Uh-oh. Why did she think she wouldn’t like what he was about to say?
“We need to go.”
“I know.”
“With the sun going down every night, we’re gonna lose degrees fast. And—What?”
“The food won’t last forever, either.” Tears ghosted over her eyes, disappearing just as quickly. “Right?”
At his nod, she turned to look at everything they’d be leaving behind. Rusty metal walls, the mismatched collection of folding chairs around a flimsy, scarred wood table. Fluttering overhead was a multicolored streamer of pennant flags. Along one side, lopsided shelves contained a random assortment of comic books in languages she’d never learn, but she could spend hours looking at the pictures, so bright and interesting after all these days on the ice. The same way she’d enjoyed the novelty of sipping coffee from an enormous mug that said BEER in bold letters.
“I’ll miss this place.” She went for light, but she couldn’t help the hint of sadness in her voice.
In the slow beat of silence that followed, she lifted her eyes and caught her breath at the unguarded hunger on Ford’s face. “So will I, Angel,” he said before turning away.
* * *
Day 15—Harper Research and Testing Facility, East Antarctic Ice Sheet
Someone thumped at the lab door.
“Hm?” Clive pulled off his headphones and turned slowly from his laptop. The connection was too crap to watch porn, so he’d downloaded a Russian language program. Anything to keep busy.
He counted five long seconds as he walked to the door and fiddled at the handle for a few more, just to watch Sampson’s face redden. Over the past week, the man’s smirk had disappeared, along with his movie-star good looks. He’d grown surlier by the day, while his face got puffy, chapped, and sunburned. His overgrown scruff couldn’t hide the herpes sore at the corner of his mouth. His knuckles were swollen, scabbed, and purple, which made sense given the dents Clive had spotted around the facility’s walls—a visible trail of rage left in his wake.
Bradley Sampson was falling apart.
Unsurprising, given the week he’d had. Clive wasn’t the only one who’d fallen out of the director’s favor. After the big storm, frozen fuel had stopped the plane from going back out, then not one, but two of Sampson’s men had injured themselves during their daily searches. Sampson himself had suffered a fall, leaving him with a noticeable limp. To top it off, amysteriousvirus had put three of them out of commission, leaving them vomiting and feverish for a good portion of that time.
That would teach the bastard not to mess with a virologist.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to fall back on his bigger contingency plan after all. If he played his cards right, the man would anger himself into cardiac arrest.
But then Clive remembered the bruises on his neck, still visible more than a week after Sampson’s barbaric manhandling. No. He wanted the man to suffer.
Pasting an interested smile on his face, Clive asked, “What can I—”
“They’ve been spotted. Just got the call.”
Ah, that would explain the almost feverish light in the man’s gaze, the frenetic aura of excitement.
He didn’t even glance at his own sat phone to see if he’d somehow missed a call from the director. He hadn’t. “I’ll be here,” he sang.Not holding my breath.
“Yeah. You’re so useful.” The dickwad looked over Clive’s shoulder at the living space he’d created right here in the lab, then slowly scanned the crowded holding cells beyond with an oily smile. “What? You just watching ’em now?” He leaned in. “Enjoying their fear? Didn’t take you for the type.”
“Ha-ha.” Clive moved to close the door but was halted by Sampson’s booted foot.
For one long, hate-imbued moment, they watched each other.
Oh yes, they’d moved on from wary to outright hostile. While Clive realized that a frustrated, caged Sampson wasn’t a beast to be toyed with, the idiot didn’t seem to understand that he too had crossed a line.
“You feeling all right?” Clive asked lightly, his eyes skimming over Sampson’s pasty features, the pallor behind the sunburn, the bloodshot eyes. Was that a slight tremor in his hands?
“Great,” the man lied, narrowing his eyes.
Though he didn’t move, something in his stance changed, almost imperceptibly. He was a brute, but he wasn’t stupid exactly, which Clive would do well to remember. He tightened his hand on the hypodermic needle he kept hidden in his pocket.
“Are you taking all the men?”
