Cold Flood (Kea Wright Mysteries Book 1)

by RJ Corgan

  The volunteers went around one by one and gave their first name and town or country of origin. Kea caught a few names that rang a bell. Gary. Derek. Fernando. Bonnie, of course. A giant bear of a man named Max. The two men who had carried Bonnie’s bags, Jon and Erik. A Russian father-daughter team, Andrei and Nadia. Tiko and Amirah. Bruce, of course. A striking woman named Zoë and her teenage son. She missed a handful of other names.

  As the group dispersed, Kea assisted as best she could by untangling poles and rain flies as they set up tents. Most of her time was spent reassuring them that they wouldn’t be washed away by a flood or volcanic eruption. She noticed that the group seemed to be placing their tents up in two separate camps, or at least as far apart as they could in the space provided. She made a mental note to ask Bruce if he had any idea what all the tribalism was about.

  Kea paused at the sound of hushed grumblings. A peculiar man with wiry gray hair was muttering to himself as he knotted a cluster of guide ropes to a peg. She considered going to his aid, but he seemed in the middle of a full-on discussion with his tent. His beak-like nose was perched atop a scraggly beard and the collar of his flannel shirt curled up on each side as if the shirt wanted to take flight. Although she couldn’t hear much of what he was saying, he seemed to be threatening the knots with a fiery death if they didn’t immediately unravel.

  “First sign of madness?” whispered Julie by her side. “Or wizard?”

  “I have to admit,” Kea said as she ushered her graduate student away from the man, “the longer I’ve been out here, the more I catch me talking to myself. You’ll understand...”

  “...When I’m older?” Julie teased.

  “When you start teaching undergraduates,” Kea replied archly.

  “Check out the bros.” Julie pointed to the two men in their late twenties, or early thirties, who looked almost identical. They had taken off their shirts to indulge in the bright sun. Their skin was dark, riddled with spiraling tattoos that skittered up torsos before wrapping around their bulging necks and vanishing beneath quaffs of perfectly spiked hair.

  Kea felt for a moment as if she had walked onto a photo shoot for a pin-up calendar. As she checked her clipboard for names, she tried to recall the last time she had stepped foot in a gym.

  “Jon and Erik,” she remembered at last. “They’re with T3. I think I heard Max say they’re cousins.”

  “Who’s the cougar?” Julie asked.

  Kea looked up. Bonnie had joined the two men and was handing them two large plastic margarita cups filled with some beverage.

  What else had that woman packed in her suitcase?

  Jon, the taller of the two men, caught Kea staring at him. She looked away quickly, feeling her cheeks flush.

  Here for the science, she reminded herself, I’m here for the science.

  “Interesting,” Julie observed. Bonnie was giggling and laughing at the young man, the woman’s eyelashes fluttering like the wings of a butterfly on crack. “I’ve never seen one hunting in the wild before.”

  “That’s enough.” Kea grabbed Julie’s shoulders and turned her around. “Stop gawking and get back to work.”

  As Julie stalked back to the main tents in a huff, Kea lingered long enough to see her force her way into the conversation with Erik, much to Bonnie’s evident dismay.

  Just ten days, Kea mentally reprimanded Julie. Just wait ten days. Then, when this expedition is over, you can flirt with whoever you want.

  Shaking her head, Kea continued her rounds assisting volunteers. Nearing the edge of the group, she locked eyes with a slender woman with long dark hair.

  Zoë Forbes.

  During the round of introductions, Kea had made a point of identifying her. Even at this distance, she noted Zoë’s slim, athletic figure. Her dark braids swept down her back to fall across her trim waist, while her lithe legs stabbed down into her hiking boots that seemed ridiculously large for her frame.

  Walking over, Kea smiled awkwardly, realizing that her cheeks were flushed for the second time that day. “It’s nice to finally meet you!”

  “Same,” Zoë shook her hand.

  Kea, spellbound by the woman’s copper complexion, her dark, languid eyes, and the warm touch of her skin, discovered that she was holding her breath. She forced herself to exhale, slowly.

