Hard Line

by Clare, Pamela

  He hoped they understood the subtext.

  If Hardin shows up at the meeting without me, kick his ass.

  He followed Hardin through the warren that was the admin offices, noticed ice on the plastic mat just inside the emergency fire exit. There was also ice on Hardin’s boots.

  Hardin had just come through that door.

  This was fucked.

  Thor reached down, loosened his pistol in its holster, kept his hand at his hip, ready to draw.

  Hardin opened his office door, gestured for Thor to enter, his gaze dropping to Thor’s right hand. “Go on in.”

  “You first.” Thor stood his ground.

  Hardin’s pupils narrowed, but he smiled. “Are you getting paranoid? It’s the twenty-four-seven darkness. It happens to all of us.”

  Thor followed him inside. “What is this about?”

  Hardin sat on the edge of his desk, a grin sliding over his face. “I’m going to need your pistol, your radio, your phone, and the location of the Golden Horde components—or Samantha will die.”

  Thor drew, pointed his weapon at the bastard’s head. “Where is she?”

  Hardin didn’t flinch. “Check the webcam.”

  Thor hazarded a quick glance at Hardin’s screen, the green glow of a night-vision camera showing… His heart gave a hard knock, a single, sickening thud. “Samantha.”

  She lay still on the ice, tied up without a parka or any cold-weather gear. Thor couldn’t identify where she was, exactly, and he couldn’t see her face or tell whether she was breathing. But he recognized the sweater—and her long hair.

  Fuck! Son of a bitch!

  Rage such as he hadn’t felt since Afghanistan surged through him, made his face burn, blood lust pounding through his veins.

  Thor grabbed Hardin by his hair, slammed his face into his desk, jammed the pistol into the fucker’s temple. “Where the fuck is she? Tell me, or I’ll splatter your brains around this office.”

  “You’ve got one chance to save her, and you’re wasting it. If you kill me, she dies. If you delay, she dies. She’s already been out there for, oh, I’d say, about five minutes. Even if you mobilize everyone on station to search for her, she’ll be dead before you find her. Give me your radio, your weapon, and the location of the Golden Horde components, and I’ll tell you where she is. And don’t say the goods are in my safe. I already looked. That’s all fucking Legos and scrap metal.”

  For Satan! Damn it to hell!

  Thor knew he had no choice. If he killed Hardin, the bastard couldn’t tell him where she was. It was eighty below out there right now. If Thor didn’t get to Samantha soon, she’d be dead. “You fucking bastard! If she dies, you die, too. That’s a promise.”

  He lowered the pistol, handed the weapon, his phone, and his radio to Hardin. “The package is locked in the vacant room across from mine. It’s locked in a biometric case hidden in the ceiling—check the rear corner tile above the bed.”

  Biometric safes were easy to crack.

  Hardin laughed. “Clever.”

  Jones and Segal would know the moment Hardin entered the room. The security camera would ping their phones, and they would know Thor was in trouble. They would act to keep the components and the rest of the people on station safe, no matter what happened to Thor and Samantha.

  But Thor needed to hurry. “You got what you wanted. Where the hell is she?”

  Hardin pointed Thor’s pistol at his chest. “Move.”

  Thor walked out of the office, careful to keep Hardin in his peripheral vision. “Do you think you’ll get away with this? There’s nowhere to run. You’re already at the top of our list of suspects. They’ll catch you.”

  “I have buyers willing to do almost anything to get their hands on this. They’ll come for me.” He gave Thor a shove. “Head out the emergency exit.”

  “Give me your parka.” If Thor was going to save Samantha, he’d need a way to keep her warm.

  “No way. I can’t even the odds like that. You’ll have to do without.”

  Hardin intended for him to die, too.

  Thor pushed open the door, sucked in a breath at the blast of cold air, the wind chill cutting through his clothing. He felt the barrel of his pistol against his back. “If you pull that trigger, everyone on station will hear it.”

  “Not if I close this door first.”

  Thor didn’t hesitate but jumped over the stair rail to the ice two stories below just as the shot rang out. Pain sliced through his left shoulder.

