Whiteout

by Adriana Anders

  Funny how half his mind flew immediately to the new slew of crew members, while the other half fixated on that stain with absolute certainty as to what it was.

  Yeah, it was blood all right. And since no flora or fauna lived this far inland, it had to be human.

  It was as bright red as his parka, which shouldn’t have surprised him, given the low temperature. Still, he always thought of blood as brown when outside the body for any amount of time. If it weren’t so grisly a sight, it would be pretty, actually. It wasn’t massive—maybe the size of his hand, bright and colorful as a bouquet in this pale place. A sprig of tiny red flowers haloed on one side with the lush, deeper red of velvety roses beyond. Not a huge stain, but enough to make him curious.

  In an absurd feat of human self-deception, Coop’s useless sense of smell gave him the sweet, rusty stench of blood, viscous and battlefield fresh. He stumbled back from the shock of hot, dusty, diesel-scented memories he’d never expected to follow him here and did nothing but breathe for close to a minute.

  There’d be an explanation for this. All he had to do was return to base and find Cortez. Probably one of his research assistants had cut herself or something and they’d had to rush back without cleaning up the site first.

  Right.

  And because he’d never been one to accept bullshit—especially his own—he climbed back onto his snowmobile and took off for the station, full of the knowledge that something was very, very wrong.

  Chapter 2

  Burke-Ruhe Research Station, South Pole

  Angel leaned over the bar and grabbed a glass of water. Around her, the Skua’s Nest was raucous, teeming with that last-day-at-camp energy. It was fun.

  It should have been fun.

  Sucking in a deep breath, she turned and leaned back against the worn wood, taking it all in.

  By this time tomorrow, she’d have left behind this odd, imperfect, wonderful bunch that had been thrown together from every walk of life—folks who worked their butts off, people she’d been honored to cook for; every last one, janitors, researchers, fuelies, her own kitchen crew. God, she’d miss them.

  With a brittle crack of a smile, she waved off a heavy-machine operator’s invitation to dance.

  Oh no. Don’t do it. Don’t cry.

  It was easiest to focus on Jameson, in all his big, bearded, bearish glory, who thrashed on the rickety stage, pouring his ever-loving guts into his guitar and vocals. He was at the point in the evening where he’d started taking requests and this one was a hard-core version of a Violent Femmes song. Predictably, the crowd was eating it up, half of them crying while they sang along, arm in arm, lighters in the air.

  She wouldn’t be alone if she let it out. That was good at least. Except, these weren’t bittersweet goodbye tears pressing at the surface—they were the deep, ugly tears of a woman who’d lost sight of herself somewhere along the way.

  She turned down a couple more friendly invitations to dance, lifting her cup as an excuse. With a smile that felt jagged at the edges, she started to spin back to the bar and froze.

  The door opened and before she’d even looked, hope lifted its sad little head, immediately followed by crushing disappointment and, on its heels, embarrassment. What an idiot.

  Would she ever stop being a glutton for punishment? After what had happened back in the U.S., she should know better than to pursue a man—especially one who disliked her as much as the Ice Man did.

  Too many feelings sprouted up when she thought of what should be waiting for her stateside. But there was nobody. Nothing to look forward to. Which was good. Perfect. A clean slate. How many people got a fresh start like this? The opportunity to build on her strengths instead of focusing on the past. And the fact was, unless it involved slicing, dicing, sautéing, baking, or anything cooking-related, Angel Smith was pretty much crap at it.

  Jameson hooted from the stage, joyous as always. Maybe instead of dwelling on things she couldn’t change, she’d take a page from his book and enjoy herself. Turning, she yelled over the bar, “Hey, Pam, would you grab me one of those?”

  “Bourbon and Coke?” Pam raised her gray eyebrows, adding an unspoken Are you sure? to the question.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s the last night.” Angel made a face and put out her hand to receive the cocktail in its plastic cup. “Thanks!”

