Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
The captain searches the sky crowded with ominous clouds and looks up at the stars imploringly, like they might pose a solution where there apparently is none. He says the words we all hoped we’d never have to hear.
“We’ve been hit.”
CHAPTER 28
LENNIX
“Don’t leave a street unturned,” I tell the volunteers sitting around the cheap wooden table in Nighthorse campaign headquarters. “We need to get as many eligible voters to vote early as possible. Inclement weather, long lines, voter suppression tricks onsite the day of—all well-documented barriers for our demographic on voting day. Let’s get as many of them to vote in advance as possible.” I pause to smile. “Vote for us, of course.”
The small team composed mostly of student and elderly volunteers laughs at my tiny joke. I try to keep morale high. Have to. We are in the fight of our lives with a strong incumbent still in the lead, according to every poll.
Last week, Mr. Nighthorse asked me to help with our voter drive. We’re about six weeks away from the election, and we may be behind, but we gain ground every week. By Election Day, I believe we can not only eliminate the sitting congressman’s lead but overtake him.
“Okay,” I say once the laughter and chatter die down. “Let’s get out there.”
Everyone has their assignments and grabs clipboards already loaded with absentee ballot forms if people want to complete them onsite.
I’m grabbing a clipboard, too, ready to hit my assigned streets when Kimba walks in. She started working with the campaign a few weeks ago. I know she believes in Jim, but I think more than anything she didn’t want to be apart from me. After four years of college and inseparable friendship, I don’t want to be away from her either.
“Have you seen the news?” she asks, her face troubled.
“News about what?” I ask distractedly, checking to make sure I have my forms, buttons, and campaign signs to give to anyone who wants them.
“It’s Maxim.”
A droplet of ice water cuts down my back. I haven’t heard from him. That was fine. We agreed to that. I knew that, though a tiny part of me has been marking off the days until his expedition is over and, according to his voice mail, we can talk. I haven’t let myself consider the dangers he was potentially facing. No news has been good news.
Until now.
“What about him?” I ask, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
Kimba picks up the remote, turns the TV on, and flips through a few channels until she reaches CNN.
Antarctic expedition team trapped in deadly storm
Deadly?
Trapped?
The headline appears above a line of photos, and I recognize David and Maxim immediately. The words and images are a one-two punch to my solar plexus. I can’t breathe, and I’m choking.
“A dangerous situation is unfolding in Antarctica,” the reporter says with the appropriate amount of professional graveness. “A team researching climate change in the southern hemisphere finds themselves caught in a storm of imperfect conditions. Their ship has been hit and is sinking. They’re thousands of miles from civilization and hundreds of miles from shore. Extreme winds have assaulted the area, and low visibility makes flying in to rescue them nearly impossible.”
I collapse into a rolling chair and fold shaking hands in my lap. I’m not sure I can do this again. When they found Tammara’s body, there was barely time to cry, to attend the funeral and console her family. If I think too long about how she died, I’ll wonder if Mama died that way, too. If her body was so carelessly used and then discarded but, unlike Tammara’s, never found. I pushed grief aside, old and new, the demands of the campaign as much a distraction as a necessity.
Now this. I feel trapped here with my frigid grief and icicle fear and the thing I don’t often allow myself anymore but, for Maxim, I must find.
Hope.
CHAPTER 29
MAXIM
“It’s too dangerous.”
I say the words to the entire group, but Dr. Larnyard is the one I pin my hard stare to.
“What do you suggest, Kingsman?” he snaps. “We stay on a sinking ship and die in the ocean?”
A few of the university students gasp at the word “die.”
This motherfucking idiot.
“We’re not going to die,” I reassure them, taking a moment to look directly at the youngest students. “I won’t let that happen.”
Grim meets my eyes with raised brows. His message is clear. How you gonna keep that promise?
“We’ve been hit,” Dr. Larnyard reminds us unnecessarily. “We were three degrees to the right yesterday, and now we’re how many, Captain?”
Captain Rosteen glances from his tilt meter to me. “Five degrees now.”
“Two degrees in a day is significant,” Dr. Larnyard says. “We need to get off this ship. Some of those ice floes are a full acre. We can take rafts to those and wait there to be rescued.”