The problem she had with walking back to camp was the length of time it would take. Her colleagues hadn’t been able to reach her by radio since before the storm hit, and she’d been missing overnight while the storm raged. They already would be sick with worry, she knew. By the time she walked back into camp, they would have launched a search party and done God knew what else.
At least the storm seemed to have passed. On this wintry gray morning, the waves rolled in with a murmur rather than a roar. The sea was up, covering the beach completely and extending fingers of water into low-lying areas around the rocks so that the area where she stood had been turned into a peninsula. The sky was heavily overcast. A thin layer of snow frosted the ground. Something—the force of the wind, the combination of snow and sleet, who knew?—had prevented much in the way of accumulation. While there were drifts against the rocks, the ground was covered with maybe an inch, no more.
The snow was crusted with ice that glittered even in the absence of any direct sunlight and crackled underfoot with every step.
Taking a deep breath of the moisture-laden air, Gina exhaled a soft, barely visible cloud: it was cold, but not freezing-to-death cold. Typical Attu early-morning midthirties cold. The air smelled of damp, and the sea. She looked out beyond the breakwater, where flirty whitecaps now broke in layers of ruffles against the rocks, to the sea itself. Nothing of the crashed plane could be seen from where she stood. She couldn’t even tell whether the tail was still there. What was visible of the sea undulated serenely, whispering rather than roaring, with no sign of having been disturbed. Last night’s violence had been replaced by a muted calm. Fog covered land and water alike, stretching as far as she could see, blocking out much of the horizon and most of her surroundings. Feathery tendrils of mist drifted across the iron-gray surface of the water, over the snowy tundra and around and over the black, rocky ridges that rose in increasingly majestic layers to peak in tall mountains in the center of the island. Sandpipers darted in and out of the foaming surf line, hunting breakfast. Kittiwakes and gulls swooped over the bay. There were no other signs of life. Gina found herself wondering about the eagles: had they made it safely back to their nests? Or, like her, had they been forced to shelter in place to survive the storm?
“How long will it take you to reach your camp, do you think?” Cal came up behind her, tall and solid in the pale dawn light. A quick, comprehensive glance over her shoulder took him in: he had the sleeping bag wrapped around him like a blanket. The waterproof bags that the tent and sleeping bag had been stored in had been drafted for use as temporary shoes. He’d bound them in place with surgical tape from the first aid kit. His eyes were bloodshot and tired looking, a day’s worth of black stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, and a bruise purpled on his left cheekbone.
He should have looked ridiculous. He didn’t. He looked big and tough and formidable.
He looks like a thug.
For all she knew, he was a thug.
A thug she did not want to know. A thug she would shortly never see again. Gina realized that she was resisting even thinking of him by his name, because he—nameless he—would shortly disappear from her life. For her, he would for all intents and purposes cease to exist.
It was a good thing. She welcomed it.
“Two, two and a half hours,” she replied. Abandoning her fruitless search of the sea, she stepped around him and headed back toward the tent. He made her uncomfortable. She didn’t know whether it was his size or what she knew about him or what she didn’t know about him or the fact that he had kissed her and put his hands on her body and made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time or some combination of the above. She was anxious to get away from him. Anxious to put this whole traumatic episode behind her and get on with her safe and orderly life.
“Don’t forget to destroy that number as soon as you use it,” he cautioned, following her.
“I won’t forget.”
“You can just wad it up and throw it in the trash. Which I assume is burned daily.”
“I will,” she agreed. When he’d first emerged from the tent, he’d caught her hand, pushed up the sleeve of her coat and shirt, then smoothed a Band-Aid onto her wrist as if to cover a cut or other injury. The use of the Band-Aid was just in case, he’d told her. When she’d warily asked, “Just in case what?” he’d replied, “In case someone searches you. They’re not going to look on the inside of a Band-Aid on your arm.”
What was inside that Band-Aid was the phone number for her to call, plus the code he wanted her to type in after the number. Using the pen from the backpack, he’d written it on the Band-Aid’s inner sterile white pad.
At the prospect of encountering the “someone” he was referring to, Gina’s stomach dropped like a stone.
He’d instructed her—multiple times—to punch the numbers in once only, then get rid of the Band-Aid and forget she’d ever done such a thing or seen him or the plane. When she’d pointed out that she thought the phone would very likely keep a register of every number dialed, he’d told her not to worry about it: a computer program on the machine that the number reached would erase its number from the phone she used.
She so did not want to know who would have an answering machine that could do something like that.
“If you should run across anybody—” he began for what must have been the twelfth time. They were facing each other in front of the tent now. She was leaving it, as well as the sleeping bag and backpack and binoculars and what remained of the supplies, for his use. She would tell the others that everything had been too wet and bedraggled from the storm to carry back with her.
“I’ve got it,” she interrupted, knowing that he meant anybody who might be looking for him, and repeated the instructions he’d given her. “Stay away from them. Hide if I can. If I can’t, I know nothing about a plane crash, or you.” He already had her thoroughly spooked by the idea that nameless bad guys might be scouring Attu for him. At the thought that she might have a close encounter with them, her insides quaked.
