Blood?
Gina barely had time to register the possibility before another wave snatched them up.
His eyes opened, and he grabbed on to the nearest strap as the water rose furiously under them.
“Don’t move,” Gina cried, because the last thing they needed was for him to start flailing around and destabilizing the boat again. Throwing an arm over the seat, she hung on as they reached the crest of the wave amid a shower of spray, then bumped at what felt like warp speed down the rough spine into the trough.
As soon as the boat leveled out she scrambled onto the seat and reclaimed the wheel and throttle.
“We’re out of here,” she said to him with a palpable surge of relief. At least she once again had some degree of control. A quick glance at the approaching weather confirmed what she already knew—time was running out fast. The waves were coming in furious bunches now and seemed to be gathering size and speed by the minute. A harbinger of what was on the way, the wind blew relentlessly, driving heavy bursts of snow in angry gusts across the water. The bulk of the storm filled the horizon as far as the eye could see. Paler gray clouds mushroomed out of the billowing charcoal central mass in a way that made her pulse pound with alarm. Flickering glimmers of lightning deep inside the storm lit up various sections ominously. The whole thing seemed to be heading their way with the approximate speed of a runaway train.
Gina came about, opened up the throttle, and started heading in. Forget trying to reach camp. They needed to get to shore now.
A look around at her passenger made her frown. He still lay on his back. His head was near her seat; his feet touched the stern. Awash in the inch or so of icy water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat, he shivered violently. The front of her hair was damp, and water beaded on her coat and pants, but inside her clothes she was dry. Still she was cold to her marrow even in her insulated outfit. He had to be literally freezing to death.
At the moment, though, the only thing she could do for him was get him off the water.
“Are you badly hurt?” Her sharp question was prompted by the movement of his hand to press gingerly over what she was sure now was an injury to his side. Diffused by the saturation of his shirt, the stain was spreading steadily. It looked more brown than red, but still she didn’t think it could be anything but blood.
He grimaced. His eyes opened a slit. “No.” He took a breath. “Where are we?”
Since any except the most urgent, lifesaving treatment was going to have to wait until they were ashore anyway, she moved on from his physical condition to answer his question.
“Just off the coast of Attu.”
A frown creased his brow. “Attu.”
“How many others were on the plane?” Her throat hurt from shouting to be heard over the wind, but she had to ask, just as she had to visually skim every piece of wreckage they passed in case there might be another survivor out there. Although she knew that there was no more time, that staying out any longer on the increasingly wild water would be little short of suicidal, she couldn’t not search, even as she sent the boat scudding across the waves.
“Three. All dead.” His voice was rough and raw. His reply ended in a violent coughing spasm that brought up a gush of seawater and had her wincing for him.
The memory of the severed leg she’d seen popped into her mind. Its owner was almost certainly dead. Even if her passenger was wrong, even if the other victims had wound up alive in the icy water, by now they would probably be beyond saving even if she could find them.
“What’s your name? Where were you headed?” she asked. The sheer amount of debris was defeating her, Gina realized even as she continued to look around.
She knew there was nothing more she could do. Still, the thought that she might be leaving someone behind to die made her stomach turn inside out.
An image of the burned-out plane in which three of the people she’d loved best in the world had died flashed into her mind’s eye. Her heart thudded and her breath caught even as she angrily shook her head to clear it.
Do not go there.
Her gaze again fell on her now-silent passenger, and she was immediately distracted. Not that he was doing anything. At all. In fact, he seemed to be barely breathing now, and that was just it. His eyes were closed again, and he lay motionless. The dark stain on his shirt continued to grow. She was sure now that it was blood. What alarmed her even more than the spreading blood, though, was that he had stopped shivering.
That was one of the signs of advancing hypothermia.
Was he losing consciousness? Going into shock?
Had she rescued him from the water only to have him die on her now?
“Hey,” she said. His head was right behind and below her. She twisted to tap his cheek with her gloved fingers. “You need to stay awake.”
No response. Not even the flicker of an eyelid.
If he was unconscious, there was no way she was going to move him: he was too big. And she knew herself well enough to know that once they reached land she wasn’t going to be able to just leave him behind in the boat to die.
You have to save yourself.
Gina shuddered. She could hear her father screaming those very words at her as distinctly as if she were back in that plane struggling to get him out. He’d been trapped inside when it had plunged into a Mexican jungle, and he’d died. A renowned archaeologist in the Indiana Jones mold, Gavin Sullivan had spent his life adventuring all over the world. Gina’s mother had tired of his nomadic existence when Gina was ten, divorced him, and settled into an ordinary life as a history professor. She was, in Gina’s father’s words, domestically inclined. The contemptuous way in which he’d said that had made Gina, who lived with her mother most of the time, secretly terrified of having him extend that description to her. Because the truth was that she also tended to like having a home and friends and a calm, stable life. To cover up what he would consider those deplorable tendencies, when she’d been with him she’d embraced his lifestyle with outward enthusiasm, going along with his increasingly hair-raising exploits as if she lived for excitement, too.
