Taylor punched the green button to close the bay door and it slowly obeyed, rattling and grinding on the way down. Wind keened as the descending door increased the pressure, then was cut off altogether as the rubberized bottom section slid into the protective socket in the floor. The two formed an almost airtight seal, although if a Condition Two storm was on the way, snow would find its way through regardless, piling in drifts on the inside of the door.
“Jennings.” She turned to face Hanratty, who had doffed his goggles and balaclava. His gaunt, stern face—a Puritan minister’s face, an inquisitor’s face—was twisted into a scowl. “Not a word of this to anyone until I can make an official announcement, understand? Only you, Taylor, and I know about Larkin’s accident and I need to keep it that way until I can get some idea of just what the hell happened out there.”
“I got it,” she said. “Who found her?”
Hanratty frowned, but said, “The Herc pilot for today’s run back to McMurdo thought he saw something odd as he took off from the skiway. He called it in about an hour ago.”
“Why didn’t you scramble one of the trauma teams? Why did we go out?”
“We checked Larkin’s tag-out. She was gone twelve hours by the time the pilot saw her,” Taylor said, joining them. Stripped of his gear, he was a man of average height but had a gymnast’s poise and strength. His large nose and receding gray hairline were reminiscent of a bald eagle, though no one at the base dared say that to him. “This was a recovery, not a rescue.”
“God,” Cass said, sick. “Why tap me to go with you?”
Hanratty shrugged. “We needed two vehicles and some help. You were here in the garage and seemed available. Do you have a problem with that?”
Cass raised her hands and dropped them in exasperation. “I have a problem with the cavalier attitude. One of our own people just died . This is a big deal. She was a . . . a good person. She deserves better than to be strapped to a gurney and carted off.”
A flicker of emotion—sympathy or impatience, it was hard to tell—passed over Hanratty’s face. “Antarctica is antithetical to life, Jennings. Every minute we’re here is stolen from the ice and sometimes the ice takes it back. Sheryl, for whatever reason, forgot that fact and paid for it. We don’t have to like it, but it’s happened before and it’ll happen again. So, in regards to my attitude, as much as I regret this . . . accident, I will not let it compromise our work here.”
Cass was silent.
“Look, I don’t need panic taking hold while we’re getting ready for nine months of isolation. When we know what happened, I’ll be fully transparent to the rest of the base personnel. You know Sheryl wouldn’t want us to handle it any other way.”
The silence stretched longer, then Cass nodded once, curtly.
Hanratty blew out a breath. “Okay, then. Taylor, let’s go see Ayres and hear what he’s figured out, if anything.” He glanced back at Cass. “Living and working down here has always had the potential to be lethal. I’m sorry Sheryl had to be the one to remind us of that.”
The two men left through the base-side exit door, heads close together as they conferred.
Cass stared at the sleds and the snowmobiles while the wind battered and screamed at the garage door. Idly, she picked up a wrench, then dropped it with a clatter. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes, resting there but not spilling until she leaned over a workbench, holding on to the edge for support.
Images she’d hoped to forget splashed across her memory. Crumbling walls. Stricken faces. One long arm draped over the side of a stretcher, bouncing gently as it was pulled hand over hand out of the debris. Incomprehension growing into horror.
It didn’t matter that this wasn’t that. Sheryl’s death summoned forth the same bottomless, sinking, sucking hole of blame and self-loathing she’d felt then; it opened up at her feet once more, tugging her downward. She rubbed her face against the rough material of her jumpsuit, trying to pull herself out of the spiral, whispering over and over again, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”
CHAPTER TWO
“So why did he pick you to go?”
Cass tugged the card table away from the wall so she could run the vacuum behind it, wrinkling her nose at the rising cloud of body odor and stale carpet. That question, among others, had cost her a full night’s sleep and had gnawed at her mind. But when Biddi said it with her lilting Scottish accent—normally employed to tell a dirty joke or dish out gossip about one of the other Shackleton staffers—it possessed all the drama of asking her if she’d seen the mess someone had left in the men’s room.
“Earth to Cass,” Biddi said. “Anyone home?”
“I don’t know.” Cass bumped her hip into the table to jog it left another half foot, then plugged in the vacuum. “He claimed I was just . . . here. Available.”