“Don’t look so worried,” he said. “I’m not positive they’re here, and if they are you’ll almost certainly never see them, especially since you’re not going to be with me. They’ll know the plane went down, and the logical assumption they’ll make is that everybody on board is dead. They’ll check out the wreckage, maybe take a quick look around to try to make sure nobody survived, but they’ll probably stay as far away from you people and your camp as possible.” He paused, then added, “Civilian casualties are always a bitch.”
Does that mean you’re not a civilian? She didn’t say it out loud and immediately did her best to push the speculation out of her head. Once more, she did not want to know.
Her eyes swept the area around them: a tall drift of snow had accumulated between the tent and the path that anyone who wasn’t coming by sea would have to take to get to it. She guessed that most of the snow in it had been blown from the tops of the rocks. However it had happened, it formed a useful barrier if someone wanted to hide, which Cal definitely did. She knew the outcropping concealed the tent from anyone on a boat, even someone who came close to shore, and she was almost certain that the tent couldn’t be seen from the path, either. Not that she expected someone to be coming along the path. This remote area high above the bay wouldn’t be the first place her colleagues would think to look for her. It wouldn’t be the second or third place, either.
It was just one of many rocky ridges fronting miles of irregular coastline, and since the last anyone had heard of her she’d been in the Zodiac, their first thought would almost certainly be to take the other boat and scoot around the island, scouring the shore. Of course, if whoever was looking for Cal knew the precise location where his plane went down, they might be able to pinpoint his current location a little more accurately.
“Did your plane have a transponder?” she asked.
His eyes narrowed at her. “It was disabled.”
Since she didn’t real
ly want to know why, she didn’t ask. Instead she took full measure of the expression on his face and responded tartly. “You’re wondering how I know about transponders, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “I’m assuming you read newspapers and watch TV.”
“That’s right, I do. So why all of a sudden look at me like you trust me about as far as you can throw me?”
A flicker of amusement came and went in his eyes. A corner of his mouth turned up in a hint of a smile. For a moment he looked seriously, scruffily handsome. She had an instant, unwelcome flashback to their sizzling kiss and her pulse quickened in response. “Maybe that’s my default mode.”
“It’s unattractive,” she informed him. “So it’s possible that whoever’s looking for you doesn’t know where your plane went down? Or even that it went down?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“It’s nothing I’d want to bet my life on. Or yours.”
For a moment their eyes held. His expression had turned grim, and reminded her that the danger he was in, and that he’d put her and her colleagues in, was very real.
It was also something she wanted no part of.
“I should go,” she said. He nodded, but when she went to turn away he reached out and caught her gloved hand.
“In case you should start having second thoughts about making that call, remember that you want me off this island. The sooner I’m gone, the sooner you and your friends will be safe.” His eyes bored into hers. The hard gleam in them was clearly a warning. “And if I’m not picked up within the next twelve hours I’ll head into your camp and make the call myself.”
She could feel the steely strength in the fingers wrapped around hers. The top of her head reached a little higher than his shoulders, and she didn’t like the fact that she had to tilt her head back so far to meet his eyes. It made her feel . . . vulnerable. Like he was letting her go but could change his mind about that at any time.
“I said I’d make the call and I will,” she told him, pulling her hand free. “Believe me, I want you gone as much as you want to be gone.”
That flicker of a smile appeared in his eyes again. This time she refused to be impressed. “Good to know.”
“Good-bye,” she said.
She started to turn away.
He caught her arm, pulled her around, and kissed her. Just like that, his hands gripping her shoulders, his mouth coming down on hers hard.
And she kissed him back. Instantly, instinctively, without any thought at all.
Her mouth opened to his. His tongue filled her mouth, scalding hot, demanding her response. And she gave it, answering his lips and tongue with a hungry intensity that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. Her body burned for his. She went all soft and shivery inside.
As quick as he’d kissed her he was lifting his head and pushing her away.
“Good-bye,” he said. He didn’t smile.
Gina didn’t smile, either. Her heart was thumping, her body was throbbing, and good-bye was both the last thing on earth she wanted to say—and the smartest thing she could say.
“Good-bye,” she said for the second time.
Then she turned and started picking her way across the slippery ground without waiting for him to answer. Their relationship, if it could even be called a relationship, was over, just like yesterday’s hair-raising episode was over, and in the cold, clear light of dawn all she wanted to do was put it behind her and forget about it and him. She would walk across the narrow peninsula of land that formed the neck of Chirikof Point, then follow the shoreline around to Massacre Bay, where her group was staying in the buildings that had once made up LORAN Station Attu.
Would she be sorry to see the last of him? Maybe some small part of her would be.
But there was no other choice. And even if there had been, she still would have walked away.
She would make his call for him, and then she would settle back into the stable routine of the life she had made for herself. Danger and excitement were not, and never again would be, her thing.
“Gina,” he called after her.
