“We won't freeze. Let's keep walking.”
“But we've been walking for hours. What are you hoping to find out here?”
“A cabin,” he said. “Shelter. Something. Fuck. There's no moon and it's as dark as the devil's asshole out here. We could have passed the fucking Ritz a half dozen times and not known it.”
I heard the low, mournful cry of an owl. The swoop of wings. There was a rustle, and then cutting silence broken only by our knife-like gasps.
“What are we supposed to do now?”
Michael sighed. “We dig. Soil is pretty insulating and it's cold, but not freezing.”
'Dig a hole' sounded simple, but it took hours to make a space big enough and deep enough for the two of us, with walls high enough to block out the wind. My fingers were scraped raw with the effort. With my luck, they'd probably get infected just like the wound on my shoulder.
My muscles felt stiff and ached, and the repetitive motions opened up some of my wounds with a sharp sting that yielded to a slow and steady throb that pulsed in time to my heartbeat and made me feel queasy as I imagined the blood. But Michael was working tirelessly and silently and he had undergone the same things I had; I couldn't sit back and expect him to do this alone.
“Don't hurt yourself, Christina,” he said, as though he had been reading my mind. I must have made some sort of sound — a grunt or a gasp or something — and I knew and understood that on a basic level, but his perception seemed downright supernatural.
“Are we almost done?”
“Almost.”
“Thank God.” I closed my eyes briefly, toying with the idea of simply collapsing unconscious and having done with it. Instead, I continued to dig, bracing myself against the pain.
“All right,” Michael said, just when I thought I couldn't take it any longer. “I think it's deep enough.”
Blindly, I stumbled into the ditch we'd made, which was about three feet deep. Clumps of soil and dirt powdered me like talcum. Michael didn't follow, at least not right away, and to my horror I heard the sound of his footsteps retreating. “Michael?”
“One second.” I heard the rustling of leaves. What was he doing? Peeing?
There was a loud snap. I heard his footsteps growing louder, and so did the rustling.
“There.” Michael climbed in beside me with a grunt, and I felt the heat of his body in the darkness like the glow of a small space heater. Something papery grazed my cheek. A leaf. Michael was arranging branches clumsily across the top of our ditch, sending little cascades of dirt sprinkling across our already-filthy clothes.
“Now we won't be seen as easily from the air.”
As soon as my body stopped moving, exhaustion weighed down my limbs like lead. My body grew heavier, denser, and I whispered, “I don't think I can get back up.”
“Better than I was. What do we do tomorrow?”
“Put more distance between us and them. Try to find real shelter — and a phone.”
“And food?” My stomach wouldn't stop rumbling.
“If we can. Human beings can live for a couple weeks without food as long as they've got water. There's a lot of ways to die in the woods, and a good number of those ways involve being poisoned.”
“I remember learning about that somewhere,” I mumble sleepily. “Berries white, a poisonous sight. Berries red, have no dread.”
“That's not exactly true, you know,” Michael murmured. “There's plenty of toxic red berries, like dogwood and holly — and yew, if you eat the seeds.”
“Maybe we'll find a cabin with food.”
“Maybe.” My head rose and fell as he drew breath to sigh. “Other than that…I don't know.”
I put my hand on his chest, and felt him tense.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he said, although I suspected he was lying. “Your hands are cold.”
“Oh.” I started to pull away, but he put his hand over mine.
“Leave it. Feels nice.” He squeezed my fingers. “Christina — ” he hesitated “ — I'm sorry about what I said before. That one night, when I listed off your weaknesses as I saw them when I tried to warn you away from Callaghan. That was a mistake.”
“But you were right,” I whispered, “he did everything you said he would.”
“It doesn't matter. You're still the strongest woman I know. And nobody can take that from you. Not unless you let them.”
I started to cry. He wrapped his arm around me, and said nothing as I wept, even when my tears began to drip down on his chest. I cried for the pain, for the humiliation, for the loss, and the fact that somebody I loved had experienced the exact same torment.
Sleep was a long time coming. But at least I wasn't alone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wilderness
Christina
It was my own stiffening injuries rather than the light of the rising sun that ended up waking me. I sat up, and the fronds of the branches Michael had used to cover our hiding place scratched at my eyes.
Michael's eyes were open when I looked his way Had he been up all night, or had my own stirring roused him? He looked as awful as I felt, which lent more credibility to a night of sleeplessness. He made a low sound, and rubbed a hand over his face.
“Fuck,” he said, dragging the word through his teeth like a tough strip of meat. “I'm in hell.”
I was about to ask if he was all right—and stopped myself. What kind of question was that?
A stupid one.
I pushed the branches aside, glancing Michael's way briefly for confirmation. He didn't tell me to stop, so I finished shoving them aside. Moving around hurt: the cold had stiffened my joints, and my injuries had started to swell in the night, making them more painful. I tried not to think about that too deeply. We were still alive. That had to count for something.
My stomach chose that moment to let out a loud growl. I hadn't eaten anything in days. Adrenaline and pain had mitigated the effects of hunger, but now that the extra burst of energy had worn off, I felt that hollowness inside me very acutely.
