Читать книгу On Thin Ice - Debra Lee Brown - Страница 11

Where had these rock samples come from, the moon?

Lauren pushed back from the microscope and focused her eyes out the trailer window. Not that it helped. She couldn’t see a thing except blowing snow. The wind velocity had increased overnight to dangerous speeds. She’d woken with a start that morning when an empty fifty-five-gallon drum had blown up against the side of her trailer with a powerful thunk.

She grabbed her calculator and ran through the sequence one more time. “This can’t be right.” For the third time she checked the smudged label marking one of the small plastic sample bags littering her workstation.

Someone had clearly made a mistake.

As drilling progressed and the well got deeper, rock samples mixed with mud and fluids were sucked up from the bottom of the hole. At the surface they were collected and bagged by one of the Altex roustabouts. It was a dirty, thankless task, usually assigned to the lowest man on the totem pole. She wondered who among the Altex crew had been elected.

The Caribou Island well wasn’t at its target depth yet, so at this point Lauren didn’t expect to see anything out of the ordinary, like traces of oil, in the samples. And least of all rocks so unusual she was certain some mistake had been made.

She shut down the microscope and grabbed her jacket, then paused to consider her options. She wasn’t that anxious to make another appearance in camp. Earlier that morning she’d been bombarded with crew members’ questions—the same question, actually, over and over.

Are we going to keep drilling?

Didn’t they understand? They were so close to finishing the well, it didn’t make sense to shut it all down now. Tiger had invested a small fortune to get the data from Caribou Island. Her boss Bill Walters, the VPs—Crocker included—and Tiger’s CEO would be counting on her. On all of them.

And she wasn’t about to let them down.

Last night after she’d left the camp, Salvio had changed his mind about continuing the drilling. But only temporarily, he’d warned her this morning. Fine. She’d take whatever she could get. Once communications were up, they could let the bigwigs at corporate decide what to do. Until then, she wasn’t changing her position.

She breezed out the door, then locked it with her key. No one was touching these rock samples until she figured out who had screwed up. The bags were clearly mismarked. It was impossible for that kind of rock to exist at the Caribou Island location. She should know. She’d interpreted all the subsurface maps of the site herself, just last year.

There would be hell to pay with her boss if she didn’t get this mess sorted out. And fast. No way was she shipping mismarked samples back to Tiger’s lab in town. But with Paddy gone and all communications down, she wasn’t sure who exactly from Altex to talk to about it.

Adams, maybe.

Warmth washed over her as she recalled the feel of his arms around her last night in the lab. Strong, solid, comforting. When was the last time Crocker had held her that way? Stroked her back, soothed her? It dawned on her that she didn’t even know Adams’s first name.

The camp’s forklift rumbled past, jerking her from her thoughts. Sheesh. Forty below, winds screaming across the tundra like a banshee, and she was lost in some fantasy about a roughneck. Great. Just what she needed. To act like an idiot out here on the job.

A man was dead. Tiger’s operation was weeks behind schedule, and the biggest promotion of her career hung in the balance. She needed to focus, to do what was expected of someone in her position. Not break down like a crybaby and fall into the arms of one of the crew, for God’s sake.

It had taken her years to win the respect of her male peers, of Tiger’s senior personnel, not to mention the rough-and-tumble drilling crews, most of whom still believed women didn’t belong in the field.

She wasn’t about to throw it all away because the going got tough. Her father would have told her to buck up, meet the challenge. That’s exactly what she intended to do. She’d see Salvio right away about those samples.

Hand over hand, Lauren pulled herself along the rope that had been set up as a guide between her trailer and the main camp. The weather was the worst she’d ever experienced, and showed no signs of breaking. Visibility was a joke. It took her nearly five minutes fighting the wind to make it to camp.

Salvio wasn’t in his office.

“Damn.” She plopped down into his beat-up desk chair and raked her fingers through her half-frozen hair. Fine. She’d talk to him later. Until then, she’d ask around among the crew.

The first shift was on break, and she heard laughter coming from the kitchen. The greasy aroma of hamburgers sizzling on the grill and her growling stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten yet that day. Lunch sounded good. Maybe she’d grab a quick—

The thought vaporized as her eyes focused on the drilling stats blinking at her from one of the computer monitors on Salvio’s cluttered desk. She leaned closer and scanned the real-time drill depth readout.

“Fifteen two?” She blinked her eyes a couple of times to make sure she wasn’t reading it wrong. Fifteen thousand two hundred and six feet. That couldn’t be right. They were at nine thousand last night, nine two this morning. The top of the target zone for the Caribou Island well was nine thousand four hundred feet. Straight down. Easy as pie.

Altex had drilled dozens of oil exploration wells for Tiger, just like this one, over the past twenty-five years. Caribou Island should have been a routine operation, but Murphy’s Law seemed to be in full effect out here.

