That threw me completely. I’d gotten used to sitting by the fire. “Move?”
“Down off the mountain. We’ve still got a good few hours of daylight left.”
I blinked. “Wait...no. No, we’re meant to stay with the plane. Rescue crews will come looking for it.”
He shook his head. “They won’t find it. ‘Least not for a few days. You remember that box the marshals threw out of the plane?”
I nodded.
“That was the emergency transponder.”
All the warmth from the fire seemed to seep out of my body. There was no telling where it had landed, if it had even survived the fall. Certainly, it was nowhere near us. The rescue crews would go to the wrong place.
I shook my head stubbornly. Procedure. Procedure would keep us alive. “We should still stay here. That’s what they always say, in the event of a plane crash. The wreckage is easier to find. And we have shelter, here, and—”
He squatted down beside me. By now, he had his pants and boots on, but he was still topless, the smooth muscles of his shoulders gleaming in the firelight. I was suddenly very aware of my near-nakedness.
“We need to move,” he said.
But I shook my head again. It wasn’t just about following the rules. That was part of it. Following the rules, being part of the system—that’s what I did. But it was more than that.
Heading off into the wilderness scared the crap out of me. The plane wreckage was the last scrap of civilization I had and I wanted to cling onto it with both hands.
He looked down at the ground as if trying to figure out how to deal with me. Endless months of solitude and then the first person he has to talk to is a scared, shaken female.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one out of my comfort zone.
He raised those big blue eyes to me. And in the firelight, the combination of hard and soft I saw there made me catch my breath. Soft because he wanted to look after me. And hard because he was going to do it whether I liked it or not.
“Look,” he said. “Right now, it’s about six degrees. But up here, once the sun goes down, it’ll drop below zero. And we already used up all the dry wood I could find. Once the fire goes out, we’ll freeze.” He looked out of the cave mouth, towards the edge of the mountain. “We need to get down. For every three hundred feet we go down, the temperature will go up a degree. By nightfall, we can be somewhere we can survive, somewhere there’ll be animals to hunt.”
“Tonight,” I echoed weakly, hugging my knees tight.
“We can bed down and carry on in the morning.”
Bed down. I pushed that thought away. I had enough filling my mind already. “But where are we going?” Please say there’s a town. Please say there’s a town only a few miles away….
“My cabin.”
“How far’s that?”
“Not far. Forty, maybe fifty miles.”
I felt my eyes bug out. “Forty miles?!” If we’d been in a car, it would have sounded like nothing at all. But on foot...I thought about how far a five mile run seemed. How far a marathon was. Forty. Miles.
“It’s our best chance.” He looked around. “If we stay here, at this altitude...we’re going to die.”
I looked away, my mind whirling. Then I looked down at my clothes, lying by the fire. He must have gotten the message because he stood up and walked around to the other side of the fire. He grabbed the rest of his clothes and turned his back to finish dressing, giving me privacy.
I quickly stood up and pulled on my pants, blouse and suit jacket. It felt ridiculous, putting on a suit for a cross-country hike, but it was all I had.
Boone held something out. “Here.”
It was his jacket. I hesitated, staring at his bare arms, exposed by his cut-off shirt. “Won’t you freeze?”
He shook his head.
I pulled the jacket on over my suit and it was glorious, still warm from the fire and thick enough to keep the chill out. “Thanks,” I said with feeling.
The jacket’s size drowned me a little, since it was made for him. It even smelled of him a little, of wood smoke and clean air and the outdoors. It brought home to me the craziness of what I was about to do.
I glanced at Boone. “Give me a minute.” Then I stepped out of the cave. I needed space.
The rain had stopped. The air outside was shockingly cold but it helped me think. Forty or fifty miles. With him. The cave had been comforting, even intimate, but it had felt temporary. In my mind, we’d been killing time until we were rescued. This was different. This was putting my faith in him. He’s a criminal!
I started to walk, making a wide circle through the trees, always keeping the cave in sight so that I didn’t get lost. Being an FBI agent is about balancing gut instincts and cold, hard facts. Up until now, I’d been letting my instincts rule the day. For some reason, I trusted him. But now it was time to take stock and get real.
Technically, I should be arresting him and trying to get him into custody. Instead, I was thinking about letting him lead me deeper into the wild. What if he was lying about what was best for us? He was a wanted man: he sure as hell didn’t want to be around the crash site when the authorities showed up.
What if going off into the wilds with him was the most dangerous thing I could do? Yes, he’d saved my life. But on the plane, a temporary alliance made sense. Now, our needs were opposed. I wanted to get back to civilization. But if we got there, it massively increased his chances of going to jail. At a word from me, the first cop we saw would arrest him. And if I didn’t do that, I’d be aiding a fugitive.
The best thing, from his point of view, was to make sure I never got home.
My stomach twisted. Had years of being an agent made me paranoid? Or were my instincts about him wrong? I went back and forth in my head.
He saved me.
He’s a fugitive.
I...like him.
He’s strong enough that he could kill me with one good punch.
He didn’t take the deal and bail out with Weiss.
