In Cold Pursuit Read Online Free Page A

coming
back?”
    Bellamy flipped a hand toward the ceiling in frustration. “This
could
all be cleared up, I suppose, and we’d get Dr. Vanderzee on the next available flight south again, but scheduling here in Antarctica is always tight. The next several flights south are filled, and there are frequent delays due to the weather. Antarctica is the land of delays! Nothing ever quite goes according to plan, and after a while it wouldn’t be worth continuing, because the season will simply fly by.”
    “What
could be cleared up?” she said, and then, her voice hitting a keen pitch, demanded, “Tell me what’s going on here!”
    “Dr. Vanderzee … had to leave to attend a hearing.”
    “A hearing? What kind of hearing?”
    Bellamy’s face darkened ominously. “A man dies in your camp, there are matters to be cleared up. Surely you understand that.”
    A thin ringing noise filled Valena’s ears. She sat down and tried to brace her elbows on her knees, which felt oddly gelatinous. “That journalist died of altitude sickness,” she said.
    “Indeed he did. And I’m sure that will all come out in the hearing. Now, Ms. Walker, I’m sure this is all a shock to you, but… well, I really can’t tell you anything more, because you see it’s all got to be kept confidential, and I need you to, uh, keep everything I’ve just said to you in strictest confidence. The US Antarctic Program does not need this kind of publicity!” His hands suddenly seemed to have left his voluntary control and began to fly around like great sallow moths. “We do the finest science, and we struggle and slave to get the word out, and now this!”
    Valena stared up into his face. “I am here to continue Dr. Vanderzee’s excellent work.” She wanted to add,
And this is not going to stop me
, but her words had grown thick, and shecouldn’t get them to come out of her mouth. Huge government programs were an abstraction to her. Her priorities lay in her thesis work and what lay beyond it: having participated in Emmett Vanderzee’s critically important study of rapid climate change, she intended to roll on through a doctoral program, thereby earning a position at the DRI—the Desert Research Institute in Reno, which was world famous for work in cold deserts like Antarctica—and begin her own projects, which would bring her back to the ice again and again. “I—I’ll phone the other people on the project and get back to you in the morning with a revised plan,” she managed at last.
    Bellamy nodded his head like a woodpecker. “Certainly. Certainly.”
    Even though she was swathed in layers of down and fleece, Valena felt cold. She was ten thousand miles from home, exhausted, and had no idea whom to turn to for help. Bellamy had an agenda, and it did not include her. If she didn’t get out of his office soon, her tears would flow, and she did not want him to see them. She needed time to think, to get her emotions back under control. She stood up and headed out of his office and toward the outer door.
    “I need your word that you will keep our conversation in strictest confidence,” Bellamy called after her.
    Valena turned, said, “I’m scheduled for survival training day after tomorrow, and—so that’s what I am going to do.”
    “As long as you exercise the utmost discretion. We probably can’t get you on a flight until Wednesday, anyway. Watch the bulletin board near the entrance to the galley. They’ll post your flight north. Make sure you’re on it.”
    Valena’s chill suddenly turned to heat. She turned and gave the big man with the pale hands a quick but defiant stare, then shoved open the door that led into the airlock, bowing her head against the cold blast of air that awaited her outside.

2
    T HE DORMITORY ROOM WAS A NIGHTMARE. V ALENA HAD been assigned to a barracks room with seven other women, two of whom were abject slobs. Their duffels spewed clothing, and their skis formed tripping hazards between her bunk and