On Thin Ice

by Debra Lee Brown

  He laughed, and for the first time in days, she felt good. Safe. Relaxed. She curled her feet up under her on the bed and watched Seth’s shadow move toward her across the room in the candlelight.

  He handed her a cup of tea and sat beside her on the bed. “You okay?”

  She nodded, breathing in the honeyed steam. “Now I am. Thank you for what you did. On the island, I mean. Thank you for getting me out.”

  “No problem.” He smiled, then sipped at the hot tea. She was conscious of how big his hands were wrapped around the cup. She remembered those hands on her body, capable and strong.

  As was he.

  There was so much about him she didn’t know, but deep inside herself where random thoughts and feelings, fears and desires spun in confusion, she knew enough.

  His hair, usually tied back in a short ponytail, had come loose, and spilled in disarray across his shoulders. His skin glowed bronze in the candlelight and his eyes danced, dark and mysterious, sharpening her awareness of his Inuit blood-lines.

  On impulse, she reached up and brushed a stray hank of jet hair from off his face. He sat motionless while she did it, his gaze pinned on hers. The moment stretched on, the silence between them ripe with awkward feelings, questions both unasked and unanswered.

  “Lauren,” he said, taking their cups and setting them on the floor beside the bed. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  He was close enough to her that she could smell him. Warm. Male. Both foreign and familiar. All she had to do was lean forward. That’s all it would take. One small move on her part and their mouths would be joined, their tongues entwined, their hands groping each other’s bodies in a frenzy, as they had that night on the island in the lab.

  “Later,” she said, her gaze moving to his full mouth, her hand inching across the bed toward his.

  She made the move and kissed him, but what followed wasn’t anything like what she’d expected. There was no frantic coupling of tongues or groping hands. He didn’t even put his arms around her, and for a moment she thought she’d made a mistake.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered against her lips.

  The funny thing was, she was sure. More sure about this, about him, than she had been about anything in her life.

  “Yes,” she said, and pulled him gently down on top of her on the bed.

  Candlelight reflected in his eyes. He snaked an arm around her waist and looked at her for a long moment. “Me, too,” he said, and kissed her.

  The room was warm, and they took their time undressing each other. He began with her sweater, one button at a time, and paused to look at her body in the knit turtleneck she wore underneath, before sliding his hand under the fabric to cup her breast.

  “Oh, Seth.”

  “Mmm.”

  He kissed her again, more fervently this time, his fingers slipping into the cup of her bra, toying with her hardened nipple. She couldn’t help her own sounds of pleasure and surprise, nor could she stop herself from wrapping her legs around his hips as he deepened their kiss and pressed his already hard body between her legs.

  He pushed her top up, and with one hand managed the front clasp of her bra. Her breasts were bared to the warm air and his scrutiny, her nipples growing harder and tighter the longer he looked at them.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, and took one into his mouth.

  She nearly came off the bed.

  “Easy.” He smiled up at her. “We’ve got all night.”

  All night.

  In the Arctic in winter, the sun set each year on an evening in late December and didn’t rise again for fifty-four days. Fifty-four days of night. She wondered what it would be like to spend a whole winter with Seth. A whole lifetime.

  Her fingers tangled in his hair as he gently suckled her breasts, pausing frequently to look at her face. Not to gauge her clinical response, as Crocker did each time they had sex, but to connect with her, to share their pleasure by acknowledging it in each other’s eyes, in his smile, or in the way he reached blindly for her hand and squeezed it.

  She was stunned by how different he was from Crocker, who never wasted energy or time on things that didn’t immediately propel her toward climax. Crocker prided himself on being able to bring her to completion in a matter of minutes. He was both expedient and skilled.

  But that’s all he was, she realized, as Seth paused to stroke her hair and trap her lips with his. There was no true passion, no emotion in the sex she’d had with Crocker. She gazed into Seth’s dark eyes and knew her world was about to change irrevocably.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  He still had all his clothes on, and suddenly she felt an overpowering need to feel his skin hot against hers. She clawed at his shirt, pulling it out of his jeans and halfway up the smooth, muscled expanse of his back. He obliged her by rolling onto his side and pulling it over his head.

  She responded in kind by shimmying out of her T-shirt and bra. His boots came next, hitting the wooden floor with a thud, followed by hers, then jeans, socks, his shorts and her panties. And then they were naked, breathless. Together.

  She drank in the sight of him, brick-hard and smooth under her exploring fingers. His skin was naturally bronze, his nipples dark, the thatch of hair at his groin blue-black in the candlelight. “You’re the one who’s beautiful.”

  He laughed at that, then she laughed, too, feeling suddenly ridiculous. He didn’t allow the feeling to last long. Her smile faded, her heartbeat quickened as they both studied the startling contrast of her pale skin against his.

  His gaze traveled lazily along the soft curves of her body, pausing at the triangle of hair between her legs. He hadn’t, as yet, touched her there, but already she felt herself moving precariously toward the edge.

  Rolling back on top of her, he kissed her hard, his dark eyes sobering, his expression tightening as he moved against her. She opened her legs to let him in. He was more than ready. She was ready, too. Closing her eyes, she held her breath, clutched his shoulders and waited.

