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  Kerry threw him a worried look.

  “Conditions aren’t going to get any better for weeks. Maybe months,” Bob said, his voice clipped. “The longer this goes on, the worse the mess is going to be for all of us. You heard what the Russians are up to. I don’t want to get the White House involved here. The environmentalists are already screaming for blood.”

  “But the water is so murky the submersibles can’t navigate—”

  “Put extra people on it if you have to.”

  “Extra people aren’t going to do any—”

  “Soon as it’s done, everyone can go home, you included. Kerry can start breaking down the command center tomorrow. I’ve already told Phil to start tying up any of his loose ends.”

  “You did.” Daniel looked at Kerry, who rolled her eyes.

  “Yes. So I want you wrapping things up tomorrow yourself and getting ready to get on a plane out the day after. I think the cost of keeping our team up here is outweighing the benefits at this point. Corporate is making noise about how much we spend on food and hotels, and we don’t need more media attention up here than we have already.”

  “Respectfully, sir, I feel we shouldn’t rush through this operation—”

  “You’ve hardly been rushing, Daniel.”

  “What I mean is that the situation could go south in a hurry—”

  “The only thing I want going south in a hurry is our team, and that all hinges on you and your people. You have a job to do. I suggest you get out there and do it.”

  Daniel held very still and didn’t answer, as if he could avoid the task by not acknowledging it. It was wrong—the whole thing was wrong. Bob knew it. He knew he was risking everything by pushing the team to do more than they were safely able to accomplish, just as he always did. He didn’t care how it got fixed or how much danger it put everyone in as long as he got the results he wanted. As long as Bob could go to the board and brag about the team’s performance, he’d risk anything.

  “Two more days and we’re all out of here,” Bob said. “Tell Kerry. In the morning, she and Judy and I are going to have breakfast with Phil. He wants to put together one last press release on the things the company is doing for the families of the victims, setting up a scholarship fund . . .”

  A feeling like desperation—or maybe it was resignation—sank down through him like submersibles to the bottom of the deep black sea. You sonofabitch, he thought. You devious, rotten sonofabitch. He hung up the phone.

  “Well,” Kerry said, “so what’s the good news?”

  Daniel murmured, “He says you and Judy are supposed to meet him and Phil for breakfast first thing in the morning to go over one last press release before we leave.”

  Kerry gave another frustrated groan and flung the covers over her head like a child saying she was too sick to go to school. She would not relish breakfast with Phil Velez, the director of the third leg of the crisis-management team—human resources. Kerry thought he had all the sparkling wit and personality of a compliance memo.

  “Is that all?”

  “Not quite. After you meet with Phil, Bob wants you to break down the command center and get everyone ready to go home. He says the trip is costing the company too much money. He wants us on a plane in two days.”

  “Two days? Is that even possible?”

  “You know Bob. He’d make it rain out of a clear blue sky if he could figure out how.”

  “That’s why he’s the senior VP. What about the bad news?”

  “Bad news is he’s insisting the leak is fixed by the end of the day tomorrow. Which means I better get on it now.”

  “You can’t!” Kerry exclaimed, sitting up and clutching the blankets to her. “You’ve already been working all day. You told him it was too dangerous. He can’t make you do this!”

  Daniel sat up and flung his legs over the edge of the bed. “He can. He already did. I don’t have a choice.”

  “You do,” Kerry said. “You could always quit.”

  “Not now. Those guys,” he said, looking out the dark windows, thinking of his team—the sub drivers, the sailors, the engineers who reported to him—“they need me. I can’t let them down, not now.”

  “You don’t have to go yourself. You’re the director of operations. So direct someone else to do it and stay here.”

