Wilde and Untamed (Wilde Security Worldwide Book 2), page 11
The sound momentarily silenced the room.
“Sounds like the real Antarctica is finally introducing herself,” Koos said. “That’s her knocking to remind us who’s boss down here.”
“Does she always knock so loudly?” Mia asked, hugging her arms around herself.
“Only when she’s feeling friendly,” Koos replied with a wink. “When she’s angry, you don’t hear her coming at all. She just freezes everything she touches.”
The conversation resumed, but Rue noticed the slightly nervous edge to the laughter that followed. Everyone at the table, regardless of their experience level, understood the fundamental truth of their situation: they were visitors in one of the most hostile environments on Earth, tolerated rather than welcomed by the frozen continent.
Tyler launched into another story, this one about a mishap during undergraduate field research that involved a snake, a professor’s toupee, and a campus security golf cart. The details grew more outlandish with each sentence, but the effect was exactly what was needed—tension bleeding away as laughter filled the common room.
Rue felt herself relaxing despite her lingering concerns. Whatever was happening at Thwaites Station—whatever secrets lurked behind biometric doors or seeped from ancient ice—it would still be there tomorrow. For tonight, she could appreciate this: the simple human connection forming among her team, the warmth of the mess hall against the howling storm, the way Elliot’s shoulder pressed against hers when he laughed.
She caught his eye as Tyler reached the climax of his story, something unspoken passing between them in that brief glance. They both knew there were questions to be answered, dangers to be assessed. But they also understood the value of moments like these—islands of normalcy in a sea of uncertainty.
Outside, the wind screamed across the Antarctic wasteland, driving snow and ice against the station walls like tiny bullets. Inside, surrounded by laughter and the smell of mediocre coffee, Rue allowed herself to set aside her worries, just for tonight.
Tomorrow would bring its own challenges. Tomorrow, they would face whatever secrets the ice was hiding. But tonight, she would let herself enjoy the sound of her team feeling like a team.
fourteen
“Listen, I tell you true,” Koos boomed, his hands spread wide for emphasis. “The penguin would not leave. He stood there, flapping his wings, guarding the outhouse like it was his throne. And there I was, stuck on the bucket, trousers round my ankles, waiting for the beast to show mercy.”
Rue’s laughter rang down the corridor, bright and unrestrained. Someone else groaned, someone else howled with delight.
Elliot was supposed to be with them, cleaning dishes after dinner, but his nerves buzzed too hard for jokes. He slipped out of the kitchen with an excuse of needing the bathroom. Rue caught his eye as she left. She knew he was up to something. But that was the point. He had to find out what the hell was going on at this station.
So while half the group was in the kitchen cleaning up, and Dr. Keene and his students hunched over microscopes, examining the samples they’d managed to extract before Tyler’s spectacular fall into the crevasse, he was going to use their distraction to his advantage.
He slipped into the residential wing. The corridor stretched ahead of him, lined with those cramped quarters that barely qualified as rooms.
Starting with Dr. Keene and the grad students seemed safest. Their room was unlocked, trusting in the way of academics who’d never learned to assume the worst of people. Elliot envied that innocence even as he exploited it.
Tyler’s bunk was a disaster zone of camera equipment, notebooks filled with terrible poetry, and energy bar wrappers. The kid’s laptop sat open, password-protected but displaying a screensaver of what looked like his girlfriend back home. Nothing suspicious, just the detritus of an enthusiastic twenty-something.
Mia’s space was more organized—textbooks on glaciology, a small stuffed penguin that made him smile despite himself, and a journal filled with meticulous field notes. Her handwriting was precise, recording everything from temperature fluctuations to Tyler’s near-constant complaints about the food.
Dr. Keene’s belongings spoke of a man who lived for his work: research papers covered in margin notes, sample containers labeled with codes that meant nothing to anyone but a professional scientist.
He moved on to Irina’s room next. Unlike the students’, her door was locked. Interesting. He slipped a thin metal tool from his pocket and had the simple mechanism open in seconds. Her quarters were immaculate, almost suspiciously so. No personal photos, no trinkets, nothing that suggested a real person lived here. Just clothing precisely folded and a medical bag tucked beneath her bunk.
He rifled through it carefully, replacing everything exactly as he found it. Standard field supplies, some prescription medications with names he didn’t recognize, and a small leather case containing surgical instruments that gleamed under the harsh fluorescent light. Nothing obviously incriminating, but the clinical detachment of her space set his teeth on edge.
Camille’s quarters were next. Her door wasn’t locked, which surprised him. The tiny space had been transformed into a bizarre luxury pod, with silk scarves draped over the harsh lighting to soften it, expensive toiletries arranged on every available surface, and what appeared to be actual Egyptian cotton sheets on the narrow bunk. A half-empty bottle of bourbon sat on the small shelf, alongside a dog-eared romance novel with a shirtless man on the cover.
He picked through her belongings with methodical care. Designer clothes, a satellite phone that appeared to be non-functional in their current location, a leather-bound journal filled with what looked like financial calculations rather than personal reflections. Nothing explicitly connecting her to Praetorian, but nothing to rule it out either.