  “Look at me,” he said, and kissed her softly on the mouth. She obeyed, and was wholly unprepared for the raw emotion she read in his eyes. “I love you,” he whispered, then drove himself inside her.

  The breath rushed from her lungs with the shock of his invasion. He held himself in check, gave her time to recover, time to allow his words to sink in.

  He was close to losing himself in her, but waited, searching her eyes for the words he didn’t hear in return. Perhaps he was just a diversion for her, after all. One last fling before marrying Crocker Holt.

  He didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not like this, with her naked and writhing beneath him, with him inside her, consumed by her heat, his passion for her driving him nearly to the edge of his control.

  She began to move, and he with her. He lost himself in her, completely and without thought. He wasn’t conscious of trying to pleasure her, or she him. They just did. They simply were.

  Several times that night he brought her to the edge, and each time, before pushing her over, he paused, waited, their gazes locked, their lips a breath apart.

  But he never heard the words from her, and he didn’t say them again.

  Chapter 15

  H e slept like the dead.

  The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Lauren crouched beside his duffel, examining the geologist’s rock hammer he’d pulled from the Dumpster on Caribou Island.

  Her rock hammer.

  Oh, Christ. He hadn’t wanted her to find out like this. He’d wanted to prepare her, to preface the truth with some kind of explanation.

  She rose stiffly, the weapon in hand, and turned toward him as he sat up in the narrow bed. “There was something you were going to tell me.” Her voice was thin, shaky, her face pale.

  “Yeah.”

  She glanced at his Glock on the floor next to the bed, then ran her hand over the dried blood on the hammer. “But it’s not what I think, right?”

&
nbsp; Her question was really a plea, the stunned look in her eyes begging him to deliver the answer she wanted to hear. He felt like a jerk to have put her through all this, to have lied to her—to have kept lying, even last night.

  It was time to come clean.

  “That’s right.” He nodded and slowly swiveled his legs to the floor.

  She stepped back, toward the door, unconsciously raising the hammer in a posture of protection. She looked so small standing there, swimming in his thermal shirt. She must have put it on when she got up. The arms were too long for her, and she pushed nervously at the sleeves.

  “Listen to me, Lauren. I found your hammer in the Dumpster behind the kitchen. And you’re right, that’s probably Paddy’s blood.”

  She took another step back, her eyes locked on his.

  “It’s evidence, in fact, and you shouldn’t be handling it.” He nodded toward the paper sack on the floor. “Put it back in the bag.”

  “It’s…why you thought I did it. You thought that I killed Paddy.”

  “At first, maybe, but not now.” Very, very slowly he rose from the bed. Lauren froze in place. “Why don’t we put it away,” he said, and offered her his open palm.

  “It’s not you.” Her voice was a whisper now. She shook her head, and kept shaking it, as if trying to convince herself. “After last night, after everything…” She took another step back and bumped up against the table with a start.

  “It’s not me,” he said with conviction, willing her to hold his gaze while he moved toward her. “You know it’s not.”

  The candlelight was bright enough so that he could see the change wash over her features. Visibly she exhaled and set the hammer on the table behind her. A second later she was in his arms.

  “Seth.” She clutched at his shoulders, burying her face in his chest. “I looked in your bag for something clean to put on. When I found the hammer, I—” he kissed her, reveling in the feel of her warm body against his “—I didn’t know what to think.”

  “Come back to bed. It’s cold.” He led her back to the narrow bed, and they slid between the army-surplus blankets. He held her for a minute, stroking her hair, breathing in the scent of their lovemaking, still warm on her skin and his, wanting to make love to her again, knowing it wasn’t possible. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  He had to tell her, but didn’t know how to begin. Last night had been incredible. She was incredible. When he’d told her he loved her, he’d meant it.

  “So Paddy was murdered, after all.” She gave him the opening he needed.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Salvio did it.”

  He still wasn’t sure if it was Salvio or Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, as he’d come to think of the two roustabouts Pinkie and Bulldog. “Why do you think it was Salvio?”

  “I found the liner of Paddy’s hard hat in his room.”

  “What?” He turned awkwardly in the small bed so he could see her face. “You were in his room?”

  She nodded. “I remembered that the liner wasn’t in Paddy’s hard hat when you returned it that day in Salvio’s office.” She was right. It was missing, and he’d thought it damned suspicious at the time. “I found it in Salvio’s closet. When he caught me in his room he—”

  “He caught you? Christ, Lauren! What happened? What did he do?” If that son of a bitch had so much as touched her…

  “That’s when he sent me out to the warehouse. To where you were.”

  His arms slid around her and he pulled her tight against him. A dozen odd events over the past couple of days—a look here, a comment there—all of it began to make sense to him.

  “He did want me dead,” she continued. “I’ve been thinking about what happened out there, and you were right.”

  “We’re out, now. You’re safe.”

  “I was confused at first, because after Paddy’s murder Salvio wanted to shut the whole operation down ASAP.”

  He knew where she was going with this. “If he was the killer, he wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to the murder. If he had shut the whole thing down, the island would’ve been crawling with cops in no time, if the weather had obliged.”