He’s wanted by the military. For something so bad, they were going to lock him away for so long, that he gave up a normal life to run from it.
I climbed over a fallen log...and stopped.
Before me, lying on its side, was the rest of the plane. I could visualize now how we must have come in, skimming the treetops, the cockpit breaking off and tangling in the branches and the rest of the plane slamming into the ground. It had hit so hard, parts of it were buried in the ground. My stomach twisted. If the plane hadn’t snapped in two, we both would have been killed.
I stepped gingerly inside. There was no sign of my purse or my coat—everything loose probably fell out of the open door or was lost when the plane broke up. And I couldn’t see anything else useful….
And then I stopped. Right at the front of the cabin, just before where the cockpit had snapped off, were the folding seats where the marshals had sat. And next to one of them was a pocket holding two blue paper files.
“Kate?” Boone’s voice.
I darted forward and grabbed both files.
“Kate?” He was closer, now.
I didn’t have time to check names so I folded both files together into halves, then quarters, then stuffed the whole thing into the front of my pants and covered it with my suit jacket. The whole time, my heart was thumping in my chest. If I was wrong about him and he saw me….
“Kate?”
I whirled around. He was leaning in through the door.
We stared at each other. “Find anything useful?” he said at last.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Ready to go?” But the question his eyes asked me was, do you trust me?
The file, with its answers, felt red-hot against my body. “Sure,” I said.
And we set off.
12
Boone
I felt...free.
Some of it was having the chains off. Some of it was being out of the claustrophobic plane. And some of it was being back in
the mountains, far from people, far from anyone who’d put me back in a box.
Except for her.
I tried to push that thought away. She’d been nothing but good to me. I could do my part, get her to safety and, in return, hope that she wouldn’t send the authorities after me. As far as she knew, I was just a criminal. She didn’t know what they wanted me for. As long as it stayed that way, everything would be fine.
“How do you know where we’re going?” Kate asked.
Kate’s voice was a world away from my own Alaskan rasp. Boston or New York or something, definitely city. It spoke of cocktail parties and business meetings, quick and efficient and yet softly feminine. It was like my ears were being caressed by wisps of goddamn silk. I’d spent four years avoiding people but I could have listened to that voice all day.
I stopped and pointed down the mountain and along the valley. “River’s about forty miles that way. My cabin’s not far beyond it.”
“So you’ve been this way before?” she asked hopefully.
I shook my head. “Not exactly. I don’t normally go this high. The hunting’s better down near the river and in the forest. But I’ve passed close by here, on my way to Koyuk.” I nodded behind us. “That’s about forty miles the other way.”
“You walk eighty miles to get to a town?” She shook her head in disbelief. “That must take days!”
“Four or five.”
“But where do you sleep?”
I frowned at her, bemused, then nodded at the landscape. “Out here.”
She just stared at me like I was crazy and then walked on. God, she was so far out of her element, it was untrue. The ankles of her pant suit were already caked with mud and torn by thorns and we’d barely gone two miles. At least she wasn’t in heels. But it went deeper than her clothes. She was looking around at the landscape as if it was the surface of the moon instead of...you know, normal. She was hating this.
And me? A twinge of guilt went through me as I realized I was loving it. I actually had to stop myself smiling. It made no sense. Sure, this was the world I was used to but I didn’t go around grinning when I was out hunting. And this was a long way from an ideal trip: I had no supplies and, for the first time ever, I had a civilian to worry about. More stress, not less. So why was I—
It was her.
It was watching her walk along ahead of me (always ahead. However we started out walking, she always drifted into the lead, like a puppy determined to prove itself). It was the sway of her ass under that damn pant suit. It was the way she was so naked, under all those clothes—
I cursed myself. That doesn’t even make sense! But it was true. I looked at the back of her suit jacket and all I could think about was the white blouse underneath and the white bra beneath that and the soft, pale breasts beneath that, the nipples I’d glimpsed like tight, pink pencil erasers, surrounded by delicate areolae….
She was covered from head to foot, more demure than any Victorian lady. Yet somehow she was sexier than any model parading around in her underwear. The more she wore, the more I wanted to take it off her.
And that braid.
That. God. Damn. Braid.
Before the end of the first hour, I’d been hypnotized by it. It bounced against the soft, pale skin of her neck, focusing my attention on it as clearly as if some sniper had put a red laser dot there. My eyes were locked on that soft indentation at the bottom of her scalp, where gossamer-thin wisps of hair gleamed against her neck. I wanted to bury my lips there. I’d already imagined every possible angle I could kiss that part of her: I’d smelled her fragrant skin, had the hair tickle my nose, felt the braid silky-smooth and heavy against my fingers as I lifted it out of the way.
That braid was her. It summed up everything about her, all her gorgeous femininity pulled back into something practical and efficient, twisted tight and knotted in place. I wanted to unknot it. I wanted to free all that hair and see it cascade down her back just like I wanted to free the heat I could feel inside her. But before I did that, I wanted to grab hold of that braid and use it to gently but firmly tug her head back and cover her mouth with mine. I wanted to use it to guide the kiss as I took ownership of those imperious, pouty lips. I wanted to plunge my tongue deep into Kate Lydecker and—
“So you do know where we’re going?” asked Kate, turning to look over her shoulder at me.
