On Thin Ice Read online

  The first shift break was over, and a few stragglers sauntered back down the hallway from their sleeping quarters toward the mudroom. Salvio whistled at one of them. “Hey, you there! Nanook.”

  Lauren winced. Apparently Jack Salvio had not been paying attention during the series of workshops on ethnic diversity Tiger Petroleum required all its employees to attend.

  At the end of the hall an athletic-looking crew hand with roughneck written all over him stopped dead in his tracks, his back to them. He was tall—too tall for a native—and sported a dark, unkempt ponytail.

  Lauren’s gaze slid across the muscles barely hidden by his rumpled flannel shirt to the mud-spattered jeans hugging his backside like something off a Calvin Klein billboard. She suppressed the wow forming on her lips. His big, dirty hands fisted at his sides as he turned in response to Salvio’s inappropriate comment.

  He was a native.

  Lauren knew the shock registered on her face.

  “Get your butt over here and take the lady’s bag.” Salvio nodded at her duffel and briefcase sitting in the corridor outside the mudroom.

  But then again, maybe he wasn’t. It was hard to tell from this far away.

  She guessed him to be in his early thirties, a year or two older than herself. His eyes were dark, his skin bronze, but the rest of his features didn’t fit. He had what her mother would have called an English nose. Narrow and arrow-straight. Mother loved the English. But neither she nor Crocker would love the way Lauren was looking at the roughneck.

  Or the way he looked back.

  She read a dangerous sort of instability in his eyes as he approached them. His gaze flicked from her to Salvio and back again. He passed her duffel, ignoring it. She fought the strangest urge to step back as he strode right up to Salvio and leveled his gaze at him.

  “You talking to me?”

  “Yeah.” Salvio had to look up to meet that murderous glare of his. He was tall. But since she was only five-three, everyone seemed tall to her.

  “The name’s Adams.”

  Adams. Not your everyday Inuit or Yupik name. He was half-native, she suspected. And apparently he’d done something to anger Jack Salvio. Jack wasn’t usually this nasty. Well, he was, but that was part of his nature. No, something else was causing the tension between them.

  “I can take her bag out,” Paddy said. As he stooped to retrieve it from the floor, he shot Lauren a loaded look. “Come on, Scout.”

  Paddy clearly wanted to talk to her alone. The way he fidgeted around Salvio, the tension in his expression, his bloodshot eyes… Something was wrong.

  “No,” Salvio said, not breaking the roughneck’s gaze.

  “But, Jack, I—”

  “Nanook here will see her to her trailer. Won’tcha, boy?”

  This was getting out of hand. Lauren pushed past them and grabbed her duffel and briefcase. “I can carry my own bag, thanks.” Before they could react, she ducked into the mudroom and made a beeline for her jacket and Sorels.

  Paddy followed her, Salvio and Adams in his wake. She laced her boots, shaking her head at their ridiculous behavior. This wasn’t exactly the Ritz, and she didn’t need a porter.

  Adams plucked her bag from where she’d dropped it. “I’ll take you out there. I’ve got a few minutes left before the shift starts up again.”

  “It’s not necessary.” She reached for the bag and, to her surprise, he let her take it. Their hands brushed in the transfer, their gazes locked, and for the barest second she imagined what those big hands would feel like on her body.

  What was that about?

  She shrugged it off and stepped around him, which wasn’t easy in the close quarters, given Adams’s size and the fact that she was dressed like the Michelin man in full survival gear.

  “Suit yourself.” Adams watched her as she snaked her way around the break room tables toward the exit. Her back was to him, but she felt his eyes on her all the same. Black eyes. Black as a winter’s night in the Chugach.

  “Scout, about that talk—” The door slammed behind her, cutting off the rest of Paddy’s words. She’d catch up with him later. Right now all she wanted to do was get settled and get to work.

  Heading straight for the geologist’s trailer, she sucked in a blast of frigid air. On purpose. The lung freeze felt good this time. Hell, yes. She was back in the field.

  She had a job to do. Failure was not an option. Not for the woman who was about to become Tiger Petroleum’s next exploration manager. Not for Hatch Parker’s little Scout.

