Darkness

by Karen Robards

  Gina knew what he meant: he wanted to know what had happened when she’d reached the LORAN station.

  In careful, concise sentences that were designed to keep emotion at bay, she told him what he wanted to know. But for all her calm on the surface, as she talked she discovered that she was still shaky inside and that grief and horror had solidified into what felt like a permanent knot in her chest.

  As she ended her story with his unexpected appearance in the kitchen, her heart was pounding and tears pricked her eyes.

  “The guy with the Texas accent—can you describe him?” he asked.

  Firmly blinking the tears away, Gina shook her head. “The only one I saw was Ivanov.” Frowning, she added, “When you got to the camp, how did you even know where I was?”

  He shrugged. “I headed for the building with the lights. Luckily, I was still a fair distance away when three men walked out the door. I gave them enough time to get clear and went in. I made it as far as the kitchen when I heard somebody coming and ducked behind the table thing. You ran through. I stayed where I was for a minute to make sure you weren’t being chased, and then I started to come after you. Only by then you’d encountered our friend Ivanov and were running back through the kitchen the other way.”

  “How many of them were there? At the camp?”

  “I saw the three who came out of the building, plus one other. But from the footprints I came across, I think there were at least six. The dinghy holds eight.”

  Gina was assailed by a terrible thought. “Oh, my God, the dinghy probably just docked and nobody had a clue that there was anything wrong.” Her throat constricted, making it difficult for her to get the words out. “They probably walked up to the camp and started shooting people. No, whoever saw them pull up probably went down to the dock to meet them and invite them up to the camp. Mary—Jorge—none of them would even have dreamed that they could be in danger. Ivanov talked to Mary. I know he did, because he knew about her accent—she had this heavy Brooklyn accent. She would have had no clue what was going to happen. None of them would have had a clue. They were just slaughtered.”

  Gina’s voice quavered on the last word. The thought of Mary and Jorge as they had looked lying there on the floor refused to leave her head. Fighting to banish the image, she took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Hey.” The path wasn’t really wide enough for two to walk abreast, but he caught up to her anyway. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her face but she didn’t look up at him because that damnable prickle of tears was back. But he clearly realized that she was upset. He caught her hand, squeezed it gently. Until she looked down at his black-gloved hand holding hers, she hadn’t realized that her fingers were clenched into tight fists. Having his big hand wrapped around her fist was almost ridiculously comforting. “I’m sorry this came down on you and your friends. I can’t do anything about the others, but I’m going to do my best to get you out of this in one piece.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You didn’t deliberately crash your plane.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t.” He was still holding her hand, and she realized that her fingers were relaxing in his, instinctively responding to the solace he offered. She freed her hand before her fingers could do something stupid, like, say, clutch at his. Or entwine with them.

  “None of that explains where you got the coat.” Her voice was deliberately crisp. Succumbing to sorrow was the last thing she meant to do. Right now what she needed most of all was to keep a clear head.

  “Coat?” His genuine confusion earned him an exasperated up-flick of a look. Exasperation, she decided, was a far preferable emotion to everything else she’d been experiencing.

  “This one. The one you’re wearing.” She gave his sleeve a tug.

  “Oh,” he said. “A second dinghy dropped two men off near the rocks where I was hiding. One of the men headed down the coastline, like he was going to walk around the point. The other went right on past me and took the same trail you did. I followed him, and when I got the chance I took him out. His gun went over a cliff in the struggle, but I got his coat before I pitched him after the gun. I would have taken his boots, too, but they were too small. Then I got to thinking that you might run into somebody like him, so I followed you.”

  Gina looked at him. He must have found a knit cap somewhere, probably in a coat pocket, because he’d pulled on a black one that hugged his head and almost touched his eyebrows in front. Below it, his eyes were as dark as the mountain behind them. His square, unshaven jaw was set and hard. His mouth was unsmiling. He looked tough. Capable. Dangerous, just as she’d suspected from the first.

  And so handsome her heart beat a little faster just from looking at him.

  He’d spoken of “taking out” the man he’d been following so nonchalantly, as if killing was something he was accustomed to doing. She thought of Ivanov and the butcher knife: killing obviously was something he was accustomed to doing.

  A shiver ran down her spine.

  Nice bear.

  Both of those men had been killed on her behalf, she reminded herself, but that still didn’t make her feel less wary where he was concerned. It was, Gina reflected, sort of like finding herself under the protection of what was so far the biggest, baddest predator in the jungle.

  It was all good unless he turned on her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For coming after me.”

  His eyes met hers. She could read absolutely nothing in them. “Like I said, I mean to get you out of this alive.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” she told him.

  A sudden updraft sent the fog swirling. As her eyes dropped away from his—she was afraid the sudden guardedness in hers would be all too easy to read—she got another look at the glinting silver ribbon that was the river, which, having passed beneath the natural bridge, curled around the base of the mountains before meandering off into the interior of the island.

