she was not in a contorted position, nor did she appear to have vomited like all the others.
Pitt’s nerves reacted by sending a cold shiver up his spine. His heart sprinted from a slow steady beat to a rapid pace. Gathering control over his initial shock, he moved slowly across the room until he stood looking down on her.
He reached out and touched her cheek with a light exploring fingertip, experiencing an incredible wave of relief as he felt warmth. He gently shook her by the shoulders and saw her eyelids quiver open.
At first she looked at him dazed and uncomprehending, and then her eyes flew wide, she threw her arms around him and gasped. “You’re alive!”
“You don’t know how happy I am to see you are too.” Pitt said softly, his lips parted in a smile.
Abruptly, she pulled back from him. “No, no, you can’t be real. You’re all dead.”
“You needn’t be afraid of me,” he said in a soothing tone.
She stared at him through wide brown eyes rimmed red from weeping, a sad enigmatic gaze. Her facial complexion was flawless, but there was an unmistakable pallor and just a hint of gauntness. Her hair was the color of red copper. She had the high cheekbones and full, sculptured lips of a fashion model. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then he dropped his stare slightly. From what he could tell about her in her curled position, she had a fashion model’s figure Her bared arms looked muscular for a woman. Only when she lowered her eyes and peered at his body did he suddenly feel embarrassed to be standing in front of a lady in his long johns.
“Why aren’t you properly dressed?” she finally murmured.
It was an inconsequential question bred from a state of fear and trauma, not curiosity. Pitt didn’t bother to explain. “Better yet, you tell me who you are and how you survived when the others died.”
She looked as if she were about to fall over on her side, so he quickly bent down, circled his arm around her waist and lifted her into a leather chair next to a table. He walked over to the bar. He went behind the bar expecting to find the body of the bartender and was not disappointed. He took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee sour mash whiskey from a mirrored shelf and poured a shot glass.
“Drink this,” he said, holding the glass to her lips.
“I don’t drink,” she protested vaguely.
“Consider it medicinal. Just take a few sips.”
She managed to consume the contents of the glass without coughing, but her face twisted into a sour expression as the whiskey, smooth as summer’s kiss to a connoisseur, inflamed her tonsils. After she’d gasped a few breaths of air, she looked into his sensitive green eyes and sensed his compassion.
“My name is Deirdre Dorsett,” she whispered nervously.
“Go on,” he prompted. “That’s a start. Are you one of the passengers?”
She shook her head. “An entertainer. I sing and play the piano in the lounge.”
“That was you playing ‘Sweet Lorraine.’”
“Call it a reaction from shock. Shock at seeing everyone dead, shock at thinking it would be my turn next. I can’t believe I’m still alive.”
“Where were you when the tragedy occurred?”
She peered at the four couples lying nearby in morbid fascination. “The lady in the red dress and the silverhaired man were celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with friends who accompanied them on the cruise. The night before their private party, the kitchen staff had carved a heart and cupid out of ice to sit in the middle of a bowl of champagne punch. While Fred, he’s ...” She corrected herself, “He was the bartender, opened the champagne, and Marta, the waitress, brought in a crystal bowl from the kitchen, I volunteered to bring the ice carving from the storage freezer.”
“You were in the freezer?”
She nodded silently.
“Do you recall if you latched the door behind your?”
“It swings closed automatically.”
“You could lift and carry the ice carving by yourself?”
“It wasn’t very large. About the size of a small garden pot.”
“Then what did you do?”
She closed her eyes very tightly, then pressed her hands against them and whispered. “I was only in there for a few minutes. When I came out I found everyone on the ship dead.”
“Exactly how many minutes would you say?” Pitt asked softly.
She moved her head back and forth and spoke through her hands. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“I don’t mean to sound like a prosecuting attorney. But please, it’s important.”
Slowly she lowered her hands and stared vacantly at the surface of the table. “I don’t know, I have no way of knowing exactly how long I was in there. All I remember is it took me a little while to wrap the ice carving in a couple of towels so I could get a good grip on it and carry it without freezing my fingers.”
“You were very lucky,” he said. “Yours is a classic example of being in the right place at the right time. If you had stepped from the freezer two minutes before you did, you’d be as dead as all the others. You were doubly lucky I came on board the ship when I did.”
“Are you one of the crew? You don’t look familiar.”
It was obvious to him she was not fully aware of the Polar Queen’s near brush with the Danger Islands. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name is Dirk Pitt. I’m with a research expedition. We found your excursion party where they had been abandoned on Seymour Island and came looking for your ship after all radio calls went unanswered.”
“That would have been Maeve Fletcher’s party,” she said quietly. “I suppose they’re all dead too.”
“Two passengers and the crewman who took them ashore,” he answered. “Miss Fletcher and the rest are alive and well.”
For a brief instant her face took on a series of expressions that would have done a Broadway actress proud. Shock was followed by anger culminating in a slow change to happiness. Her eyes brightened and she visibly relaxed. “Thank God Maeve is all right.”
The sunlight came through the windows of the lounge and shone on her hair, which was loose and flowing about her shoulders, and he caught the scent of her perfume. Pitt sensed a strange mood change in her. She was not young but a confident woman in the prime of her early thirties, with strong inner qualities. He also felt a disconcerting desire for her that angered him. Not now, he thought, not under these circumstances. He turned away so she wouldn’t see the rapt expression on his face.
“Why...?” she asked numbly, gesturing around her. “Why did they all have to die?”
He stared at the eight friends who were enjoying a special moment before their lives were so cruelly stolen from them. “I can’t be totally certain,” he said in a voice solemn with rage and pity, “but I think I have a good idea.”
Pitt was fighting fatigue when Ice Hunter sailed off the radar screen and loomed over the starboard bow. After searching the rest of the Polar Queen for other survivors, a lost cause as it turned out, he only allowed himself a short catnap while Deirdre Dorsett stood watch, ready to wake him lest the ship run down some poor trawler fishing for ice-water cod. There are those who feel refreshed after a brief rest. Not Pitt. Twenty minutes in dreamland was not enough to reconstitute his mind and body after twenty-four hours’ of stress and fatigue. He felt worse than when he lay down. He was getting too old to jump out of helicopters and battle raging seas, he mused. When he was twenty, he felt strong enough to leap over tall buildings with a single bound. At thirty, maybe a couple of one-story houses. How far back was that? Considering his sore muscles and aching joints, he was sure it must be eighty or ninety years ago.
He’d been working too long for the National Underwater & Marine Agency and Admiral Sandecker. It was time for a career move, something not as rigorous, with shorter hours. Maybe weaving hats out of palm fronds on a Tahiti beach, or something that stimulated the mind, like being a door-to-door contraceptive salesman. He shook off the silly thoughts brought on by weariness and set the automated control system to ALL STOP.
A quick radio transmission to Dempsey on board Ice Hunter, informing him that Pitt was closing down the engines and requesting a crew to come aboard and take over the cruise ship’s operation, and then he picked up the phone and called Admiral Sandecker over a satellite link to give him an update on the situation.
