On Thin Ice

He reminded himself that even if she wasn’t a perp, she was still off-limits to him: a rich sorority princess with a fancy career and ice water in her veins. He’d gotten burned on that type once already, and wouldn’t make that mistake again. Women like Lauren Fotheringay didn’t love men, they used them. That fact made it easier to focus on his goal.

Bledsoe had ordered him to hold his cover even after he’d fingered the ringleader and his or her accomplices. They wanted to take everyone involved in this corporate piracy case down at once. No one was sure how high up in Tiger the fraud went, but Seth suspected pretty high.

Based on what he knew so far, if he had to guess, he’d make Lauren as the kingpin here in the field, and Paddy O’Connor her accomplice. Paddy must have gotten scared or screwed up, done something to make it dangerous for Lauren to let him live. Maybe he was getting ready to blow the whistle on the whole operation.

Seth didn’t know, but he was going to find out.

Amazingly enough, his own father—a shrewd businessman who watched the movements of oil companies operating in the Arctic like a hawk—had been the one who’d tipped off the Feds to what he’d first thought was some kind of illegal collusion between Tiger and that foreign company. How ironic that Seth should catch the case. He wondered if his father knew. And if he did know, if he’d care.

Oh, he’d care all right. The great and powerful Jeremy Adams would expect Seth to screw it up somehow. Just like he thought Seth had screwed up his career with the Bureau and his marriage. Not to mention a hundred other things growing up.

Lauren started up the metal stairs, and Seth followed, his gaze fixed on her jeans-clad behind. Mmm, nice. The view drove all thoughts of his father from his mind.

The higher they climbed and the closer they got to the drilling floor, the more deafening the noise became. The screeching sounds of machinery one floor above them told Seth they’d already started the rest of the shift without him. He’d catch hell from Salvio for sure now.

He swore silently under his breath. One of these days he and Jack Salvio were going to have a serious disagreement.

They topped a landing, and Lauren stopped short. Seth crashed into her from behind. “Whoa, sorry.” He grabbed the greasy metal handrail to keep from falling backward down the stairs.

Over the noise, he heard her rattle off a litany of cuss words the average society cupcake shouldn’t even know. But her tirade wasn’t on his account. She pointed across one of the catwalks circling the central drilling pipe that stretched from ground level up five stories to the drilling floor just above them.

Seth looked past her and saw two roustabouts—the same guys who’d corralled him yesterday into helping them move that equipment. He’d found out soon afterward that they’d lied to him about the camp’s forklift being down. The question was why?

His hunch was that they’d deliberately wanted to divert his attention. Away from a murder being committed not fifty yards away as he humped crates off a pallet? Maybe. Maybe not.

Seth filed that question away for the time being, and watched them scoop samples out of the big metal vat of drilling mud and rock being circulated out of the well. “Want me to—”

Lauren didn’t wait for him to finish. In three seconds she was across the catwalk, shouting something at the two roustabouts that Seth couldn’t make out over the noise. A second later he bumped up behind her again.

“What’s going on?” Seth looked to Pinkie for an explanation. The roustabout had gotten his nickname when he lost one of his little fingers in a drilling accident years ago, so Paddy O’Connor had told him.

“Nothin’,” Pinkie said.

“Yeah, nothin’.” Seth looked hard at Pinkie’s greasy-looking friend. The name Bulldog was painted in crude letters across his hard hat. “We was just takin’ samples like—”

“Like we’re supposed to.” Pinkie shot Bulldog a cautionary look.

Something was off about these two. Seth had thought so since his first day on the job. They were thick as thieves and strangely aloof from the rest of the crew. Come to think of it, neither of them had seemed overly concerned, as had the rest of the men, when Paddy O’Connor turned up dead in the reserve pit.

Lauren grabbed a half-full plastic sample bag out of Bulldog’s hand, yanked off her glove and ran a finger over the crudely marked depth measurement on the plastic. “Ninety-three ten.”

“Yeah,” Pinkie said. “What of it?”

Lauren shook her head. “Nothing. I just wanted to have a look, is all.” She dipped a finger into the muddy, crushed up rock and sniffed it.

Seth leaned down and smelled the open bag. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just—”

“We gotta get back to the floor.” Pinkie tried to squeeze past them, but Seth blocked his way.

“Salvio ask you two to take samples?” Seth remembered that another roustabout, a young kid, new to the oil field, had been doing the sampling up until now.

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason.” He let Pinkie pass.

“I’m going with you.” Lauren handed the sample bag back to Bulldog.

Pinkie turned on her. “Salvio says no one who ain’t needed is supposed to come up there—geologists included.”

