident.

Something was going on here, and she intended to get to the bottom of it.

Pushing back from the desk, she made a mental note to query the one person who didn’t seem to belong on Caribou Island at all. “Whatever-your-name-is Adams.”

“It’s Seth.”

His low, smooth voice startled her. With a shock she glanced up to see the target of her thoughts standing in the doorway, his broad shoulders filling it.

“Seth Adams,” he said, and shot her the most dangerous-looking smile she’d ever seen in her life.

That wide-eyed innocent look didn’t fool Seth for a second. Lauren held his gaze just long enough for her cheeks to warm to pink, then she wet her lips and pretended to study the numbers on one of the monitors.

“You called?” he said, adding the narrowest edge of seduction to his voice.

A beautiful woman was the hardest kind of criminal to catch. And once caught, the hardest to put away. There was always some gullible sucker around willing to do anything to help her. Seth felt himself slipping easily into the role.

How predictable. Bledsoe had wanted him on the job because he thought playing the dumb roughneck suited him perfectly. Maybe it did. But for different reasons altogether.

“Um, yes. I uh…saw you in the hall.”

He smiled again, thinking what a perfect touch that coy little flustered look was to her whole act. “And?”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Go ahead, shoot.” He pulled a chair up close—a lot closer than he would have if she was a man—and shot her another smile.

“How long have you been out here?”

“Came in last Wednesday. Why?”

“No reason. I just wondered.” She gave up a smile.

“Matter of fact, a whole new crew came on that day. Was that your doing?”

“My doing? No, how could it be? Geologists don’t make those kinds of decisions. Only the—”

“Toolpusher?”

“That’s right.”

His eyes fixed on the tiny mole near her mouth. Sexy as hell. He’d noticed it for the first time last night in the lab.

“Who’s in charge of the crew now that Paddy’s…” All the light went out of her eyes, and he found himself feeling sorry for her again. All part of her plan, he reminded himself.

“Don’t know. Salvio, I guess.” Jack had been riding roughshod on them since the second Paddy O’Connor was pronounced dead. It made sense, since Salvio was Tiger’s senior man and in charge of the whole field operation.

“Jack wants to shut it all down,” she said absently.

“Makes sense, given what’s happened.” Seth cast a look out the window in the direction of the drilling rig, barely making out the outline of the derrick.

“I’m going out there to talk to him.”

“Hey, wait.”

She ignored him, and a minute later was suited up and out the door to the yard. Seth was right behind her. He was late as it was. Lunch was over and everyone was back on shift.

Lauren slipped on the ice as she grabbed the guideline connecting the camp to the rig. He caught her just in time.

“Thanks.”

He barely heard her over the wind. She smiled up at him, her auburn hair whipping around her face. He grabbed the fur ruff of her hood and pulled it snug, holding her close longer than he should have.

Again he had to remind himself he was acting. So was she. All in a day’s work. He was a cop, and she was a murderer. He hadn’t wanted to believe it when he was with her last night, but what he’d found in the Dumpster convinced him. He’d wrapped the evidence in a paper bag and stashed it in his duffel. It wasn’t enough. He’d bet his life there’d be no usable fingerprints on that rock hammer. All the same, he had to get a look at Paddy’s body.

As they pulled their way along the guideline to the rig, he mentally checked off what he knew about Lauren Fotheringay. Not nearly enough. Not yet. The homicide alone might be tough to hang on her. But proof that she was the corporate thief would likely buy her the murder rap, too.

His goal was clear to him now. Forget the murder. Finger her for the illegal sale of Tiger’s proprietary data. Rock samples and maps—that was likely what she was selling. The rest would follow if he could establish motive. This much he did know about her:

Oil industry papers had rumored Tiger’s CEO was thinking of promoting Lauren over her boss, Bill Walters, to VP of exploration. No small leap. She couldn’t be that good. There must be another reason. Maybe she was sleeping with him.

Maybe she was sleeping with all of them—Tiger’s CEO, her boss, not to mention that pretty-boy fiancé of hers. Seth watched her shuck her jacket off inside the first-floor stairwell of the drilling rig, his gaze pinned on the curve of her hip, the swell of her breasts against that ratty old cardigan she seemed to live in.