Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

You’re an incurable romantic , he told himself. Then, a darker voice within spoke: you come all the way down here and it doesn’t change a thing. You’re in paradise and you’ll screw it up. And she won’t want you with your past. Give up.

Now, lying in the darkness, he took these thoughts and pressed them like a nail through his consciousness, trying to keep his mind and heart from wandering, but thoughts of her uncertain smile filled his imagination. He listened, imagining that he could hear her breath flowing in and out of her strong, curvaceous body.

Was she dreaming? What dreams did she dream, lying so close to him? Or was she awake, listening to him breathing, too? Did she feel one tenth the attraction he felt for her? Or did she avoid him because she found him unacceptable, uneducated, rough? He liked to think it was because she was shy, or perhaps distracted with the problems his roommate Matt had told him about. Imagine, coming all the way down here only to find that ol’ Emmett had been jailed.

During the long day driving the snow machines and Challenger along the trail from Mac Town to Black Island, he had caught glimpses of her. How fine and competent she had looked driving that Delta! And when she’d climbed onto that snow machine, she’d taken to it like a rodeo queen. She had a natural grace. He liked her determination, her will, her desire to learn.

But she was not from his place in life. She had a degree from a university and was working to get another. She would come to know a man who worked beside her in some laboratory and smile at him someday, and that would be that.

But it was more than that. Coming to Antarctica with Emmett meant that she had found that one break in a million that would put her on top, and she would know prestige. He had walked across the university campus near his hometown, watching from afar as regally dressed people strolled into gala celebrations overflowing with class and confidence. With his thick workman’s hands and sun-leathered skin, he could never walk that walk, and though he counted himself as reasonably intelligent and read as much and as often as he could, he could never talk that talk. With her grace and intellect, she would climb that ladder with ease.

Or perhaps she had been born to it, and driving the Delta was the exception to the rule. He imagined that her exotic looks spoke of the union of two professors at some foreign institute and a patrician upbringing.

The truth was that he knew almost nothing about her. Matt had had little to report from his evening with her at the Tractor Club, except that she had once driven an antique tractor on her grandfather’s farm. She had probably said little else. It seemed her style.

Willy began to snore. Dave let out a breath, wondering why the man had ever been hired, much less hired back for a second season. Where had he learned such ham-fisted handling of equipment? The army? Another place that Dave had never been. His had been the lot to leave school early. He’d picked up his GED a few years later. It hadn’t been hard to do. Getting along in the world after his drunken father had thrown him out at sixteen had been a whole lot harder.

He’d done well, considering, he knew that, but still, the limitations of his rough beginning had narrowed his options to just about exactly what he was doing. No matter. He loved Antarctica, and that would have to do.

He closed his eyes and turned onto his side, letting his arm curl up around his opposite shoulder, and waited until the comfort of tired muscles drew him into sleep.

VALENA AWOKE EARLY IN THE DARKNESS OF THE BUNKhouse, uncertain of the time. For a while she lay wrapped in the suddenly cloying warmth of her sleeping bag, trying to regain the escape that night should bring, but the grip of whatever had awakened her only increased. Had she been dreaming? She could not recall, but she felt a gnawing at her gut just like too many times in childhood when she’d awake in the night in a room with all the cousins. She told herself that wasn’t it. Had the heat finally come on in the desperate old heater in the corner of the room? No, it was the wind. It had stopped, lessening the advective draw on the heater’s capacities.

At length the sure knowledge that she would not get back to sleep descended upon her and she looked at her watch. It was 5:36 a.m., far too late to dig into her tiny toilet kit in search of the over-the-counter sleep aid she should have taken the evening before. She wasn’t a chronic insomniac, but she had to admit that over the past year or so—since when? since starting graduate school?—she had risen early and nervous with increasing frequency.

The only thing for it was to get up and start her day. But her day was under the control of others—their schedule, and that of the weather. These thoughts added to her anxieties.

She decided to head over to the station house. There would be water for tea there, or coffee. She wiggled out of her bag so as not to make a noise letting down the zipper, dressed quickly, and headed out the door and across the yard.

Outside, the world was bright and rugged and still. The cold air wakened her further. She could see a hundred miles or more in all directions. To the south and west, the Transantarctic Mountains danced in glistening splendor, and to the north, across the stretch of sea ice, lay Ross Island, on which McMurdo languished. The island was a meringue of ice sliding in its infinitely slow pace downhill toward the sea. Beyond McMurdo Station, Mount Erebus raised its angry fist in constant eruption, marked this morning by a trail of vapor that slid away to the west. She had not previously seen it completely naked, devoid of its customary veils of clouds, and it was the first time in her life she had seen an actual volcanic eruption. She stared at it, for a moment not breathing, then turned slowly on one heel and absorbed her surroundings in one long panorama. In answer, the scene wrapped its majesty about her heart and kept it for its own.

She was still high from this experience ten minutes later as she slipped quietly into the kitchen in search of a way to warm herself. She found tea, cups, and a container of honey laid out right next to a self-heating teapot. As she plugged in the pot, she heard someone moving beyond the heavy drapes that separated the room from the sleeping quarters beyond.

The station manager emerged, shuffling slowly in a pair of fuzzy slippers with leopard spots, his eyes swollen from sleep. “Howja sleep?” His voice rasped with early morning and too much drink the evening before.

“Okay.”

“Yer lying.”

“Yeah.”

“Sucks.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Find whatcha need?”

“Mm-hmm.”

He arched his well-padded body into a stretch, moaning. “Sheila said to tell you there’s an e-mail message for ya. She printed it out.” He pointed with his elbow toward the computer stand.

Valena grabbed the page and sat down on the couch.

Sheila had folded it three times, stapled it as many times across the middle, and written VALENA on it. Quickly, she picked out the staples, unfolded it, and read it. It was from Cal Hart.

You’re looking to talk to everyone who was at Emmett’s camp last season. I join you in wanting to know the truth. I can’t tell you how shocked I am that Emmett was not here on my arrival. Please e-mail back saying when you’ll be in from BI and I’ll meet you at Crary. Cal

Well, check that one off the list of suspects , thought Valena, and then, an instant later, But maybe this is a con, a try at misdirection! She turned toward the station manager, who was now scratching at his armpits and belly. “Can I use this computer to send an e-mail?” she asked.