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 endlessnothing,drew people together. She looked around at her team. No, more than that. Her family.
Where else would a thirty-one-year-old chef and 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.
Herstupidmind 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 actuallyenjoyedthe 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.
Acreepwho, 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.