She hit the side of the monitor with the flat of her hand and watched the screen. The green numbers jumped, then blinked back at her. Fifteen two. “This is crazy.”

“Fotheringay!” Jack Salvio’s gravelly voice made her jump. He shot through the door, a nasty expression screwed into his face. “I’m having enough trouble with this frickin’ equipment as it is.”

“I was just—”

“Damned thing is always screwed up.” He leaned over her, typed some two-fingered gibberish into the keyboard and hit the Escape key. The monitor did a split-second reset, then flashed back to life.

Lauren focused in on the depth measurement. “Nine thousand three hundred feet.”

“There. It’s fixed.”

Frowning, she studied the blinking stats again. Everything seemed to be normal now. The drilling depth looked fine.

“Don’t touch it again, ya hear?”

“Sorry.” Lauren had never seen so much computer equipment in a company man’s office before. Personally, she’d opt for a sheet of paper, a pencil and a plain old calculator any day over all the fancy analytical instruments Tiger had insisted they install at Caribou Island.

Bill Walters, her boss, had insisted, actually. She remembered a presentation he’d given months ago on the financial return of using some new computerized drilling system. It was supposed to have made the job easier, and to have saved them money. Funny that Bill even considered the financial end of things. That had been a first. Shaking her head, she gave the numbers on the monitor a final glance. The new system was clearly junk. As soon as communications were restored she’d give Bill a call to let him know.

Salvio grabbed his hard hat from a hook on the wall and turned to leave.

“Oh, Jack—wait.” She’d almost forgotten why she’d come to see him in the first place. “Do you know which roustabout was assigned to collect rock samples here last Tuesday?” That was the date scribbled on the bags of samples left outside her lab, though the crate they’d been boxed in was missing its label.

“Beats me. Why do you want to know?”

“There were some really strange samples in front of my trailer when I arrived, and—”

Without a word, Salvio jammed his hard hat onto his head and stormed out the door.

What’s with him?

Ignoring his trademark rudeness, Lauren scanned the messy bulletin board on the wall over his desk. A second later she found what she was looking for—the crew manifest detailing who was on shift last week. Maybe now she’d find out which roustabout had—

“That’s odd.” The routine paperwork indicated a whole new crew had come in last Wednesday. Roughnecks, roustabouts, two cooks, the medic, the housekeeper, everybody.

There was always a lot of overlap on an operation this big. Eighty guys staggered on four-week shifts, for as long as it took to drill the well. They never all changed out at once. It was hardly possible, just given the logistics of getting everyone on and off the island.

Lauren shook her head.

Strange-looking rock samples, computer stats that weren’t possible given their operational plan, the worst weather in years, and a complete crew change just days before their toolpusher was killed in what Lauren knew in her gut was not an accident.

Something was going on here, and she intended to get to the bottom of it.

Pushing back from the desk, she made a mental note to query the one person who didn’t seem to belong on Caribou Island at all. “Whatever-your-name-is Adams.”

“It’s Seth.”

His low, smooth voice startled her. With a shock she glanced up to see the target of her thoughts standing in the doorway, his broad shoulders filling it.

“Seth Adams,” he said, and shot her the most dangerous-looking smile she’d ever seen in her life.

That wide-eyed innocent look didn’t fool Seth for a second. Lauren held his gaze just long enough for her cheeks to warm to pink, then she wet her lips and pretended to study the numbers on one of the monitors.

“You called?” he said, adding the narrowest edge of seduction to his voice.

A beautiful woman was the hardest kind of criminal to catch. And once caught, the hardest to put away. There was always some gullible sucker around willing to do anything to help her. Seth felt himself slipping easily into the role.

How predictable. Bledsoe had wanted him on the job because he thought playing the dumb roughneck suited him perfectly. Maybe it did. But for different reasons altogether.

“Um, yes. I uh…saw you in the hall.”

He smiled again, thinking what a perfect touch that coy little flustered look was to her whole act. “And?”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Go ahead, shoot.” He pulled a chair up close—a lot closer than he would have if she was a man—and shot her another smile.

“How long have you been out here?”

“Came in last Wednesday. Why?”

“No reason. I just wondered.” She gave up a smile.

“Matter of fact, a whole new crew came on that day. Was that your doing?”

“My doing? No, how could it be? Geologists don’t make those kinds of decisions. Only the—”

“Toolpusher?”

“That’s right.”

His eyes fixed on the tiny mole near her mouth. Sexy as hell. He’d noticed it for the first time last night in the lab.

“Who’s in charge of the crew now that Paddy’s…” All the light went out of her eyes, and he found himself feeling sorry for her again. All part of her plan, he reminded himself.

