The rest of the sentence was lost, but she didn’t need to hear it to know what was happening.
“These five?” A pause. “You’re sure about that?”
“If there are more, I don’t—” Alex coughed long and hard before speaking again. “Don’t know. But we all got a chance to see them. They were so…extraordinary.” Another cough. “See? There.”
“Right.” A pause. “And these numbers right here? That’s the date?”
“Y-yes.”
“Great, that works!” Sampson said this like they’d just made lunch plans for next Tuesday. “Now, kneel.”
“I c-c—”
“Do it,” Sampson said, all friendliness gone. She pictured him putting a hand to Alex’s shoulder and pushing. “If that fucker hadn’t gone out on the ice again today, we’d have the damned thing already. Ford motherfucking Cooper. Dude is—”
He abruptly stopped speaking. The clomp of footsteps told her he, or someone, had moved a short distance away. “Go ahead,” Sampson said in a completely different voice. Deep, all business. After a long pause, he asked, “How many missing? This is confirmed?” Another pause. “Shit. Can’t contain the whole group here and the aircraft’s just for today. We’ve got to get to the Facility.” He might have listened again before uttering a curt, “Good. Ignore those assholes and tell the pilot they’re all accounted for. Tell them…I’m the operations manager, dammit. And if I want to hire her on for another damn season, I can. Tell them to take off without her.” He paused, then in a louder voice clearly meant for his companions as opposed to whoever was on the other end of the headset, said, “Summer plane’s taking off right now. Missing the cook, apparently.”
The plane was leaving already? How was that possible? She hadn’t even heard it land.
No. Oh, please, don’t leave me here. Angel opened her mouth and shut it tight, not trusting herself to keep quiet as the unmistakable drone of the plane’s engine cut through the corrugated metal and layers of snow overhead to reach her sensitive ears.
“All right. Let’s do this now.”
A few seconds ticked by, as hopelessness and fear warred with Angel’s need to intervene. To help Alex. To stop these monsters.
She had to do something. There was no choice, was there? She either did something to stop them or… Without waiting for that thought to gel, she set the can down, quietly, so quietly, and scooted along the wall. Slowly, carefully, breath held. If she could get a look at them, maybe she could find a way to intervene.
“I said kneel.” How could Sampson sound so casual?
“Please don’t.”
Her heartbeat picked up, frantic. What was happening? Faster, she sidestepped until she couldn’t move farther without going out into the open, and bent forward. Alex said something, his words coming at her as an incomprehensibly jumbled flurry.
The prickle she’d felt earlier buzzed to life again, heating her face, slicking clammy sweat wherever fabric rubbed skin.
There, three top-lit silhouettes. One doubled over on the ground, his arms thrown up to protect himself.
She watched in slow-motion horror as Sampson reached out. For a few seconds, it looked like he planned to give the cowering man his blessing. But then the gun materialized—long and thin and deadly. Was that a silencer? She’d never seen one in real life, but it sent something visceral through her. Please, no. Please.
He pressed it to Alex’s head and, without ceremony, pulled the trigger. The resulting pop seemed too small to kill a man, to cut him off midplea. How could something so quick, so casual, end a life?
Disbelief. White noise. Nothing for a handful of seconds but void, filling her brain like television fuzz.
Suspended on that spinning sphere of shock, she couldn’t move, couldn’t get air, couldn’t believe what had just happened.
And then, with warp speed, reality hit her, as painful and real as a cast-iron pan to the face. Her entire frame heaved. She had to keep the scream inside, so she shoved her gloved fist into her mouth and stared at the ice-coated wall opposite, deaf but for the buzzing in her ears. It was a trick of her eyesight, she knew, or her brain probably, but the ice, like cloud shapes, offered up an elephant, its trunk raised. Beneath it was a cherry. No, a double. Double cherry. The kind she’d hung over her ears as a kid to make round, shiny, ripe earrings.
“All right. You acquire the samples.” Sampson didn’t sound like a man who’d just committed murder.
“Yes, sir,” said the other one. She couldn’t even be sure who it was at this point. Didn’t want to turn and look at what they’d done.
“Bring them to the surface. We’re moving out now.” He switched to that other voice. “Alpha Team, you are a go in five.”
Go? Go where?
Oh God, she couldn’t think, couldn’t figure any of this out.
The plane was gone, and she had no idea what she’d find up there. Was she alone with these murderers?
She squeezed her eyes shut, only to be assailed by Alex’s death again—that smooth, snakelike movement that had changed the scene from benediction to condemnation. The point of no return. The moment her life went from complicated to nightmarish. Worse, because she’d always woken up from nightmares.
But this wasn’t a dream.
Now poor Alex would never speak again. Never breathe, never eat or see his sweet little girl, and all she could do was find cloud shapes in the ice.
No. No, that wasn’t all she could do. She was alive, wasn’t she? She had no idea what or how or if she’d die in the process, but she was going to find some way to stop these men. Now.
* * *
Something wasn’t right.
Coop already knew that, but he hadn’t seen Cortez out here—or any sign of him on the ice at all—and as he drove on, the feeling of unease grew and ripened inside him like a rotten fruit about to explode.
A lot of vehicles seemed out of commission lately, so he’d been forced to bring the big PistenBully out to fix the drill he’d been unable to repair on-site. He’d have to haul it back and pull it apart. Besides, he’d figured he’d be able to bring Cortez back if his friend had run into an issue. Now he pushed the machine as fast as it would go, wishing he’d taken a snowmobile instead.
He approached his field research site, watching the horizon…and pulled to a stop.
He confirmed his current coordinates on the GPS unit and looked up again.
Usually, he’d see his site from here. Today, there was nothing.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled up beside his site.