  Pam, the Burke-Ruhe station’s physician, gave her a long look. “What took you so long getting here tonight?”

  “Once I’d printed out all my recipes, I realized they needed to be…you know, stuck together.”

  “Collated?”

  “Mm-hm. So I did that and then—”

  “We’ll be able to boil pasta, you know.”

  “I know, but Jameson loves my puttanesca, and what’ll Alex and Rowe do without my mom’s empanadas?” So she was going overboard. She knew that, but it didn’t stop her from making sure these guys had everything they’d need once she was gone.

  “You include the brownie recipe?”

  Angel nodded. She’d cry on the plane, dammit. “And I’ll bring what’s needed up from the supply arch.”

  “There’s nobody like you, Angel.” Her friend’s eyes narrowed. “You gonna be okay, hon? You thinking about the acci—”

  “Great!” She pulled from her selection of well-worn responses. Good, fine, awesome!

  Pam circled the bar and tapped her cup against Angel’s. “All right, then. To new beginnings!”

  She grinned, for real this time, and nodded, her entire being swollen with affection. The crowd swallowed up her too-quiet “Cheers,” and instead of riding this self-pity train any further, she took a swig and yelled, “Hell, yeah!”

  When she’d come here, there’d been nothing to look forward to. No future beyond this crazy stint as a cook at the South Pole research station. And, yeah, coming here had felt a whole lot like running away, but it couldn’t be if there was nothing left to run from, right?

  These last few months were supposed to show her the way. And they had. They had! She’d landed here in pieces, like a broken doll or one of Jameson’s machines. Which was okay, because sometimes, it turned out, you had to take something apart before putting it back together again.

  Never mind the cracks it left behind.

  “Wipe that look off your face, Angel, honey. You deserve a fresh start.” Pam put a thin but strong arm around her and pulled her into her fleecy, disinfectant-scented embrace. “Stop kicking yourself and accept that. Okay?”

  Nodding, Angel squeezed back, refusing to let this morose mood mess tonight up.

  “The world”—she lifted her cup toward Pam with a forced smile—“is my lobster roll.”

  Pam toasted, laughing, and the two women drank.

  Angel watched the dance floor as she nursed her cocktail. This place had changed her outlook if nothing else. It wasn’t every day you met the best people in the world. Poleys—the folks who lived and worked at Pole—were special, a population apart. She’d never find anyone quite like them back home.

  Swallowing back more sentimental tears, she looked on with affection as one of the smaller scientists lifted a big guy onto his shoulders, the two of them collapsing to the floor in a fit of laughter.

  “Jesus. I’d better stop drinking right now.” Pam handed Angel her cup. “Half these idiots’ll be in my clinic before the night’s over.”

  Angel watched Pam stomp over to the guys and give them a talking-to. The station’s doctor might be half their size, but she wasn’t intimidated. Then again, why would she be? This was the best group of people Angel had ever known.

  The only bad thing about this place was what lay outside. Hunkering down in the middle of all this vastness, this absolute endless nothing, drew people together. She looked around at her team. No, more than that. Her family.

  Where else would a thirty-one-year-old chef a
nd a fiftysomething emergency room doc like Pam be thrown together? Or Jameson—a rough-looking ex-army oil rig mechanic who’d never managed to fit into civilian society? The man looked like he could chop a redwood in half with his teeth, but he was the biggest marshmallow in the world. She’d never have met him back in Pittsburgh. Or any of these people—scientists or maintenance folks.

  Aside from a few outliers—like the new group that had arrived a few weeks ago—she’d miss pretty much everyone from Burke-Ruhe.

  The only thing she wouldn’t miss was the ice.

  Her stupid mind chose that moment of weakness to swerve right back to the Ice Man. He spent every waking hour in the elements, aside from the torturous moments he took to eat in her galley. Dr. Ford Cooper actually enjoyed the cold. He liked it so much he’d become a part of it, let it seep into his veins, transform him from a warm-blooded person into some soulless…cyborg.

