Anything would be better than this emptiness.
It took an hour to go through the galley and the other communal living areas. The gym was empty, as were the screening room, game room, labs, and offices. Pam’s medical clinic sat cold, her data uplink smashed to pieces, generator silent and broken.
It all reminded him of something that he couldn’t put his finger on, though his body showed recognition. He couldn’t get rid of the goosebumps climbing up and down his arms.
Tightening his jaw, he made his way through the remaining common areas to the communications room door, which was wide-open. The utter destruction inside tested his forced calm. They’d taken a sledgehammer to the place.
Pure sabotage, deliberate and devastating. Violent.
Unease growing in his gut, Coop headed over the ice to the power plant arch, which had hummed with life for as long as he’d been here. Nothing was left of it now but a misshapen pile of melted plastic and blown-out metal, crackling with invisible flames. He couldn’t get within a hundred feet of it without choking on the fumes.
Innards roiling with tension, he turned in a circle. What now?
He exhaled a puff of vapor and blinked, sorting through the pieces in his head. Stolen drills, destroyed power plant, no communications.
What was he missing?
What did they want with his drills? Why destroy years of work? Not just his work, but this entire place. And where the hell had everyone gone?
That last question sent something dark and queasy through him, sour as bile and heavy as sludge.
Unless he’d grossly misread the situation, no help would be coming, and unless the airplane truly had evacuated the winter crew to safety, no one would even know there was a problem until they reached out to the station and couldn’t get through. That could be days or weeks away, given how spotty communications were here in the winter.
Desperation sharpened Coop in ways that might dull someone else. He’d been deployed in enough war zones to know how to use fear to get shit done instead of letting it drag him down. Heat and food. Those were the only things he’d need to survive. There was plenty of the latter, and the former would be impossible to find, unless…
Wait. There was one backup generator they might have missed.
Instead of checking out the supply arch as he’d planned, he hurried to the ancillary building, the base’s emergency locale, equipped with its own generator, in case of an outage. Camp beds, cooking supplies, MREs: it had everything needed to survive for a day or two. Maybe longer, if he could locate more fuel. Maybe, just maybe, the people who’d carried out this destruction hadn’t known about it.
Hopeful for the first time since he’d gotten back, he threw open the shed door to find the ancillary generator in one piece. Relief flooded him. Hallelujah.
If they’d forgotten this, he thought as he got it up and running, maybe they’d left other things behind. A charger for his sat phone, for example. That would be helpful. Thus far, though, he hadn’t found a single charger—solar or otherwise—which spoke of a highly organized, premeditated operation. A full-blown assault.
Burke-Ruhe felt like a war zone.
He looked up at the sky, picturing the plane he’d watched flying away earlier. Had it been full of refugees from some terrible accident, or hostages?
In a flash, his brain fed him an image of Angel Smith, dancing like a hot-blooded goddess in the coldest place on earth. Had that been just last night? Felt like ancient history.
Where was she headed right now? The safety of McMurdo Station? Christchurch? The fucking Bermuda Triangle?
Dammit!
He squeezed his temples, willing his brain to think. What were they up to? And who were they? What had they done with everyone? There was no blood. No signs of violence, and he’d checked everyth—
The supply arch. He’d been headed there when he’d remembered the ancillary building.
Suddenly, the image of that airplane full of Burke-Ruhe’s population changed into something entirely different. What if the supply arch was filled with corpses instead of food, rows and rows of—
No. He had to stop thinking like that if he wanted to be in any state to search for possible survivors.
Angel Smith filled his thoughts again, and he gently pushed her aside. He needed his wits right now, had to treat every move with as much seriousness as a military recon.
Filled with a sick dread and armed with a baseball bat, he headed into the supply arch.
Chapter 10
As Coop stalked silently down the long ice ramp toward the arch’s entrance, a deep, disturbing sense of déjà vu washed over him.
He’d been here just last night, looking for the missing Cortez. He couldn’t help but wonder: What if he’d found him then? What if he’d insisted on seeing his friend’s face, rather than accepting that scratchy whisper through the door?
He stood to the side of the open entrance and paused.
The long, metal-arched structure, which had been built on top of the ice years ago, was now so deep underground that the entrance had to be plowed out on a pretty continuous basis. Especially in winter.
A perfect place to hide something. Like bodies.
Or it could be empty.
He needed to get a grip. He’d be useless if he let what-ifs rule him. After a silent, calming count of three, Coop slid inside, stepped to the right, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the complete dark. Nothing. Not a sound, not a ticking clock or a scuffle. Not a sign of life.
Dead. They could all be dead. Jameson, Doc, Angel Smith.
He couldn’t push the thought from his head, couldn’t stop the way images long buried mingled with scenes of gore freshly painted by his mind. A mind that was all too aware of how barbaric death could be.
He couldn’t stand the idea of Angel Smith—so alive this morning—snuffed out like a too-bright, too-hot flame.
Taking a crushed-ice breath, he set off, sticking to the wall, where the shadows immediately engulfed him. The crisp fall of each cautious step was the only sound, aside from the loud pounding in his ears.