I wet my cracked lips. Even the leaves were starting to look like a possibility. Remembering Michael's earlier warning about the dangers of forest flora made me cautious, though. I tilted my head towards him. “How well do you know these plants?”
“I know very little. Mostly from books.”
My hopes crashed, and burned.
He had been watching my face. He rolled to his feet, shuddering with the effort. He braced himself on the edge of the hole until the spasm passed.
“I didn't save you from drowning just so you could starve,” he said. “We'll find something.”
I nodded and tried not to think about food, but my desperate insides had seized control of my brain. An image of a plant hanging with berry-sized cheese burgers popped into my head without warning. I choked as my mouth flooded with saliva.
We'd managed to put some distance between us and the IMA's base last night, but then the helicopter had crashed, serving as a giant, smoking marker for how far we'd gotten and where we might be. Michael said we had to focus on covering as much ground as possible while also searching for food, and shelter.
The trees were a dense emerald tangle, fading to Impressionist daubs on the horizon. It was out of season for most flowers, but there were a few determined clusters of California poppy scattered among the shrubs and moss, along with lupin and wild clover. There were some berry bushes, too, but Michael said they were all poisonous. I might have fallen in love with this place if it weren't proving so inhospitable. The air was clear, and the scent of pine lingered everywhere with a pleasant, spicy fragrance.
I was getting exhausted, though. My feet were aching. As carefully as I tried to tread, I kept getting splinters and then having to stop and get them out. It was when I was sitting down on a half-rotted log, picking out some splinters and massaging some feeling back into my throbbing feet, that Michael came over with something in his hands. It took me a moment to r
ecognize what he was holding, and when I did, I knocked some of them to the ground in my eagerness — blackberries. “Food!”
Michael picked up the berries I'd dropped and popped them into his mouth. “They're late harvest,” he commented, to himself mostly since I was too busy stuffing my face. “But those tend to taste the best.”
I wasn't sure we could afford to be impartial. There's a quote in Don Quixote: hunger is the best sauce in the world. Right now, anything would have tasted amazing just because I was eating it.
The berries were tart and made the cuts on my lips sting, and the back of my throat seemed to want to curl up at the violent sweetness. But the sugar gave me energy, and dissipated some of that mental fog.
Ah, food.
Michael let me eat a handful before folding the rest up in a large leaf. “The last thing you want is to get a case of the shits out here in the middle of nowhere,” he said over my protests, “especially in your weakened state. You wouldn't survive.”
He then tried to distract me by pointing out a budded snow flower, a bizarre red plant that looked like a transplant from an alien planet. Someone — probably a forest ranger — had erected a little fence around it. There was a plaque with the plant's Latin name (Sarcodes sanguinea) and the words “DO NOT TOUCH.”
“Are they poisonous?”
Are they edible?
“Just rare. We'll eat more berries later.”
We had been walking for what felt like hours when we finally saw it — a cabin made out of dark wood that blended into the surrounding trees. It was small, with a single stone step. The area in front was worn down, as though someone had parked their car there. I looked around instinctively to see if there were any cars or roads around but there was nothing.
Which wouldn't be surprising, not at this time of the year. It was too late for camping and too early for skiing. The mountain economy would be dead until at least November. But the presence of the cabin was a good sign: it meant we were close to civilization.
Michael tried the door. It was locked. Of course.
“You'd be surprised,” he said, when I looked. “Give me a swatch of your skirt.”
The hem was already ragged from catching on branches and rocks; the fabric tore easily. Michael took the fabric and wrapped it around his fist. He punched through one of the windows, swiping the glass out of the way so the frame was clean. Then he climbed inside. The front door swung open creakily.
Michael looked around for alarms, but didn't see any. I immediately began searching for food. It was obvious some family or families used this as a winter getaway. There was a stack of well-worn games under the oak coffee table, and some mugs with tribal designs in one of the weathered cupboards. Books filled a lopsided bookshelf leaning against the wall opposite the fireplace. The titles were amusing. Time Enough for Love. Wanton Angel. Valley of the Dolls.
I opened a closet and found some cases of soda. They had a light coating of dust, but the date was still good. There were also two gallon jugs of water, a box of granola bars, and, pushed all the way to the back, a bag of marshmallows someone had clearly tried to hide. The marshmallows were no good — they'd melted into a sticky, gelatinous mass — but I tore open the box of granola bars and devoured two.
Michael found me while I was on the third. In one of the bedrooms, he'd found some spare clothes. He was wearing a UC Berkeley sweatshirt whose sleeves ended an inch above his wrists. “I thought these might work for you,” he said, tossing a large shirt and a pair of what looked like snow pants at me.
“Is there a bathroom?”
“Yeah. Water seems to be running, too.”
“Really?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “See for yourself.”
I immediately went to take a shower. The water didn't go hot at all, but I didn't care. I was covered in several days' worth of filth, and underneath all that, I could still feel his touch on my skin like a brand. It felt so good to scrub everything way; it was as though I were a butterfly emerging from my cocoon. Being clean again was like starting over anew. Clean slate.