Noah’s quarters yielded more promising results. Beneath a stack of neatly folded thermal underwear, Elliot found a small black notebook filled with what appeared to be coordinates, times, and cryptic notations. He snapped photos with his phone, careful to leave everything exactly as he found it. The man’s quarters were spartan, with military-grade equipment tucked alongside geological instruments. A half-hidden case contained what looked like communication equipment that definitely wasn’t standard issue for academic field researchers.
And, interestingly, a red silk thong that almost certainly belonged to Camille Middleton, judging by the matching bra he’d seen in her quarters. So those two were sleeping together. Information to file away for later.
Koos’ room was like the man himself – boisterous even in stillness. Colorful posters from various research stations plastered the walls, technical manuals for every piece of equipment in the facility stacked in teetering piles, and an impressive collection of small carved animals – penguins, seals, whales – lined his shelf. The man had clearly spent many seasons in Antarctica, his quarters accumulated with the souvenirs of a life at the edge of the world.
But still nothing that set off alarm bells.
Elliot closed the door carefully behind him, leaving everything as he’d found it.
Moretti’s quarters were next. The hydrologist lived with monkish austerity—bed neatly made, a pair of boots and a pair of slippers lined up beneath the bunk, research notes stacked square on the desk. No clutter, no indulgence, no sign of personality.
Except for one.
On the nightstand, a single framed photograph. Moretti, younger, his arm wrapped protectively around a dark-haired woman with a luminous smile. His wife, Elliot guessed. The glass was scratched, the frame dented, as though it had traveled with him through years of deployments and expeditions.
Elliot stood over it longer than he should have. Something about the photo itched at the back of his mind. It was perfectly normal—hell, expected even—for the guy to carry a picture of his wife, but everything else in the room was so proper, it all almost felt staged. This photo was the one piece of authenticity.
But he couldn’t get hug up on it now. He was running out of time, and he still had one room left to search.
He rifled through the desk: research journals filled with hydrological data, technical specifications for water sampling equipment, and field reports dating back several years.
All exactly what he’d expect from a career researcher.
Which was why the slip of paper tucked into a water-systems manual stopped him cold.
A printout of a news article, dated six months ago:
“Research Team Presumed Dead in Antarctic Accident.”
The article was brief, clinical in the way news reports were when they dealt with tragedy in remote places. Last summer, a research team from Thwaites Station suffered a “catastrophic equipment failure” while out in the field that resulted in the loss of all six team members.
Why would Moretti have this?
A noise from the hallway froze him in place. Footsteps. Approaching from the direction of the common area.
Fuck.
His pulse spiked as he folded the article carefully and tucked it back exactly where he’d found it. He eased the desk drawer closed with infinite care, every muscle in his body coiled for action. The footsteps paused outside Moretti’s door.
The room had no other exit, no convenient hiding spot. If whoever was out there tried the door and found it unlocked, he’d be caught red-handed rifling through another man’s belongings. His cover story—lost and looking for the bathroom—would crumble under even casual scrutiny.
But then the footsteps continued down the hall.
He exhaled the breath caught in his lungs and waited for another handful of seconds to be sure the hallway was clear before stepping out. Too close. He’d already been away from the others longer than was smart. Every second stretched the risk.
He should cut his losses. Head back, play it safe.
But Jess’s room was right there. And he’d more than once caught her whispering with Moretti. If they were hiding something, he might find clues in her personal space.
He weighed it the way he always did—pros and cons, risks and gains. Pro: She was cagey, nervous, and if she had something to hide, her quarters would be the place to find it. Con: If she caught him, he’d burn whatever trust he still had with her and maybe with the rest of the so-called crew. Another con: Rue would kill him for pushing his luck.
But the itch in his gut told him there was more going on here than anyone admitted. And the itch never lied.
A quick peek. In and out. Just enough to scratch the suspicion before it drove him crazy.
He stepped toward her door—
And nearly collided with her as it swung open.
Jess blinked at him, green hair standing up in defiance of gravity. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Looking for something?”
His mind sprinted through a dozen excuses—wrong hallway, lost his way, bathroom again—but none would hold up. Keep it simple.
“Yeah, you, actually. I was hoping to send a message back home.”
“The storm’s blocking communications,” she said flatly, crossing her arms. Her fingers tapped against her bicep in an anxious rhythm.
What did she have to be nervous about? Was it the storm or something else?
He still didn’t fully trust these supposed summer crew hold-overs. Rue hadn’t known about them, and their story seemed off. He needed to get back in touch with his brother and see if WSW was able to put together dossiers on them.
“Right. When do you think we’ll have communications back?” he asked.
“Hard to say. Could be hours. Could be days.” She shrugged and pulled her door shut, testing the knob to make sure it was locked. “Interference happens a lot this time of year. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
She eyed for a long beat, then scoffed as she turned to walk away.
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
Turned out 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 sat untouched. 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 way Camille’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.
“You don’t look fine,” Rue said. “You look like you’ve been hit by a snowcat.”
Tyler attempted a smile that looked more like a grimace. “Just didn’t sleep well. Bad dreams.”
“About falling into the crevasse?”
“Something like that.” He rubbed at his eyes, which only seemed to make the redness worse.
Mia guided him to a chair. “He was tossing and turning all night.”
“Ah,” Koos said with a wave of his huge hand. “He’s just got the big eye. Everyone gets it their first time on the ice.”
“The big eye?” Mia asked.