  Part of him recognized the wisdom of this idea, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let someone else do a job he wasn’t willing to do himself, no matter how tempted he might be. Daniel’s father, who’d been a steelworker in the Indiana mills, had always said that the best foremen he’d had were guys who’d come up from the millworks, who knew what it meant to work for a living, who weren’t above putting their own backs on the line. His father had never let someone else do a job he could do himself. No—Daniel had to get it together, get the job done and get everyone home safe. It was his father’s voice he heard in his head: Keep your eye on the ball, Daniel. You take your eye off the ball for even just a second and someone could die.

  He gave a heavy sigh, then stood up and starting putting on his warmest clothes once more—thermal underwear, then jeans, then snowpants, then a thermal undershirt, fleece, down coat, earmuffs and a fleece hat—and he stuffed two pairs of gloves in his pockets for good measure.

  “How can I make those guys go back out there if I’m not willing to go with them?” he asked. “It’s not right, Kerry. If they go, I go.”

  Kerry watched him perform this familiar ritual and sighed. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock. It’s fifty below out there. What do you think you’re going to be able to do?”

  “Whatever it takes.” Daniel looked at her from under his layers of wool. Already he could feel fatigue stiffening his limbs, a yawn stretching the back of his throat, but he would never be able to sleep warm and comfortable knowing his guys were out in the cold Arctic night without him. He’d be up all night anyway; might as well try to be useful.

  “You heard Bob,” he told Kerry. “I’m going to single-handedly save the company from disaster and get the team home for Christmas.”

  “You’re not Superman. You can’t conjure a heat wave or calm the seas with a flick of your wrist.”

  “I’ll think of something,” Daniel said, leaning down to kiss her forehead, patting the pockets of his coat to make sure he had his satellite phone, his emergency charger and his hotel key. “Sleep tight, babe. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Hopefully,” she muttered as he turned to go.

  “Hopefully,” he said, and then he was out the door once more, into the cold.

  3

  When Kerry Egan woke to the sound of knocking at the door of her hotel room the next morning—or what she assumed was morning; the clock on her cell phone said seven, but evening or morning she couldn’t tell in the darkness—Daniel was still gone. She rolled over to see his side of the bed still empty, still cold. He’d been out in the frigid weather all night long, and a sudden jolt of worry squeezed her. She didn’t like wondering where he was.

  Another knock at the door. It was Judy, coming to collect Kerry and head downstairs for their breakfast meeting with Bob Packer and Phil Velez. Still half-asleep, Kerry shuffled to the door, keeping the blanket wrapped around herself. Judy looked nauseatingly cheery for seven a.m., her tousled blond hair recently washed and styled, makeup on, neatly dressed. In contrast, Kerry felt like she’d been punched in the face; her eyes felt swollen, her mouth so dry she could barely swallow. The constant cold and the chugging of the heaters gave the inside of the hotel a hellishly dry quality. She gave a theatrical groan and flung herself back down on the bed.

  “What’s the matter?” Judy asked. “The prospect of breakfast with Phil doesn’t sound too appealing?”

  “It’s not Phil. I could be having breakfast with George Clooney this morning and I would still hate it.”

  “If you were hav
ing breakfast with George Clooney, I’d hope you’d take a shower at least.”

  “I’m not sure I could muster the energy even for him.”

  Judy gave an inelegant snort. “One of these days you’ll discover you’re really a morning person, and then I’m going to remind you of this moment.”

  “Not likely. Please tell me that’s my coffee in your other hand.”

  “It’s your coffee in my other hand.” Judy handed over the cup and looked at the bed, the blankets still undisturbed on Daniel’s side. “Bob strikes again?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Kerry said. “He used last night’s broadcast to make sure Daniel gets the leak fixed on his time line. Nothing like announcing success to the whole world to make sure it happens.”

  “He’s the boss,” Judy joked, sitting down next to her on the bed. “Come on, get in the shower. We’re supposed to be in the diner in fifteen minutes.”

