Through the blowing snow she caught a glimpse of the brand-new geologist’s trailer out behind the rig, by the big open pit—the “reserve pit”—that acted as an overflow for the oil well’s drilling fluids. She checked her watch. Fourteen hundred. Two o’clock in the afternoon and it was pitch-black out. There was nothing quite like an arctic winter.
“Suit yourself, then. Take care, kid.”
A roustabout, the oil field equivalent of a ranch hand, dressed in a down jumpsuit and white bunny boots, yanked the chopper’s door wide. Lauren sucked in a blast of frigid air. Big mistake. Lung freeze. She’d forgotten you weren’t supposed to do that.
The roustabout grabbed her duffel as she hopped out of the chopper with her overstuffed briefcase. They made a mad dash toward a waiting vehicle. Fifty yards to camp was too far to walk in this weather. Climbing into the Suburban, she waved to the pilot who gave her the thumbs-up before he took off.
For the barest second Lauren wished she was taking off with him. Too late now. She was here and, given the weather, here she would stay for at least a week. In a whiteout nothing could fly, and Caribou Island was over a hundred miles from Deadhorse, Tiger’s outermost base camp. Too far to drive in these conditions, even if Tiger had maintained the ice road, which it hadn’t. Budget constraints, her foot. She’d remember to talk to her boss about that. Not that it really mattered. She had a job to do, and she’d do it. She always did.
Two minutes later the wind blasted her through the main door to the camp and into the break room. A dozen pairs of eyes focused on her as she pushed her hood back, snatched the hard hat from her head, and shook out her shoulder-length hair.
No, nothing had changed at all. There was still that momentary shock in the crew’s eyes that she was a woman. Probably the only one out here.
Nodding at no one in particular, Lauren snaked around the cafeteria-style tables littered with empty cigarette packets, disposable coffee cups and half-eaten glazed doughnuts, then pushed the door open into the mudroom.
A few seconds later, her steel-toed Sorels, hard hat and jacket tucked into an empty corner, she padded in heavy wool socks toward Jack Salvio’s office. It was just like riding a bike. She bet she could traverse every inch of this place blindfolded.
The air was stale, as it always was in these oil field camps. She wrinkled her nose at twenty-odd years of cigarette smoke that clung to prefab walls like the inside of someone’s diseased lung. This was not the Alaska she loved.
She turned into Salvio’s office and did a double take.
“Hiya, Scout.” Paddy O’Connor’s weathered face cracked in a wide smile.
“Paddy!” The old toolpusher rose from the stained Naugahyde sofa that had been there since 13-E was new. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d retired from fieldwork years ago.”
“Oh, no. Still at it, Scout.” He pulled her into a bear hug, and she fought a painful surge of emotion that threatened her composure for the second time that day.
No one called her Scout anymore. No one except Paddy O’Connor, owner of Altex Drilling, a company that had been on its last legs for as long as Lauren could remember.
Most oil companies, Tiger included, didn’t own their own drilling rigs and equipment. Nor did they employ the roughnecks and roustabouts needed to run an operation like Caribou Island. The job was contracted out to outfits like Altex. Only the geologist, an engineer or two, and company men like Jack Salvio who oversaw the whole operation, were Tiger employees.
Lauren’s father had coined the nickname Scout when she was just a kid, tagging along with him on field surveys in the Brooks Range. Paddy had been one of his closest friends. She looked warmly into the toolpusher’s bloodshot eyes and nodded.
His smile faded. “Lauren, we need to talk.”
“Yeah, just as soon as you get that sorry-assed crew a yours back to work.” Jack Salvio brushed past them, dropped into his creaky overstuffed chair and tossed his hard hat onto a desk covered in paperwork.
“How are you, Jack?” Lauren said and extended her hand.
Salvio waved it away. “I been better. We’re behind schedule. And I could do without this frickin’ weather.”
Lauren nodded, glancing at the computer monitors on Salvio’s desk, flashing stats on the weather, drilling depth, and a host of other specifics critical to the oil well’s operation.
Hmm, that’s strange…
Some of the measurements seemed to be off. Then again, these computer systems were always on the fritz. She watched as Salvio narrowed his eyes at the flashing readout on one of the monitors. Swearing under his breath, he abruptly switched it off.
Lauren had never liked Jack Salvio’s nasty disposition and bulldog tactics, but she did respect him. He was the best company man in Tiger’s history. He knew what he was doing, and she’d need his cooperation and his clout in order to get her work done on time.
“Where’s your bag, Scout?” Paddy moved past her into the hallway. “I’ll help you get settled.”
“No.” Salvio shot to his feet. “We got a well to drill. Get one’a your guys to help her.” He grabbed Lauren’s arm and steered her back into the hallway. No use protesting. On Caribou Island Jack Salvio was the boss. When he gave an order, everyone jumped.
The first shift break was over, and a few stragglers sauntered back down the hallway from their sleeping quarters toward the mudroom. Salvio whistled at one of them. “Hey, you there! Nanook.”
Lauren winced. Apparently Jack Salvio had not been paying attention during the series of workshops on ethnic diversity Tiger Petroleum required all its employees to attend.
At the end of the hall an athletic-looking crew hand with roughneck written all over him stopped dead in his tracks, his back to them. He was tall—too tall for a native—and sported a dark, unkempt ponytail.
Lauren’s gaze slid across the muscles barely hidden by his rumpled flannel shirt to the mud-spattered jeans hugging his backside like something off a Calvin Klein billboard. She suppressed the wow forming on her lips. His big, dirty hands fisted at his sides as he turned in response to Salvio’s inappropriate comment.
He was a native.
Lauren knew the shock registered on her face.
“Get your butt over here and take the lady’s bag.” Salvio nodded at her duffel and briefcase sitting in the corridor outside the mudroom.
But then again, maybe he wasn’t. It was hard to tell from this far away.
She guessed him to be in his early thirties, a year or two older than herself. His eyes were dark, his skin bronze, but the rest of his features didn’t fit. He had what her mother would have called an English nose. Narrow and arrow-straight. Mother loved the English. But neither she nor Crocker would love the way Lauren was looking at the roughneck.
Or the way he looked back.
She read a dangerous sort of instability in his eyes as he approached them. His gaze flicked from her to Salvio and back again. He passed her duffel, ignoring it. She fought the strangest urge to step back as he strode right up to Salvio
