The Stormriders

  THE STORMRIDERS

  By Donna Ball

  Copyright 1991 by Donna Ball Inc

  Digital edition published by Blue Merle Publishing July, 2010

  One

  A bitterly cold gust of wind followed Meg Forrest through the door, generating shouts of protest from several of the half dozen or so people gathered around the common room's nineteen-inch television set. She quickly closed the door and began to peel away the layers of scarves that covered her face, stamping her booted, snow-frosted feet on the rubber mat that lay just inside the door as she had done every morning for the past two years. This is the last time I'll be doing that, she thought in satisfaction, but the satisfaction faded somewhat as she realized this was the last time she would be doing a lot of things.

  It was called a common room, instead of what a more structured organization might have called a reception area, because the front room of the Carstone Industries' Adinorack, Alaska, subsidiary was where everyone gathered when they had nothing else to do— which in Meg's opinion was far too often. It was furnished like a living room with two cheap plaid couches on sagging frames, several badly upholstered chairs and a television. The only indication that this was a place of business was the desk by the front door, which was unoccupied at present and, as usual, cluttered with file folders, circulars and unanswered mail. A gallon coffee urn was kept filled all the time and for that, at least, Meg was grateful. She went to it now and filled her mug.

  "Oh, hi, Mrs.—I mean, Ms. Forrest." Sadie, whose title identified her as the office manager but who was in fact a barely adequate secretary, came through the swinging doors that led to the lab and private offices. The mail sack she carried indicated the nature of her errand.

  "Good, my plane's here," Meg said, nodding briefly at her. " Where's the pilot?"

  "In the radio room with Joe." Sadie gave her a hesitant look as she opened the sack and began to scoop the contents onto her already overflowing desk. "Urn, Ms. Forrest, I think-"

  Meg cut her off. "Good. Tell him I'll be ready to leave in about an hour. I've got some things I want to tie up here first." She picked up a stack of envelopes and began quickly sorting through them. "No, never mind, I'll tell him myself. I don't know how long I'm going to be."

  "Hey, Sadie, anything for me?" one of the men called from his position in front of the television set. Five of them were watching a Godzilla movie with all the rapt attention of die-hard football fans in the last quarter of the Superbowl.

  "Mail call is at ten-thirty," Sadie retorted. "You know the drill."

  The man gave her a grin and waved with his coffee cup. "Never hurts to try."

  Meg directed a cool stare toward him, but he just continued to grin and turned back to the television set. It irritated her beyond measure to see half of Car-stone's staff lounging around the television at ten o'clock in the morning, and even more than usual today because it seemed to her they were doing it on purpose, just to see if they could get one last rise out of her. She refused to give them the satisfaction.

  Instead, Meg collected the envelopes that were addressed to her and turned back to Sadie. "Sadie," she said patiently, "as my last official act as your boss, I'd like to ask you a question."

  Sadie glanced up from the slow, methodical job she was making of putting the mail into alphabetical order. "Sure, Mrs.—I mean, Ms. Forrest."

  "Why," asked Meg, "when we only get mail delivery once a week, are you always two weeks behind in answering our correspondence?"

  Sadie looked surprised. "I always get the mail out the very morning it gets here. You know that, Ms. Forrest!"

  "Those are personal letters. These—" she gestured to the stacks that cluttered the desk "—are business letters. This is a business, Sadie."

  Sadie looked at her for a moment as though she did not quite understand the problem, then replied politely, "Oh." She went back to sorting her mail.

  Meg closed her eyes briefly, trying to take some comfort in the fact that, after today, it would no longer be her problem. After today, she would leave this godforsaken, permafrosted piece of wilderness behind forever, and with any luck at all she would be lying on a beach in Waikiki in another two weeks. The thought should have made her feel better, but it didn't. She wasn't exactly sure why.

  Meg Forrest was thirty-two years old, and one of Carstone Industries' top design engineers. Everything about her, from the way she wore her hair to her long-legged, aggressive stride, proclaimed the fact that she was a woman to be reckoned with—as well it should have, for she had spent years perfecting that look. She was tall and naturally slim, which was an advantage. Her heart-shaped face, large brown eyes and wide, expressive mouth were also an advantage, because too often men mistook the delicate, feminine face as indicative of the woman to whom it belonged, which was not necessarily the case. Customarily she wore her brown hair clipped above her ears, but the lack of a decent hairdresser had forced her to allow it to grow long over the past two years. She compensated for that inconvenience by pulling it into a severe chignon that was pinned at the back of her head in a style that was neat, serviceable and out-of-the-way. No one looking at Meg Forrest could mistake her for anything except what she was: The Boss.

  And it still irritated her that, after two years as head of the Energy Research Station, the male eyes that followed her across the room were focused inevitably on her backside.

  She had prayed for release from this little scrap of hell from the moment her plane had touched down on the dirt landing strip two years ago; she had marked the days off on her calendar; she had counted the hours. She had hated everything about the village, a dot on the map hardly worthy of even a name.

