Time crawled past like one of the island’s glaciers. Still, she waited. If she was cold, then he was cold, and he would know there would be a warm coal fire and a cozy bed waiting for him inside, with no reason not to claim them.

Finally Randi heard the first ever-so-faint squeaking crunch of a boot step on snow. Her thumb moved half an inch, flipping the fire selector on her primary weapon from “Safe” to “Auto.”

An amorphous blob of total blackness moved slowly down the trail from beyond the camp. Gradually it defined itself as the upright form of a man carrying a slender, elongated shape in each hand. Moving with a stalker’s care, he approached the bunkhouse entry.

The thumb that had flipped off the MP-5’s safety moved to the button on the SMG’s handgrip.

The figure paused for a moment outside the snow lock, taking a final protracted look around and missing the faint bumpy irregularity in the snow a few yards away. Then he leaned the elongated object in his right hand against the door frame and transferred the one in his left hand to the right. Using the freed left hand, he reached for the door handle.

Randi heaved aside the thermal blanket and came up onto her knees, the MP-5 lifting to her shoulder. Her thumb pressed the switch of the tactical light, and the narrow, dazzling blue-white beam lashed out, encompassing and paralyzing the man who stood at the bunkhouse door, his ice axe half raised.

“Hello, Mr. Kropodkin,” Randi said, her voice as cold as the barrel of the leveled submachine gun. “Shall I cut you in two now, or should we wait until later?”

The MP-5 lay on the bunkhouse dining table, its muzzle aimed at the dark-stubble-bearded youth seated in the wall-side bunk. Randi Russell’s hand rested a short grab away from the SMG’s trigger. They had both shed their heavy outdoor snow gear, and she had used a set of nylon disposacuffs to bind Kropodkin’s hands behind his back. Now she stared at the man with ebon-eyed intensity.

“Where did you leave the bodies of the other members of the science team?”

“Bodies?” Kropodkin turned to the third party in the room. “Dr. Trowbridge, please. I don’t know what this madwoman is talking about! I don’t even know who she is!”

“I…don’t either, really.” Trowbridge blinked uneasily in the glare of the gas lantern, smoothing back his sleep-rumpled fringe of white hair. Still clad only in thermal long johns and socks, he had been jarred awake a few minutes before when Randi had prodded Kropodkin in through the snow lock.

“Don’t worry about who I am,” Randi said coldly. “Don’t even worry about standing trial for murder yet. Focus on staying alive long enough to be handed over to the authorities. Answering questions is your best chance. Now, who do you report to? Who’s coming for the anthrax?”

“Anthrax?” The Slovakian’s eyes darted once more to his only potential ally in the room. “Dr. Trowbridge, please help me! I don’t know what is happening here!”

“Please, Ms. Russell. Don’t you think we might just be getting ahead of ourselves here?” The academic fumbled his glasses onto his nose.

“I don’t think so,” Randi replied flatly. “This man killed the other members of your expedition in cold blood, the teammates he’d lived and worked with for over six months. He slaughtered them all like sheep, and I’ll bet for no better reason than money.”

Kropodkin’s jaw dropped. “The others…dead? I do not believe this! No! This is insane! I am no killer! Doctor, tell her! Tell this woman who I am!”

“Please, Ms. Russell!” Trowbridge’s voice strengthened in protest. “You have no grounds to make such…drastic accusations. We have no real proof that anyone has been killed here yet.”

“Yes, we do, Doctor. Last evening I found Kayla Brown’s body on the hill below the radio tower. Someone had used an ice axe on her. That one, I suspect.” Randi nodded toward the axe that lay on the table beside the submachine gun, the axe Kropodkin had been carrying. “I have no doubt DNA testing will prove the point. They’ll probably also find blood traces from Dr. Gupta and Dr. Hasegawa as well. You took out Creston and Rutherford by other means, didn’t you, Kropodkin?”

The graduate student half rose from the bunk, straining at the nylon bands around his wrists. “I tell you, I have killed no one!”

Randi’s hand covered the grip of the MP-5. The muzzle traversed half an inch, indexing in line with Kropodkin’s chest. “Sit down.”

He stiffened and subsided into the bunk.

Trowbridge stood watching the developing tableau, a totally blasted expression on his face. The revelation about Kayla Brown’s corpse had been another of those things that shouldn’t happen in his existence, another boulder in the accelerating avalanche that was sweeping his life and carefully ordered career into scandal and chaos. His only escape lay in denial. “You have no proof that any of the expedition members are responsible for any of this,” he protested hoarsely.

“I’m afraid I do.” Leaning back in her chair, Randi caught up the model 12 Winchester Kropodkin had been carrying, the camp’s polar bear deterrent. “This shotgun has a three-round magazine capacity. It’s a safe assumption that there were three shells in it when it left this camp.”

She jacked the model 12’s pump action repeatedly, but only a single round of magnum-load buckshot ejected to clatter on the tabletop. “Three shells in the gun when it left the camp, three men with this gun when it left the camp. One of each came back. Do the math.”

“I fired those shells as a signal, Doctor, out on the ice pack! Will you make this woman listen?”

“The boy is right,” Trowbridge protested with growing vehemence. “At least he has the right to be heard.”

Randi’s cold stare never left Kropodkin’s face. “All right. That’s fine with me. Let’s hear him. Where’s he been? What happened to the others?”

“Yes, Stefan,” Trowbridge interjected almost eagerly. “Tell us what happened.”

“I have been trapped out on the damned pack ice for two nights, and I have been wondering what happened to the others!” He took a deep, shuddering breath, bringing himself under control. “Dr. Creston, Ian, and I were looking for Dr. Gupta and Dr. Hasegawa. We thought maybe they had gone out onto the pack after a specimen or to get around the ice jam along the shore. Somehow, when we went out onto the pack, I became separated from the others. The ice near the island is very broken, with many hummocks and pressure ridges.

“Then the wind shifted and a lead opened in the ice. I was cut off from the island! I couldn’t get back to shore. I called for help! I fired shots. Nobody came!” Kropodkin’s eyes closed, and his head sank onto his chest. “I had no food. I have not eaten for two days. No heat. No shelter but the ice. I thought I was going to die out there.”

Randi was unimpressed. She picked the single shotgun shell up from the table. “The standard firearm distress signal is three shots fired into the air.”

Kropodkin’s head snapped up. “We found signs of a polar bear out there! I kept the one shell for him! I didn’t want to be devoured on top of dead!”

“And how did you get back?” Randi kept her words emotionless.

“Tonight the lead in the ice closed. The wind must have changed, and I managed to get back to the shore. Then I came straight back to the camp. All I wanted was to get warm again!”

“That’s odd,” Randi said. “I was out there tonight, too, and the wind seemed to be holding steady from the north, just as it’s been all along.”

“Then it must have been the tide, the current, the Holy Virgin-God knows I prayed enough! I don’t know! All I know is that when I finally get back to camp, someone pushes a machine gun in my face and accuses me of murdering my friends.” Awkwardly Kropodkin twisted in the bunk, looking to Trowbridge once again. “Damn it to hell, Professor! You know me! I have taken classes with you. You were on my selection committee. Are you a party to this insanity as well?”