Darkness

by Karen Robards

  In the meantime, she was going full nice bear on his ass.

  “Here.” Gina wrapped the Mylar blanket back around his shoulders and handed him the crumpled turtleneck, which she might have considered trying to work him into to replace his shirt except for the obvious-at-a-glance fact that the trim-fitting garment had no chance in hell of stretching enough to accommodate his heavy shoulders, to say nothing of his arms and chest. “Put this back on that.”

  Nodding, she indicated the bullet hole, which still seeped blood. While he did as directed she pulled her gloves back on her cold hands and turned toward the fire. Grabbing one heat-resistant handle, she began to pull the pan away from the flames.

  “You have any—” he began.

  He was interrupted by Gina’s cry of dismay as a miniavalanche of snow that almost certainly had been blown off the top of the rocks by the howling wind dropped directly on the fire.

  And put it out.

  “Crap.” Gina stared with horror at the mound of snow that was already melting into the smoking, hissing remains of the fire, ruining nearly all the material that had gone into making it that hadn’t already burned. Galvanized by the need to save at least the core of her makeshift furnace, she frantically started wielding the pan and a piece of scorched stick to scrape the rocks away from the sizzling mess. Moments later she had the rocks scooped up in the pan and was speed-crawling for the tent with them. She could feel the precious heat wafting off them as she went.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Getting us some heat,” she told him over her shoulder as she entered the tent.

  She’d left the sleeping bag unzipped for easier access. Running the pan of rocks along the inside of it as a kind of makeshift bed warmer, she then set the pan down in the back corner, where it would heat the small tent while still being safely out of the way. Even if the rocks were to somehow spill, though, the worst that would happen is that they would melt a hole through whatever they landed on. There was no possibility of anything catching on fire.

  As an afterthought, she tucked the hand warmers down inside the sleeping bag to serve as an extra source of heat.

  The only thing left to do was get him inside.

  When she crawled back out, he was already on his hands and knees and almost at the door of the tent. Without the fire, the darkness was interrupted only by the narrow, focused beam of the flashlight in her hand. As it hit him, she could see that his face was drawn with effort and his mouth was tense. The air near the tent already felt ten degrees colder. The shriek of the wind howling past and the drumming of the sleet on the rocks underlined the extremity of their situation. Without the shelter the tent provided, they almost certainly wouldn’t live through the night.

  “I was coming to help you,” she said in a scolding tone, to which he responded with a grunt. On all fours, he was a large, dark shadow the approximate size and shape of a grizzly. A grizzly with a rattling Mylar superman cape and her turtleneck tied around his waist, which made for an irresistible mental image that would have made her smile under better circumstances. If there were such a thing as limp-crawling, he was doing it. If she’d had to help him—well, there really was no way to support someone who was crawling. And dragging him inside the tent would have been impossible.

  Turning to set the flashlight down inside so that he wouldn’t have to find his way to the sleeping bag and avoid the makeshift furnace in complete darkness, she scooted out of the way as he reached the tent and pulled the flap aside for him.

  “The sleeping bag’s unzipped. Get in it. Be careful of the pan of rocks at the far end.”

  He didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure he had the energy to speak. He was breathing hard enough so that she could hear it even over the noise of the storm. As he crawled past her, she saw that he was carrying his discarded clothes with him.

  “Wait! Stop! You can’t take those in there.” She caught a trailing pant leg, tugged. “They’ll get everything wet.”

  He stopped, looking over his shoulder at her. “I’ll need them. Tomorrow.”

  His tone told her that he was determined.

  “They won’t dry,” she said.

  “They’ll dry some.”

  Stalemate, and it was too cold and she was too tired to argue. “Fine. Leave them right where you are and I’ll hang them up in the vestibule.”

  He made a sound that she thought signified agreement, dropped the bundle of clothes, and proceeded on his way. The door of the tent was small, and he had to maneuver his way through carefully. He made it inside, and she heard the crackling of the space blanket, then a soft sound as, presumably, he collapsed onto the sleeping bag. Following him in, she closed up the outer flap, hung up his wet clothes as best she could in the vestibule, then took off her boots and left them in there, too.

  Crawling into the main part of the tent, she sealed the doorway up behind her, first with a zipper and then with a Velcro flap. The sounds of the storm were suddenly muffled, like the rush of traffic on a distant freeway. Except for the flashlight’s narrow column of light, the tent was dark. The corners, the ceiling, the sides of the tube encircling her were thick with shadows. She heard his breathing, harsh in that enclosed space, smelled the salty-sea scent of him, and felt her shoulders tighten. She’d never been one to suffer from claustrophobia, but for a moment the flimsy nylon of the walls and ceiling seemed to shrink around her. If she and the big, scary guy with the bullet wound had been in a space capsule on their way to Mars, their isolation couldn’t have been more complete.

  Stay calm.

  On her knees, she turned, picked up the flashlight, and played it over the cramped, tunnel-like interior, over her backpack, over the smoking rocks in the makeshift furnace a few feet away, over the arched ceiling and the sealed flap at the far end of the tent. The Mylar blanket lay crumpled in the maybe eighteen inches of space between the edge of the sleeping bag and the curving wall. It glittered as the flashlight beam caught it.

  “Glad you came prepared,” he said. He lay on his uninjured side in the sleeping bag with his head cradled on his bent arm, still breathing heavily from his recent exertion. The bag was the same dark gray as the tent and the pad beneath it. It had a side zip and the top could be adjusted so that it closed around the head like a hood. At the moment that top part lay flat beneath his head and arm.

  “What can I say? I was a Girl Scout.” Maybe her tone was a little tart under the circumstances. Surprise: being sealed up in a virtual wind sock with him was making her nervous. The flashlight beam caught him in the process of stretching his long legs down inside the sleeping bag while pulling the loose corners of it close around his bare shoulders. At his height, she saw that he was barely going to fit. He was shivering again, which she took as a good sign. It had been a while since she’d seen him shiver. Hypothermia in reverse? She didn’t know if that happened. But he was shivering.

  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 frow
ning: 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

  No,” 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 takin
g 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.