“What?” Lauren’s mouth gaped.

That figured, Seth thought. And it made sense. You didn’t want too many people around distracting the drilling crew. He’d been more than distracted himself the past twenty minutes.

“Salvio put me in charge a-makin’ sure.” Pinkie flashed a hardened look at her. “Know what I mean?”

Seth had had enough of these two. “Get going.” Oil field hierarchy, punctuated by the fact that Seth was bigger than both of them, insured their compliance.

Pinkie smirked, then nodded at his partner. Bulldog zipped the sample bag closed and tossed it into an open box beside the mud vat. Seth followed them both out onto the catwalk.

“Damn split-tails,” Pinkie said, to no one in particular. “Women shouldn’t be out here, if ya ask me.”

Lauren stood there, face flushed, her whisky-brown eyes flashing anger, as she watched the two of them jog up the metal staircase toward the drilling floor.

“Ignore him,” Seth said. “He’s an idiot.”

“If he’s assigned to sample collection I’ve got to work with him, now don’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess you do.” The thought bothered him more than it should have. Seth nodded at the samples in the box. “What’s up with those rocks anyway?”

She shook off her foul temperament and turned her attention on the box. “You wouldn’t understand.”

She’d be right, if Seth was who he was supposed to be—just another roughneck working another job. If he was smart, he’d stick to that role. But years ago, in college, he’d taken an introductory geology course along with a handful of other science classes needed to fulfill his degree requirement. In the end, his pride got the better of him. “Try me.”

She looked at him for a cool moment that seemed longer than a winter in Kachelik. Hell, what was she doing, sizing up his intellect? His ex used to do that all the time.

“Forget it,” he said, and started for the catwalk.

“No, wait.” She grabbed his arm. “I—I’m sorry. It’s just that so few people are ever interested in my work. It surprised me, is all.”

He shrugged, annoyed at himself for letting her get to him.

“Come on.” She pulled him toward the open box of samples.

The machinery noise was so loud, he had to invade her personal space so he could hear her. At least that’s what he told himself as he edged close enough to her to catch the lingering scent of shampoo in her hair. He knew being this close to her was dangerous. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t focus. Come on, Adams, get a grip.

“These are totally normal,” she said, snapping him back to the topic. “Exactly what I’d expect to see at this location and this depth.” She snatched one of the sample bags from the box and handed it to him.

He pulled off his glove and squished the heavy plastic between his fingers, squinting in the bad overhead light, studying the grayish-brown rock chips floating in mud. “Shale, right?”

“That’s right.” She smiled at him. “That’s exactly what we should be seeing at this point.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“That’s not what’s in the samples that were waiting in the crate outside the lab when I arrived.”

“You mean the ones I saw you looking at last night?”

Their gazes locked, and for the barest second he knew she was remembering what had happened between them in the trailer. Their embrace, the delicate kisses he’d brushed across her temple and her hair. The recognition in her eyes told him she knew he was thinking about it, too.

She snatched the bag from his hand and broke the spell. “Um, yes.” Her cheeks flushed with color. Clearly, she was uncomfortable with the bit of spontaneous intimacy they’d shared last night.

He was uncomfortable with it, too. Damned uncomfortable. But he was determined to get close to her. Close enough to learn her secrets—exactly what information she was selling, and how. She’d responded to him last night, and whether it was all an act or not didn’t matter.

For whatever reason, Lauren Fotheringay wanted him on her side, as an ally. Maybe more than that, given the way she stole a glance at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. That’s exactly what he’d become, then. Another dumb, unsuspecting primate she could use for her own purpose.

It couldn’t be more perfect. Once he proved to her she could trust him, he’d be able to glean the facts he’d need to collar her and her cronies here in the field, and anyone else in on the scheme back at Tiger Petroleum.

Time to move in for the kill.

“If there’s anything I can help you with,” he said, drawing her gaze back to his, “let me know.”

“Thanks.” She smiled again, and this time he marveled at how genuine it seemed.

Looking at her standing there in her field clothes, her expression open, eyes wide and trusting, he could almost believe she was innocent. That she knew nothing about Paddy’s murder or the illegal peddling of information worth millions to the right buyer. He wanted to believe it. More than anything.

Watch your step, Adams.

She tossed the sample bag back into the box and slid past him, pausing at the catwalk. “See you later?” It was more than a question. Her eyes held a subtle plea.

“Yeah,” he said, and forced a smile. “Later.”

As he turned toward the metal staircase leading up to the drilling floor, he saw Jack Salvio leaning casually against the railing at the top, watching them. Lauren saw him, too. Salvio flashed her a hard look, then waved Seth up to the floor.

