On Thin Ice. Debra Lee Brown

      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