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relationships were not something she did, not even for him, and gave him a choice: move in or move on. He’d made the only choice he could, and she’d accepted it and moved on too, with no bad feelings and no looking back. It hadn’t been quite so easy for Gabriel. He’d been of two minds about asking her to join this expedition, but she was the only person he knew who had practical Antarctic experience. She’d done a few summers as a mechanic in the Heavy Shop at McMurdo Station and knew people on the ice who would be able to get them inland with minimal bureaucratic interference. It made all the sense in the world to involve her—but that didn’t make seeing her again any easier.
    “What the hell do you know about it?” the biker asked Rue, fi xing her with his beery, bloodshot gaze.
    “A hell of a lot more than you, apparently,” Rue replied, taking a swig of her Tui Brew 5 and wiping the foam from her upper lip with her knuckles. “I know well enough not to get my bank account cleaned out by a gang of celebrity babacas who think it’s perfectly acceptable to bend and force their goofy custom partsto fit the frame because they were too stupid to factor in the extra eighth of an inch before powder-coating.”
    “Oh yeah,” the biker said, flushing a deep, dangerous crimson. “Let’s see your ride, then.”
    “I’ve got a beat-up 99 Suzuki Hayabusa that I’m working on back home in Sao Paulo,” she said with a shrug. “She’ll do 300 kilometers per hour without breaking a sweat, but she doesn’t have bat wings or neon, or a football helmet welded to the frame, so I guess I have no idea what makes a real bad-ass ride. On the other hand, I could race your Malibu Barbie Dream Chopper on roller skates and still leave you in the dust.”
    “Well why don’t you then?” the biker asked, taking a threatening step toward Rue, big hands clenching. “Right now, if you think you’re so goddamn clever.”
    “I’d love to,” she said with a smirk. “But I can’t stand to see a grown man cry.”
    “Why, if you were a bloke, I’d…”
    “You’d what?” Gabriel asked, stepping swiftly in between Rue and the biker.
    “And who the fuck are you?” the biker asked. “Her bodyguard?”
    “Nah,” replied Millie Ventrose, rising suddenly out of the crowd like the calm eye of a storm. “That’d be me.”
    Maximillian Ventrose, Jr., Millie to his friends, was the second team member Gabriel had come here to meet. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle with twelve-inch fists and a boxer’s profile under his faded Saints cap, he stood six foot seven barefoot and looked like he could wrestle an alligator one handed without spilling his coffee. But there was a profound, Zen-likecalm about him that ran contrary to his thuggish features and massive physique. He’d grown up in Chalmette, Louisiana, just southeast of New Orleans, and his deep, soft voice with its odd, almost Brooklynesque Yat accent possessed a mysterious power to smooth over even the most heated disagreements. Of course, anyone drunk, cranked or foolish enough to resist the calming power of Millie’s warm molasses voice was swiftly made to change his mind about fighting through more direct means. Usually by way of the local emergency room.
    “That your chopper out front?” Millie asked.
    “Yeah,” the biker replied. “You got something to say about it too?”
    “That a Baker right-hand drive six-speed trans you got on there?” Millie asked.
    “Hell, yeah,” the biker replied. “Gives her better balance with the fat tires. ’Course it costs twice as much as the standard left-hand drive, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
    “Really?” Millie asked, nodding thoughtfully and stepping to one side, subtly pulling the biker’s focus away from Rue. “Ain’t that somethin’.”
    Less than a minute later, Millie had the biker right back on track, jawing about his precious motorcycle as if Rue’s interjection had never