Time to go to work.

Chapter 5

The rhythmic whomp of chopper blades ripped her from an uneasy sleep. Lauren sat up in the hard, single bed and blinked her eyes open to pitch-black. “Oh, right.”

Before she’d gone to sleep last night, she’d drawn the blackout shades in the trailer’s tiny bedroom. Not that it was necessary in the dead of an arctic winter when darkness prevailed twenty-plus hours a day.

She checked the glow-in-the-dark hands of her watch. 2:40 a.m. Great. She’d never get back to sleep now. Why had she dreamt of a helicopter? In this weather, it was the last thing—

Wait! There it was again. She scrambled out of bed and ripped the Velcro-lashed drape away from the window. The harsh yard lights made her squint. She blinked a few times, to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing.

Absolutely nothing.

No blowing snow. Not a breath of wind, in fact. The yard between her trailer and the drilling rig and the rest of the camp was perfectly still. Then she heard it again. She hadn’t been dreaming. From this vantage point she couldn’t see the chopper pad lying out beyond the camp, but her ears told her everything she needed to know.

Someone was here. Thank God!

She flipped on the overhead light and snatched a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the pile of clothes she’d unpacked last night. If the weather had cleared long enough for a chopper to get in, maybe she could get word to her boss. Let Bill know what had happened to Paddy O’Connor, about the faulty computer system and those strange rock samples she’d found outside her trailer when she’d arrived.

Not bothering to wash her face or run a comb through her tangled hair, she jerked the connecting door open to the lab, just as the fluorescent lights snapped on overhead.

Jack Salvio stood across the room, framed by the lab’s open doorway, a master key in his hand. “Good. You’re up.”

“What’s going on? There’s a chopper outside.”

“Grab your gear. You’re outta here.”

“What?” She padded across the linoleum to where she’d left her boots, and slipped them on.

Ignoring her question, Salvio brushed past her and made a quick survey of the lab, his gaze darting across the stainless steel countertops, pausing on the open notebook at her workstation. She knew what he was looking for.

“Those samples you took from my locked trailer yesterday—where are they, Jack?” She was still steamed about the whole incident. She’d come back here yesterday afternoon to find them gone. Salvio was the only other person with a key.

“I told you. They were from last week. Shoulda been shipped days ago back to the lab at Tiger. It’s taken care of now.”

“That’s not the point.”

He started to read her handwritten notes about the unusual samples. Lauren closed the distance between them and snapped the notebook shut.

What Salvio didn’t know was that he’d missed one of the samples when he’d confiscated the crate. Lauren’s eyes darted to the open plastic bag sitting next to her microscope. Salvio’s gaze followed. She snatched it off the counter and stuffed it into the pocket of her cardigan.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Just something I was working on yesterday.” She tossed him a blank look.

“Don’t screw around, Lauren. There’s no time.” He continued to eye the bulge in her pocket, the lines in his face deepening into a scowl.

“I’m not screwing around.” She tried to ignore the fact that for some silly reason he was making her nervous. “What exactly is going on here, Jack?”

“Like I said, you’re outta here.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m not leaving, I just got here.”

“Yeah, you are. I’m sending O’Connor’s body back to Deadhorse. You’re going with it.”

“What? I can’t leave now. We’re nearly at target depth.”

No one else knew what to look for—where and how much to sample, or what the samples meant, whether they had to drill deeper, or if they could stop. No one could make those decisions except the geologist.

Besides, she wasn’t going anywhere until she found out where those peculiar rock samples had come from, and what Salvio had done with the crate.

“You’re the one who found the body. And someone from Tiger’s got to make the report. It’s you or me.” Salvio nodded at the rig. “Unless you want me to shut the whole frickin’ thing down like I wanted to in the first place. Then we can go in together.”

“No. That’s out of the question, and you know it.”

“Well, then?”

Lauren swore. Salvio was in charge and couldn’t leave the island while they were drilling, especially now that they had no toolpusher to manage the crew. And if they didn’t keep drilling, they’d never finish on time.

“Start packing.” Salvio shot her a nasty look just begging her to challenge him. “The break in the weather’s temporary. We got a half hour at best.” He started for the door.

Lauren’s hand closed over the rock sample in her cardigan pocket. Instinct told her it was the key to this whole nightmare. On impulse, she dashed into the bedroom and stuffed it into a half-full box of tampons. Safest place on the planet. No guy in his right mind would ever touch that box.

