Frozen Read Online Free PDF

sledgehammer, pounding down through the skylights and battering the carpeted floor with yellow fire. It was nearly three o’-clock, and the profiler was late, and Maura was starting to wonder whether he was going to show up at all. She kept thinking back to the sound of the man’s voice over the phone that previous week: that weird reluctance beneath his words. Maybe this was all a big mistake.
    Snubbing out her third cigarette in a canister near the glass doors, Maura continued to pace and worry. Her compact body was adorned that day in a very uncharacteristic corporate pantsuit—the pin-striped slacks creased so sharply they looked dangerous. Even her hair was sedate—pulled back, swept up, and pinned against her skull. She felt ridiculous in the conservative attire, but she was representing the magazine that day, and she wanted to make a good impression on Ulysses Grove. She didn’t know what kind of man to expect.
    From the sound of his phone voice, she had gotten the impression that he was middle-aged, white, probably midwestern. He had a friendly manner, if somewhat guarded, and his voice radiated confidence. But what about that name, Ulysses ? It sounded blue bloody, pompous, and southern, and yet the voice had been void of any accent. Maybe Grove was one of those slick, Clinton-ian, corporate types from the “New” South. Maura knew the type all too well. She had encountered more than her fair share of arrogant bureaucrats in the world of academia. But this was her show now. This was her idea, and her article, and her magazine, and she would not let some cocky, middle-aged, white asshole from the FBI push her around.
    She was finishing up her fourth cigarette, lost in her thoughts, when the tall figure entered the lobby through the revolving glass door.
    Maura whirled. “Special Agent Grove?”
    â€œMiss County?” the man said with a perfunctory smile, and came over to her with his hand extended.
    â€œMaura, please, call me Maura,” she said, and shook his slender, concert-master’s hand.
    For an infinitesimal moment, Maura had to consciously blink away the urge to gawk at him. It wasn’t the fact that he was black (although that was part of it). Nor was it because he was so dapper and well put together in his Burberry coat and tailored suit, his attaché gripped at his side like an appendage. What made her stare for that brief instant was the lack of guile on the man’s face. This guy was the antithesis of a smug bureaucrat. He looked like a visitor from another time, a nineteenth-century abolitionist or poet, his dark eyes radiating passion.
    â€œMaura it is,” he said, his face warming. “If you’ll call me Ulysses.”
    â€œYou got it,” she said. “And I really appreciate you coming all the way up here.”
    â€œI just hope I can offer something.”
    â€œI’m sure it’ll be fascinating. How was the trip up?”
    â€œHad a little problem with connections, had to take a puddle jumper from Anchorage that felt like it was powered by rubber bands.”
    Maura grinned. “Welcome to Alaska.”
    â€œQuite a facility they got here.”
    She nodded and indicated the inner doors on the opposite side of the lobby. “Why don’t I give you a little tour? I believe the project leader’s waiting for us back in the lab.”
    Grove nodded. “Lead the way.”
    They crossed the high-gloss tile floor and vanished through the double glass doors.
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    The University of Alaska’s Paleo-DNA Laboratory is the largest of its kind in North America. Housed in the lower levels of the Schleimann Building, temperature and humidity controlled, the facility rivals the Pentagon for length and breadth of security. Its endless labyrinth of fluorescent corridors and access tunnels spread across nearly a hundred acres. Any significant archaeological find in the Western Hemisphere eventually finds its