On Thin Ice

Bledsoe had ordered him to hold his cover even after he’d fingered the ringleader and his or her accomplices. They wanted to take everyone involved in this corporate piracy case down at once. No one was sure how high up in Tiger the fraud went, but Seth suspected pretty high.

Based on what he knew so far, if he had to guess, he’d make Lauren as the kingpin here in the field, and Paddy O’Connor her accomplice. Paddy must have gotten scared or screwed up, done something to make it dangerous for Lauren to let him live. Maybe he was getting ready to blow the whistle on the whole operation.

Seth didn’t know, but he was going to find out.

Amazingly enough, his own father—a shrewd businessman who watched the movements of oil companies operating in the Arctic like a hawk—had been the one who’d tipped off the Feds to what he’d first thought was some kind of illegal collusion between Tiger and that foreign company. How ironic that Seth should catch the case. He wondered if his father knew. And if he did know, if he’d care.

Oh, he’d care all right. The great and powerful Jeremy Adams would expect Seth to screw it up somehow. Just like he thought Seth had screwed up his career with the Bureau and his marriage. Not to mention a hundred other things growing up.

Lauren started up the metal stairs, and Seth followed, his gaze fixed on her jeans-clad behind. Mmm, nice. The view drove all thoughts of his father from his mind.

The higher they climbed and the closer they got to the drilling floor, the more deafening the noise became. The screeching sounds of machinery one floor above them told Seth they’d already started the rest of the shift without him. He’d catch hell from Salvio for sure now.

He swore silently under his breath. One of these days he and Jack Salvio were going to have a serious disagreement.

They topped a landing, and Lauren stopped short. Seth crashed into her from behind. “Whoa, sorry.” He grabbed the greasy metal handrail to keep from falling backward down the stairs.

Over the noise, he heard her rattle off a litany of cuss words the average society cupcake shouldn’t even know. But her tirade wasn’t on his account. She pointed across one of the catwalks circling the central drilling pipe that stretched from ground level up five stories to the drilling floor just above them.

Seth looked past her and saw two roustabouts—the same guys who’d corralled him yesterday into helping them move that equipment. He’d found out soon afterward that they’d lied to him about the camp’s forklift being down. The question was why?

His hunch was that they’d deliberately wanted to divert his attention. Away from a murder being committed not fifty yards away as he humped crates off a pallet? Maybe. Maybe not.

Seth filed that question away for the time being, and watched them scoop samples out of the big metal vat of drilling mud and rock being circulated out of the well. “Want me to—”

Lauren didn’t wait for him to finish. In three seconds she was across the catwalk, shouting something at the two roustabouts that Seth couldn’t make out over the noise. A second later he bumped up behind her again.

“What’s going on?” Seth looked to Pinkie for an explanation. The roustabout had gotten his nickname when he lost one of his little fingers in a drilling accident years ago, so Paddy O’Connor had told him.

“Nothin’,” Pinkie said.

“Yeah, nothin’.” Seth looked hard at Pinkie’s greasy-looking friend. The name Bulldog was painted in crude letters across his hard hat. “We was just takin’ samples like—”

“Like we’re supposed to.” Pinkie shot Bulldog a cautionary look.

Something was off about these two. Seth had thought so since his first day on the job. They were thick as thieves and strangely aloof from the rest of the crew. Come to think of it, neither of them had seemed overly concerned, as had the rest of the men, when Paddy O’Connor turned up dead in the reserve pit.

Lauren grabbed a half-full plastic sample bag out of Bulldog’s hand, yanked off her glove and ran a finger over the crudely marked depth measurement on the plastic. “Ninety-three ten.”

“Yeah,” Pinkie said. “What of it?”

Lauren shook her head. “Nothing. I just wanted to have a look, is all.” She dipped a finger into the muddy, crushed up rock and sniffed it.

Seth leaned down and smelled the open bag. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just—”

“We gotta get back to the floor.” Pinkie tried to squeeze past them, but Seth blocked his way.

“Salvio ask you two to take samples?” Seth remembered that another roustabout, a young kid, new to the oil field, had been doing the sampling up until now.

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason.” He let Pinkie pass.

“I’m going with you.” Lauren handed the sample bag back to Bulldog.

Pinkie turned on her. “Salvio says no one who ain’t needed is supposed to come up there—geologists included.”

“What?” Lauren’s mouth gaped.

That figured, Seth thought. And it made sense. You didn’t want too many people around distracting the drilling crew. He’d been more than distracted himself the past twenty minutes.

“Salvio put me in charge a-makin’ sure.” Pinkie flashed a hardened look at her. “Know what I mean?”

Seth had had enough of these two. “Get going.” Oil field hierarchy, punctuated by the fact that Seth was bigger than both of them, insured their compliance.

Pinkie smirked, then nodded at his partner. Bulldog zipped the sample bag closed and tossed it into an open box beside the mud vat. Seth followed them both out onto the catwalk.

“Damn split-tails,” Pinkie said, to no one in particular. “Women shouldn’t be out here, if ya ask me.”

Lauren stood there, face flushed, her whisky-brown eyes flashing anger, as she watched the two of them jog up the metal staircase toward the drilling floor.

“Ignore him,” Seth said. “He’s an idiot.”

“If he’s assigned to sample collection I’ve got to work with him, now don’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess you do.” The thought bothered him more than it should have. Seth nodded at the samples in the box. “What’s up with those rocks anyway?”

She shook off her foul temperament and turned her attention on the box. “You wouldn’t understand.”

She’d be right, if Seth was who he was supposed to be—just another roughneck working another job. If he was smart, he’d stick to that role. But years ago, in college, he’d taken an introductory geology course along with a handful of other science classes needed to fulfill his degree requirement. In the end, his pride got the better of him. “Try me.”

She looked at him for a cool moment that seemed longer than a winter in Kachelik. Hell, what was she doing, sizing up his intellect? His ex used to do that all the time.

“Forget it,” he said, and started for the catwalk.

“No, wait.” She grabbed his arm. “I—I’m sorry. It’s just that so few people are ever interested in my work. It surprised me, is all.”

He shrugged, annoyed at himself for letting her get to him.

“Come on.” She pulled him toward the open box of samples.

The machinery noise was so loud, he had to invade her personal space so he could hear her. At least that’s what he told himself as he edged close enough to her to catch the lingering scent of shampoo in her hair. He knew being this close to her was dangerous. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t focus. Come on, Adams, get a grip.

“These are totally normal,” she said, snapping him back to the topic. “Exactly what I’d expect to see at this location and this depth.” She snatched one of the sample bags from the box and handed it to him.

He pulled off his glove and squished the heavy plastic between his fingers, squinting in the bad overhead light, studying the grayish-brown rock chips floating in mud. “Shale, right?”