  Bob preferred the food in one of the local diners to the restaurant in the hotel, which meant going outside, which meant boots, coats, scarves, gloves, every inch of exposed skin covered to stave off frostbite. Just then, Kerry couldn’t face the idea of going outside into the cold even one more time—it was just too much. She sat up next to Judy and said, “You’re sure there’s no way of getting out of it?”

  “Not if we want to still have jobs when we get back home.”

  She groaned. “Can’t you tell Bob I’m sick or something?”

  “Like that’s ever worked.”

  “You could tell him I’m pregnant. That I’m on my hands and knees puking my guts out, and you have to stay here and tend to me in my delicate condition.”

  Judy appeared to think that over for a second, then shook her head. “He’d probably ask to see the stick you peed on.”

  “I’d be willing to try if it meant I could get another hour in bed.”

  Something nagged at the back of Kerry’s mind, some little thing she needed to give her attention to. Her period—was it late? In all the crazy crush of the past few days—not to mention the incessant darkness—she’d lost track. She picked up her phone and looked at the date: the tenth of December. Her calendar said she should have gotten her period no later than the fifth. A quick jolt of adrenaline shot through her. She was never late.

  Judy’s phone buzzed briefly. She looked at it and said, “That was Phil. Says he’s got us a table and to come on over when we’re ready.”

  “Isn’t he the early bird, though?” Kerry said, though she could think about nothing except getting her hands on a pregnancy test. The pharmacy wasn’t too far away, but she had the meeting with Phil and Bob before she’d have time to pick up a test, much less take it. She decided to temporarily banish the question from her head. No sense freaking out yet. It was probably a fluke.

  “Come on,” Judy said, “quit complaining and get in the shower.”

  A few minutes later, Kerry bundled up in her heaviest things to brave the outside temperatures—heavy down coat, fleece-lined leggings, waterproof knee-high boots, knit hat, scarf and gloves—feeling like she was the one headed down to the bottom of the sea instead of Daniel, and this time without a submersible.

  The thought of him out in the cold all night made her afraid. She wished he wouldn’t let Bob goad him into taking such terrible risks. His sense of responsibility to the people who worked for him was admirable, and she understood he was still living by his father’s philosophy of leading from the front—but he didn’t always have to take on every duty himself.

  “All right,” she said, mumbling to Judy through the layers of clothing, “let’s go.”

  They pushed open the door and stepped outside, struggling up the street toward the coffee shop where Phil and Bob would be waiting for them, and for the hundredth time she wished they’d been able to rent snowmobiles, apparently the preferred form of winter travel in Barrow. At least there would be hot coffee and food when they got there, she thought, even if it would be dark all day.

  The one thing Kerry really wanted at that moment, with the snow blowing in her eyes and the streetlights overhead throwing a feeble glow on the dim street, was to watch the sun rise up over the eastern horizon, just for the space of a breath. A glimpse of orange on the horizon. After nearly two weeks in Barrow, she was longing for even the slightest hint of sunshine, for any reminder that the world would not always be drowning in darkness. She found herself staring at the edge of the horizon and thinking, Please. Please, just a glimpse.

  Sometimes, near the middle of the day, if the weather was clear, the sky would lighten, turn blue, a phenomenon the meteorologists called “polar twilight,” but there was never any real sun, never a beam that broke the horizon and fell across the frozen ground. It was too close to the winter solstice. The sun wouldn’t rise for real here for another five weeks.

  “When I get home,” Kerry said finally, “I’m never complaining about Chicago winters again.”

  “That’s what you said after Newfoundland,” said Judy. “At least Bob says we’re going home tomorrow.”

  “That’s what he’d like you to think,” Kerry answered, “but if Daniel can’t get the leak shut down, it won’t matter what Bob says.”

  “You really think Bob would lie to my face?” Judy asked. “About going home?”

  “I think he’d sell his own right hand if he thought it would be good for the company,” Kerry said.

  Judy stopped in the middle of the street, frowned theatrically at Kerry and said, “I’m not hanging around you anymore if you’re going to be such a downer.”