  Shit!

  He hit the ice hard, rolled beneath the stairs, leaving blood on the snow. “Where is she, Hardin, you fucker!”

  Bam! Bam!

  One of the shots creased Thor’s thigh, the sting barely registering over the blistering chill as he crawled beneath the cover of the station. “Where is she, Hardin?”

  “Fuck you!” Hardin stood at the top of the stairs for a moment as if trying to decide whether to come down and finish Thor. Then he turned and opened the door. “I hit you! I see your blood on the snow! You’re done, Isaksen, and so is Sam!”

  The fucker walked back inside, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  * * *

  Steve shoved the pistol into the back of his jeans, locked the door, and ran back to his office. He’d gotten the bastard. He’d put at least one bullet in him, maybe two. It didn’t matter how big or tough Isaksen thought he was. No man could survive bullets and temps of eighty below for long.

  He logged onto his computer and into the station’s emergency control panel, then punched in his admin code and sealed the B1 Life Pod to keep the two surviving Cobra guys from getting out. Just to be safe, he locked the station down. Every entrance, even the doors to the service arches and ice tunnels, was secured now. If Isaksen didn’t die from his gunshot wounds, he’d die of hypothermia, trying to find a way back inside.

  Either way, Thor Isaksen was a dead man.

  Steve stripped out of his parka, drew a breath to compose himself, and made his way downstairs toward the Cobra guys’ rooms. He ought to kill all three of those Cobra assholes, but he couldn’t risk that. If Isaksen had lied to him, he would take the other two, one at a time, until someone told him what he needed to know.

  They’d fooled him. He’d believed the Golden Horde components were secure in his office safe this entire time. He had reached out to his contact, told him he had the goods when all he’d had was junk.

  Fucking assholes!

  If the components had been in his safe, he wouldn’t have had to kill Sam or Isaksen. He could have taken the package—that’s what the Cobra guys called it—and handed it over to his contact at any time.

  Who gives a shit?

  Steve was smarter than all of them and good at thinking on his feet. Every time something had gone wrong, he’d found a way around it. He’d brought the satellite down to take his revenge against Titan. Then, thanks to Cobra, he’d seen a way to make some money by selling the technology to a power that would appreciate it—and his skill.

  God, he would love to see his former supervisors’ faces at Titan when they found out he was behind the satellite hack. He’d brought their pet project crashing down, and now he was going to sell it to their enemies and pocket millions. Living in exile for the rest of his life was a small price to pay for destroying the men who’d fired him, taken his research, and gotten rich by selling it to the Department of Defense.

  Golden Horde had been his vision, and the sons of bitches had cut him out of it.

  All these years of planning were finally going to pay off. He’d rebuilt his identity, taken bullshit jobs that were far beneath his intelligence, and dealt with more idiots than he could count—people like Jason and Charli.

  Fuck them. Fuck all of them.

  He reached the room, grabbed the keys on his belt, and unlocked the door. Isaksen had told him it was hidden behind the rear corner tile above the bed. Steve would know in a moment whether the bastard had lied to him.

  He
climbed onto the bare mattress, pushed on the tile, felt something heavy weighing it down. He lifted the tile out of the way and drew the steel lockbox out of the ceiling.

  Yes!

  Isaksen had told him the truth—and all to save Sam. These Cobra men had more testosterone than brains and thought with their dicks. That had made Steve’s job easier.

  Steve shut down his emotions. He could celebrate later when he was far away from this frozen, godforsaken continent. In the meantime, he needed to stash this in a secure location and move to the next phase of his operation, which was getting the hell away from the station.

  He walked along the empty corridor back to his office, where he locked the case in his safe. That was probably unnecessary, as he had control of the station, but he hadn’t gotten this far by being careless or taking chances.

  When the lockbox was secure, he logged into his personal VPN and sent an encrypted email to his buyer.

  I have it. Deposit the funds, and send a plane during the next weather window and it’s yours.