“Don’t know. Salvio, I guess.” Jack had been riding roughshod on them since the second Paddy O’Connor was pronounced dead. It made sense, since Salvio was Tiger’s senior man and in charge of the whole field operation.

“Jack wants to shut it all down,” she said absently.

“Makes sense, given what’s happened.” Seth cast a look out the window in the direction of the drilling rig, barely making out the outline of the derrick.

“I’m going out there to talk to him.”

“Hey, wait.”

She ignored him, and a minute later was suited up and out the door to the yard. Seth was right behind her. He was late as it was. Lunch was over and everyone was back on shift.

Lauren slipped on the ice as she grabbed the guideline connecting the camp to the rig. He caught her just in time.

“Thanks.”

He barely heard her over the wind. She smiled up at him, her auburn hair whipping around her face. He grabbed the fur ruff of her hood and pulled it snug, holding her close longer than he should have.

Again he had to remind himself he was acting. So was she. All in a day’s work. He was a cop, and she was a murderer. He hadn’t wanted to believe it when he was with her last night, but what he’d found in the Dumpster convinced him. He’d wrapped the evidence in a paper bag and stashed it in his duffel. It wasn’t enough. He’d bet his life there’d be no usable fingerprints on that rock hammer. All the same, he had to get a look at Paddy’s body.

As they pulled their way along the guideline to the rig, he mentally checked off what he knew about Lauren Fotheringay. Not nearly enough. Not yet. The homicide alone might be tough to hang on her. But proof that she was the corporate thief would likely buy her the murder rap, too.

His goal was clear to him now. Forget the murder. Finger her for the illegal sale of Tiger’s proprietary data. Rock samples and maps—that was likely what she was selling. The rest would follow if he could establish motive. This much he did know about her:

Oil industry papers had rumored Tiger’s CEO was thinking of promoting Lauren over her boss, Bill Walters, to VP of exploration. No small leap. She couldn’t be that good. There must be another reason. Maybe she was sleeping with him.

Maybe she was sleeping with all of them—Tiger’s CEO, her boss, not to mention that pretty-boy fiancé of hers. Seth watched her shuck her jacket off inside the first-floor stairwell of the drilling rig, his gaze pinned on the curve of her hip, the swell of her breasts against that ratty old cardigan she seemed to live in.

He reminded himself that even if she wasn’t a perp, she was still off-limits to him: a rich sorority princess with a fancy career and ice water in her veins. He’d gotten burned on that type once already, and wouldn’t make that mistake again. Women like Lauren Fotheringay didn’t love men, they used them. That fact made it easier to focus on his goal.

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?”

“That’s right.” She smiled at him. “That’s exactly what we should be seeing at this point.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“That’s not what’s in the samples that were waiting in the crate outside the lab when I arrived.”

“You mean the ones I saw you looking at last night?”

Their gazes locked, and for the barest second he knew she was remembering what had happened between them in the trailer. Their embrace, the delicate kisses he’d brushed across her temple and her hair. The recognition in her eyes told him she knew he was thinking about it, too.

She snatched the bag from his hand and broke the spell. “Um, yes.” Her cheeks flushed with color. Clearly, she was uncomfortable with the bit of spontaneous intimacy they’d shared last night.

He was uncomfortable with it, too. Damned uncomfortable. But he was determined to get close to her. Close enough to learn her secrets—exactly what information she was selling, and how. She’d responded to him last night, and whether it was all an act or not didn’t matter.

For whatever reason, Lauren Fotheringay wanted him on her side, as an ally. Maybe more than that, given the way she stole a glance at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. That’s exactly what he’d become, then. Another dumb, unsuspecting primate she could use for her own purpose.

It couldn’t be more perfect. Once he proved to her she could trust him, he’d be able to glean the facts he’d need to collar her and her cronies here in the field, and anyone else in on the scheme back at Tiger Petroleum.

Time to move in for the kill.

“If there’s anything I can help you with,” he said, drawing her gaze back to his, “let me know.”

“Thanks.” She smiled again, and this time he marveled at how genuine it seemed.

Looking at her standing there in her field clothes, her expression open, eyes wide and trusting, he could almost believe she was innocent. That she knew nothing about Paddy’s murder or the illegal peddling of information worth millions to the right buyer. He wanted to believe it. More than anything.

Watch your step, Adams.

She tossed the sample bag back into the box and slid past him, pausing at the catwalk. “See you later?” It was more than a question. Her eyes held a subtle plea.

“Yeah,” he said, and forced a smile. “Later.”

As he turned toward the metal staircase leading up to the drilling floor, he saw Jack Salvio leaning casually against the railing at the top, watching them. Lauren saw him, too. Salvio flashed her a hard look, then waved Seth up to the floor.

Time to go to work.