  An ugly, barren collection of concrete block huts in the heart of nowhere, the place had an average January temperature of minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and it was windswept, ice-locked and thoroughly inhospitable. The night spots were the Blue Jay Bar & Grill and Brownie's Video, which carried over a hundred titles for rent, none of them less than five years old. Haute cuisine was a venison burger with cheese. There weren't more than twenty books, other than technical manuals, in the whole village and most of them Meg had brought with her. And her staff—technical engineers, mechanics, specialists and clerical personnel, the very backbone of this outpost society—were misfits, outcasts and ne'er-do-wells to a man. That was Adinorack, Alaska, population seventy-five.

  Seventy-four after today, she thought grimly, hanging her coat and scarves on a hook by the swinging door on the way to her office. Then why wasn't this the happiest day of her life?

  Adinorack—affectionately known as Hell Annex by those who through one misfortune or another had been forced to call it home—had been established twenty years earlier as part of a support facility for a military outpost. The military base had closed down, but the village itself had survived. When Carstone needed a spot to test its government-funded alternative-energy project, Adinorack had been the perfect place.

  There had been no reason, however, for the presence of the head engineer on the test site. Meg Forrest had designed the system to be flawless, and flawless it had been. She had told the paper pushers at Carstone it would be, and that, of course, was why she had been sent here—she had insisted once too often, far too loudly, to the wrong person. Mistake number one. She was being punished.

  After the first few months of setup, her presence here was superfluous. The mechanics and engineers handled the maintenance and day-to-day fluctuations required by the system, and all that was left for her to do was stand around and give orders to which no one listened. Two years later, and still no one listened. Meg Forrest was used to being in charge, to having people stand up and take notice; assuming she could whip this ragtag bunch of dropouts and comic-book addicts int
o some semblance of a disciplined organization had been her second mistake.

  She reached her office, which was as stark and unwelcoming as the rest of the building, and set her coffee cup and her mail on the desk. That was when she realized the real reason for her ambivalent feelings about leaving this place. She looked at the coffee cup solemnly.

  It was a plain white ceramic mug, with an etching of a cartoon Red Baron and the slogan "Flying Ace" in red flowing letters around the circumference. It was his cup. The chip on the rim was from the time she had thrown it at him in the midst of an argument she couldn't even remember anymore. Six months later, and she was still drinking out of his cup.

  He knew she was leaving today; he must have known. And he hadn't even called to say goodbye.

  "Mistake number three," she murmured.

  Then, mentally shaking off the shadows that had become more of an annoyance than a pain of late, she sat down behind the desk and went through the mail. There was nothing of interest that demanded her personal attention; she had wound up her involvement in the project a week ago. There was a note from her father advising her to let him know the time of her flight in Washington so that he could have someone meet her at the airport. She took note of the "have someone meet you" instead of "I'll meet you" with little emotion. The General was a busy man and could not be expected to take time out of his schedule to run back and forth to the airport, not even for the daughter he hadn't seen in two years.

  Meg tossed most of the letters into the trash, saved a few for Sadie to answer—when she got the time— and tucked the letter from her father into her purse. Then she leaned her elbows on the desk and sipped her coffee, looking absently around the room. There was nothing to keep her here. So why didn't she leave?

  The room looked just as it had when she'd first entered it two years ago: cheap plywood paneling, two steel filing cabinets, a drafting board, a black Naugahyde sofa where she had spent many uncomfortable nights when the weather was too inclement for her to traverse the block and a half to her apartment, which was just as inhospitable and utilitarian as her office. Of course there had been other nights on that couch, nights not quite so uncomfortable, nights when she was not alone....

  She quickly jerked her eyes away and glanced toward the window. The Venetian blinds were firmly closed, as they always were, against the depressing view of frozen wasteland. Now, idly, Meg opened them a little, and the view was just as demoralizing as ever. Frozen tire tracks in the muddy snow, patches of bare earth where the wind had blown the snow away, the squat shape of the Blue Jay across the street, shadowed by a rusted-out, abandoned water tower that should have been torn down years ago. A twilight gloom hovered over everything, even though it was March and the days were supposed to be getting longer.

  "Land of the midnight sun," Meg muttered, and let the blinds fall back into place with a rattle. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had seen the sun since she'd been here.

  Furthermore, she had noticed heavy-bellied gray storm clouds building in the east, signaling the definite possibility of snow. There was no point in hanging around here any longer. Any bush pilot worth his name in these parts could negotiate his way through a snowstorm, but it was a four-hour flight to Juneau and Meg didn't want to make it any more difficult than it had to be. The best thing to do was to leave now.

  He wasn't going to call.

  She slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and started for the radio room, stopping in the common room on the way to refill her coffee cup. She might have noticed a few odd, brightly interested looks from the television viewers as she opened the connecting door to the radio room, but she didn't pay much attention. She was already speaking as she walked inside.

  "I'm Meg Forrest," she said briskly, "and if you're fueled up I'm ready to go. Looks like we're going to get some snow and I want to outrun it."

  There were two men in the closetlike room that served as communications center and weather-tracking station. Joe was at his usual place in front of the radio, headphones draped around his neck, joking with the pilot, who sat on the edge of the desk. His laughter faded when Meg entered, and the pilot slowly turned around.

