Darkness (12 page)

His head lay right beside her thigh. As the light caught him he looked up at her, squinting against the brightness of the beam. “I thought ‘Be Prepared’ was the Boy Scout motto.”

The implication in that was actually kind of reassuring. “What, were you a Boy Scout?”

“No. I beat up on kids who were.”

For a moment she looked at him in surprise. Then something—a glint in his eyes, a twist at the corner of his mouth, clued her in: he was joking.

“Funny,” she said. But it was good to know that he
could
joke. She didn’t know any, so she couldn’t be sure, but she liked to think that killers lacked a sense of humor.

As well as sex appeal. He definitely possessed that, too. Even in his present condition, he exuded a kind of animal magnetism. Raw masculinity in spades.

He was so close she could see the small lines around his eyes and the deeper ones bracketing his mouth; the elbow of the arm tucked beneath his head brushed her leg. Even lying down he was
big
. His ink-black hair appeared to be slightly damp again, and she remembered the snow that had melted in it. He was frowning: the straight black slashes of his brows nearly met above eyes that were bleary with fatigue. The blue tinge had left his mouth, which was still way too pale, just like he was way too pale. From the darkness of his hair and eyes, she was as sure as it was possible to be that vampire was not his natural color.

He was still sexy.

“Bag’s warm inside,” he said. “Or else I’ve got hypothermia bad.”

She knew that feeling hot while you were actually freezing to death was a major end-stage hypothermia symptom.

“The bag’s warm,” she said. “I ran the pan inside it. And the hand warmers are down at the foot.”

“Ah.”

He hitched the silken cocoon higher around his shoulders. In the process his knuckles brushed her side. Her pulse skittered uneasily as she registered just how small the space really was, and that he took up way more than his fair share of it. His lids drooped as if he was on the verge of closing his eyes, but the prospect didn’t make her feel any less anxious. She didn’t know him, didn’t trust him, and was more than a little afraid of him despite his assurance that he wasn’t going to hurt her. To make matters worse, she was attracted to him. And there wasn’t going to be any keeping her distance from him.

To say that she was uncomfortable was an understatement. She felt vulnerable and at risk, and she didn’t like the feeling. The hollowing of her stomach, the prickliness creeping over her skin, were sensations that she could have lived without.

To combat them, she did what she could to take control of the situation.

“I’m going to finish setting the furnace up,” she said, indicating the pan of rocks.

“Furnace, huh?”

“That’s right.”

Telling him what she was doing was unnecessary, but she was nervous, and talking to him, she hoped, would help mask that. If he had any evil intentions toward her, demonstrating how useful she could be to him might help ward those off, too. She crawled away from him as she spoke, pushing the pan of rocks down to the far end of the tent and positioning the blanket behind it so that its shiny metal surface would reflect and thus intensify the heat. Stripping off her gloves, she tucked them into her pocket and reached for her backpack. Rooting around in it, she pulled out two protein bars, the last bottle of water, and the first aid kit.

His head was tilted so that he could watch her.

“You got any kind of weapon in there?” he asked.

The question sent curls of apprehension twisting through Gina’s bloodstream. It spoke volumes about what kind of man he was. It told her that he still thought someone was coming after him despite the storm.

It scared her.

Chapter Eleven

N
o,” she replied shortly. “I don’t have a weapon. I have food. And water. A first aid kit.”

Trying to calculate how far the glow from the flashlight might be visible after accounting for the shrouding effects of their protective nylon shell and the storm was useless. Worse, picturing the tent as a beacon of light in the snowy darkness made her feel like jumping out of her skin. Under the circumstances, the staccato drumbeat of the sleet pounding down outside was downright reassuring. The occasional blast of errant wind that rippled the silky walls around them was, too.

No one is out there in this
.

As soon as it was over she was getting away from him, she reminded herself. Without him, she was in no danger at all. She just had to sit tight and ride out the storm.