Grabbing her jacket, she followed Salvio out the door. The cold hit her like a brick wall. The wind had died, but the ambient air temperature had dropped. She jogged after him, teeth chattering.

The whole place was in an uproar. Salvio hadn’t been kidding. Four men in bunny boots and survival gear exited the prefab camp, bearing Paddy O’Connor’s stiff, plastic-wrapped body across the yard toward the chopper pad out back.

“Why didn’t you wake me sooner? You can’t make a decision like this on your own. What if the weather gets worse? I might never get back to the island. We need to call in, tell someone what’s hap—” Lauren stopped dead in her tracks. “Wait a minute!”

Salvio turned.

“The chopper. How’d you get it?” She spun toward the tiny communications shack nestled between the camp and the rig. “The satellite link! It’s up!”

“Not anymore. It was working just long enough for me to make the call to Deadhorse for the bird.”

“But Bill Walters… Didn’t you—”

“Never got the chance to call him. Besides—”

Lauren didn’t wait for him to finish. Pushing through a line of men making for the rig, she stormed toward camp.

“Get your stuff together, Fotheringay!” Salvio shouted after her. “You’re gonna be on that bird.”

She blasted through the door into the break room and collided with one of the crew. “Dammit! Watch where you’re going.”

Seth caught her by the shoulders. “Whoa! What’s the hurry?”

She gritted her teeth and mentally counted to ten, trying to calm her anger. He pulled her off to the side, so more men could file past.

“It’s Jack,” she said. “He has no right to do this without permission.”

“Do what?”

“He’s sending me back to Deadhorse with Paddy’s body.”

“Makes sense. Someone has to go.”

“But why me, and why now?”

Paddy didn’t have any family; his crew was his family. Altex was his whole life. There was no one else to notify except the borough police and Tiger’s senior management, and that could all be done by phone.

“The weather’s supposed to get worse. Another hour, maybe less, and it’s coming back.” His voice was calm, smooth as glass. Exactly the opposite of the way she felt. “With a vengeance, so the chopper pilot says.”

“So I’ve heard.” She brushed past him and started for Salvio’s office.

“Where’s your gear? Don’t you need to—”

“I’m not going.” Her declaration didn’t seem to surprise him one bit.

She plopped into Salvio’s desk chair and snatched the red phone receiver from its hook. Dead. “Damn!”

“Communications are down.” Seth looked at her hard, as if he expected her to react in some way to his comment.

“Well, they were up at some point, now weren’t they? Long enough for Jack to call in that helicopter.”

“Yeah, I guess they were.”

She glanced briefly at the computer monitors on Salvio’s desk. They were blank. Figured. The whole system must be down.

She had to call in. Had to tell someone what was happening. Her boss would be furious if he knew Salvio was trying to send her back to Deadhorse without consulting anyone else.

“I’m going over there.” She pushed back from the desk.

“Where?”

“Sat-comm shack.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She looked up at Seth, and their gazes locked. She realized he expected her to protest. To tell him no, that she didn’t need his help. Common sense told her to steer clear of this guy, but instinct told her different.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

By the time they slipped out the camp’s rear emergency exit, the wind had started up again. Visibility dwindled as the gale whipped swirling, needle-sharp blasts of dry snow into her face. Lauren pulled her fur-ruffed hood tight as they jogged along the back side of the metal building.

Where the snowdrifts deepened, Seth grabbed her gloved hand and guided her on, sheltering her from the wind with his body. He was so…what was the word? Chivalrous came to mind.

She recalled the last time she and Crocker had been caught in a snowstorm. It was during that awful ski vacation in the Alps. She had wanted to ski down the mountain, leaving space on the cable car for children and seniors who hadn’t the stamina to brave the weather. But Crocker wouldn’t hear of it. He’d pushed his way onto the car. Lauren was so angry at him, she’d skied down alone.

As Seth’s grip on her tightened, she felt a warm sort of satisfaction blossom inside her. No man had ever gone out of his way to protect her before. Well, not since she was a kid and her father was alive.

“Wait here!” Seth shouted over the wind. He ducked inside the back door to the machine shop and emerged thirty seconds later with a pair of bolt cutters. Of course! The sat-comm shack was always locked for security reasons. Jack Salvio had the only key.

Together they rounded the corner and peeked between the buildings. No one was around. He pulled her into the tight space between the two steel structures. “Come on.”

A dozen paces later they stopped dead. The door to the sat-comm shack was cracked, light spilling from inside. The heavy padlock lay open on the ground.

The door crashed wide, and Lauren’s heart leaped to her throat. Seth pushed her hard against the wall of the shack and flattened his body over hers. It was dark, and if they were lucky—

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