  Zoë pulled the teenage boy over. “This is my son, Cole.”

  Cole had his mother’s raven hair and narrow face, his eyes two dark specks framed by soft, delicate lashes. His clothes were rumpled, a mixture of flannel and an ill-fitting long sleeve t-shirt that drooped across his thin, angular frame. Teenage angst hung about him like a dreary cloud, tugging his shoulders down and making his every move appear reluctant, burdensome. Despite this affliction, Kea had the impression that he would someday grow into a very large man indeed.

  “Have a good trip?” Kea asked, shaking Cole’s hand.

  Cole’s hazel eyes scrutinized Kea for a moment before dismissing her outright. “Was long.” He turned back to his tent. “Mom, the knots are still all tangled.”

  Zoë winced, but Kea waved it aside. “It’s okay, I just wanted to say thank you again for stepping in at the last minute.”

  “Not a problem, Bruce said you needed help, and I’m glad we came.” Zoë stared at the camp around her. “It’s amazing here.”

  “Did you have any trouble at customs?” Kea asked.

  “Nope, the permits you arranged were perfect.” Zoë waved at the boxes by her feet. “Should be ready to go whenever you need them.”

  “Thank you again,” Kea smiled. “I can’t tell you how much this means...”

  “Mom!” Cole pleaded.

  Despite Cole’s size, the whine in his voice caused Kea to dial down her estimate of his maturity. Not for the first time, Kea wondered if she’d ever have children of her own, or if she’d wind up drowning them at the first sign of a tantrum.

  “Sorry.” Zoë moved to help her son. “See you in a bit!”

  Walking away, Kea couldn’t help looking back at Zoë and found herself thinking, Just ten days… ten long days indeed.

  While the volunteers continued to set up their tents, Kea took a moment to return to her tent to change into a pair of sneakers. As she was lacing up, her phone gave a quiet ding. It was a notification of an email from a colleague at one of the New York State universities with the subject heading: ‘Thought you might want to see this.’ The attachment contained a submission to a popular scientific journal. Opening it, the sight of the article’s title and the main author made her blood boil.

  “That bastard,” she breathed.

  Kea scrolled through the document, gulping it down in flashes of black and white as it flickered across the screen before she could digest it: Marcus had submitted an article for publication on the effects of terrain on glacial flooding, using data they collected together during the previous field season. She flipped through to the analysis and references. Not only had he not included her as a co-author, but she also wasn’t listed in the acknowledgment section, nor in the references.

  Calm, Kea reminded herself, remain calm. Marcus hasn't written a paper in decades, it’s probably rubbish.

  It had better be rubbish.

  She connected her phone to her laptop, transferred the file, and began to read the paper on the larger screen, as the noises from the camp settled into a background hum. It only took ten minutes to come to the throat-clenching conclusion that while the document wasn’t groundbreaking, it also wasn't a complete insult to the scientific community.

  It might actually get published, she realized with growing horror. She started digging through her hard drive, trying to find her original data files. Was he working with her processed data or did he use the raw data?

  “What the hell do you want?” A voice whispered hoarsely just outside her tent.

  Startled, Kea nearly tossed her laptop into the air.

  “Why did we have to come here?” The voice was less than a foot away. It
was male, foreign, and angry.

  “Keep your voice down.” A large silhouette settled across the rear of her tent. Given its size, it could only belong to the bear of a man, Max.

  Kea found that she was holding her breath. She was suddenly hyper-aware of how stifling the humid air inside her tent was, how even the faint daylight had managed to boil her laundry, creating a funky, unbearable stench.

  I should make a noise, she thought responsibly. Rattle around a bit to let them know that I’m here, that they should move on.

  “A team building exercise? Now?” The accent clicked. New Zealand. There was only one in their party. Derek. “After what happened to Andrea?”

  Very slowly, Kea closed her laptop to hide the glow of the screen. She sat up straight and listened intently.

  “Can you think of a better time?” Max’s deep voice rumbled like the sound of boulders rubbing together in a river.

  “Any time other than now.” Derek gesticulated wildly, the shadows of his arms dancing across Kea’s tent. “We were already six months behind on production.”

