“Wait.” Cal stopped her with a hand on her arm when she would have scrambled up through the rocks toward it. Looming close behind her, he was a tall, broad-shouldered, reassuringly solid shape in a gloomy world that had been rendered almost phantasmal by the mix of heavily falling snow and shifting fog. The purple twilight made his eyes look black as coal. His hard, handsome face was grim.
Holding her in place, his grip hard enough so that she could feel the imprint of his gloved fingers through her coat, he leaned down so that his mouth was at the approximate level of her ear.
“What the hell is that?” His voice was just loud enough so that she could hear him. She looked up at him with a frown.
“What?”
“That sound.”
“Oh.” She supposed that to anyone who hadn’t heard it before, the continuous low, grinding errm coming from somewhere up ahead of them would sound ominous. To her, the sound was comforting: it reminded her of a giant cat purring. Lots of giant cats purring.
“Puffins,” she said. “They have burrows all along here, among the rocks. That’s how I found the cave.”
“Birds? You’ve got to be kidding me.” He released his hold on her.
Gina would have smiled in spite of herself, but her facial muscles were too frozen. “We’re here,” she told him, and started to climb.
Careful not to put her hands or feet into a burrow, catching glimpses of dozens of funny little red-beaked clown faces that were the puffins peering out at her anxiously as she passed, she ascended the black, snow-dusted, nearly vertical cliff until she reached the entrance to the cave. Impossible to see from the path, it had an unimpeded view of the valley where the LORAN station was located, and beyond it to the bay and sea. The entrance was tall and narrow, a slit in the rock no more than five feet wide that was all but hidden by a jutting stone formation beside it.
It was dark inside the cave, she saw as she hoisted herself through the opening, but not so dark that she couldn’t see, at least for the first few yards. After that the cave was black as pitch.
It smelled faintly of earth and various other not unpleasant things she couldn’t identify. There at the entrance it was still cold, but it was many degrees warmer than it was outside and she was out of the wind and snow and relatively safe and that was all she cared about for the moment. As Gina looked out, though, she discovered that there was a problem, or at least there would be from Cal’s point of view: she could see nothing but a nearly impenetrable wall of blowing snow and heavy fog turned deep purplish-gray by the coming night. She couldn’t even see the lights of the buildings at the camp, which she knew had to be on and shining through the windows.
Unless there was no one left in camp to keep the generator running, of course. Unless the bad guys had gone, and all that was left behind were corpses.
She shivered and did her best to push away the horrifying images that accompanied the thought.
Having crawled well out of the reach of the wind and snow, she sat, knees bent, resting against the wall with her head tilted back against the worn-smooth stone, and watched as Cal levered himself inside, then stood up to tower in the entrance.
“I can’t see anything,” Cal complained. He was looking out toward the camp, so she knew he was worried about their ability to watch for the plane that was presumably going to arrive at some point. Or maybe it already had arrived. She felt sure that they would have heard any plane flying low enough to land, but maybe she was wrong about that. Maybe they’d missed it, she thought hopefully. He added, “Not that there’s a chance in hell a plane landed in this.”
Another hope dashed. Since she didn’t feel like arguing about his plan right then, she made a noncommittal sound.
He turned away from his unproductive contemplation of the deepening darkness to walk over to where she sat. She didn’t glance up as he stood there looking down at her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He shrugged out of the backpacks. There was the slightest of twin thumps as he dropped them on the ground beside her, then hunkered down to unzip one. Her mouth was dry, and she thought about searching through one for water, but she was too tired and dispirited to move. They’d each eaten a second protein bar on the long march to Terrible Mountain, but the effects of that had worn off and she was hungry.
“You haven’t been up inside here before?” He was looking at her. She could feel rather than see his gaze on her.
“No.”
“All right.” Twisting the cap off a bottle of water, he handed it to her and stood up. Just because he’d assumed she wanted water didn’t mean he could read her mind, she told herself. It simply meant that he could add two and two, as in, long walk coupled with arduous climb equals thirst. “I’m going to go check it out.”
“I’ll be right here.”
He was holding a flashlight, she saw when he switched it on. Only the smallest sliver of light escaped, and she realized that he was taking care to mask it with his fingers, not that, given the weather, there was any real chance that so insignificant a light could be seen beyond the cave. The gun was in his other hand. Seeing it, she shivered.
“I won’t be long,” he said.
Gina didn’t reply. Instead she took careful sips of her water and watched the receding narrow stripe of light as he headed down what seemed to be a long passage before hanging a left and disappearing from view. As she sat there listening to the wind and snow and puffins, she suddenly regretted not going with him. Alone in the dark, it was much harder to keep the ghosts at bay.
She thought of sunny California, her cheerful, comfortable condo, her mother, who lived with her second husband just a few miles from her. Her calm, sensible, unadventurous mother had been her father’s second wife (he’d been on his fourth at the time of his death) and, while Gina had had an older half sister from her father’s first marriage—Becca, another natural-born adventurer who’d died in the plane crash—Gina was her mother’s only child. She knew that if she didn’t make it back, her mother would grieve forever.
