On Thin Ice. Debra Brown Lee

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

      Chapter 3

      For 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.

      Accusation.

      “Have them bring the stretcher. Tell Salvio to order a medevac out of Kachelik. It’s closer than Deadhorse. That chopper that dropped you here isn’t set up for it.”

      She nodded, took a second to get her bearings, then took off at a run, Adams’s unzipped jacket whipping her in the wind.

      Two minutes later the camp was in an uproar. Twenty minutes after that, in the camp’s tiny infirmary, the medic—a freckle-faced kid fresh from advanced life-support training—pronounced Paddy O’Connor dead.

      Lauren felt sick to her stomach.

      Salvio wrapped an arm around her and moved her toward the door. “Come on, I’ve got just the thing for you.”

      She tried to wave him off through a haze of tears, but he persisted, steering her back down the hallway toward his office. They passed Adams, gathered with the rest of the crew just inside the camp’s kitchen. His face was hard, his eyes black and unreadable. Surely he didn’t think it was her fault that Paddy’d been, that he—

      “Did he make it?” one of the crew asked.

      Salvio shook his head.

      Some of these guys had worked for Paddy O’Connor since the beginning. Lauren had known the toolpusher all her life. What on earth had happened?

      They turned into Salvio’s office and he directed her to the beat-up sofa. “Sit down.”

      “No, I—”

      He pushed her down onto the stained Naugahyde. She watched, in a daze, as he fished something out of his file cabinet.

      “Here. Drink it.” He handed her a small, silver flask.

      It didn’t surprise her at all that Jack Salvio ignored Tiger’s strict rules prohibiting alcohol in the field. She stared blankly at the flask. Why not? It couldn’t make her feel any worse, and it just might settle her nerves if not her stomach. He opened it for her, and she took a healthy swig. Whatever it was, it burned all the way down.

      “Good. Now get some rest. You look like hell.”

      She’d shed Adams’s jacket in the mudroom. Her clothes and her hair were caked with drilling mud, but that could wait.

      “No, I’ve got to call in.”

      “Phones are out. The weather.”

      That’s right. She’d forgotten. Crocker had mentioned it to her on her chopper flight in. “So there’ll be no medevac to transport Paddy’s body?”

      “Nope.”