His expression was as hard as she’d ever seen it. “No, I’m not.”
She made a derisive sound in the back of her throat, and snatched her hand from under his. “What, am I under arrest?”
“No. But I want to think about this first.”
“Think about what? I need to call my boss. I need to call Crocker. Tell them what’s happened.”
“No way.”
“Why not?” Again she reached for the phone. “Even prisoners get one phone call. Is that what I am, Chief? A prisoner?” She tipped her chin at him and steeled herself for his response.
“You’re not a prisoner, or a suspect. But any move you make now could compromise the Bureau’s investigation.”
“Oh, right. The investigation. Your job.”
“That’s right.”
He didn’t try to stop her this time when she jerked the receiver from its cradle. At least not physically. As she punched in the numbers to Bill Walters’s office in Anchorage, Seth slid a hip onto the edge of the cluttered desk and leaned toward her.
“That sat-comm system on the island was operational all the time,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
The call connected and her boss’s phone in Anchorage a thousand miles away started to ring.
“It was rigged to work when Salvio needed it to work, like every morning when he faxed in his reports—and yours.”
“What?”
A recorded message came on informing her that Bill Walters’s number was out of service. Absently, she placed the receiver back on the hook.
“What do you mean he faxed them in?”
“I saw the reports in his desk drawer. Each one had a confirmation report stapled to it. I’m guessing that back at Tiger Petroleum they thought everything on Caribou Island was business as usual.”
She thought about it for a minute, and wondered if he could be right. “But how could they think that? The chopper crash, Paddy’s body. Surely they’d know—”
“Nothing about what really happened. Not yet, anyway. Salvio’s made sure of that.”
She nodded. “I get it. The only people who suspect Paddy’s death was anything other than an accident—and now they think it’s a chopper accident—are you and me.”
“And we’re supposed to be dead.”
She’d forgotten about that. “Salvio will know by now that we’re not.”
“And he’ll be doing everything possible to cover his tracks. See why I don’t want you calling in?”
“Because Salvio would have already called in—to his partner at Tiger. Whoever that is.” She refused to believe it was Crocker. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
“Yeah. And filled him in on you and me, and how much we know about what’s really going on.”
An idea formed in her mind. “That means anyone who’s innocent, who thinks things are business as usual on Caribou Island, wouldn’t think anything of me calling in. See where I’m going?”
“Yeah.” She watched him think it through.
“Wait a minute. Why did I get a recording when I called my boss’s number?”
“You got a recording?”
“Of course! Last week all the executives got new phone exchanges. Bill’s number, Crocker’s, too, would have been changed.”
She fished the forgotten scrap of paper out of her cardigan pocket. Thank God she still had it. “I found this in the pocket of Salvio’s jeans when I searched his room.” She handed him the paper with the unfamiliar phone number scrawled across it in blue ink.
Seth reached for the phone.
“No, wait!”
He paused, his hand on the receiver.
“Let me. Please.”
If it was Crocker who was the ringleader of this whole ugly caper, she needed to find out for herself. To hear his voice. To make the leap, which, right now, seemed so impossible.
“Okay, but don’t say anything. As soon as you recognize the voice, we hang up.”
She nodded, her hand shaking as she took the scrap of paper from him. She punched in the numbers and held her breath. Seth leaned in close to listen. She felt his heat against her shoulder, his arm brush against hers.
The call connected. There was a lot of static, and both of them glanced outside at the blowing snow. The sound of the wind provided an eerie backdrop to the shrill ringing on the other end of the line.
“Walters,” the gravelly voice said.
“Oh, God,” Lauren breathed. Seth tried to grab the receiver from her, but she held on tight.
“Lauren? Is that you? Where are you?”
Seth depressed the hook and the connection was lost.
“I can’t believe it. He’s such a nice man. Bill Walters is the last person on earth, besides Crocker, I would have thought…” She slumped into the chair behind Seth’s desk, and stared blindly out the window. “What do we do now?”
“Nothing—yet. I’ve got to be sure it’s him. If Walters isn’t involved, he wouldn’t have been so surprised to hear your voice. He wouldn’t have asked—”
“Where I was.” She nodded. “He knew I wasn’t on the island. He knew because Jack Salvio told him.”
“Come on. Let’s get out of here and get something to eat, some rest.”
“Don’t you need to—” she nodded at the phone “—call someone? The FBI?”
He shook his head. “No. I want to think it through first. Make sure I’m right.”
“I’m calling Crocker.”
“No.” He grabbed the phone and set it out of her reach. “You’ve got to promise me you won’t call him, or anyone. Not yet. Promise me, Lauren.”
She met his gaze and tried to fathom what was reflected back at her in his dark eyes. She couldn’t. “All right. I promise.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“My place. It’s just a few blocks.”
She drew a breath and stood up, her head throbbing from the events of the past two days, the past two hours, last night. “No.” She had to distance herself from him, get a grip. Put her life back in perspective. “Isn’t there a hotel somewhere I could check into?”