  Chapter 2

  S eth Adams wasn’t a betting man, but if he had to guess who the corporate thief was that the Feds had hired him to finger, he’d put all his stakes on Lauren Fotheringay.

  Last year, a small, foreign oil company that had never set foot in Alaska before snagged a land deal netting what turned out to be a fortune in oil drilling rights. No way was it just dumb luck. They’d had an inside track. Access to geological data the FBI knew, because of the position of the leases, could have only come from one source—Tiger Petroleum.

  The Bureau had already ruled out the possibility that the foreign company simply stole the data. Tiger’s security was renowned in the industry. No, the data had likely been sold to them—and selling proprietary corporate data without that corporation’s knowledge or consent was a crime. A big one.

  There was a criminal at work somewhere in the Tiger organization, and the Feds, along with Tiger’s CEO and some high-ranking Wall Street types, wanted that person caught. The Caribou Island operation was as good a place as any to start. Perhaps the thief would strike again. No one at Tiger knew, of course, that they were under surveillance, and the FBI wanted it kept that way.

  Oh, yeah, Seth thought, as he watched Lauren Fotheringay out the icy window of the break room, lugging her duffel and briefcase across the site in near whiteout conditions.

  The woman was tough as nails. And a hell of a lot more attractive in the flesh than she appeared in that society news clipping he’d seen showing her dressed to the nines with Tiger’s money man, Crocker Holt. Seth had read all about the two of them in the dossier Bledsoe had provided.

  Those big brown eyes of hers had given him the once-over, too. More than once. In an irritating way, she reminded him of Kitty, his ex. They both had that same finishing-school, expensive-women’s-college, “hey, look at me, I’m a big lady executive” sort of arrogance about them.

  Behind the scenes, women like that got their kicks from messing with the heads of men they considered a couple of rungs below them on the evolutionary ladder. Construction workers, auto mechanics, even a roughneck now and then. Yeah, he knew the type. Boy, did he ever.

  What Little Miss Society In Geologist’s Clothing didn’t know was that he wasn’t a roughneck. Well, not anymore he wasn’t. Fresh out of high school he’d pulled pipe from Barter Island to Barrow, scraping together enough money to pay his way through college.

  He’d graduated with honors with a B.A. in criminology from the University of Alaska, surprising the hell out of his old man. Seth would never forget the day he called him in his New York office with the news. Not that an important oil man like Jeremy Adams had time to attend his kid’s commencement.

  Remembering, Seth made a derisive sound in the back of his throat.

  The FBI had recruited him right out of school. Some affirmative action thing, though he could have easily made the cut on his own. He ended up second in his class at the Academy. Even so, Bledsoe, his section chief in D.C., had never liked him. The feeling was mutual.

  Three years later Bledsoe had him dismissed for reasons Seth didn’t like to remember. He’d blown their cover on a major counterfeiting sting the FBI and Secret Service had spent six months and a bundle of cash setting up. The way Seth saw it, it was either that or watch his partner take one in the back. He’d had no choice. Bledsoe thought otherwise.

  In the end, his partner nearly bought it. Bledsoe somehow managed to blame that on him, too. After Se
th got the ax, he went home to his native village of Kachelik, and had worked as a borough cop there ever since.

  It was a great job, and he loved the village. He had friends there, and family. His wife left him when the Bureau canned him and, in hindsight, he considered himself damned lucky. They were from different worlds, and Seth never intended to make that mistake again.

  The past few years had been pretty uneventful. No real challenges, no serious girlfriends. Everything was rocking along just fine until a few weeks ago when two suits showed up at the village in the dead of night in an unmarked FBI chopper.

  Bledsoe wanted him back. Needed him, was more like it. The Feds wanted someone undercover on Caribou Island, and couldn’t find one among the ranks of bright and shiny new agents who’d fit in on an offshore oil rig in the Arctic. Seth was elected.

