Elliot watched her go, the knot in his stomach tightening. That went about as well as sticking his hand in a hornet’s nest. Jess was definitely hiding something—the locked door, the nervous finger-tapping, the convenient “communications blackout” that prevented him from contacting WSW.
He glanced at his watch. He’d been gone too long already. Time to get back before someone else came looking for him.
But first, he had to contact WSW. The storm wouldn’t affect his own personal equipment.
Moving quietly, Elliot slipped into his and Rue’s room and locked the door. He retrieved his secure communications equipment from beneath a false bottom in his duffle bag and powered up the specialized transmitter. The device was WSW’s latest model—designed to piggyback on existing satellite networks, encrypt data into innocuous-looking packets, and route through multiple nodes to avoid detection. If anything could punch through interference, this would.
The boot sequence completed, and he entered his authentication codes. The system initialized, scanning available frequencies and attempting to establish a connection. Minutes passed as the device cycled through options, searching for any available pathway to the outside world.
Nothing.
He frowned, adjusting settings to broaden the search parameters. He switched to emergency protocols that would normally override any standard interference, methods that had worked in active war zones and during natural disasters.
Still nothing.
He tried a direct satellite connection next, pointing the device toward the small window. The system searched, recalibrated, searched again. The loading icon spun endlessly before returning an error:
CONNECTION FAILED.
fifteen
Turnedout sleeping mere feet from Elliot night after night wasn’t easy.
Go figure.
She dreamed of his mouth on hers, his hands roaming her body, waking her with a heat that had nothing to do with the station’s heating system and everything to do with the man sleeping barely three feet away.
She’d jerked awake at 4:47 AM according to her phone, pulse racing and skin flushed, acutely aware of every sound Elliot made in the bunk below—the rustle of his sleeping bag, the soft exhale of his breathing, the occasional shift of weight that made the metal frame creak. The dreams had been vivid enough to leave her aching, and she’d spent the next hour staring at the ceiling, trying to convince herself it was just proximity and adrenaline and the strange intimacy of sharing such a small space.
It wasn’t working.
And now here she was, nursing her coffee in the mess hall, trying to ignore the wind hammering the station, its banshee shriek echoing inside her skull. The food on her tray satuntouched. Koos hummed cheerfully from the kitchen as he prepared something that smelled like eggs and bacon, though she was pretty sure it was neither.
She took another sip of coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste. Even the caffeine wasn’t helping her mood. “How are you always so damn cheerful?”
“Life’s too short not to be,” he replied, shoveling food into his mouth with gusto. “Especially down here, where the cold would kill you in minutes if you stepped outside naked.”
She looked toward the window as it rattled ominously, as if the continent were putting an exclamation point on his statement. The storm had been going for thirty-six hours now, and the walls seemed to be closing in with each passing minute. She’d always been someone who needed movement, needed the open sky above her head and solid ground beneath her feet. Being trapped in this metal box while the wind screamed like a living thing outside made her skin crawl.
She watched the others shuffle in for breakfast. Dr. Moretti was first, shoulders hunched and face drawn. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, the shadows under his eyes deep enough to store supplies for winter. He nodded vaguely in their direction before slumping into a chair at the far end of the table, staring into his coffee cup as if it contained the secrets of the universe—or possibly just confirmation that life was meaningless.
The mess hall door swung open again, and Camille sauntered in, looking far too put-together for 7 AM in Antarctica. Her hair was perfectly styled, makeup flawless.
Seriously, who even brought makeup to a research station?
Noah Braddock followed Camille. He nodded curtly at the room in general before taking a seat at the opposite end of the table from her. They didn’t look at each other directly, but Rue didn’t miss the subtle glance they exchanged or the wayCamille’s fingers lingered a moment too long on her coffee mug when Noah’s gaze swept past her.
Interesting.
For two people pretending not to know each other, their body language screamed familiarity. The kind that involved significantly less clothing.
Her suspicions deepened when Noah absently touched the collar of his thermal shirt, revealing a faint reddish mark at the base of his neck that looked suspiciously like a bite mark. A matching shade of lipstick clung to Camille’s coffee mug.
The grad students came in next, and one look at Tyler had her earlier concerns about her own sleepless night evaporating. The kid looked terrible—face pale and drawn, eyes bloodshot and puffy. He shuffled rather than bounced, his usual enthusiastic energy completely drained.
Mia hovered beside him, her hand occasionally brushing his arm as if to steady him. “Maybe you should go back to bed,” she murmured.
“I’m fine,” Tyler insisted, but his voice came out raspy.
