Wait, was she limping?
He opened his mouth to ask, but she spoke first. “Must be something pretty special in those tubes, huh?”
Well, he thought they were special, but the normal ash or trapped air bubbles that got him riled up wouldn’t send anyone else into—
He paused, an idea spinning brightly in his brain. Those samples he’d pulled a few weeks ago. They’d contained a different sort of finding.
Suddenly, he had an idea of what Sampson and his team were after.
They arrived at the still-open door to the arch, which sent him into hypervigilance. “Stay here.”
“I’ll come.” Breathing hard, she went on. “No way am I staying here alone.”
He stared at her gloved hand clenching his arm, wondering if she felt the same thing—a memory from last night—the Skua’s Nest was worlds away now. Something a lot like shame washed over him before he shoved it far, far down.
This wasn’t the time for such pointless emotion.
After a few steps, she broke the silence. “I don’t think they saw me.”
“What?” He turned to look at her. She was nothing but a darker shade of black.
“I mean, if they saw me replacing them, then your ice tubes are gone, right?”
“Right.” He walked on as he considered the ramifications. It would be very bad if those men had gotten ahold of certain ice cores. Because what they contained…well, their actions pretty much confirmed that it was dangerous.
But if after all of this effort, they’d taken off with the wrong cores… His flashlight shone on a pile of heavy-looking white bags, hanging over the shelf like big, fat lolling tongues trying to lick the floor.
Angel crouched. He bent beside her, focused the light, and let out a long, slow breath.
“Still there,” she breathed. “I switched the date stickers but never got to one.”
He pulled them out, eyeing them one at a time until he got to the one that still had its sticker on it. “I know what their payload was.”
“What is it? What’s worth all these lives?”
“I found something in a core a few weeks back. It looked like…” He shook his head, sure now. “Cortez has…had a colleague back in the UK. He sent her images and she confirmed that it’s—”
Something heavy and dark rose up from his chest, stopped his air and cut off his voice.
“What?” The word was less than a whisper.
“Shit. It has to be linked. She died. House fire. Cortez was devastated when he found out.”
Angel let out a sound—low and pained. Her eyes were massive in the dark. He couldn’t look away from them. Didn’t even try.
“It’s a virus, Angel. A very old virus, buried deep in the ice.”
“A virus? What do they want with that?”
“I don’t know.” Even as he said the words, an idea occurred to him—the kind of worst-case scenario that couldn’t possibly be real and yet clicked right into place. All the deaths. The military precision. The warning scrawled in blood. “Maybe…maybe a bioweapon?” Shit. This was bad. Worse than bad. If his gut instinct was right, it was potentially catastrophic.
“What can we do?”
The tubes sat beside them, gleaming innocently in the dim light.
He had an idea of what they could do—what they had to do—but he wasn’t quite ready to share it yet.
“We’ll uh…figure it out.” He stood, heavy from the sudden weight of what lay ahead. He swallowed and shined the light up the long length of the arch. “Where did they—” There was too much crap in his throat. He tried again. “Alex. Where’d they kill him?”
“Up there.” Her usually musical voice was no better off than his. “By the rest of the tubes.”
He squinted. There was nothing there now.
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Ah, there was the voice he knew. “Of course I’m—” She turned to look at the spot where he shone his flashlight. “Where is he?” She spun. “I swear he was—”
He reached into his pocket, then grabbed her hand and slapped the 9mm bullet case he’d found into her gloved palm. “I believe you.” He leaned down, caught her eye, and held it. “Even without this, I’d believe you, Angel.”
She stared at the object in her hand before looking up at him. “Okay. Okay, then.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again, then headed toward the door.
“What? What are you not saying?” She ran to keep up.
“The ice cores.” He didn’t pause until they were back outside, on the bright, clean ice. “When they open up the dummies, it won’t take long for them to figure out that they’ve got the wrong ones.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “You think they’ll come back?”
“Yeah.” He nodded without hesitation. “They’ll be back.”
“What do we do?”
“We leave.” He threw his head back to look at clear blue sky. “Now.”
Chapter 12
Coop went to work hurriedly gathering everything they’d need to survive a trek across the continent, while Angel prepared their food. He’d located skis, snowshoes, camp stoves and fuel, a tent, sleeping bags, and pads to protect their prone bodies from the ice. Most of this he amassed in the eerily empty living quarters, which added a layer of discomfort to his growing anxiety. Rooting through his friends’ private belongings while they were likely in trouble somewhere felt as dirty and wrong as looting the recently deserted homes of nuclear disaster victims.
But it couldn’t be helped.
The rest he found in the “skua” pile, named after the rapacious sea birds that plagued Antarctica’s coastal research stations. Thank God people dumped things they no longer needed when they left or Coop and Angel would have been out of luck. While Coop had skis and boots already, they’d been incredibly fortunate to find a pair that almost fit Angel. A little big, which they could compensate for with padding.
The second he stepped out of the dorm, relief flooded him. There, on the horizon, were clouds. And while bad weather was usually a pain in the ass, today it would keep aircraft at a safe distance.
Good.
The stress inside him had coalesced into hatred now. It burned so hot he could have taken off his coat out here.
Murdering bastards.
What they’d done to the rest of the crew was anyone’s guess, but two people, at least, were dead. He’d taken a precious half hour to search the rest of the tunnels and arches and found no sign of either body, which meant those assholes had taken them, since you couldn’t hide that kind of evidence under the ice without time and a big-ass digger.