Once the last glimmer of light was swallowed by the pure black of the arch, he had no choice but to switch on the flashlight, though it would make him a target. He hefted the baseball bat and hungered for the weight of one of those ultraheavy law-enforcement flashlights or, even better, his rifle.
Memories assailed him, as brutal as a Condition 1 storm: dust and diesel oil, sweat and fear. The polar opposite of this place, until today. He shut off the light, paused, breath suspended, and waited out the feeling of being watched.
Stress. This is stress. He knew it, recognized it, did his best to push it back, and finally moved ahead, his feet as stealthy as they’d been on dozens of raids, his body primed for attack.
He didn’t question this need to be quiet—instinct drove it, not well-thought-out strategy.
Given that instinct had saved his ass more than once, he listened.
One step, foot down, leg bent, no scuffing, barely a sound. Which was hard in boots that turned feet into blocky hunks of ice.
He sniffed the air. What was that? A spice, maybe. He knew it but couldn’t put his finger on it.
His foot kicked something that skittered across the concrete floor to land with a high, brassy bell sound, and it hit him—that odor was gunpowder. It was here in the still air. Not heavy, but… He inhaled through his nose. He’d never forget the smell.
It had no place here.
He switched the light back on and shone it on the ground, picked up the gleam of a shell casing, and stepped toward it when—
Something moved to the right. He snapped off the light, canted his head, quiet as the grave while alarm bells tore up his insides.
There. Again. A metallic rattle. Like a machine trying to work and failing. The vibrations lasted for a few se
conds and stopped, started…stopped. Spurred on by the possibility of company, he headed toward the entrance to the ice tunnel.
As he watched, the wooden door shook, rattled like it’d fall off its hinges, and then stopped. Behind the sound was a low humming that raised every hair on his already chilled body.
He leaned in, startled to see a heavy-duty slide lock where he didn’t remember there being one before. The fresh-looking drill holes confirmed it.
His jaw went diamond-hard, crackling the thin layer of ice coating the new growth on his chin. “Who’s in there?”
The moaning went on, and the rattling picked up.
He reached for the handle and hesitated, horror movie images flashing through his head, The Thing high on the list. Bat fisted in his gloved hand, he stepped to the side, grabbed ahold of the slide…and pulled.
Inside, the sound stopped.
He pulled again, but the damned lock appeared to be jammed. He bent closer, ran his light up and down then door, and… Sonofabitch. There was a second latch, at the very bottom, in a place where most people would never think to look. And this one was padlocked shut.
He’d have to cut it off.
“You okay in there? This is Serg—” He stopped. “This is Dr. Ford Cooper.” Christ, he’d almost given his rank. That was how fucked up this was. He shut his eyes and went on. “It’s Coop. Who’s in there?”
Moaning. Just moaning, with another bout of shaking and a thump, but the voice was one hundred percent human. And female. And she wanted out.
“I’m gonna get you out, okay?” He tried to soften the hard army edge from his voice. “Hold tight.”
He spun, ready to tear the place apart in search of something to pry open that lock.
Tools. Jameson’s shop was in the utility arch, but there’d be something here. There—a fire extinguisher.
Without hesitation, he pulled it from its red metal case and returned, squatted in front of the door, and beat the shit out of the lock.
It popped off after three good hits. In a rush, he threw the extinguisher to the side, pulled open the door, and just avoided getting brained with a hatchet.
“Whoa! Whoa. Hold it.” He threw his hand out and snatched the tool from her, which wasn’t much of a challenge, given how hard she was shaking. “It’s Coop. Ford Cooper. Not here to hurt you.”
He didn’t need to see her face under the layers of cloth to know this was Angel Smith. Holy shit. As if he’d conjured her.
“I’ve got you. Got you, Angel. Got you.” Shaking from adrenaline and anger and relief, he put an arm around her and shifted into the tunnel. He went still at the sense of déjà vu when he spotted drops of red against the ice, mostly hidden by a messy pile of crates, like the last bit of evidence left from a hasty cover-up.
“What is that? Is that blood?”
“Jamie C—Cor—” Her shuddering took over. “Cortez.”
The name fell on him like an avalanche, covering every bit of hope he’d harbored until now. Shit.
No time for thinking about his abysmal failure at saving his friend. Angel sucked in a wheezy breath and shuddered so hard he almost lost his hold on her.
Sticking the flashlight into his mouth, he bent to slide one arm through her legs and hauled her up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. No time to check on her. No time to ask questions. No time for stealth or mourning or regret.
He’d get her warm, keep her alive, and worry about what the hell was going on here later.
As he turned, her foot caught on the pile of crates, overturning the top two and spinning the bottom one out.
Letters had been scrawled across the previously hidden side of the bottom crate. They spelled out CHRONOS COR, which was interesting. But what made him stop and stare in absolute shock wasn’t the words themselves so much as the sloppy, thick, fingerprint-smudged blood in which they’d been written.
Chapter 11
Something poked at Angel. “Mmmmmm.” She turned away.
