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She had a slight gap between her two front teeth, which made her even prettier. Earthier, somehow. She said she’d worked a few winters here, and now he wondered how old she was and what she’d done before this gig that had qualified her for such a rare opportunity.
“Nate,” she said, turning her head, “why don’t you show Gunn where he’ll be staying.” Turning back to him, she said, “Hanna made stew for tonight. We’ll eat after we do a perimeter check to make sure all the gear is stored and the heater’s working in the garage. We eat well, even if we do have to get creative with our limited variety of foodstuffs.”
There were two other females in the room. A redhead lifted a finger. “I’m Hanna Weber.” She tilted her head toward the other, a slim blonde, and put her arm around her shoulders. “Em is catching a ride back to HQ.”
Em laid her head on Hanna’s shoulder. “I’ll miss you guys.”
“We’ll miss you, too,” Hanna said.
Clive from Polardyne pulled back his sleeve to check his watch. “Maddie, we have some things to discuss before I head back.”
She stood. “We can use my Nate’s quarters to talk.” Her gaze swept her team members. “We’ll likely be doing our chores after dark. The officer said not to leave the building, but we have to safeguard our equipment. Maybe once he’s finished with some of you, we can rotate out to check on the sites. When you do go, remember, you go out in groups of two, and—”
“Go armed,” Nate finished. He looked at Gunn and tilted his head toward the corridor. “We were always supposed to—polar bears, you know. We have rifles in the mudroom locker.”
Gunn nodded and followed Nate out of the room. “Good to know. Do you have many problems with polar bears?”
“I ran over one, went right over his back but didn’t know it. I thought the ice was breaking up beneath me, but it was just the damn bear who didn’t take it very well. They’re fast, but they only run in spurts, so I throttled down and got the hell out of there.” He chuckled as he strode down the hallway.
Gunn trailed after him but looked back to see Lieutenant Commander Navarro signal to Ms. Russo to follow him. Now, that was a conversation he likely needed to hear. He hurried after Nate, determined to drop his gear and rejoin the pair. He had yet to hear the whole story of what business the U.S. government had been conducting on this floating island.
CHAPTER3
Maddie’s gazefollowed the retreating back of Gunnar Neilson as Nate led him to his quarters. Something about him was unsettling. Perhaps it was the fact she hadn’t been around a guy built like him in a while, which wasn’t something she ought to be noticing, but his shoulders were broad and his arms thickly muscled—both appealing and…again, unsettling.
She turned back to Commander Navarro, whom she’d met during her team's orientation before departing Cambridge Bay for their current deployment. “Don’t you think we should wait for Gunn to join us so you don’t have to repeat yourself? Shouldn’t he know what this is all about, too?”
“We’ve given you a provisional clearance so I can brief you, and yes, he should probably hear this, too. The Navy approved bringing him in the loop. He’s prior service—a former SEAL—so as trustworthy as they come.”
Her eyebrows rose. “We need a SEAL?”
His dark eyes narrowed. “While the RCMP is likely leaning toward one of your team being the murderer, the Pentagon won’t rule out that Mateo was killed because of what he was collecting for us. Your site might have been transgressed.”
She drew a deep breath. While she’d hoped a friend wasn’t responsible, the idea of someone invading their floating island undetected to commit murder seemed farfetched.
Footsteps sounded from the hallway, and she turned to watch Gunn as he approached, his gaze narrowing on the commander as he drew nearer. “Am I going to find out what this is all about?” he asked quietly.
The commander turned to Maddie. “Let’s head to Mateo’s office. You’ve been keeping it locked, right?”
“Of course. I have the only key; I retrieved it from Mateo’s pocket.”
She led the way to the office corridor, stopped at the third door to unlock it, and held open the door for the two men to file inside.
After she closed the door, the commander stared at the computer. “You removed the hard drive?”
“Yes, after dumping the data onto a flash drive.”
“I’ll take the flash, but I’ll need to reinstall the hard drive.”
Maddie frowned. “Who do you think is going to collect your data now that Mateo is gone?”
“You will. And you’ll maintain the equipment he has on the ice. The two of you will,” he said, including Gunn in his sweeping gaze. “The cone is already in the water. You don’t have to perform analysis on the data. Just stick the SD card in the slot on the box on his drill tripod, and the device will start copying the data. The light will change from red to green to let you know it’s done.”
She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s this all about?”
The commander blew out a deep breath. “Mateo,” he said, lowering his voice, “installed a Magnetic Anomaly Detection device under the floe.”
Her mouth tightened. “English, please.”