  "You," she breathed. "I might have known."

  Meg was face-to-face with Red Worthington. Mistake number three.

  Had she been paying any attention at all, she would have recognized him even from the back. The Dodgers baseball cap perched atop his curly brown hair, the faded red sweat jacket with its broken zipper, the all-too-familiar cocky way he held his head... Who else could it have been? She might have known.

  Few people would have called his a handsome face or even a memorable one. With cool, analytical precision Meg had decided long ago that he was, in fact, quite ordinary-looking. Undistinguished features, plain hazel eyes, completely forgettable. Except for that little-boy grin that somehow managed to cause a flutter in the heart of any female over the age of six, that rueful way he had of rubbing his chin and glancing at a woman sideways that made her want to forgive him anything, the way his jaw hardened into a bulging knot when he was angry, which was more often than not when Meg was around... except for the way he moved and the way he spoke and the way he had of looking at a person, steadily and mildly, until that person wanted to either squirm away from his gaze or run into his arms... except for the fact that Meg's heart, even now, had picked up a skipping, breathless rhythm from no more than simply looking at him, he was the most perfectly forgettable man she had ever met.

  His eyes went over her once in that familiar, all-too-intimate way, from the crown of her head to the pointed tips of her boots, tracing the curve of her breasts beneath the bulky sweater and the shape of her thighs beneath the snug-fitting jeans. She hated it when he did that. And loved it.

  He grinned and saluted her with his plastic cup of coffee. "Why, Mrs. Worthington," he drawled, "as I live and breathe."

  Meg glanced pointedly at the cup and said coolly, "You're killing the planet with those things, you know."

  He shrugged and sipped from the cup. "Don't have much choice. You've got my mug."

  She hesitated, then closed the door, sparing a stern look for Joe. He couldn't have been more than twenty, an absolute genius with any kind of electronic equipment but not very bright when it came to anything else. Meg had no idea how he had ever ended up here; she only knew that his curious, blond-bristled young face in this room at this particular moment made her uncomfortable.

  Joe immediately tried hard to look invisible, but nothing on earth could have persuaded him to leave his station now, that much was clear. Not that it mattered, Meg decided after a moment. She and Red had nothing to say to each other now that the whole world couldn't hear.

  She struggled to get her heartbeat under control as she crossed the room. "What are you doing here?"

  He feigned surprise. "This is my route, isn't it?"

  "Not for the past six months it hasn't been,”she pointed out. Her pulse was beginning to settle down to normal. Ordinary, she assured herself. A perfectly ordinary man.

  He merely grinned over the rim of his coffee cup. "Well now, little darlin', I could hardly let you ride off into the sunset without even saying goodbye, could I?"

  And just when she thought she was perfectly under control, her heart started stuttering again—from anger this time. "Of course," she replied briefly. "You're the only man I know who'd fly halfway across a continent just to escort his wife to the state capital so she could file the divorce papers."

  He leaned back, eyes twinkling. "Right now," he replied, "that's the only thing I can think of that's worth flying halfway across a continent for."

  Meg's lips thinned.

  Red put down his cup and got to his feet, holding his arms out wide. "Come on, Megan, give us a little kiss. For old times'sake."

  She stood perfectly still as he advanced on her, never mind that swift hot tightening in her stomach, that leap of excitement in her throat, that flood of memories the wo
rds, even in jest, could evoke. Never mind that just for a moment she actually considered it—no, more than considered it. She wanted it, with the desperate hunger of a condemned woman at a feast. When he was two feet away from her she pushed her hand against his chest and stepped coolly away.

  "I hate that name," she said. Except when he used it. He was the only one who had ever called her Megan without making her want to punch him in the jaw.

  Red chuckled infuriatingly.

  Meg glanced at Joe, who had replaced his earphones and was fiddling earnestly with the dials on the radio. But the earphones did not quite cover his ears, she noticed, and he was sure not to miss a word.

  She said, "You left some things at my place. I packed them up, and I was going to mail them to you. They're out in the trunk with my bags."

  Red picked up his coffee again. "I don't carry bags." Then, he asked casually, "You got someone to take care of your car for you?"

  As long as he was teasing her, prodding her, making her angry, she could take it and give back her own. But that simple inquiry—polite, distant, the kind of thing one casual acquaintance might say to the other-was almost her undoing. It sounded so final and so emotionless. As though nothing was left between them but the mundanities.

  Which, she supposed, was probably the case.

  She had to swallow before she could answer. "Dancer's going to try to sell it for me."

  "Maybe I'll take it off your hands."

  "As part of the settlement?" she shot back before she could help it.

  "Hell, I ought to get something."

  "For all those years of constant devotion?"

  "Now sweetie,, I was devoted—"

  "You don't know the meaning of the word!"

  "And you do?"

  ' 'At least I tried to be a wife!"

  "Talk about not knowing the meaning of something. I hope you packed up a dictionary in those bags of yours, because it looks to me like you've got a lot of studying to do."

  "And now that I don't have to waste my time on you, looks like I'll have plenty of time to do it!"