  Altex’s grim financial situation made it easy for the FBI to get him out on the island. Posing as a native Alaskan affirmative action group, Bledsoe’s men had paid Paddy O’Connor a subsidy to hire Seth as a roughneck for the Caribou Island job. In a roundabout way, it was the second time he’d been hired by the Bureau because of his ethnicity.

  It would be the last time.

  He hadn’t wanted the job at first, but a tribal elder had counseled him to take it. Seth wasn’t sure why. He’d finally agreed, but it wasn’t because of the elder’s gentle prodding, or because Bledsoe offered him his old job back in D.C. if he fingered the perp. But this was no time to reminisce about his motives. He needed to focus on the facts.

  He’d been on the job six days now, and so far everything about the operation seemed above board. He’d gotten the usual cold reception from the crew. If he hadn’t, he’d have been suspicious. Jack Salvio was a nasty piece of work, too, but nothing Seth couldn’t handle. Everything seemed normal, in fact, until fifteen short minutes ago when Lauren Parker Fotheringay landed on Caribou island.

  Already he smelled blood.

  Seth zipped his survival jacket all the way up, slammed his hard hat on his head and yanked the camp’s front door wide. A blast of arctic air hit him full in the face.

  Some routine maintenance had delayed the start of his shift, but he’d check in on the drilling floor anyway, just to make sure he wasn’t needed. After that, he’d have plenty of time to pay a surprise visit to his number one suspect out there in her shiny new trailer.

  That was probably Money Man’s doing. The protective fiancé. Every geologist’s trailer he’d ever seen on the North Slope had been beat-up and barely livable. This new one, which was bigger and nicer than half the houses in Kachelik, had been brought in special a couple of days ago for Her Majesty.

  Seth dashed across the yard, took the slick outer stairs up to the drilling floor two at time, then skidded to a stop on the landing. Squinting back toward camp through the blowing snow, he saw Paddy O’Connor—that red hard hat of his was unmistakable—fighting the wind as he made his way toward Lauren Fotheringay’s trailer.

  Damn! He’d hoped to overhear their conversation. Paddy was also on his list of suspects, but only as an accomplice. The Feds knew the thief was someone on the inside at Tiger, someone with a technical background who could interpret the data. But to pull it off, that person would need help in the field. And a drilling company toolpusher one short season away from bankruptcy was the most likely candidate.

  Bledsoe had told Seth little else about the case. Just enough to get him started. He was supposed to finger the perps, then call in the cavalry. He wasn’t authorized to take action on his own. That figured. His job was to stay undercover and report back to the almighty Doyle Bledsoe.

  He jerked the door open to the “doghouse,” the small break room just off the drilling floor, and ducked inside. The crew was standing around, drinking coffee. Big surprise. None of these yokels lifted a finger unless Paddy O’Connor was right there, making sure they were working.

  That was fine with him. He shot back down the stairs and started for Fotheringay’s trailer. Perhaps he’d get an earful of Paddy’s conversation with her, after all.

  “Yo, Adams!”

  He turned in the direction the shout had come from, but couldn’t see more than ten feet ahead of him. If the storm got much worse, they’d have to set up a rope between the rig and the camp, so no one would get disoriented walking back and forth.

  A couple of roustabouts—Paddy O’Connor’s men—fought the wind as they made their way to Seth’s side.

  “What’s up, guys?”

  “How ’bout giving us a hand?” One of them pointed back toward camp, where Seth knew a pallet of equipment sat waiting to be carried inside. “Forklift’s down for the count.”

  Seth glanced in the direction of the geologist’s trailer, but couldn’t see it anymore through the storm. He bit off a silent curse. He wanted to get out there and see what was going on between Paddy and Lauren, but he also didn’t want to arouse any suspicion, or give any of the crew any more reason to hate him than they already did.

  Some of these good old boys didn’t take kindly to natives taking up good roughnecking jobs they considered theirs by right. In winter the Arctic was a deadly environment. There was an unwritten rule out here that everyone pitched in and helped each other.

  “Sure,” he said, casting an annoyed glance in the direction of the equipment. It would probably only take a minute.

  Twenty minutes later, when the pallet was empty and the roustabouts were on their way inside, Seth crept around the side of Lauren Fotheringay’s custom-built trailer and peeked in the only uncurtained window.

