At last, I grabbed the edge of the ledge and hauled myself up. First, I lay full length. Then I managed to get to my knees and finally to my feet. This time, I held his hand as we stepped around the corner. Twenty feet further on, the ledge widened into a path. As soon as it was wide enough, I slumped down, my back against the cliff.
His big body slumped down next to my small one. And then he told me what happened in Afghanistan.
18
Boone
It was all my fault. That’s all I could think. If I’d been any other guy, if I’d been anything other than a fugitive, she would have trusted me. And if she’d trusted me, she would have taken my hand on the ledge and she would never have fallen.
I nearly lost her.
The thought made a big, cold ache open up, right in the middle of my chest, like the mountain wind was blowing right through me. I barely knew her. And yet the idea of something happening to her scared me right down to my bones, scared me as much as the thought of going back to jail.
Maybe even more.
And unless I got her to trust me again, she’d die out here. One thing the Navy taught me: in the wilds, if you can’t put your faith in the people you’re with, you’re dead.
It was four years since I’d told anyone my story. I’d sworn that I’d never tell it again because reliving it stirred up all the anger I’d let settle down to the bottom of my soul. And there was a bigger problem, too: reliving it would put me dangerously close to reliving what happened immediately afterwards. Not only did that scare the crap out of me: if my mind went back there, she was as good as dead because I’d lock down and just sit there, glazed-eyed and useless, leaving her vulnerable out here. I knew I was already stretched thin: when we’d been on the ledge, I’d gotten that itchy, antsy feeling like I used to get when there was a sniper around. Which was nuts: there wasn’t another living soul for miles. And if I was starting to lose it, that really wasn’t a good time to revisit the past.
But I didn’t have a choice. I looked across at her, drinking in her beauty, drawing strength from seeing what it was I had to protect. Then I looked out over the landscape and began.
“A group of civilians had been captured,” I said. “My SEAL team were sent in to get them back. It was deep, deep in the insurgent-held half of the city so we went in at night: the idea was to go in and sneak them out without anyone knowing we were there.”
I paused. “Only our information was bad. We ran into way, way more resistance than we were expecting. We got the civilians out but we couldn’t get to our extraction point. The streets started swarming with insurgents. Felt like the whole city wanted us dead. We were using NVGs—”—I looked across at her—“Sorry, night vision goggles. But they’d gotten wise to that and were throwing road flares that made it so bright we couldn’t see, and someone had tossed a smoke grenade and….”
I drew in a deep breath. I could smell the tang of the smoke, feel it in my lungs. I was back there.
“Somewhere along the way, we get separated. Just me and one civilian, a young guy called Hopkins from one of the big military supply companies. It’s just me and him, skulking through back alleys, trying to reach the alternate extraction point, which is a rooftop. I have to give him my sidearm so he can watch our back.”
I still had my eyes open but I couldn’t see the landscape in front of me. I could see a confusing mass of walls and doorways, all rendered in night-vision green. “We somehow make it almost to the extraction point. We just have to get up onto the rooftops and sneak across them and wait for the chopper. So we pick a house that looks abandoned: the door’s broken in and we can’t hear anything.”
My voice slowed. “We sneak inside. Nothing. We climb the stairs. Nothing. We finally start to relax. We just have to wait until we hear the chopper, then we’ll climb up through the roof hatch and they’ll pick us up. We have to be quiet because we can hear insurgents searching for us right outside, but we figure we’re in the clear.”
I stopped for a moment. The sun was still well above the horizon as I sat there with Kate. I let the sunlight bathe my face. You’re here. Not there. A little mantra I repeat when I’m close to slipping back. It usually works well, in the daytime. Not so well at night. But now it wasn’t working at all. I was back in a stone-walled room...and one side of it was moving.
“See,” I said in a tortured voice, “when we’d come up the stairs, we’d thought it was a small room, only half the size of the downstairs. We figured that’s just how the house was built—they’re laid out all sorts of ways, when they’re packed in so close together. But we were wrong. We suddenly hear something, really close, right on the other side of the wall, only it’s too loud and too near to be in the next house.” The words were bursting out of me, now, like black oil erupting out of the ground when the drill hits it. “And that’s when we realize it’s not a wall: it’s a sheet, painted to look like a wall. And there’s people right on the other side of it.”
“Hopkins,” I said, my voice tight, “He doesn’t even think. He just assumes we’re about to be overrun. He raises my sidearm and opens up, empties the whole magazine into the sheet. Puts fourteen holes straight through it. And then the screaming starts. And someone staggers forward, pressing up against the sheet, and falls and they rip it down with them and we see—”
I broke off, my lips pressed tight together. “They’d been hiding,” I said. “They slept behind that sheet each night, so the house would look abandoned if anyone searched it. When we’d come in, we’d woken them up and they’d been waiting there, terrified, praying we’d leave peacefully. Until one of their kids woke up and made a noise.” I closed my eyes. “Mom. Dad. Six children. All dead.”
I heard her soft moan of horror from off to my side. My stomach twisted: that night was toxic, the events tainting everyone who heard them. She’d never forget the image she had right now in her mind’s eye. It should have made me stop but there was something in the sound that gave me the strength to carry on: not just horror, but sympathy. She was imagining how much worse it must have been to be there, to know that you were partially responsible.
