Read Online FIRE AND ICE by Julie Garwood - Free Book Online

They stare, but they don’t retreat or attack. They’re curious creatures, and our scent must be strange to them.
    Yesterday was a sad day. One of Lucy’s pups died. Though we were curious to know the cause, Brandon is insisting that we not interfere. He wants to watch the dynamic of the pack as it deals with the loss, so we won’t do an autopsy. Ricky was quite stoic about it and left the camp to gather food as if nothing had happened.
    The blood Eric and I have studied thus far has indicated a hormone I have not been able to identify yet, and Ricky appears to have high levels of it. I’m anxious to delve into this further.
    Brandon isn’t interested in our discovery. He seems a bit threatened by any activity he hasn’t approved of in advance. Kirk is indifferent to it all. Each evening he writes copious notes about each member of the pack.
    I also write in my journal as often as I can. I can’t wait to begin my own experiments, but I must wait until the dead of winter to begin.

S OPHIE COULDN’T GET BACK THE HOURS SH E’D SPENT WITH William Harrington, but she felt she was owed, at the very least, an apology. She had taken more than an hour after the race to look for him.
    As she had walked back to her apartment that morning, she had tried to call Harrington at his home. His answering machine had clicked on, and she’d left a message for him to please call her. She had tried to sound concerned, not irritated. But she
was
irritated. How could anyone be so rude? And what about dinner Monday night? That, she assumed, was off.
    By Sunday morning there was still no word from him. She called his home number again. After two rings, a mechanical voice clicked on, announcing that the phone number was no longer in service. She thought she must have punched in the wrong numbers, but when she entered them a second time, she got the same message. She called his cell phone number next and got another mechanical message. No longer in service.
    That left Harrington’s website. When she had looked at it duringher research on him, she had discovered that he provided visitors a place to leave comments. She decided to pull up the site and leave a written message. She typed in the address. His website was no longer there. She did a quick search and couldn’t find a trace. The website, like Harrington, was gone.
    Okay, now it was getting really weird. She decided to make one last effort to get hold of him before dropping the matter. She had his home address—he’d given it to her during their interview Friday night—and since he didn’t live all that far from her, she decided to walk to his building, knock on his door, and demand some answers.
    Harrington’s condominium was much farther than she had estimated. It actually took her forty-five minutes and a twenty-dollar cab ride after her feet started screaming because she had forgotten to change out of her three-inch heels.
    Harrington lived in an exclusive neighborhood. His building was sleek and modern with reflective, tinted windows. The doorman wearing an impeccable gray uniform let her inside. A short corridor led to a palatial lobby with marble floors and walls covered in white linen. A thirty-something man with a buzz haircut and an extremely muscular frame was adjusting his tie as he rushed behind the granite counter to wait for her to approach.
    He was either ex-military, she thought, or a bodybuilder. He reminded her of Bluto in the Popeye cartoons. His eyes seemed too small for his head, and his head seemed too small for his huge shoulders and arms. Receptionists were supposed to be friendly, but Bluto must not have read the job description. Stone-faced, he stared at her and waited for her to speak. He was neatly dressed in dark pants and a striped shirt. Sophie decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was part of the building’s security team and was just filling in for the actual receptionist.
    The security was impressive. She saw cameras tucked