  Steve sat back, waited for the reply. He could keep the staff locked up in the B1 Lounge for as long as was necessary. The life pod had water, food, videos, toilets—everything they needed. Until his ride arrived, the station was his.

  Chuckling, he got to his feet and walked to the B1 Lounge. He wanted to see Jones’ and Segal’s reactions to the news their leader was dead.

  He found them standing at the door, looking out at him.

  “Where is Isaksen?” Jones shouted through the small glass window. “We know he went with you.”

  “Where the fuck is he?” Segal shouted. “And where is Dr. Park?”

  Steve grinned, amused by their helplessness. Their brawn and bullets couldn’t help them now. “They’re dead. I drugged her, shot him, and locked them out in the cold without parkas. I’m sure they died quickly—or faster than Patty did anyway.”

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Did you hear that, brother?” Jones laughed. “This sick fuck locked Isaksen and Dr. Park outside without parkas. He thinks they’re dead. He doesn’t know the Viking. He’s not someone you want to piss off, Hardin.”

  Segal leaned closer to the glass, peered out at Steve, his gaze hard. “Jones, you know what I’m looking at?”

  “A dead man.”

  This wasn’t the reaction Steve had expected, his disappointment mingling with anger. “I don’t care how tough he is. No man can survive out there for long.”

  The others came up behind Jones and Segal, anger on their faces.

  “Hardin, what the fuck?” Ryan glared at him. “You’re the murderer? Jesus!”

  Kristi pushed her way to the front, tears on her cheeks “Where’s Samantha, you bastard? What did you do to her?”

  “Hardin’s the killer?” Lance was there, his face red. “You fucking piece of shit!”

  “Is he going to kill us, too?”

  “Hardin killed Sam and Thor!”

  But Steve didn’t have to put up with this—the questions, the demands, the anger. These people weren’t worth his time. “You’ll all be locked in there until I’m gone, so make yourselves comfortable.”

  He walked back to his office, sat at his desk, savoring the quiet. Then he logged onto his computer, driven by a morbid sense of curiosity. If Isaksen hadn’t bled out under the stairs, he was probably lying beside Samantha on the ice.

  How perfectly romantic.

  Hardin clicked on the webcam and stared. “What the...?”

  There was nothing but rope.

  Sam was gone.

  The bitch was gone.

  Isaksen.

  * * *

  Thor staggered across the ice toward the structures that the staff called Summer Camp, doing his best to ignore pain and cold, Samantha in his arms.

  Let her be alive.

  If Samantha was alive, he might be able to save her.

  If she wasn’t…

  The thought almost split his chest wide open.

  Thor had found her almost right away. Hardin hadn’t tried very hard to hide her, perhaps because he’d planned to kill Thor with his own firearm. Too bad for him that he was such a lousy shot.

  Samantha had patches of white skin on her face and fingers, a sign of early frostbite. But it was the tears frozen on her eyelashes and cheeks that had crushed him—and unleashed that sickening, deadly rage.

  You don’t have the energy to waste on emotion. Keep moving.

  Fighting to put one foot ahead of the other, Thor kept his gaze on the nearest building, pushed himself to go faster. He thought he remembered Samantha telling him that the first two structures were still in use—one as a climbing gym and the other as a café and nightclub. He hoped to God they had heat—and a cold-weather first-aid kit.

  Not that the gunshot wounds posed any real threat to his life. The bullet had lodged deep in his left shoulder and hurt like hell, making it hard to hold Samantha’s weight. But he didn’t yet have to worry about blood loss, as both wounds had frozen.

  The immediate threat to her life and his was the cold.

  He focused on one step and then the next and the next, the blue building with its white door only a hundred meters away now. He was almost there. A hundred meters was a little more than a hundred steps for him. He counted them down, the wind chill seeming to suck the life out of him.

  Seventy to go. Sixty. Fifty.

  If he collapsed, if he gave in to hypothermia now, they would both die.

  Forty-five. Forty. Thirty-five.

  He had never been this cold in his life, not even during the worst snowstorms in Greenland. Temperatures never dropped this low, and he’d always had shelter with him.