Lips compressing, she glanced back. Fingers of fog curled around the outcropping, making the landscape look like something out of Kafka. Shrouded in the deep gray of the sleeping bag, he looked as massive as one of the towering rocks behind him.
“Thank you,” he said. “Again. For saving my life.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, and meant it.
She walked away without looking back a second time.
IT TOOK her almost five hours to travel the eight-plus miles back to camp. Although the storm had passed on during the wee hours of the morning, the storm surge she had feared had, in fact, occurred all over this eastern part of the island, cutting off many of the routes she might have taken. Most of the low-lying areas near the coast had flooded, with water in some places lying in depths of one to two feet. The deceptive film of ice that covered everything made it tricky to judge what was water and what was dry land. In addition, there were drifts of snow in unlikely places, so Gina abandoned the easier route that hugged the coastline in favor of keeping to higher, rockier ground. Footing was treacherous so she had to go slowly. By the time she got close enough to actually see her destination, from about halfway up Frazier Mountain to the east of the camp, she was cold and hungry and thirsty and so tired she had to work to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
So cold and hungry and tired, in fact, that her fear of running into one of the “strangers” he’d warned her about had receded into the category of things-to-worry-about-after-I-don’t-fall-and-break-a-leg-or-collapse-from-exhaustion.
After hours of walking she hadn’t seen a single, solitary soul, which reinforced her conviction that Arvid and Ray or whoever had volunteered for the search party must be out looking for her in the boat. Once she got back to camp, it would be an easy matter to contact them via the radio and tell them to come back in. Merely thinking about how much worry she was causing them, to say nothing of the time spent searching for her that was being taken away from their projects, made her feel guilty. Visiting Attu required reams of paperwork and countless official permissions. It was expensive and difficult to arrange. They all had research to carry out, both on their own and to fulfill the terms of the grant, and only a limited amount of time on the island. The likelihood was that none of them would be back.
The quicker she got down there and let everyone know she was safe, the quicker everyone could get back to work and life could proceed as usual.
Trudging along the steep, rocky path, Gina thought longingly of food, warmth, and a shower, all of which were, she estimated, less than fifteen minutes away. All she had to do was make it the rest of the way down the mountain. With an elevation of twenty-three hundred feet, Frazier Mountain was one of maybe half a dozen low mountains that formed a semicircle around the former Coast Guard station. There were no trees to speak of on Attu, and the mountains curved behind the flat meadow just off the cove where the LORAN station lay. On a clear day she would have been able to see it below her, but there weren’t many clear days on Attu and today was no exception. Fog lay over everything in a thick, gauzy blanket. But she knew where the buildings were, and she looked toward them. Solid concrete painted white, with thick walls and reinforced, black-framed windows, they were grouped closely together. The main building was two stories tall, and she could just see its rusting metal roof through the fog. The island’s only runway, which was, in fact, its only paved surface, ran alongside the buildings. It ended some distance from them at a corrugated metal hangar with a red and white sign bearing the tongue-in-cheek message WELCOME TO ATTU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.
Peering down through the fog, Gina was able to see that lights were on in the main building, which told her that somebody was home: electricity was precious, the product of a single large generator that had to be sparingly fed fuel from the cylindrical, aboveground storage tanks
that were topped off maybe once a year by a visiting freighter. Energy conservation was taken seriously on Attu, and lights were turned off when not in use. She looked toward the bay and the dock where the Zodiacs were kept tied up, but was able to see nothing through the fog.
The satellite phone was kept in the main building, which also housed the dormitory-style rooms where they all slept, women in one and men in the other. The kitchen was in there, too, along with a large common area where they ate and hung out. Just thinking about the kitchen made her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten that morning: knowing that there would be food waiting for her at camp, and not anticipating such an arduous trek, she’d left the remaining two protein bars for Cal. She’d already made up her mind about the best, most unobtrusive way to make his telephone call: if anyone was around when she picked up the phone, she would simply tell them she had a private call to make and then go outside and key in the numbers he’d given her. Then she would call her mother as cover.
Hiding in plain sight, as it were.
The more she thought about it, the more not reporting the deaths or the plane crash bothered her. She hadn’t entirely made up her mind yet, but she was considering doing so once she was safely back in California. Cal would be off the island by then, too, and if he had kept his word he would have already reported the crash and the deaths, so she would be doing the right thing without endangering anybody.
Unbidden, the thought of how he’d kissed her, and how she’d kissed him back, made her cheeks heat. And her body heat. He had made her want him, and it had been a long time since she’d felt anything like that. The knowledge was disturbing, and, cross at herself, she pushed it out of her head.
The fog was heavy enough so that once she reached ground level she could only locate the main building, and that was because of its glowing windows. As she approached, light spilling through the glass panes made weird yellowish patches in the gray fog. Her boots crunched through the ice, the sound almost covered by the rush of the waves rolling into the bay behind her. The rumble of the generator grew louder as she neared the side door that opened into the mud–cum–laundry room, where they generally left their outdoor clothes.
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