“The closest one’s in Deadhorse, a hundred and fifty miles from here.” It might as well have been a thousand. “It’s my place or nothing.”
His place was a complete surprise.
As she stood in his living room and he built a fire in the fireplace, she studied the sturdy, high-quality furniture: comfortable sofa, hand-carved table, a big, squashy chair with matching ottoman. Deep impressions in the seat cushion, along with a stack of books and mismatched, half-full coffee cups on the floor next to the chair, told her he spent a lot of time in this room, reading and listening to music.
Solitary time.
She glanced at the eclectic mix of CDs scattered across the coffee table, then smiled as her gaze lit on a couple of ragged chew toys wedged between the cushions of the sofa.
“Where’s Amaguq?” she asked, remembering the animation in his voice when he’d told her about his dog.
“At my mom’s. I’ll pick him up when all this is over.”
On a side table she spied a copy of Business Week, open to a full-page article on oil financier Jeremy Adams, Seth’s father. He caught her glancing at it, frowned, then tossed the magazine onto the crackling fire along with a handful of kindling.
“Tell me about him,” she said.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
His face hardened. “There’s nothing to tell. We don’t see each other.”
She wondered why that was, but knew better than to probe deeper. Besides, she didn’t want to know any more about him than she already did. She didn’t even know if what he’d already told her about himself was true. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. And that’s the way she meant to keep it.
She focused on the objects in the room. Padding across the thick, handmade carpet covering old hardwood floor-boards, she marveled at the workmanship th
at had gone into the traditional Inuit design.
“Danny’s grandmother made that rug for me.”
She glanced up at him, surprised. “It’s beautiful.”
The room was decidedly warm, and not simply because he’d built a fire. Buttery-colored walls were graced with native artifacts and limited-edition prints, mostly Alaskan landscapes and wildlife. Rows of books—lots of them college texts—flanked the old-fashioned double doors leading into the small dining room where a desk and late-model computer fought for space with a rough-hewn dining room table and sturdy chairs.
It was a man’s domain, but not like any man she’d ever known. There was no trace of cold steel, glass or black leather that seemed to be the unifying force in every room of Crocker’s San Francisco condo.
Crocker.
She vacillated between wanting desperately to call him, to reconnect with him and reground herself, and wanting to push him from her mind altogether.
Pictures of Seth’s family and friends, packed onto the cluttered surface of a sideboard against the wall, drew her attention, and all thoughts of Crocker vanished.
She recognized the smile of a much younger Seth in one of the photos. He and a couple of other guys—one white, one native—stood grinning, on what looked like a frozen pond. They were in hockey uniforms emblazoned with the name of the village. Mirth danced in his eyes. She smiled unconsciously, then caught herself.
“Hungry?”
She realized with a start that he was standing right behind her.
“Not really. Just tired.”
He tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him and turned away. “Don’t.”
“We need to talk about last night.”
“I told you. I don’t want to discuss it. I just want to forget it.”
She felt him move up behind her. She closed her eyes and tried not to be affected by his familiar scent, his warm breath ruffling her hair.
“I’ll never forget it,” he whispered. “And I don’t think you will, either. Even if you are still planning to marry that guy.”
She turned on him. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m still planning to marry him. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I just thought…maybe…”
“Maybe what? That once I calmed down, I would change my mind. Not likely.” She put distance between them. “I told you, I have a life, a career. It’s all planned out, and it’s nothing like—”
Her gaze darted across the objects in the room, the cozy fire, the photos, the books—all the things that told her she was in his world now, not hers, and completely out of her element.
Or was she?
“Like this place?” He picked up the coffee cups from the floor, juggling them awkwardly. Cold coffee splashed from one of them onto the rug.
“That’s right.”
“I like it here, and I like the village,” he said, anger flashing in his eyes. “I grew up here. I liked it then, I like it now.”
“So do I.”
He made a sarcastic sound.
“I mean, I did like it, when I was here with my father.”
“That was a long time ago. You were a different person then. A kid.”
She was a grown woman now, living in a world completely unlike the one he lived in. But was she so different? Was she really?
The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts and their conversation. She relieved him of the coffee cups so he could answer it, and bussed them into the kitchen to give him some privacy for the call.
A minute later he joined her. “Look, we’re both tired. Why don’t we just get some sleep?”
“Fine. Got a guest room?”
“Down the hall.” He cocked his head toward the darkened hallway. “First door on the right. There’s only one bathroom. On the left.”
“Thanks,” she said, and moved past him. “I’m dying for a shower.”
He reached out and grasped her hand.
Her breath caught, and she stopped. Rigid. Waiting.
For a long moment he didn’t say anything. They stood there silently, the ticking of the old-fashioned kitchen wall clock and the howling of the wind outside the only sounds.
“Last night had nothing to do with the FBI’s case, or my job.”
She stiffened in his grasp.
“Whatever happens, Lauren, I just want you to know that.”
Chapter 17
W hen she woke up the next morning Seth was gone.