Michael didn't ask to join me. I didn't even think about that until I ran into him in the hall outside. He usually wanted to shower with me, because it was an easy way to have sex without cleaning up after. But one look at his face said that sex was the last thing on his mind. It was the last thing on mine, too. It made me think too much about him and what he'd done.
There was only one bedroom, which made me think that this family didn't have kids, despite the board games. Rich college students, maybe.
I collapsed on top of the quilted comforter that looked handmade and probably was. My college experience was severely limited. I'd had to drop out of my university without a trace because the IMA had tracked me down and tried to have me killed just like they had unraveled all my other hopes and dreams.
I scratched at my arm, frowning. It definitely looked infected. The wound was hard, which was odd, and seemed to go beneath the skin. I didn't remember Adrian inflicting it. But then, I hadn't exactly been committing his acts to memory, either.
I didn't want to think about that now, though. Michael would look at it later. I'd have to remember to ask him. I closed my eyes and let the room melt away on a single, shaky breath.
When I opened my eyes again, it was dark, silent. A depression in the bed beside me told me that I wasn't alone. I could feel his breaths puffing softly against the back of my neck.
“Do you mind?” His voice was rough.
“No,” I said. I didn't.
He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest. I was still agonizingly sore, but with a soft bed under my body and some food in my belly, the pain felt a little less…immediate.
I shifted and something hard pressed against my backside. I froze. “Michael?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you want to…?”
“No.” His vehemence came as a relief. “Call me crazy,” he said, “but I'm not really in the mood.” To soften the words I imagined, he kissed the back of my neck, pushing my hair aside to get to it.
I rolled over, so we were facing each other. His breath was awful — but then, mine was, too. I didn't care. I put my hand on his hip and stroked him, once, with affection, as I leaned in to kiss him full on the mouth. His lips were dry and papery, but as he began to kiss me back they were anything but light.
He was an unstoppable force, this man. Like an earthquake or a torrential rain, he was a juggernaut powered by will and sheer determination. I had never thought I'd see him run down, but as he lay beside me he was the picture of exhaustion. I'd never seen him look more vulnerable — or more human.
Michael deepened the kiss, sweeping through my mouth like a gale. His hand was cupping my butt through the snow pants, and I tensed as he gripped too hard, causing pain to arc down to my thighs.
He had a second-sense for recognizing pain. I'd tried not to let myself think about why, but the truth of it was that he had caused his fair share of it and knew when to recognize the signs, when enough was enough. When he felt me clench, he let his hand fall to the mattress and he pulled away, gently rolling me over so we were back to our original position, his arm over my waist, me pressed against his front.
He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.
Michael
I kept thinking about what had happened at the base: our capture and subsequent torture, the all too narrow escape. That had been cutting it close, even for us. I was getting old. I was starting to make mistakes. Without realizing it, I'd come to rely almost entirely on luck…and now that luck had run out.
How had I failed so badly?
How had I fallen so far?
I thought of my track record. I was the man people went to when they wanted to get a job done. I'd never once made a mistake—until, all at once, I had, and everything I had built crumbled to pieces like a house of cards, or a bad chess game. Now I was a laughing stock. The type of man people used as an example
of what could happen to those who didn't play by the rules. I was a cautionary tale. I was a man who spent a night sleeping in a ditch, on the run from his life. I was a fucking victim, a fucking mess.
But I could feel the possibility of what I'd been buzzing in my veins like a drug. That potential for death and fear and violence was scratching just below the surface, always a second away from breaking out.
Christina had been my first mistake. She had been the poor move, the ill wind, the rogue element that had compromised everything. I'd broken the first rule of all mercenaries; I'd gotten involved. She had broken something inside of me, and the splinters of that shattered whole cut my whole world apart.
Was she worth it? I had asked myself that daily. Knowing what I knew now, would I take the opportunity to go back and do it all again differently? Would I have killed her when my boss had asked?
I…no. Not even now.
Did that make me a fool?
I was pretty sure it did.
I did not sleep well. I got up with the sun, rolling out of bed as soon as the first rays of light crested the mountain peaks. A bit of the night chill had seeped through the insulated walls of the cabin. It made my skin tighten around my bones with a deep ache.
I unwrapped one of the granola bars and poured myself a mug of water to wash it down. This cabin did not have a phone—I'd checked—which meant that we would have to locate another place that did.
I glanced back at the bed, where Christina still slept. She was an odd blend of vulnerability and strength. One moment, she could look ferocious; the next, painfully young. It was as subtle as a trick of the light, and just as deceptive.
That was what captured my attention. She had a tenacity, a willingness to survive, that many others lacked. No matter what life threw at her, she refused to curl up and die. She would go down fighting.
Unfortunately, men like Callaghan took that as a challenge. Even I had, once. The fact that she could be so blind to the dangers I posed to her infuriated me. I hadn't completely realized that it was a crumbling front to hide her own mounting terror.
Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) Page 29