Water in her mouth, steaming hot, trying to drown her. Coughing, flailing, hands trapped. Stop. Stop it. Stop!
“Drink.”
She froze. The syllable was so scratchy and deep, it was more grunt than word. She should open her eyes, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay asleep. To play dead.
“Drink,” the rough voice ordered again. “So you don’t die.”
Let me. Let me die.
“No. No way, Ms. Sm—Angel.”
Everything was fever-wrong. Clammy-hot, shaky-cold, and heavy. So heavy. Was someone sitting on her?
“’swrongwithmyhans?” Her tongue wouldn’t work.
“Drink.”
Something pressed against her mouth. Fighting the need to gag, she gave in, opened up, let it flow into her. Warm and sweet, sunshine coated her insides. No, not sunshine, but…
Good.
“More.”
“Okay.” Prying open her eyes was like pulling apart thick, cooling caramel. Finally, she got one, then the other. She immediately shut them again, hard. “’stoobright.”
Something landed on her face. Sunglasses. “Try again.”
This time, things were slightly darker, no blazing shaft of agony.
“More.” That rough voice cut in and out, as if it couldn’t quite find a note to cling to. As if part of its register had been ripped out, leaving swiss cheese holes.
Something about it irritated her. She shook her head—or tried to. It ended up as more of a side nudge. And her head was big and cotton-filled.
“You want to die?”
No. No she didn’t want that. Her lids weighed a ton. They shut again.
More sweetness trickled down her throat, followed by a bigger mouthful, then a gulp.
“Wha’s going on?”
“You tell me.” The bed shifted beneath her. Bed. What bed? “Sit up.”
Turning to face the seesawing mattress, she pushed hard on hands that felt like lead, shifted up and back, away from this incredible, firm warmth, and managed to crack her eyes open one more time, focusing on—
Holy mother of God in Heaven above.
She’d have done the sign of the cross if her hand had worked, because the sight of the Ice Man half-naked and right there was too much for her poor, overwhelmed senses to handle.
She could only slam her eyes shut, but that did nothing to obliterate the image, burned into the inside of her eyelids.
He had one of those thick, wide, flat-planed male bodies that she’d only ever seen in movies, his pecs slabs of squared-off stone, with a light fan of dark blond, almost reddish hair, leading down to…
She swallowed and squeezed her eyes tighter to clear away the hallucination.
I must be dead. And this is what Dead Me wants: the dude who rejected me with his shirt off.
But common sense followed right on that thought’s heels. No. No way would Dead Me settle for that. She’d want the bottom half, too.
She leaned back and cracked an eye open to see thighs covered in tight merino wool.
Oh well.
Besides that, the mean expression he wore, too intense and hard to be anything but the real Ice Man, confirmed that she wasn’t dead. He’d be much nicer in the afterlife. Besides, the sun-, wind-, and ice-burned red of his face wasn’t something she’d ever conjure up on her own, nor were those hard brackets around his mouth.
Almost angrily, he put one of those muscle-packed arms around her and pulled her back into his heat. She was about to protest when he asked, “What the hell happened here today?”
She blinked. It all came back in a three-second flash that sent her careening into hell again.
“Gonna throw up.” She lurched to side and just made it into the trash can Ford Cooper held up for her.
The memories hurt, scraped her insides and tightened her st
omach, reminding her of how indelible those deaths were. Of how she’d done nothing to stop them.
Alex. Oh God. Poor Alex. And Jamie Cortez.
The tunnels. Even now, they were closing in, darkness crowding the edges of her vision. Those footsteps, slowly approaching.
“Angel.”
“I ran.” He bent close to hear her whisper. “They killed him and I just…ran.”
“Cortez?”
“Alex.” She blinked at him. “Cortez…” She couldn’t think of that bloody mess and the sweet, silly Jamie Cortez she’d known. Her body tried heaving again and she held it back, breathed through it until she could talk. “He was already in the tunnel when I got there.” Deep-frozen. Blood everywhere. She put a hand to her face. Her nose was swollen and hot where she’d hit it on the door.
Ford swiped something warm and wet over her mouth, her cheeks, then tightened his hold on her, pulled her into his body.
“You’re safe now. Safe.”
Slowly, she loosened a bit, let him take a little more weight.
At least Ford was alive. At least she wasn’t alone. Or frozen through, like Sampson had threatened.
“I’ve got you.”
Nodding seemed like a good idea, particularly since it rubbed her damp cheek—when did I cry?—against that wide, solid expanse.
“Where is everyone else? Did you find any more…” She wouldn’t say bodies. Just the idea that there could be more made her ache.
“No one else.” With something like relief, her gaze shifted to the five o’clock shadow over his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. With a curse, he tried again. “Gone.”
The shaking started again, although this time it wasn’t from hypothermia—it was an overdose of pure, raw emotion.
I know you’re around here somewhere, Angel, darlin’. Wanna know how? Her heart thumped in her chest, too fast, too heavy, and so loud he had to hear it. That trapped feeling rushed out of the recent past to smack her in the face. My God, that was just this morning.
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