AWOL with the Operative (13 page)

She handed him a towel after he’d washed his hands and face with a bar of soap.

“I found an unopened toothbrush along with the soap,” she told him as he dried himself. “Just the one, so we’ll have to share it.”

Not a problem, he thought, considering how intimate their mouths had been last night.

“There’s a package of disposable razors, too.”

Good. No more risk of whisker burns when he kissed her again, which he fully intended to do as soon as possible. Right now, though, his hunger was a priority.

“What have you got cooking in the pot?”

“Oatmeal. We’ll have scrambled eggs to go with it. Powdered, of course, like the milk that gets mixed in with the eggs, so I don’t know how they’ll taste. But, Sam, you wouldn’t believe what we’ve lucked into here.”

She began pulling open drawers and cupboard doors, showing him tightly sealed containers of flour, sugar, a variety of dried meats and fruits and an assortment of seasonings. There were also the jars of rice and beans he’d noticed yesterday on the open shelves.

“Everything is nonperishable, which I guess it has to be without a refrigerator.”

Sam nodded. “Well, whoever the owners of this isolated place are, groceries must be a problem if they have to be hauled in with them from any distance, probably either by boat along the river or maybe a floatplane out on the lake.” He tossed the towel down on the counter. “You happen to come across any tools?”

“In the drawer over there.”

Great. At least he could make an effort to repair the latch and lock on the back door, saving them from the nuisance of using the chair to keep the door shut. As much as he admired Eve’s resourcefulness, along with a growing list of other qualities about this amazing woman, he had been feeling pretty useless since she had awakened him. He’d need to remedy that.

She had breakfast ready and waiting on the table when he successfully finished with the door. “Not bad,” he complimented her after tasting the eggs. “Not bad at all.”

“It’s the spices that save them.”

“Whatever the secret, you are one hell of a cook, Eve Warren. That restaurant you’re planning to open will definitely be a hit.”

Sam could see he had pleased her, and that made him feel good. For the moment, anyway. He hated the thought of having to spoil her enthusiasm, but before they finished their breakfast it would be necessary for him to do just that.

“Only with the right ingredients and a restaurant-size range to cook on. One that doesn’t qualify as a museum piece and has to be fueled by wood. Although,” she said, glancing at the ancient iron cookstove, “I’m not a stranger to this kind of antique.”

She went on to tell him that, while researching an article for the magazine on how their ancestors prepared meals for their families, she’d had the opportunity to use such a cookstove at a re-created pioneer village outside St. Louis.

It was an interesting anecdote, but Sam only half listened to it. The other half of his mind dealt with the reality that had been gnawing at him at a gut level from the moment he had opened his eyes this morning.

In the end it was Eve who, finally aware of his silence, gave him the opening he needed. “What is it, Sam? What’s bothering you?”

Lowering the mug of coffee he’d been sipping from, he leaned toward her across the table, his tone one of necessary authority. “Angel, as tempting as it is, we can’t go on staying here playing house.”

“You’re telling me we need to clear out. When?”

“As soon as the fog shows any sign of lifting. Because when it does, there’s nothing to prevent our bad boys from taking to the air again in that chopper of theirs. They could already be up and searching for us.”

“It’s a big wilderness out there, Sam, and they can’t possibly know where we went.”

“Dammit, Eve, it isn’t safe for us here.”

“And just where do we go that
will
make us safe?”

“Downriver. Sooner or later, we’re bound to reach some kind of settlement that will put us in touch with the outside world.”

“They could just as well find us there or on the river itself while we’re trying to get to this settlement you’re counting on.”

“We are not going to sit around waiting for them,” he insisted.

She gazed at him solemnly for a few seconds before nodding slowly. “You’re right, of course. We’ll go as soon as the fog starts to thin.” She got to her feet and began to clear the table. “But until then…”

“Until then, what?”

“I’m going to use the time to put food and water together for the trek.”

He could see that made sense. To go out there again without the essentials would be courting suicide. He hesitated before asking her, “You mind taking care of that end of it?”

He went on to explain that he felt the need to go down to the shore, where he would try to learn if there
was
a downriver or whether the stream ended on the lake. He also meant to check the ice to make certain it was still solid. And while he was there, he would look through the boatshed for anything that might be useful to them. Not to mention being on the alert for any sign of the enemy.

Sam had been pleased by the rising temperature when he’d come away from the privy earlier. But when he emerged from the cabin again and stood on the front porch, listening to the drip of water from the melting snow on the roof, he began to regret that development.

He should have realized that a thaw wouldn’t benefit them. That if it got any warmer the ice downstream might not remain reliable enough to bear them. Providing, that is, such a route existed at all. Yesterday, in the heavy snowfall, he hadn’t been able to make out the end of the lake, and with this fog today it was still hidden from him. But since the river entered the lake, it only made sense that there would be an outlet somewhere out there.

Leaving the porch, he made his way down the slope in the direction of the shore, pausing at intervals to listen for the sound of any aircraft. Nothing. There was only the eerie silence of the motionless fog, its dampness licking at his face. He could almost smell it.

However, the ice concerned him when he reached the shoreline. He could neither see nor hear any open waters flowing yet on the lake. Didn’t mean the cover was still safe. He needed to test it.

Moving with care, he ventured out several yards on the lake, risking a plunge through the surface when he stomped his boot on the snow-crusted ice. There was no give in any of the spots he tried. The ice was still hard and secure.