  A creep who, since her first day at Burke-Ruhe, had looked at her as if she were nothing but a speck of…whatever it was he looked at out there all day.

  “How can I get just one screw?” Jameson’s voice growled from the too-loud speakers, stirring her annoyance up into something hot and reckless. She slugged back the rest of her drink. No, wait. She coughed. That was Pam’s. Straight rum burned to the ends of her limbs and pushed her away from the bar.

  “Come on.” She went up to Pam, grabbed her hand, and tugged her into the heart of the ripe, overheated crowd. “Let’s dance.”

  Maybe if she closed her eyes and let the music take her away from thoughts of cold ice and colder eyes, she’d forget for a few minutes that she had absolutely nothing to go home to.

  * * *

  Back at the research station, Coop parked the snowmobile in the vehicle hangar and stepped onto the ice, head cocked to the side.

  What the hell was that pounding?

  It wasn’t until he’d made his way closer to the main cluster of buildings that he realized it was coming from the Nest. Jesus, with decibels like that, the little hut should have been visibly shaking. He pictured it reaching such a fever pitch that it exploded out all over the sunlit night.

  “Shit.” He rubbed a hand over his stiff neck, annoyed that he’d told Jameson he might put in an appearance tonight.

  Later, he decided with a sigh. First, he needed to figure out what the hell was up with Cortez. Halfway to the central building, he heard a sound from the supply arch entrance. Was someone in there? At this hour? He’d bet that every single person, from cleaning crew to mechanics to researchers, was in the bar right now. Except, possibly, for whoever’d left that bloodstain on the ice.

  He changed course and stalked over to the open arch door where he hesitated, staring into the deep black interior.

  “Somebody in here?” he called, his voice immediately swallowed up by echoing space.

  Nothing.

  After a few seconds, he slid quietly inside and groped along the wall for the light switch.

  A scan of the enormous, arched interior showed two rows of high shelving along the walls, filled with cardboard boxes. Food. Enough for a siege. Beyond, past the wooden door to the ice tunnel, he glimpsed the dimly lit area where he stored his ice core samples.

  Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

  He’d just flipped off the overheads when he heard a sound, so light and scuttling that he couldn’t be sure it was real. Muscles spring-loaded with tension, he headed farther into the dark, cavernous interior, oddly hesitant to turn the light back on. Had the noise come from the tunnel? Ridiculous.

  He’d advanced a half-dozen steps when a prickle of wariness made him go absolutely still. Slowly, he turned as someone stepped into the doorway, blocking out the exterior light. Had this guy made the sound? The arches were a strangely echoing place.

  Coop squinted, unaccountably spooked by the unmoving silhouette. He forced his hands to loosen at his sides.

  “Who is that?” His old throat injury kept him from yelling, but the guy, who was only a few yards away, had to hear him.

  “Bradley Sampson,” the man finally responded, sliding in and moving to push the door closed.

  “Don’t shut it. Headed out.”

  The pause was shorter this time. And maybe, just maybe, that could be explained by the awkwardness of getting caught together in the dark or even by the lingering hostility between them, since he’d never made a secret of the way he felt about this new operations manager.

  “Everything good?” There was something careful about the way Sampson spoke. It was as off-key as Coop’s singing voice.

  “Yep.” Coop didn’t bother faking a smile. The man would see right through that, if he could see at all in here. “Just trying to find a friend.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep.”

  Did he imagine the shift in Sampson’s shoulders? “Maybe I can help. Who’re you—”

  “Coop!” another voice sounded from farther off, cutting through the tension like hot metal through ice.

  Relief shot through him.

  “Hey, Sampson. You see Coop in there?” Alex, part of the meteorite search team, came into view and Sampson subtly shifted away from the entrance, letting in more light.

  “I’m here.” Muscles tense, Coop immediately moved the last few feet to the door, and then outside. “What’s up?”

  “Coop, bro. Been lookin’ all over for you.”

  “Just got in.”