Oh, God, after all the work she’d done to put the memories behind her, the crash of the silver jet had brought them raging back.
The next contact her hand made with her passenger’s face was more of a smack. “Can you hear me?”
Still nothing.
Straightening, Gina turned her face into the wind in hopes that a blast of icy air would clear her mind, and found herself confronted by the appalling image of the tumbling clouds at the leading edge of the storm swallowing up the crashed plane’s still-upright tail. This evidence of how fast the storm was closing in did what a faceful of snow-spiked wind couldn’t: it cleared her mind instantly. It also terrified her.
Jerking her gaze away from the spine-chilling sight, she pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go and set the boat on a beeline for the rocky beach that was the closest practical spot to land.
Reaching down behind her, she smacked her oblivious passenger again, hard.
“You! Wake—” up, was how she meant to finish that, but the radio interrupted, crackling to life with a sputter of static, making her jump. God, she’d forgotten about it. It was still clipped to her pocket.
“. . . blizzard conditions. Are you there? Gina? This is Ray . . .”
His voice dissolved into more static, but Gina knew who it was: Ray Wheeler. The team leader. Grabbing the radio, she depressed the speaker button and said into it, “Ray. There’s been a—”
Before she could say anything more, before she could tell him about the plane crash and the survivor and where she was and that she urgently needed help to get her and her passenger safely back to camp, the radio was snatched from her hand.
Her mouth dropped open in shock as she watched it sail over the side of the boat to splash down in the churning water, where it immediately vanished.
Then her head swiveled. Her passenger had somehow managed to roll onto h
is knees. He was right behind her, steadying himself with a hand curled around her seat and another braced against the boat’s side. Their eyes locked. There was no mistaking what was in his this time. They were hard. Brutal. Deadly.
“No radio,” he said.
Chapter Six
A quiver of fear shot down Gina’s spine. Her pulse kicked into overdrive. Her heart began to pound.
Looking into the hard, handsome face of the man whose life she had just risked her own to save, Gina had a terrible epiphany: the thing about rescuing a stranger was that after the rescue, he was still a stranger.
She didn’t know the slightest thing about him. Except that she was now alone with him in the middle of a stormy sea, he was a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than she was, and he had just thrown her radio in the drink.
And now every internal warning system she possessed was going insane.
She tightened her grip on the wheel as it occurred to her that there wasn’t a whole lot to prevent him from throwing her in after the radio. Then he’d have the boat to himself and—and what? She didn’t know. Maybe she was reading too much into what he’d just done. Maybe he was hallucinating/traumatized by the crash/unaware of what he was doing?
Yeah, no. Those narrow glinting eyes—they were the color of black coffee, she saw now that she was looking into them all up close and personal—were as aware as her own. Swallowing hard, she tore her gaze from his and forced herself to concentrate on her driving as the boat bounced like a kid on a trampoline over the tall whitecaps that raced toward shore. The truth behind the old no-good-deed-goes-unpunished saying might have just hit her over the head with a two-by-four, but she had to keep her focus: if they weren’t off the water by the time the storm caught up with them, whether the guy she’d saved was up to no good probably wasn’t going to matter.
Because they were both going to be dead.
“Why would you do that?” she asked angrily. Pretending that she wasn’t disturbed by what he’d done was pointless: he had to know she was. Realizing that her shoulders had hunched in an automatic defensive reaction to having someone she didn’t trust so close behind her, she deliberately relaxed them. “I was trying to get you some help.”
“You’re all the help I need.” His voice was a ragged growl. For the first time it occurred to her that his accent was American, not that it made her feel any better. She could be harmed by a fellow countryman as easily as by anyone else. He moved closer as he spoke, which put him way too close for comfort. Having the bulk of him looming up inches behind her made the skin prickle on the nape of her neck.
He could be dangerous.
Her breathing quickened. So did her pulse.
He leaned closer. She could feel the brush of his big body against her back, and her shoulders instantly tensed again in response.
He said, “Where are the people you’re with?”
If he hadn’t been so near, she wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the escalating noise. Wind blew, surf crashed, and the motor whined with the effort of combating the increasingly massive waves. But his voice was practically in her ear, and his encroachment into her space felt—threatening. The question felt threatening. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t asking so that he could calculate the quickest route to reaching help.
As she brushed away the pelting crystals of snow that were making her chilled face tingle, her mind went in a thousand directions at once, trying to decide the best answer to give him. Confirming that the two of them were totally alone might not be smart. On the other hand, he had the same view of their destination that she did: a shallow crescent beach rising to a rocky hillside striped with areas of brownish tundra, and, beyond that, a line of black mountains powdered with snow.
Not exactly a well-populated area.
She made the decision then not to lie to him. He had no reason to harm her. She didn’t mean to give him one.
“At our camp. Most of them. Probably.” Okay, that had the virtue of being the exact truth while still leaving room for reinforcements to be lurking just out of sight.