  “A couple of setbacks-” Max protested.

  “Setbacks? Seriously?” Derek’s voice went up a notch.

  Due to the distortions of the shadows on the fabric of the tent, Kea couldn’t tell if Derek was pulling his hair out or just tugging violently on his knit cap.

  “A couple of setbacks,” Max repeated, his tone hardening. “It just means we need to be more focused as a team and learn how to work together.”

  “My team,” Derek said slowly, “knows what we’re doing, we’re not the ones-”

  Ding. Her phone’s email notification chimed merrily.

  Kea froze, her eyes frantically searching the profiles that rested against the tent wall for signs that they had noticed. The shadows lingered for a moment, then slipped away, the conversation aborted.

  Kea let out a long sigh as she considered.

  Drama to the left, drama to the right.

  She glanced at her phone. The email was a reminder about open enrollment for health benefits.

  Damn.

  At least they didn’t know it was her inside the tent. Although, she supposed, they’d work it out at some point, unless she spent the rest of the trip inside her tent. She closed her eyes and took another breath.

  Tempting, but dear god it stinks in here.

  She opened her laptop and stared at the paper again. She’d have to talk to Marcus. She sent off a note of thanks to her colleague and examined the data files again, in case there was some data that he missed.

  After running several searches, she found nothing on their shared drives. Anything she really wanted to get her hands on was undoubtedly on Marcus’ laptop.

  Shrugging off the thought of having to confront Marcus, she found herself more concerned with the variables she wasn’t familiar with: the volunteers themselves. She pulled up the roster. Max and Derek belonged to T3. She peeled off a sticky note and made a list of the team members and their respective companies, T3 or Corvis, for future reference.

  It was another five minutes before she realized she was late for the team huddle. Swearing, she crammed her laptop into her pile of laundry and bolted for the main tent.

  ***

  After giving the group an overview of the camp, the leads let the volunteers loose on the visitor center café for an early afternoon dinner. The remainder of the evening was left open for the volunteers to take a flight over the glacier, or in most cases, simply turn in early.

  Kea would gladly have hit the sack as well, but she had a mountain of receipts to document, papers to grade, and field equipment to check. However, she made a point of visiting Bruce after dinner. She found two empty folding chairs waiting for her outside his tent and his legs and rump sticking out of the tent flap. She coughed politely to announce her presence.

  “Oh, ah, sorry,” Bruce called from inside the tent. She spied him hurriedly tucking something small and blue into the space under his sleeping bag before crawling back out.

  “I brought you some hot cocoa.” Kea brandished a thermos and a couple of plastic mugs. Pouring the drinks, she noticed that Bruce had changed into sweats and an Icelandic sweater, gift-shop fresh. It had been so long since she had seen him, and he appeared so changed, that she found that she didn’t quite know what to say.

  “You okay?” Bruce spoke first, eyeing her warily as he accepted a mug. “You look like someone threw a wet cat at you.”

  Kea shook her head. “Just a bit irritated with a colleague right now. He’s normally just annoying, but he’s upped it to a new level this week. Plus, it turns out he made a special arrangement with Corvis to get some new gear out here.”

  He looked puzzled. “How is that any different from me getting Zoë and her toys out here for you?”

  Kea narrowed her eyes. She was in no mood for people who used facts against her in arguments. “It’s very different,” she replied, wounded. “Epically different. I told everyone what I was doing. I didn’t go sneaking around with crates acting like they contained the Ark of the Covenant.”

  Bruce just chuckled quietly. “You’re welcome.”

  “What? Oh, yeah, thanks again for arranging that,” Kea replied sheepishly. “What’s her story anyway?”

  “Zoë? We use her sometimes for some testing and evaluation. She’s independent so we can contract her out for short gigs. Lost her for a while, guess she and her wife had a messy divorce last year, but she’s been helping out quite a bit lately.”

  “Really? How interesting,” Kea replied. Wife? Divorced? She filed that fact away in a drawer labeled: ‘Yay!’