The thought of her mother grieving made her chest tighten.
Just don’t think.
Keeping her mind blank was a useful way to avoid being overwhelmed with emotion, she had learned.
An image of Arvid in his Day-Glo coat floating facedown in the river slid past her defenses.
Her stomach twisted. Had she left him behind to die?
Save yourself.
Her father’s last words to her echoed through her head.
Once more, that’s exactly what she had done: saved herself.
Gina’s throat closed up. She scrunched her eyes shut, but it didn’t help.
Hot tears slid down her cheeks.
Stop it, she ordered herself fiercely.
When the tears kept coming, she pushed her hood back and unzipped her coat and dried her cheeks on the edge of her thermal shirt. She took off her gloves and poured some of the water from the bottle into her cupped hand and splashed her face with it. Several times. It was cold, bracingly so.
That seemed to do the trick. The tears stopped. She dried her face on her shirt again, sniffed mightily, and dug in her pocket for her ChapStick, which she applied to her lips. It tasted of cherry, which was nice. Next she pulled her comb out and started methodically working the tangles out of her hair.
Concentrate on mundane tasks: another lesson learned in how to carry on after a tragedy.
She saw the stripe of light that was Cal coming back and pocketed her comb.
“This is a hell of a cave,” he said when he reached her. The stripe of light hit her face, causing her to flinch. The light lingered, and she got the impression that he was staring hard at her.
She threw up a hand in protest.
“Would you turn that off?” Her voice was sharp.
He did. It was suddenly so dark that she could barely see him. He made a movement that she thought was him pocketing the gun. Easing down to sit beside her, he said, “
You crying?”
Oh, God, she couldn’t believe that he’d noticed what must be the telltale signs.
“No.” Her voice was sharper than before.
“Thank God. Crying women scare the hell out of me.”
That made her smile. A little. Reluctantly. “In that case, maybe I am.”
She could feel him looking at her. Taking another drink of water, she concentrated on the wall opposite them instead of looking back. The wall she absolutely couldn’t see because it was too dark.
He took the bottle from her, drank. He’d taken off his gloves, she saw. The better to handle a weapon? She didn’t want to think about it.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Pretty upsetting, seeing your friend killed like that. Several of your friends.”
“Who are you, Dr. Phil?”
“If you need me to be.”
She shot him a look. Not that he saw it, she thought, or that she saw him as anything other than a solid patch of darkness looming beside her. He was being nice, and right now nice was something she couldn’t take. Especially from him. He’d come out of the same mold as the bad guys chasing them, she was pretty sure. The only difference was that right now he happened to be on her side.
She said, “I don’t need you to be anything. Except quiet.”
He didn’t reply, just meditatively sipped her water. Gina’s eyes narrowed as it occurred to her that he was waiting. For her to break down and pour her heart out to him. Which wasn’t going to happen.
“That’s annoying,” she said.
“What’s annoying?”
“You. Sitting there like that.”
“You mean, being quiet?” Was there a hint of humor in his voice? “I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”
If he’d been able to see it, the look she turned on him then would have fried his eyeballs.
“Why don’t you go explore more of the cave?”
“I don’t like leaving you here alone in the dark.”
“So give me a flashlight.”
“It’s the leaving you alone part I don’t like.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything more. He sipped more water. She tried to keep her mind blank. But his words sent a fresh niggle of fear slithering through the mental barriers she was busy erecting.
“You think somebody could be in here?” She cast a nervous glance toward the impenetrable darkness he’d just walked out of.
He shrugged. “Possible. Not likely. I didn’t see signs that anybody’s been here in years, and as far as I can work out, unless somebody already knew this cave was here, they haven’t had time to find it. And they’d have no reason to be looking for it. We just got here ourselves, and they can’t know that this is where we’d head.”
That made her feel a little better.
“You think they’ll find it?”
She could feel his shrug. “If they look long enough.”
“It’s pretty well hidden.”
“Yeah.”
From the tone of that, Gina gathered that he thought that wasn’t an insurmountable barrier. He sipped more water. She tried, unsuccessfully, not to think.
“Do you think Arvid was dead?” She couldn’t help it: the words pushed themselves out before she even knew she was going to say them, a result no doubt of the thought continually preying on her mind. “I mean, obviously he is dead. I know those men will have made sure of it. But do you think he was dead when we left him there in the river?”
“Yep. Believe me, he was dead before he hit the water.”
She slanted a look up at him. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I know, okay? Trust me, I know.”
Funnily enough, she did trust that he knew, although what that said about him, and about her for not being horrified that she was sitting here so companionably with him, she didn’t care to think about.
Still, she couldn’t just leave it. She needed more. “How do you know? The tough-guy version of female intuition?”
“There wasn’t a follow-up shot. If he’d still been alive when they reached him, there would have been.”