“How many?”
Wetting her lips, she told him.
“How close is your camp?”
Again, she rejected the temptation to lie. “A few miles.”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” There was a menacing undertone to that last question that sent another wary quiver snaking down her spine. Her already thudding heart thudded faster. This time she absolutely got the feeling that giving him the wrong answer might prove hazardous to her health.
Who is this guy? What have I gotten myself into?
Beating back the panicky feelings that were fluttering like butterflies in her stomach wasn’t easy, but she tried, and when she spoke, her tone was measured and calm. “My name is Gina Sullivan. Dr. Gina Sullivan. I’m an environmental studies professor at Stanford, and I’m here with a group of scientists to study the effect of pollution on birds.” Narrowing her eyes against the rushing wind as she marshaled her courage, she added tartly, “And I just saved your life.”
“Yeah,” he said, with no inflection at all. Something about that struck her as being more alarming than the menace she’d thought she’d detected in his tone before. Like her saving his life didn’t matter. Like he was the kind of ruthless opportunist who would let himself be saved, and then dispose of his savior in any way he found convenient. She was reminded suddenly, irresistibly, of that old scorpion-and-frog story where the frog gave the scorpion a ride across a pond and was stung to death by the scorpion on the way. When the dying frog asked why, the scorpion replied, “Because that’s my nature.”
Picturing herself as the frog, Gina shivered.
Then her chin came up. She’d be damned if she was going to sit there quivering in fear of him.
“And your name is . . . ?” she prompted.
When he didn’t answer, Gina’s lips compressed. She flicked a wary glance back at him. Focused ahead of the boat, his eyes were obsidian slits in a face that was ashen now except for the blue tinge of his mouth, which was grim. His jaw was hard. The wind had dried his hair, which was seal black and cut so short that she wondered if he could be military. She didn’t find the thought reassuring. His shirt was still so wet it clung to him. Through it, she could see exactly how heavily muscled his shoulders and chest were. Despite his clothes, which appeared to be the tattered remains of an expensive suit, the man was definitely not a desk jockey. The lower half of the left side of his shirt was now dark with blood. If he was bleeding like that despite how chilled his body had to be, then it was a serious injury. She marveled that he was still able to function. He had to be operating on pure adrenaline.
To have survived the crash, to say nothing of his immersion in the icy sea, and still be moving and functional, he had to be a fricking machine.
HIS GAZE shifted. Abruptly she found herself looking into his eyes. Even with him on his knees behind her they were higher than hers, which unhappily reminded her of just how big he really was. There was not a trace of softness or compassion in them, or really anywhere in his harshly carved face.
Pulling her gaze away, Gina worked on maintaining an outward facade of calm as she looked unseeingly toward the beach.
“The storm’s getting close,” he said. The tickle of his breath against her cheek made her tense up. Despite his good looks, she hated having him so near. “We’ll be lucky to make it in.”
On that they were in full agreement. Whatever else was going on with them, they were of necessity allied against the storm. For now, it was the common enemy, chasing them across the water like a ravenous gray beast, obliterating sea and sky as it devoured everything in its path. Gina’s heart pounded as she realized that it was gaining on them with alarming speed. Ahead of it, all around where the Zodiac was shooting toward the bay and beyond, the day was darkening as if dusk were falling, although it wasn’t yet four p.m. and there should have been at least an hour and a half of daylight left. The waves were starti
ng to rival skyscrapers in size, and the wind was approaching gale force. As long as they were able to stay a reasonable distance out in front of it, they were actually benefiting from the strength of the blow because it was taking them in faster. Pushed toward land, the boat skimmed the water at what felt like warp speed, touching down with a jolt and then bouncing up again, over and over and over, Gina’s butt smacking the seat with each bump. If she’d been trying to do anything except go straight in, the little craft would have been impossible to control.
He asked, “Anybody going to be waiting for you up there on the beach?”
She hated admitting it. “No.”
“So you’re out here all alone.”
Something in his tone gave her pause. She didn’t answer.
“Are you alone?”
The menace was back in his voice. Gina barely repressed a shiver. “Yes.”
By that time they’d almost reached the mouth of the bay fronting the beach that was her target. The water before them wasn’t quite as rough as the waves they were riding, although tall whitecaps rolled angrily toward shore, and near the beach the surf was white with foam. As they flew past, the giant waves they were leaving behind broke over a trio of building-size rocks that served as a breakwater, booming as they showered the boat with a fine mist of icy spray.
Gina barely felt the droplets hit. She had both hands clamped around the wheel as she piloted the boat through the rocks. All her focus had to be on keeping the boat on course as she pointed it directly toward the smoothest section of beach.
Given the turbulence and what was certain to be the concurrent state of the undertow, to say nothing of the temperature of the water, she wasn’t even going to try to bring the Zodiac in in the usual way, which, absent a dock, involved stopping a few yards from shore, hopping out, and pulling the boat through the surf to land.
Darkness Page 4