  “Your presence is being requested.”

  “Hm?”

  “Everybody’s waiting for you at the Nest, man.”

  “Why?” Coop stopped, flummoxed. He never went to the base’s bar. Or at least he’d stopped going since Angel Smith had started showing up there. The last thing he needed was one more opportunity to stutter like a fool in front of her.

  “Jameson’s got his eight-thousand-year-old bottle of scotch out. To celebrate the summer people leaving, he says.”

  Oh, right. Jesus. He didn’t have time for this. “I’ll pass.” He shifted subtly toward Sampson.

  “Yeah, well, he’s not opening it unless you show up. Says you promised.” Alex shook his head. “Things were getting so tense I came to find you.”

  Coop couldn’t help giving a dry huff of humor. Jameson playing games, as usual. He knew damn well that Coop would feel obliged to go. Or maybe he figured that he wouldn’t go, in which case Jameson could hold on to his precious bottle for one more season.

  He glanced at Sampson, who looked smaller than he had moments before, his stance casual. Had Coop imagined the threat he’d seen in the man’s silhouette? “Cortez at the Nest?” he asked, keeping Sampson in his peripheral vision.

  “Yeah. I think so, man.”

  “All right then.”

  They set off, side by side, just three buddies headed to the bar for a drink. Alex showed no sign of sensing the strain beneath the surface, but Coop felt it, as present as the thump of music in the air.

  The last of the quiet blew away the moment Sampson swung open the door to the Nest.

  Within seconds, Coop was swallowed up by the crowd. Sweaty arms landed on his shoulders, pulling him deeper in, yanking off his coat, and helping with his gloves.

  While every instinct screamed at him to get away, he used his height to scan the bodies for Cortez.

  The closeness, the noise, the smell, all of it made him want to head back into the cold, where he could breathe unimpeded. And think.

  He shook his head to clear it, blinked away the tunnel vision threatening to take over, and did his best to respond to the greetings thrown his way, all while trying desperately to find Cortez. He couldn’t get that bloodstain out of his head.

  “Hey, Coop!” Someone slapped him on the arm and another thrust a drink into his hand. Coop blinked at it for a few seconds before setting it on a table.

  On
the tiny stage, Jameson looked like a youngish, demented Santa Claus with his flaming-red beard and hefty frame. He stopped singing abruptly and pointed Coop out with a whoop. “Coop’s in the house! Let’s open her up!” Jameson yelled before throwing his guitar and mic to someone else and stomping toward the bar, where he grabbed his bottle from the place of honor it had occupied these past couple years.

  With a sigh, Coop gave in and concentrated on fighting his way to Jameson instead.

  Just before he reached the bar, his eye latched on to something, sending his breath into overdrive before his brain registered what it was.

  Angel Smith. Dancing.

  By some sort of witchcraft, his gaze separated her out of the faceless bodies writhing on one side of the room. He focused on her sinewy movements alone, while everything else blurred away into background noise.

  He half acknowledged Jameson thrusting a drink into his hand and clinking their glasses together, caught just a whiff of the shot’s smoky fumes, and barely registered the peaty burn of barrel-aged booze as it slid its way down his throat. All his senses were pointed at the place where Angel turned and twisted to the rhythm of the music—bare, glistening arms stretched high, head swinging back, river of dark hair cascading behind her. Her face…

  “Good to see you here, my friend. Been a while.”

  “Mm-hm.” Coop blinked back the haze and squinted at Jameson. What was it he wanted to ask again?

  “So, listen to this, Coop. I’ve got a plan for the 300 Club that you’re gonna love. We’re gonna do freaking margaritas or some shit and get someone to take pictures like we’re in goddamn Club Med. I’ll wear my hula skirt, Pam’s got that…”

  No way was he running around the South Pole buck naked after sitting in a two-hundred-degree sauna. Coop shifted his head, doing his best to listen to all the ways the winter-overs would freeze their nuts off in the spirit of macho stupidity.