A colleague from San Jose has come down to find our missing people and he needs your assist ASAP. Hopes to borrow you from Mac for a flyby of B. Pass. Let me know when you can make it.

Best/MB

Granger fished a hard pack of Marlboros from his open jacket, put a smoke in his mouth, and fired it up with his disposable lighter. Given the extreme urgency of Megan’s request, he knew that clearing it with his bosses at McMurdo wasn’t anything to worry about.

He frowned, dragging on the cigarette.

No, it definitely wouldn’t be a problem.

The real problem was this “colleague” she’d mentioned, and the complications his arrival could bring about for the people who really padded Granger’s bankroll enough to make living in this stinking, abominable icebox worthwhile . . . and further down the line, the serious mess it could churn up for Granger himself.

He took another deep hit off the cig and its tip flared. It wouldn’t be much fun springing the bad news on the Consortium, but he’d have to get in touch with them, see how they wanted him to handle the situation.

Yeah, he thought. The thing was to contact Zurich directly, let the kingfish have it in front of him.

ASAP.

Inverness, Scotland

Nan Gorrie looked again at her watch and once more at the stove, where a fine piece of mutton sat in a soup of juice and rapidly coagulating fat. Her husband usually rang ahead the few times a year he might be late; he’d been awfully distracted this past week, and she preferred to hope that he had forgotten, rather than worrying something had happened to him. There had been a few occasions as a constable that he’d gotten into scrapes, but none that had risen to the level of what she might call actual danger. As a detective, his days ran at an even pace. His nature helped pour oil on the seas, smoothing the swells; if he felt apprehension, she had rarely known it.

But the way he’d been going lately, rising in the middle of the night, pacing and rocking, rocking and pacing . . . Frank Gorrie was not a pensive man—not a fool nor shallow by any means, but no brooder. Some men—James Fitz came to mind, the Irishman who lived in the next house but one—spent their time staring into space, contemplating the whys and wherefores of the universe. Frank was more a solid sort—a piece of mutton who knew what he was about, which had been a large part of their attraction.

She suspected the wee child at Eriskay had distracted him. The social worker had called him twice now to report on the infant’s progress.