  “And you?” Bruce prompted. “How has life treated you since high school?”

  “Well, I spent nearly all of that time doing indentured servitude, or as they call it in academia, a Ph.D. Then, I spent last spring dealing with a messy breakup,” she admitted. “But now I’m drowning in work and busy doing the whole avoidance thing with this expedition, which is just lovely and distracting. Essentially, that’s fifteen years of me in a nutshell.” She took another sip of her drink and found herself wishing for marshmallows, wondering why it was so easy to sum up her life so quickly. “Your turn.”

  “Pretty much the same,” Bruce considered. “College, followed by office work, then start-up company. Still married, although marriage can be just as messy sometimes...”

  Kea got the impression the conversation was heading somewhere unpleasant if she pulled that thread, so she fell silent again. She examined the lines that crinkled his temples and the loose chins that jiggled when he shifted in his chair. His hair, once light brown, was riddled with silver and gray strands. Mostly bald, the crown of his head was studded with groves of freckles that shone under a slick of grease. His voice was the same yet tinged with a harsh rasp that made him sound wiser, aged.

  She wondered if time really did imbue knowledge, or if he, like her, still felt as if she were still the same person she was at sixteen, forever a stranger in a body that seemed to creak and groan in protest more each year. She gave a little shudder and gripped her mug tighter, enjoying the warmth that seeped into her skin.

  “We’re very happy that you guys could fit us in at such short notice,” Bruce said, seeming to want to move the conversation to safer ground.

  “No problem,” Kea said. “We were short on volunteers, and you guys fell into our lap. Great timing.”

  Bruce laughed. “Tax write-off for us, plus team building. Two birds...”

  Silence sat awkwardly between them.

  “Are you going on the flight over the glacier tonight??” she asked, wincing as she remembered her own recent excursion.

  “Yeah, I’m part of the second group.” Bruce checked his watch. “Headed out in about a half-hour.”

  A dozen blond little heads bobbed and weaved in the grass field before them, the children squealing with delight as they chased after a soccer ball. Farther away, a horde of teenagers played their own game while the parents
cheered every goal. The sound of the supportive families felt so different from their own new batch of volunteers. Kea found herself anxious to fill the silence between herself and Bruce.

  Once more Bruce beat her to it. “This break up…”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” Kea said with a sigh, then contradicted herself. “I’m not sure if the problem was him or me.”

  “Him?” Bruce’s eyebrows wiggled in surprise. “That’s a change.”

  Kea narrowed her eyes. “It’s about the person,” she reminded him, “not about what’s between their legs.”

  “If you say so,” Bruce stared into his mug. “If I recall, you dumped me for that dreadful girl, Tina, wasn’t it?”

  She laughed. “It was the fifth grade for god’s sake. It’s not like you and I ever really dated.” She chuckled longer than she should have, vividly remembering breaking up with him all those years ago. Although friends, they had drifted apart during high school and had only stayed in touch since then through the odd social media post.

  Kea studied him again out of the corner of her eye. Aside from a less than healthy diet, Bruce seemed to carry a weight heavier than his years about him, that caused his head to droop and his back to bow. She was afraid to ask, worried it would require far more than hot chocolate and she wasn’t feeling up to playing therapist tonight. Instead, she resorted to empty platitudes. “It really is great to see you, honestly. It’s just today… I’ve been put in charge. It’s making my stress levels skyrocket.”

  Bruce nodded. “I don’t know how you do it. I can’t imagine taking care of complete strangers who swap out every couple of weeks.”

  “It can be... exhausting,” Kea agreed, taking another sip. “I haven’t even filed the accounts yet for the last expedition. Nor applied for a grant for the spring.”

  “You take on too much, like always.” Bruce sounded worn and tired as he spoke, as if knowing she would disregard his advice as soon as he said it. “You can’t be responsible for everyone. You’ll burn yourself out. Or drive people away.”

  “You sound a lot like Jason.” Kea stared into her drink, tracing the chaotic circles of chocolate residue that lined the inside of her mug. “Apparently, I spent too much time working, and not enough time scrumping.”