To be fair, she’d asked the question. It was her own fault if the answer made her dizzy. Anyway, as horrible as that was to think about, it relieved her worst fear: that she’d run away and left her friend behind to die without even trying to help him. She let out the breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in what she hoped was a nearly soundless exhalation. To her chagrin, her lips trembled in the aftermath.
“Nothing you could have done,” Cal added. She guessed that either he’d heard the sigh, or that with her face silhouetted against the marginally lighter entrance to the cave he could see her profile and had seen her lips tremble.
“I know that.” She sounded defensive, she realized, and pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling again.
“He the reason you’re crying? Arvid?”
“I’m not—” Gina began, her voice tight. But he knew better, and she knew he knew better, and suddenly she didn’t feel like pretending anymore. “I hate that he died like that, okay? I hate the idea that I just ran away and left him to die like that.”
To her horror, she felt tears welling up again and closed her eyes tightly to keep them from spilling over. When that didn’t work, when tears slid down her cheeks despite everything she could do and she felt him looking at her, she scrambled to her feet and started blindly walking away, back the way he had come, into the darkness that was the interior of the cave.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gina,” Cal called after her. “Hold up.”
It was, literally, so dark that she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Gina was having to feel her way along with her hand on the cold stone wall, but she didn’t even slow down. Not that she was going very fast to begin with, but still.
The sliver of light caught up with her before she made it much farther along the narrow passage. He was right behind it, his arm brushing hers as he fell in beside her. Fortunately, she’d had just enough time to swipe her eyes with her shirt, and to get the damned tears under control.
With his fingers covering it, the flashlight provided no more than a minimal amount of illumination. Even with him walking right beside her she didn’t think he could actually see her face. That being the case, she was glad of his presence. Or, more precisely, glad of the flashlight that was moving over the rough stone floor in front of them to illuminate the way, even if it only brightened up the darkness slightly. Otherwise she’d be worried about breaking her neck.
“I’ve got the flashlight. And the gun. You want to wait for me,” he said.
She made a noncommittal sound. At least, she’d meant it to be a noncommittal sound. What actually came out, to her horror, was more like a sniffle.
She could feel Cal looking at her. Then he said, “You’re right. You shouldn’t have left him. You should have done what you threatened to do to me: gone all ninja assassin on those four heavily armed military types and saved your boyfriend. Except, wait, he’d been hit by a bullet from a sniper rifle and was already dead before anybody had time to do anything.”
When he put it that way, the welling guilt she felt seemed absurd. But still she felt it, and sorrow and anger and fear as well, even as she struggled to push such useless emotions aside. Right now, she needed every bit of focus she could summon just to keep going.
Her reply had an edge to it. “Arvid isn’t—wasn’t—my boyfriend. He was a friend, and a colleague, that’s all. Doesn’t mean I can’t grieve for him. And Mary and Jorge and all the others, too.”
“You absolutely should grieve for them. But you shouldn’t feel guilty about something that wasn’t your fault and that you couldn’t have prevented no matter what you did.”
Having him nail her on the guilty part bothered her. She didn’t like that he had such an accurate read on what she was feeling. They didn’t know each other in any su
bstantive, real-life way, and that was how she wanted to keep it. A man like him—well, he wasn’t for confiding her deepest, most personal secrets in.
A sudden petrifying thought made her stop dead and pivot to face him. “We have to find Keith Hertzinger—I think it’s Keith who’s still alive; his gear was missing from his cubby—and warn him. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I didn’t think about that sooner. Arvid might still be alive if I’d thought to try to warn him.” She fixed unblinking eyes on Cal as it hit her that Keith could at any time be shot by assassins he didn’t even know were stalking him, or blindly walk in on the murderous situation at the camp just as she had done, or—the possibilities were endless. She grabbed Cal’s arm. “He should have his radio with him. We have to find a radio.” She shook her head at her own missing of the obvious. “I should’ve thought to look for a radio before we ran out of the building earlier. I’m sure there was one in there. I could have warned Arvid and—”
“We’d be dead,” Cal interrupted before she finished. “If you’d managed to do that, you would have led them right to us. The radio frequencies are being monitored, remember?”
The reminder was so appalling that Gina could only stare up at him. With the flashlight beam pointed at the ground and casting long upward shadows, he looked almost impossibly tall and intimidating. Menacing, even. Only, she discovered, she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him anymore.
For better or worse, she discovered with a degree of dismay, he was just Cal to her now.
“I have to warn Keith.” Her voice was tight with determination.
“No, you don’t.” As Gina opened her mouth to argue he added, “There’s no way we can. We don’t have a radio, and anyway radios are out. We could try flashing Morse code signals at him out the door of the cave with the flashlight, but they’re a hell of a lot more likely to be seen by the people looking for us than by your friend. Or did you mean to just start screaming his name from the mountaintop and hope he shows up?”
“We could go looking for him.” Ignoring his sarcasm, Gina did her best to recall the details of Keith’s research project. “I think I know where he might be.”
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