Still, he couldn’t convince himself a massive thaw wasn’t imminent, and if they were caught by an ice breakup while on the river… Yeah, that would be bad. Even worse, the fickle weather could trap them in another blizzard, and this time with no handy shelter.

Hell, there were no good options, were there?

Might as well investigate that boatshed while he was here. Perhaps it would provide him with some kind of weapon to use to defend them if, and when, they encountered their pursuers again at close range.

Circling the structure, he discovered that it had no windows. There were two wide doors, however, one on the water side and the other facing the cabin.

He didn’t have to force any entry this time. The waterside door he tried was unlocked. He left it open for light when he went inside. The first thing he noticed was a lightweight, fiberglass canoe. When the fog finally cleared, and there was an ice breakup, the canoe could carry them downriver.

Maybe. All these
maybes
.

Other than an assortment of fishing gear, there was little else of interest in the shed. Certainly no weapons of any kind. Not so much as a bow and arrows. There were no firearms in the cabin, either—nothing like a hunting rifle. He’d already looked for one earlier. The owners would probably have taken that kind of thing with them.

Shutting the shed door behind him, he returned to the cabin where he found Eve in the kitchen assembling the last of the provisions they would take with them downriver.

“I found these in one of the cupboards,” she said, indicating two plastic, capped bottles on the counter that she had already filled with water. “As for food, there’s beef jerky over here, along with some dried fruits and nuts. I figured we would divide the stuff, maybe carry the loads in backpacks we might be able to fashion out of a pair of blankets. We’ll need blankets if we have to spend another night in the open.”

Sam gazed at her, moved by the spirit in her voice. There was an enemy somewhere out there, just waiting for the opportunity to find them again. Eve knew that, knew it just as well as he did. And yet she was handling that certainty with a courage that tugged at his gut.

Despite the insanity of it, it was there inside him. The longing to tell her how much she had already come to matter to him in these few days. How he had this strong desire not just to make love to her every time she came near him but to hold her close, emotionally as well as physically. To keep her safe. To make her his own.

It would be reckless of him, however, to express such feelings. As long as he had this memory loss, with no past and no real identity, he couldn’t let himself get deeply serious about her. The trouble was, he already cared about her far too much.

But until he fully regained his memory, knew just what he had to offer her, any commitment would be unfair to both of them. And so far, except for disjointed fragments here and there that didn’t always make sense to him, he wasn’t much closer to finding that memory. In Sam’s opinion, it made him less than a whole man.

It was after he told her what he’d learned down at the lake, then shaved and brushed his teeth, that Eve sought his opinion about fixing lunch for them.

“With the fog out there showing no sign of any letup, I think it would still be safe to use the stove. It wouldn’t take me long to put together something with the noodles and dried beef. We ought to have one last, hot nourishing meal before we leave here,” she reasoned. “There’s no telling when we’ll be able to eat like that again.”

Her argument was sound. As long as they were prepared to douse their fires at the first indication the fog might be thinning, Sam had no objection to her plan.

He left her in the kitchen working her culinary magic and went outside to haul in more wood. With two fires to feed, they were burning up a considerable amount of fuel. It might even be necessary to split more logs. There was no shortage of them on the back porch.

Locating an axe in a cupboard beside the fireplace, he went outside, found a spot to work and began to cleave the logs that hadn’t already been split and stacked on the front porch.

The labor was a welcome outlet for his restless energy. More than that, it gave him the opportunity to work on his memory. It was probably something that couldn’t be summoned at will, but to his satisfaction he was able to achieve just that.

Still pieces, nothing complete, but it was enough. By the time he had a pile of split wood ready to carry into the cabin, he’d been able to recall images of his rigorous FBI training sessions at Quantico. He even remembered the other rooms in his Chicago apartment and his squad supervisor at headquarters. But not all the rest. Not yet.

Although he made an effort to restrain his excitement, Sam must have had a look on his face that betrayed him. Because when Eve finally called him into lunch, she gazed at him thoughtfully, maybe wondering whether he’d made any progress in regaining his memory. She didn’t question him, however, and he appreciated that. He wasn’t ready to tell her, not until he’d recovered the rest.

They talked instead about the meal she had waiting for them on the table. After a few bites, he praised the steaming beef and noodles.

“I guess it’s good enough,” she agreed.

“You underestimate yourself. It’s better than just good.”

This time he helped her with the cleanup when they rose from the table.

“I should check that ice again on the lake,” he told her, hanging the dish towel on its hook.

Eve didn’t object. She seemed to sense he needed to be alone, not just to test the ice again but to do battle with those portions of his memory that still eluded him.

The fog remained as dense as ever, but the temperature had continued to climb. Climbed considerably. In just the relatively brief span of time Sam had been in the kitchen with Eve, there had been changes.

He could see those changes when he made his way down the hill to the lake. There were already some bare patches on the ground, along with little rivulets of melted snow trickling down the slope to join the lake.

The conditions on the lake itself were more startling. Obvious even through the fog were open spots where the water below had worked its way above the swiftly rotting ice. A breakup was already under way, needing only a stiff wind sweeping over the lake to carry the ice through whatever outlet existed on the other end.

But even without a wind, neither the lake nor that stream beyond it would be safe to travel on foot. The canoe would be their best means of getting out of here, provided that breakup occurred. If not, their only choice was to hike along the bank of the stream. The vegetation bordering streams in a forested area like this would be heavy, making the going tough, maybe even impossible.