  “What are friends for?” Kerry answered, and they both gave a laugh. “Come on, let’s get there before we freeze to death.”

  They stepped aside to let a couple of snowmobiles blow past, pausing in front of the brightened windows of a house strung with white Christmas lights, caribou bones and whale bones making up part of the family’s fencing. What fortitude it must take to live here year-round, Kerry thought, stopping to watch the family matriarch load more wood into the stove in the middle of the room in which four children were gathered, playing a game at the kitchen table. What kind of resilience did a person have to have to live in a place where the air was never really warm, where there were no roads in and out, where Taco Tuesday at the local Mexican restaurant was the biggest weekly event?

  “I suppose I shouldn’t complain so much,” Kerry said at last, watching the youngest kid throw the dice and land on Boardwalk. “At least we do get to go home again. Sooner or later.”

  “I thought you promised Daniel he could build a summer home overlooking the Beaufort Sea. I bet it’s beautiful here in the summer.”

  Kerry couldn’t see her face, but her best friend’s voice was definitely full of mirth. “Could you imagine going all summer without darkness, too? Waking up at two in the morning, and it’s still light? I don’t know what would be worse.”

  Judy smiled, but shivered. “Bob would love it. He’d work us year-round.”

  Kerry sighed. “You’re probably right.”

  Then the squat, flat-roofed form of the diner rose up out of the snow to meet them, all the windows ablaze, the sign outside a rising sun made of gold and blue neon, shining the only real light in the December darkness. Kerry paused for a moment and saw Bob just inside the front door, pacing back and forth with the phone to his ear. His face, already red from anger, turned nearly purple for a moment, and he shouted something into the phone. She knew without even hearing the conversation whom he was talking to and what the gist of the conversation was—Daniel still didn’t have the leak shut down.

  Judy looked where Kerry was looking. She knew who was on the other end of the line, too. “Bob’s got him working early.”

  “You mean late. Very, very late.”

  Judy looked at her through layers of wool. “We could always quit,” Judy said, looking up to where Bob paced behind the wi
ndow. “The whole lot of us, in protest.”

  Kerry had suggested the same thing to Daniel just the night before, but she’d known even then it wasn’t a real solution. “Fat lot of good that would do. He’d replace us with cheaper workers, and the board would give him a raise as a thank-you.”

  “You could always go back into journalism,” Judy said.

  Kerry snorted. “You think I could get a real media job after working for the enemy? No way. I’d be kryptonite.”

  “Not to mention you like it,” Judy said. “No matter what you try to pretend, you’re good at what you do. You can’t be that good at it and not love it.”

  Kerry shook her head, half-pleased. The truth was, she was good at it—sometimes better than she wanted to be. Anyone could manage the corporation’s image in good times, but she felt it took real ingenuity to be able to spin a disaster, to stem the inevitable tide of criticism and turn it to the company’s advantage. Kerry had a knack for feeding the media feel-good humanitarian stories of dramatic rescues, or communities banding together to serve the families of the victims, anything to keep the attention off the disaster itself. It was her specialty, the humanitarian story—she was known for it. Give Kerry Egan a mess, and she’d dig around until she found the story within the story, the best possible angle. Spinning garbage into gold, or at least that was what Bob always called it. She was proud of that ability, but the truth was, there was something in it that shamed her, too. That made her feel she could have done more, something nobler, if she’d only tried harder.

  Once upon a time Kerry had looked forward to a promising career as an actual journalist: a degree from Northwestern and a prestigious summer internship at a big national print newsweekly, which she’d hoped would set her up for her eventual career as an investigative journalist. Hard news—the kind that would really challenge her personally and professionally. She’d wanted to be Diane Sawyer; she’d wanted to be Christiane Amanpour, jetting around the world to talk to business leaders and prime ministers, taking on the powerful, the corrupt. She’d wanted a Pulitzer Prize.