  There was nobody there.

  At least not in the lab portion of the trailer. He scanned the clean white linoleum and sparkling steel countertops. A crate full of plastic bags filled with muddy rock samples sat by the door. Lauren’s briefcase lay open on the desk next to a top-of-the-line laptop computer.

  There was only one other room in the trailer. A small bedroom and bath in the back. He didn’t think Paddy would be in there with her. But maybe so. He seemed to know her pretty well. What had he called her back in the mudroom?

  Scout. Kind of an odd nickname for a society cupcake who wore the biggest diamond engagement ring Seth had ever seen up close, and who drove a seventy-five thousand dollar Porsche. Yet another little gift from her fiancé. Seth had done some last-minute homework on both of them using the Internet.

  Skirting around the back of the trailer, he took care to avoid slipping into the murky-looking reserve pit. Due to the warm temperature of the mud and drilling fluids circulating in and out of it, it was the only thing liquid for miles. Everything else in the Arctic was frozen solid this time of year.

  The wind was blowing so hard now, swirling dry snow up around him like an icy white shroud, he could barely see his hand in front of his face. The bright, overhead yard lights reflected off all that white, making visibility almost worse.

  Then he heard it. A woman’s scream.

  Seth froze in place, peering straight across the reserve pit from where the sound had come, ice and wind slicing at his eyes. It had to be Lauren. She was the only woman on the island.

  It took him a full minute to traverse the narrow strip of ice sandwiched between the back of the trailer and the open pit. Where the yard opened up again, he took off at a run, then stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her.

  She was kneeling at the edge of the reserve pit. In shirtsleeves! No jacket. No hard hat. Was she nuts? Her auburn hair whipped at her face. Up to her forearms in mud, she was trying to pull something out of the pit—or push it in—he couldn’t tell which.

  As their gazes collided, he read panic in her eyes. “You!” she shouted at him over the roar of the wind. He took another step toward her, then caught a glimpse of something that made his heart seize up in his chest.

  A red hard hat, lying next to her on the ice.

  Only then did he notice what she was desperately clutching. Paddy O’Connor’s limp, mud-covered body.

  Seth narrowed his ey
es, but not from the sleet blasting his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Chapter 3

  F or the first time in her life Lauren was knee-knocking, bone-shaking terrified.

  Adams bore down on her like a predator. Once, years ago, she’d watched as a polar bear slaughtered a lone seal who’d drifted away from its herd. It all came back to her now as she felt a dazed sort of panic, the kind she’d seen reflected in the seal’s eyes the second before the bear took it down.

  Three strides, then two. Adams was almost on her, but she couldn’t will herself to let go of Paddy’s jumpsuit and run. She locked gazes with the roughneck, her teeth chattering from the cold. Adams reached out and—

  To her astonishment, he grabbed the collar of Paddy’s jumpsuit and in one smooth motion pulled him out of the pit onto the ice.

  “Move away from him.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “You heard me, move!”

  She slid to the side, her arms dripping mud that would be frozen in— Oh, God, it was already frozen.

  Adams shot her an icy look as he checked Paddy’s body for a pulse. Lauren knew he wouldn’t find one. That was the first thing she’d done when she’d discovered him facedown, floating in the reserve pit.

  “Get the medic.”

  The world spun around her. Bright yard lights reflected off blowing snow. Bone-chilling wind sliced her skin like a razor. She sat back on the ice as visions of Paddy O’Connor and her father—collecting rock samples, inspecting a worn drill bit, sharing a beer after a job well done—screamed through her mind in an avalanche of pain and tenderness.

  She was barely aware of Adams starting CPR.

  “I said get the medic! Now!”

  His command snapped her out of her daze. “Y-yes. Of course.” She scrambled to her feet.

  “Wait. Here.” He stopped the chest compressions long enough to shrug off his survival jacket and toss it to her. Then he watched her as she struggled into it, teeth chattering, her gaze pinned on his. For the barest moment she read something in his eyes, something she wasn’t prepared for.