  There was an orange boat in the river: a Zodiac. In the Zodiac was a splotch of bright neon yellow. The splotch was moving, and it had a dark head, arms and legs attached. By this time she and Cal had descended until they had almost reached two hundred feet and were very near to the place where the mountains fused. From Gina’s perspective the boat and its contents were rendered small by distance, but she was as sure as it was possible to be about what she was looking at.

  The boat conceivably could have been any orange Zodiac, but the splotch of neon yellow in it was unmistakable: that was Arvid’s parka. She would recognize it anywhere. They’d all been teasing him about its Day-Glo color since they’d first gotten a look at it.

  Gina’s eyes widened in surprised recognition. She stopped, grabbed Cal’s arm, pointed, and said excitedly, “Arvid! There’s Ar—”

  From somewhere above them a shot rang out, as clear and sharp and unexpected as a thunderclap on a clear summer’s day.

  The neon yellow splotch that was Arvid jerked, spun, and toppled from the Zodiac into the river.

  Chapter Twenty

  He’s been shot.

  Realization was almost instantaneous. Gina screamed.

  Or at least, Gina would have screamed. A scream tore into her throat. Whether she would have stopped herself before letting loose with it was something she was never destined to know: Cal’s hand clamped tight over her mouth, smothering any sound before it could emerge. At the same time his arm shot around her waist and he yanked her against him.

  “Shh,” he hissed. Her back to his front, his hand still clamped over her mouth, he lifted her clean up off her feet with his arm around her waist and bounded a few yards up the steep, uneven rise behind them. She was tangentially impressed with his strength and agility even as her head swam with denial and her heart burst with pain. His fingers dug into the soft skin of her face. His arm around her was so tight that it was difficult for her to breathe. She must have made some slight sound, because he whispered “Shh”
again, fiercely, before pushing her down behind a formation of boulders and dropping to his knees beside her. A heartbeat later they were lying chest to chest on the rocky slope. Her back was pressed against a boulder, her face was buried in his coat and held in place by his hand on the back of her head, and his hard body covered hers. There was snow beneath them, a shallow drift that had gotten caught by the boulders. With her head pillowed on his arm, Gina was only aware of it because of its cushioning properties and the cold scrunch of it beneath her as they settled in.

  Shock and horror held her immobile. The image of Arvid tumbling into the river replayed itself over and over in her mind’s eye. Inside she was screaming. Cal’s hand was no longer clamped over her mouth and she pressed her lips together to keep from making a sound. Her hands fisted in the front of his coat.

  “Don’t move.” It was the merest breath of sound. The arm that he had wrapped around her tightened in silent warning an instant before she heard voices coming toward them and understood that someone was hurrying down the path they’d just vacated. She felt something hard in the small of her back: the gun. Cal was holding the gun. Aiming the gun, presumably up toward where any attacker coming from the path would first appear. She could tell by the way the grip dug into her.

  Fear shot through her, colder than the snow in which they lay.

  “Penyal yego!” It was a man’s voice, full of exuberant exclamation, speaking Russian that she was too rattled to even try to translate. Nearby, footsteps crackled on the icy crust that covered the path. Full recognition of the danger she and Cal were in hit, and Gina froze, lying as still as a corpse in his arms. Her heart raced wildly as another man, sounding like he was practically on top of them, replied in a congratulatory tone, “Khorosho s’yemki.”

  All of a sudden the gist of the Russian words came to her. They’d said something on the order of:

  “I got him!”

  “Good shooting.”

  Her stomach cramped with sudden nausea. Her pulse pounded so hard it made her dizzy.

  The thud of footsteps, the sense of people passing nearby, the sound of more voices coming from farther away, farther down the slope, sent a fresh wave of fear through her. She could feel goose bumps rippling over her skin.

  Cal lay heavily against her, his body as unyielding as a brick wall, the steady expansion and contraction of his chest as he breathed the only movement he made. He was big enough to both shield her completely if more bullets should start to fly, and hide her completely from view. She could feel the steel bands of his arms around her, the pressure of his muscular thighs against hers, the hard length of his shins, the slickness of the tops of his boots where her toes rested against them. His coat was rough against her cheek. The raucous honking of more geese overhead made Gina start, and his arm tightened around her once more in warning.

  Gina didn’t move again, barely breathed.

  From the sound of it there were four men, all heading down toward the river.

  Toward Arvid. Oh, God, he’d been murdered right before her eyes.

  She couldn’t help it: she started to shake.

  Cal must have felt it, because his hold on her changed. His broad shoulders curved more closely around her. The hand pressing her face into his coat gentled. She thought she felt his cheek rest against the top of her head.

  She held on to him like he was the only safe harbor left in the world.

  She didn’t know how much time passed before she felt him move. It felt like hours, but from the unchanged quality of light filtering through the fog when he shifted and she opened her eyes she guessed that it had been more like fifteen minutes. Much longer than that and it would have been growing dark. Darkness fell early on Attu.

  He was pulling away from her as her eyes rose to meet his. His were narrowed, with a deadly glint in them. Hers, she felt sure, were dazed and traumatized.

  Feeling dizzy, she sucked in air.

  “Shh.” He pressed a gloved finger to her lips and shook his head at her. She nodded in acknowledgment and almost reluctantly opened her fingers to release his coat from what had been her death grip on it.