Lauren showered and dressed in the same jeans she’d been wearing for the past three days. Last night, she’d rinsed out her bra and panties in Seth’s bathroom sink, and had hung them to dry over the tub.
This morning she’d discovered them folded neatly on top of her jeans, along with a clean flannel shirt and pair of socks. His, she realized, when she put them on and found herself swimming in them.
His doing something as simple as putting a pot of coffee on before he’d left the house, or making sure she had something clean to wear, caused a stab of regret to pierce the emotional armor she’d donned to keep him out of her heart.
She poured herself a cup of the coffee and read the note he’d left for her on the kitchen table.
Be back around ten. Wait for me. Seth.
Maybe she’d overreacted yesterday when she found out who he really was. Maybe she’d owed him the benefit of the doubt when he’d said last night that what had happened between them had nothing to do with his assignment or the FBI’s case.
Maybe. Maybe not.
She stared at the yellow phone on the wall next to the refrigerator, and thought about what she would say to Crocker if she called him now. She’d promised Seth she wouldn’t.
Her hand was on the receiver. Her heartbeat accelerated. She was just about to dial his pager, when the kitchen door opened behind her.
“Hello?”
Lauren slapped the receiver onto the hook and turned toward the unfamiliar voice. An Inuit woman wearing a fur-trimmed parka and carrying something bulky, wrapped in a dish towel, blew through the open doorway on a blast of icy air and blowing snow.
The woman fought the door closed behind her with a grunt, then smiled. “You’re Lauren.”
“Uh, yes.” How on earth did the woman know her name? “Um, that door wasn’t locked?”
“Nobody bothers. Not in the village.”
“Oh.” In her whole life Lauren had never lived anywhere where it was safe to leave your front door unlocked.
She and the woman looked at each other for a few seconds, the woman not missing the fact that Lauren was dressed in what was obviously Seth’s shirt.
“And you are…?” Lauren prompted.
“Violet. Violet Adams. Seth’s—”
“Mother.” Lauren realized that this was the same woman she’d seen in some of the pictures scattered on the sideboard in Seth’s living room.
“That’s right.” The woman smiled. “How did you know?”
She was about to mention the pictures, but what came out of her mouth instead was an observation. “He looks a lot like you.”
Her smiled broadened, highlighting laugh lines that made her round face look unusually beautiful. She must have been in her mid-fifties at least, but she didn’t look it.
“He has my eyes.”
“He does,” she said, marveling at how dark they were, exactly like Seth’s.
The older woman shrugged off her parka and pushed a strand of salt-and-pepper hair out of her face. “I smell coffee,” she said, unwrapping the dish towel, which she’d set on the table.
“Seth made it, before he left this morning. But…how did you know my name?”
“He stopped at my house this morning on his way to the school. He told me all about you.”
“Did he?”
“Well, not everything.” Her dark eyes washed over the long tail of Seth’s flannel shirt. Lauren realized she was twisting it nervously in her hands. “But some things a mother knows.”
Lauren felt her face grow hot. She t
urned to the coffee pot, embarrassed, and searched for another cup. “It’s not what you think. I mean, we’re not…”
“Nice ring,” Violet said.
Lauren went statue-still, her left hand poised on a cup on the top shelf of the cabinet. Her diamond shone dully under the overheard kitchen light. “Uh, thanks.”
“I brought sweet rolls—homemade. Sit down, have one.”
Feeling incredibly awkward, Lauren poured Seth’s mother a cup of coffee and joined her at the table. The sweet rolls were still warm, and smelled delicious.
“You made these yourself?”
“Sure.” Violet handed her one on a napkin.
Lauren tried to remember the last time her own mother had made her something to eat. She couldn’t. All the meals at the Fotheringay house were prepared by a cook. Even before her father died, her mother hadn’t cooked much. She’d said cooking was for people who couldn’t afford to eat out.
When Lauren was a child and was asked to join in school bake sales or potlucks, her mother had always provided something store-bought. Later, after her mother remarried, there hadn’t been any more bake sales, and potlucks were out of the question. The private schools Lauren attended simply didn’t have them.
“This is delicious,” she said as she wiped a bit of frosting from her cheek. “God, it’s the best thing I’ve eaten in…” She laughed. “I don’t know. A long time.”
“Good.” Violet nodded, pleased by her enthusiasm.
“You said Seth went to the school. The village school?”
“Yes. He said the principal called him last night, wanted him to speak to the kids about the weather and safety—what to do if they got into trouble in the storm.”
Lauren recalled with a shudder their own experience on the open tundra the past thirty-six hours. “Well, he’s the right man to talk to them, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for him. I’d be…”
She stopped and caught her breath, remembering what had happened in the warehouse, and on the ice when they’d run out of fuel.
Violet sensed her distress. She reached across the table and patted her hand. “But you’re here now, with my son. Things are good.” She smiled.
“Are they?” Lauren said, not realizing she spoke aloud.
“Come on.” Violet cleared up the mess they’d made at the table, and beckoned her into Seth’s living room. “I want to show you something.”
On Thin Ice Page 17