Tearing open the wrapper with more force than the action strictly called for, Gina shoved a protein bar at him. It had been hours since her last meal. She wasn’t hungry—she was beyond it, she thought—but some of the shakiness she was experiencing might be because she needed to eat. He definitely needed the calories to make up for the blood he’d lost, and to produce heat.

“A pocket knife? Eating utensils?” His tone made it clear that he was still harping on the possibility of a weapon. Taking the protein bar, he raised himself up on an elbow and bit into it hungrily. His voice was stronger now. She thought that the warmth plus the water he’d consumed had revived him a little.

“Try a spork.”

He grimaced his opinion of the weapon potential of the combination spoon and fork.

“Mace? Pepper spray?” he continued between bites.

“Oh, my gosh, you’re in luck: I have bug spray. No, wait, they’re towelettes.” She was eating by that time, too. The chewy combination of chocolate and oats tasted better than the finest filet mignon—or at least it would have, if chills of fear hadn’t been chasing each other down her spine at the idea that he thought a weapon might be necessary. “Are you seriously expecting some kind of an attack? Tonight? Out here?”

He was wolfing down his bar as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. “Depends.”

That did not help. Definitely. Not.

“On what?” She eyed him starkly.

“If they find us.”

Oh, God
.

“They?” The question was out before she could stop it. She had a ridiculous urge to instantly clap both hands over her mouth in an attempt to stuff the imprudent word back inside. She was really, truly better off not knowing. She didn’t
want
to know.

He didn’t answer, not directly. Finishing his protein bar, he held out his hand for the water bottle, which she passed him. He took a swig and said, “You tell anybody about pulling me out of the sea? Over that radio?”

Gina could feel her heart beating way too fast. “I tried telling Arvid and Ray—two of my colleagues—about the plane crash, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t hear me. There was too much static. Once I spotted you, I was too focused on
saving your life
to try getting hold of them again until the transmission you interrupted by
throwing my radio into the water
.”

He ignored the pointed parts of her answer. “With any luck they think everybody who was on that plane is dead. In that case, we might be all right.”

There was that terrifying
they
again. Coupled as it was with the even more terrifying
we
, it was enough to make her blood run cold. The bite of protein bar she was swallowing suddenly felt like a clump of sand going down her throat. Coughing, she held out her hand for the water bottle and, when he passed it to her, chugged a few mouthfuls. Once more visions of taking off through the storm and leaving him behind danced through her head. Tantalizing visions. Which were immediately crushed by the rattling of the thin walls encircling them as another moaning blast of wind snaked around the rocks to shake the tent. Even if the storm lasted only a few hours, by the time it passed it would be the middle of the night. Only a fool would head out across Attu’s rough, arctic terrain in the middle of the night.

Gloomily she faced the truth: she couldn’t have been more trapped if she were chained to him.

“So you don’t think anyone heard your transmission about the crash?” he said, as if he was thinking something through. He definitely seemed stronger now. She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. “Did your friends know where you were?”

“They knew I was out in the boat.”

“They know where?”

“Not really, no. I tried telling them where the plane crash was over the radio, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t get the message because of all the static.”

“You took off from your camp alone?”

Gina shook her head. “A colleague and I left camp yesterday. We rescued a white-tailed eagle that got caught in some oil. Today my colleague walked back to camp, and I took the boat to follow the eagle and her mate back to their nest. I put in on the other side of Chirikof Point, but I could have gone in any direction, depending on which way the birds went.”

“Good thing for me you came my way.”

Gina made a noncommittal sound.
Not such a good thing for me
.

But then she thought of him dying all alone in that frigid water. She couldn’t bring herself to wish things had turned out that way, either.

Neither of them said anything more until, after finishing her protein bar and taking a few more sips of water, she handed him the bottle along with a couple of pills from one of the two-pill packets in the first aid kit.

“Extra Strength Tylenol,” she explained when he looked askance at the tablets she’d given him.

He eyed the small pills on his palm with disfavor. “That the best painkiller you have?”