  Twenty. Fifteen. Ten.

  He reached the door, shifted Samantha in his arms so he could grab the doorknob.

  It was unlocked.

  Gudskelov! Thank God!

  He turned the knob, lifesaving warmth hitting him in the face. Careful not to bump Samantha’s head, he walked inside, kicking the door shut behind him. He would need to secure it in case Hardin came looking for them to finish them off, but for now, his priority was saving Samantha’s life—if she wasn’t already gone.

  He didn’t flick on the lights. In the Antarctic darkness, the windows would shine like a beacon and tell Hardin exactly where they were. Instead, he walked through the darkness into the next room. There, a bar ran along one wall, a handful of tables arranged in a narrow space. This was the café.

  He carried Samantha over to one of the heat registers that ran along the floor and laid her down on the carpet, tucking his numb fingers into his armpits to warm them enough to feel for a pulse. “Samantha, can you hear me? Wake up, skat. I’m going to take care of you.”

  He wished he’d been able to bring her inside the station, but he was pretty sure Hardin would anticipate that move. Thor had decided against giving the bastard another crack at the two of them. But that had meant exposing Samantha to the cold for much longer. She was so still, so pale, her skin cold.

  He pressed a finger to her carotid, let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, almost weak with relief. Her pulse was faint, but she was alive.

  Now the hard work began.

  His body sluggish, he willed himself to stand, and walked behind the bar, searching in the dark for things that could help him. Bar rags. A coffee maker. Hot cocoa mix. Teabags. Ground coffee. Powdered milk. Biscotti. Lots of bottled water.

  There was also a large plastic box beneath the counter. He opened it and could have shouted for joy. A flashlight. Matches. Emergency candles. Several cold-weather first-aid kits.

  He grabbed all of them, carried them to Samantha, and dug inside, taking out what he’d need. Hand warmers. Body warmers. Foot warmers. Several Mylar emergency blankets. A trauma kit for his shoulder. When he had everything arranged, he stripped Samantha out of her clothes. The radio he’d given her spilled out of her jeans pocket.

  He would test it later. For no
w, she was his priority.

  Using the flashlight, he checked her for frostbite. The skin on her cheeks, nose, forehead, and fingertips was white, but her ears, which had gotten some protection from her hair, and her toes seemed fine.

  He stumbled to his feet once more, went to the bar, and grabbed several clean bar rags, making his way back to Samantha’s side. He couldn’t put the body warmers on her skin without risking burns, so he wrapped each one in a rag as he activated it and set them on her chest, abdomen, and throat, even tucking one beneath her head. Then he covered her with a Mylar blanket and walked to the nearest table with the trauma kit to treat his shoulder, which had begun to bleed heavily.

  He groaned between gritted teeth as he pulled off his shirt, the pain in his shoulder radiating down his arm and into his chest. There was no exit wound, so the bullet was still inside him. Well, it was going to be there for a while.

  He cleaned the area with an antiseptic cloth, then ripped open a QuikClot dressing and pressed it against the wound before fixing it in place with a pressure bandage. Next, he peeled off his snow pants and jeans and cleaned the graze wound on his thigh, sucking in a breath at the burn of the antiseptic.

  When he had triaged the graze, he checked on Samantha, then went to the bar and made a pot of coffee. Warm drinks would go a long way toward helping with the cold. While the coffee brewed, he moved one of the tables so that it sat over Samantha and then draped another Mylar blanket over the table, creating a sort of tent to hold in the radiator’s heat—and hide the light from the flashlight.

  He drank a cup of coffee as quickly as he could but didn’t pour one for Samantha. She needed to be conscious to drink. Now, there was one last thing he needed to do before he could get beneath the blanket beside her.

  He walked to the entrance with a chair to bar the door. As it turned out, the door also had an old-fashioned bolt. He slid it into place and tucked a chair beneath the doorknob. Then, at last, he crawled into the Mylar tent, got beneath the emergency blanket with Samantha, and held her close, doing his best to warm her.