  In one fluid movement he sat up and rolled into a crouch. The gun ready in his hand, he looked over the rocks that had sheltered them.

  Toward the river. Toward Arvid.

  Gina felt the shakes coming back.

  You are not that big a wuss. But then again, maybe she was.

  Curling her legs beneath her, Gina cautiously sat up, brushed snow from her coat, breathed. White tendrils of mist slid past her, as cold on her face as ghostly hands. Gritting her teeth against the image of Arvid being shot that kept threatening to undermine her fragile calm, she did her best to banish the shakes, without entirely succeeding. The fine tremors that remained made her fingers slightly unsteady and her knees feel weak.

  Crawling forward until she was kneeling next to Cal, she looked down toward the river, too.

  She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see much of anything. Couldn’t hear much of anything. The distant murmur of voices, maybe? Or was that the wind, or the river? Impossible to tell: there was too much muffling, veiling fog.

  Not being able to see the river, the boat, Arvid—oh, God, Arvid!—was probably a blessing. She caught herself praying that he wasn’t dead.

  He almost certainly was. She knew that. But that niggle of doubt made the urge to go rushing down to the river, to try to find him, to help him, almost impossible to resist.

  But going down there was the best way she could think of to make sure that she also ended up dead. She knew that.

  Cal glanced at her. His face was all harsh planes and angles. With the black watch cap pulled low on his forehead and stubble darkening his square jaw, he looked fierce, lethal, and totally badass.

  She was desperately thankful he was on her side. Her bear.

  “We need to go.” His voice was scarcely louder than a breath.

  She nodded and murmured the only sensible answer she could give: “Yes.”

  Standing up, he held a hand down to her. Taking it, she let him lift her to her feet. The fog wrapped around them, hiding them, protecting them: it had become their friend. Sliding an arm around her to pull her close against his body, pushing her hood just far enough back to uncover an ear, he spoke almost directly into it. She could feel the warmth of his breath against the delicate whorls.

  “I’m almost certain they’re down there by the river.” His voice was so quiet that if his mouth hadn’t been right by her ear she wouldn’t have been able to hear him. She leaned against him, letting him take most of her weight as her knees recovered their ability to keep her upright. Her hands lay flat against the front of his coat. She didn’t grip him, didn’t hold on. She refused to give in to the waves of anguish that assailed her, to the urge to blindly turn responsibility for her survival over to him. I have to stay strong. He continued, “We need to steer clear. Can we get to that cave you were talking about without going that way?”

  She had to force her mind to function, force herself to think, but she did it with a fierce determination. She nodded. “The path forks up ahead. The way we need to take doesn’t go to the river.”

  “Good. Go. Be as quiet and quick as you can. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Gina turned and started walking. The first few steps required a major effort of will, but as she headed steadily away from the river, leaving got easier. As he had promised, Cal stayed right behind her. Again, she thought his intent was to block her from any bullet that might come their way. Nerves jumping, hideously conscious of every rattling pebble and crackling piece of ice underfoot, Gina went as quickly as she could, blessing the whoosh of the wind, the honking geese, even the distant murmur of the river that she couldn’t see, because it masked the sounds of their passing from any unseen ears that might hear.

  After what had happened to Arvid, she was all too horribly aware that death could explode out of nowhere at any time.

  She couldn’t let herself think ab
out that, or about Arvid, or anything else. Not now, not while she needed all her concentration just to keep putting one foot ahead of the other.

  Except for the occasional, nerve-racking moment when an unusually strong gust of wind swept through and lifted whole sections of it, the fog swirled around them, gray and thick. She knew that they probably owed their lives to it. It hid them, hid the marks their boots had to be leaving on the shell of ice and snow that covered the trail. They slipped through it as silently as possible. Listening intently, she continually searched the drifting banks of mist with frightened eyes, but nothing was there. She could see the trail for no more than a few feet in front of her; she was able to follow it only because she knew where it was and how it ran.

  Snow began to fall, big, fat flakes that drifted down lazily at first, then came faster and faster. She welcomed it, knowing sufficient quantities would mask the marks of their passing. The temperature dropped until her face felt like it was freezing and each breath became a frigid assault on her lungs. Her feet got cold in her insulated boots. The wind picked up, whistling through the high passes, rushing down the slopes, blowing the fog and snow into wintry dust devils that rose like dervishes around them.

  They reached Terrible Mountain as dusk fell, and began to climb. The rusted-out skeleton of a World War II–era vehicle—“A Weasel!” Cal murmured reverently upon spotting it—was overturned near where the almost invisible path to their destination branched off from the main trail. It was the landmark Gina knew to look for to find the way. The new path went almost straight uphill, and grew so steep and so slippery that Gina needed handholds in places to get to the next section. Thickening darkness made it hard to see by the time they reached the last little bit, and if she hadn’t had the familiar growling rumble to guide her she might have missed the final turnoff. What she had once considered an inconvenience she now knew was a blessing: the cave was not on any trail. It would, she thought, be almost impossible for anyone who was unfamiliar with it to find.