For a second, I couldn’t speak. I just stared at her lips.
“Mason?”
I blinked. No one had used my first name in a long, long time. I’d almost forgotten I had it. “Yeah,” I said. I tried to keep my voice level but I could hear the throaty rasp in it. “Yeah. I know where we’re going. As long as we keep heading north, we’re good.”
“But how do you know which way is north?”
That threw me. I cocked my head to the side and frowned at her, trying to understand the joke. Then I realized that she was serious: she had no clue.
She must have seen the surprise in my eyes because her face grew dark. “I put an address into the car’s GPS.” She raised her chin defensively. “That’s how I navigate. That’s how everyone navigates!”
I nodded. But she’d gotten it wrong: I didn’t think she was dumb and I wasn’t mocking her. The only thing I was feeling was a big, unexpected swell of that protective instinct I got whenever I was near her. She was screwed out here, without me. And I realized that’s why she was touchy. She wasn’t used to having to rely on someone else.
I took hold of her wrist, trying not to think about how good her smooth skin felt against my calloused palm, and showed her how to figure north using the sun and her watch. She was a fast learner. When we walked on, I saw her trying it herself a few times to make sure she had it. And the weird thing was, I’d enjoyed teaching her. I’d been just fine on my own for years but now, sharing this stuff with her….
Now, those years felt lonely.
My eyes locked on that braid again...and then I caught myself and stopped in my tracks. For a moment, I’d gotten caught up in it, in some fantasy of me and her, happy together.
As if I could have that. As if I could have a normal life. I looked around at the mountains. This was my life: out here on the edge. Walking. Hunting. Maybe one night in five sleeping in an actual bed in a ramshackle cabin, the rest under the stars. Hell, even going into Koyuk, my one contact with civilization, was now too dangerous. I was back on their radar. I was going to have to withdraw even more. Who’d want to share that life? Certainly not a woman like Kate.
Her braid swished back and forth, bouncing off the soft skin of her neck.
And I clamped down on my feelings and walked on after her. I’d get her to safety. Then I’d say goodbye. That was the only sensible thing to do.
So why did it feel so wrong?
13
Weiss
“Goddamn it,” I muttered, rummaging through my pack. “Seriously? Fucking energy bars?” I waved my hand at the back of the 4x4. “We’ve got plenty of space. Would it have been too much trouble to bring some real fucking food?”
The lead mercenary—I couldn’t remember if his name was Sergei or Stepan: they all looked the same, to me—shrugged as if trying to make an irritating insect fly away. “When you get to Russia, you have all food you like.” His English was better than my Russian but that wasn’t saying much.
In front of us, the two other 4x4s stopped. “We’re here,” said Sergei, and quickly got out as if he didn’t want to spend any longer with me than necessary. Prick. He could at least be civil. I was paying him enough.
I jumped out...and sank almost up to my ankles in thick, sucking mud. When I Iooked down, my handmade Italian leather shoes had all but disappeared and the mud and water was soaking the cuffs of my pants. Great. I hated Alaska.
When I caught up with Sergei, he and the others were looking at the wreckage...but only half of it. The damn thing had broken up. It took us another few minutes, with the marshals, me and the three Russians spread out and searching, befo
re we spotted the cockpit jammed in some trees, high up off the ground.
I let out a long sigh of satisfaction. “Okay. Get the bodies and burn it all.
Sergei climbed up to take a look at the cockpit while the others started unloading the three body bags from the back of one of the 4x4s. I didn’t know who they were: Russians, I guess, or some unlucky homeless guys they’d found in Alaska. Didn’t matter. As long as they were the same sex, height and weight as me and the two marshals.
In minutes, the bodies were loaded into the tail section and strapped into seats. Then the Russians started pouring jet fuel over them.
That’s when Sergei climbed down from the cockpit. “We have problem,” he said as his boots hit the ground.
“The pilot’s not there?” I asked.
“Pilot is there. Other two are not.”
I stared at him. “Did they fall out of the door, after we jumped?”
Marshal Hennessey shook his head. “I watched that plane the whole way down. No one fell out.”
All of us looked around at the forest. Shit. “If they’re alive,” I grated, “we have a very big problem.”
The Russians spread out into the trees, guns drawn. They moved silently, even in their heavy boots and military gear. The guy I’d paid in Russia had said they were all former Spetsnaz, Russian special forces. The sort of men who knew thirty different ways to kill you even without a gun.
A few minutes later, the shout went up. They converged on a spot, then came jogging back.
“You found them?” I asked.
Sergei shook his head. “We found remains of fire. Two sets of footprints. They are heading down mountain.”
“Goddamn it!” I yelled. Then I rounded on the marshals. “You should have just shot them!”
“We already have a pilot with a bullet in his head,” snapped Marshal Phillips. “You should have stuck to the plan! It was meant to be a blow to the head, so it looked like it happened in the crash! You really want three bodies with bullets in, when they investigate this thing?”
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