“Yes.”

He swallowed the pills, chased them with a gulp of water, and looked at her.

“Got any more?”

“Tylenol? One more packet. I suggest you save it for later.”

“What about food? Water?”

“A couple of protein bars. No more water. If we have to, we can always gather snow and melt it.”
That’s it, Gina, you can throw the “we” around, too. Make it sound like the two of you are a team
. Although given how wet everything was going to be after the storm, gathering fuel for a fire might be a problem. But she could use the lighter flame by itself if necessary. She would need the pan, but she could dump the rocks out once they’d cooled.

She didn’t like to think about the rocks cooling. Their heat had already appreciably warmed the tent. Since she didn’t want to overheat—sweat was an enemy in cold conditions—she pushed back her hood and unzipped her parka. Beneath it she was wearing a red thermal long-sleeved tee tucked into her waterproof pants. Beneath the pants was a pair of jeans. The thermal tee was snug as befitted an inner layer. So were the jeans.

As her coat opened her hair spilled out to tumble around her face. Sometime over the last hour or so it had worked its way free of the bobby pins that had secured it. Shaking it back impatiently, gathering the mass of it in both hands, she ran a hand along the length of it to check for any remaining bobby pins and found none. Twisting it into a rope, she knotted it at her nape with the efficiency born of long practice. It wouldn’t stay that way for long, but for now at least it was out of her face.

Finishing, she looked up to find that he was watching her. Intently. The tee had a crew neck, so she was still covered from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes, even if her shape—small but round and firm breasts above a lithe waist and slim hips—was now more readily apparent. And her hair was just—hair. No need to feel uneasy under his gaze.

But she did. Take the close quarters, add in his rugged good looks and all those muscles and his seminudity, and it was impossible for her not to be aware of him as a man. The look in his eyes made it clear that he was now equally aware of her as a woman.

Their eyes met. Something crackled in the air between them that hadn’t been there before—a kind of current. An electric vibration. An elemental male-female thing.

The sudden spark of sexual heat that flared inside her as he looked at her was so urgent it actually hurt. Her chest contracted. Her throat closed.

And her body started up with a hot, sweet pulse.

She instantly, figuratively, turned her back on it. It was nothing she felt the slightest urge to acknowledge, much less pursue.

The plane crash—
her
plane crash—was five years in the past now. In the last year, she’d had precisely two dinner dates. Each with a different man, each leading nowhere. Before that, nothing. She hadn’t been ready. She wasn’t ready when she’d gone out on those dates. Along with her father, her husband, David, had died in the crash. Four months after their wedding. Their lives together had barely begun. He’d been her father’s research assistant, twenty-six years old, blond and wiry and handsome. He’d been as reckless and adventuring as her father, and Gina had found herself agreeing to do things she never would have agreed to do if she hadn’t fallen so hard for him. Reckless adventuring was not her nature, but she’d pretended like it was for the year they’d known each other, just like she’d pretended it was for her father. Maybe if she hadn’t pretended so hard, maybe if she’d allowed herself to be her true careful, logical, look-before-you-leap self, she could have stopped what happened and the others would still be alive.

But she hadn’t, and they’d died.

She’d lived, which meant she’d had no choice: slowly, painfully, she’d put her life back together. It was a different life than before, but it had gotten to a place where it was an actual life again. Quiet. Predictable. Stable. Good.

That was what she wanted. That was the only kind of life she could handle now, she saw.

This—this second plane crash, the apparent danger she was in because of it,
him
—was more than she was equipped to deal with.

It hit too close to home. It brought back too many memories, too many emotions. The trip to Attu had been a baby-steps attempt to get back out into the great outdoors, to embrace the wider world of adventure again, to heal herself. She saw now that it had been a mistake. She was still too raw inside, while reality was too harsh, too sharp. Too ugly.

“Something wrong?” he asked, which was when Gina realized that she’d been staring at him with who knew what kind of expression on her face.