  “Exactly.” She turned in his arms. “But don’t you see? Salvio knew I’d never consent to the shutdown. He played me, Seth. He made me out to be the bad guy, the one who wanted to keep drilling after Paddy was dead.”

  She was right. He could see it now, though one thing still didn’t fit. Why, if he didn’t want to cause a stink, did Salvio send Paddy’s body back to town on that chopper? “Yeah,” he said, distracted by the paradox. “I think that’s exactly what he did.”

  “He knew how dedicated I was to the job. That I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of Tiger’s success. My success.” Her voice was laced with bitterness and self-censure. “Salvio knew me better than I knew myself.”

  She threw back the blankets and sat up, rubbing her temples, cradling her head in her hands.

  “It’s over now. Lie down.” He coaxed her back under the covers.

  “Why was Paddy murdered? Why, Seth?”

  “He knew too much. Maybe he was ready to blow the whistle.”

  “Blow the whistle on what?”

  He couldn’t see keeping it from her any longer. He looked at her, burning into his mind the memory of last night, the passion in her eyes, the tenderness and trust he saw there now. In a moment it would be gone. Vanished. As if what they’d shared had never happened.

  Get it over with, Adams.

  “What, Seth? Tell me.”

  “The FBI suspects that someone at Tiger, someone high in the organization, is secretly selling Tiger’s proprietary geologic data to a foreign interest.”

  “What?” She sat up in bed, and he moved with her.

  He told her the name of the foreign oil company, and she knew it. She was familiar with the lucrative oil tracts the company had won in Alaska in last year’s federal land lease. Tiger had bid on adjacent tracts. Both companies had scored big time, and now held billions of dollars in oil reserves.

  “That still wouldn’t explain the samples.”

  “What samples?”

  “Of course! That’s what all this is about. When I first arrived on the island, there was a crate of unmarked rock samples outside my trailer. All they had on them was the date—a week ago Tuesday, before the crew change. When Salvio found out I had them, he went crazy. He confiscated them. Later they were inadvertently destroyed.”

  “So…?” Seth didn’t get it.

  “Don’t you see? Those samples weren’t from Caribou Island. They were from somewhere else. But where?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Positive. I hid one of them in my trailer before Salvio took the crate. I didn’t think he realized I had it, but—” she shrugged “—I guess he figured it out.”

  “Which is why he had your trailer ransacked.” So many things he hadn’t understood before made sense to him now.

  “Yes. He was looking for it.”

  “Lauren, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He didn’t find it. It’s still there, right where I hid it, in a box of tampons in the bathroom.”

  He remembered the afternoon they discovered the trailer had been searched, how she ran to the bathroom in a panic. He’d thought… Hell, how much more hadn’t she told him?

  “That’s what you wanted to get before we left the island. That sample.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “So maybe Caribou Island has nothing to do with all this. Maybe it’s the other samples that are important, that were going to be sold.”

  She looked at him, but didn’t see him. She continued to nod, her eyes unfocused, as if she was looking right through him. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

  He told her the rest of what he knew about the case, leaving out his own role in the undercover operation. The funny thing was, she didn’t seem all that surprised. As he talked, she stared blankly into near space, her mind working, a
manicured fingernail tapping rhythmically on the edge of the metal bed frame.

  “Salvio’s the kingpin here in the field—I’m sure of that, now—both on last year’s operation and this one.” Though it wasn’t clear now what this year’s operation actually was.

  If Lauren was right, and those other samples were the contraband goods in question, and if they hadn’t come from Caribou Island, then…

  “Pinkie and Bulldog are in on it with him, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” he said absently, still trying to figure it out. There were too many pieces still missing. “They worked for Altex, but Salvio owned them.”

  “And Paddy’s involvement?”

  “He was probably pressured into it, into whatever scam they’re running out here. Altex isn’t exactly a picture of financial health. It would have been dead easy to coerce him.”

  “Oh, God.” Her expression mirrored a sudden realization.

  “What?”

  She turned to him and grasped his hands, gripped them tightly in hers as she spoke. “When I first arrived on the island, Paddy was desperate to see me alone. I’ve never seen him so agitated. He was probably going to warn me.”

  “Did he know, beforehand, that you were the geologist assigned to the well?”

  “No. No one knew. It was a last-minute substitution.”

  “Maybe he was willing to go along with things until he found out you would be involved and be in danger.”

  She nodded. “That makes sense. Paddy’s known me since I was a child. He would have been protective.” Her eyes filmed. “It’s my fault he’s dead.”

  Seth slipped an arm around her, pulling her close. “Don’t think like that. It’s not your fault. If anything it’s…”

  As his voice trailed off, she looked up at him, swiping a hand across her eyes. Her brow furrowed. “How do you know all this, Seth?”

  It was time to tell her. He met her gaze and sucked in a breath. “My father was the one who tipped the Feds to the shenanigans with that foreign oil company last year.”

  “Your father?” She looked more confused than ever.

  “Yeah. He’s a big shot in the industry. Corporate wheeling and dealing, stock swaps, negotiating deals between oil companies and government agencies—that kind of thing.”