“Things happened fast after that,” I told her, opening my eyes and staring at the sinking sun. “The insurgents outside hear the shots and start piling into the house. At the same time, we hear the chopper, right overhead. Hopkins is just standing there, gaping at what he’s done, so I push him towards the roof hatch and tell him to go, while I hold them off.”
I could feel the fear crawling over my skin, a million freezing insects preparing to swarm. This memory was threatening to trigger that memory, the one I couldn’t control. I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “I’m firing down the stairs when I hear the roof hatch open and Hopkins climb out. The chopper’s thundering away, right above us, the downwash blasting through the hatch, blowing everything around: I can barely see. But I run over and climb up to the hatch and—”
I broke off, seeing Hopkins’s face in my head. When I restarted, it was with difficulty. I was dangerously close to the brink, close to falling into a place I wouldn’t return from. I have to stop. But I needed to finish this part. “Hopkins is crouching there on the roof, looking down at me...and he just shakes his head like he’s sorry. And then he swings the hatch closed.”
“What?!” Kate gripped my arm.
Her touch gave me just enough strength to continue. “By now, insurgents are flooding up the stairs. I hammer on the hatch but it won’t move—he’s put something heavy on top of it. And I can hear the chopper flying away—”
I stopped, as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch. I couldn’t go on. I wasn’t sure if I could ever tell her the next part.
So I skipped forward, side-stepping a huge, painful chunk.
“I was MIA for a while. When I finally made it back to base, I found that Hopkins had told them that I shot the family.”
For the first time, I looked at Kate. Her face was ashen. “And they believed him?”
�
�Turns out, Hopkins’s dad owned the supply company. Multi-billionaire. No way was he going to let his son go down for something like that. He put pressure on the military to buy Hopkins’s story. And it was easy to blame me: everyone thought I was dead. By the time I showed up, everything was set in stone. They brought me back to the US, there was a court martial...and I was found guilty. I was going to jail for a long, long time. So as soon as I got a chance, I ran.”
And that was it. That was my story—or all of it I could tell. I found I was looking into Kate’s eyes, trying to read her thoughts—
I realized I was trying to tell if she believed me. I hadn’t done that in years. I knew no one believed me. I’d had that beaten into me. I’d stopped caring.
But I cared what she thought.
Kate shook her head. “That’s—Jesus, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever—That’s why you’re out here? That’s why you’re—” She looked around at the mountains, at the tiny speck of humanity we represented. That’s why you’re all alone.
I nodded and looked down, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. The tension was too much.
A moment later, her small, elegant hand slid on top of my big, clumsy one and gripped tight. I still couldn’t look at her.
“I believe you,” she said.
My head snapped up and I was looking right into those rich brown eyes, lit up with more warmth, more trust, than I’d ever seen. God, she was beautiful. But I almost glared at her, I wanted to believe it so much. Don’t you be lying to me.
She stared right back at me, resolute.
She did believe me. She really did.
19
Kate
I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much but it seemed like we were past the worst of the descent. The cliffs had transitioned into gentler slopes, with grass mixed in with the rocks. Boone had been right: it was warmer, the further we descended. It became almost comfortable.
And then we entered the forest. By now, the sun was almost setting and Boone was talking about finding a place to spend the night. Just the thought of that made my heart race. Out here. Alone with him.
So much had changed in just a few minutes, up on the cliff. My trust in him had done a complete one-eighty and not just because of what he’d told me. That had been the explanation but the way he’d saved me when I fell was the proof. I believed him. I’d watched his face so carefully as he told me about Afghanistan. No way was he lying.
Which meant that, somewhere out there, a lying, moneyed prick called Hopkins had gotten away with manslaughter. He thought the law didn’t apply to him. And, meanwhile, Boone had spent four years in self-imposed exile, his service to his country forgotten, his record forever tainted. No wonder he kept away from people, away from civilization. It was about more than just hiding. Boone had lost all faith in the system.
He was in the lead at the moment. I looked down at the huge footprints his boots were leaving and my much smaller ones within them. He was the right size for this vast land and I was comically, terrifyingly dwarfed by it. And nothing seemed to bother him: cold, heights, even hunger. I was starving.
I let my eyes track down his body. The shafts of sunlight coming through the trees painted stripes across the hulking muscles of his back. They wrapped around the heavy bulges of shoulder and bicep, stroked their way down into the small of his back, then bent outward again over the twin globes of his hard ass—
I was uncomfortably aware that the sunlight was doing exactly what I’d like to do with my hands. He was just so...big. Powerful and raw in a way that was a million miles away from the guys I knew at the FBI. And now that I trusted him….
He’s still a fugitive. And he’d be living out here forever, unless….
Unless I could get him justice.
I was so distracted, I walked right into Boone’s back. It was like we were back at the airport again...except, this time, when I felt that hard body against me, I had a sudden urge to just stay there, wrap my arms around him and—
I jumped back as he turned around. Don’t be stupid! We were still stranded, still in danger. And I couldn’t just—With a guy I barely knew—
I met his gaze and saw the same flicker of helplessness there, the same pull I was feeling. A wave of heat washed over me. He wanted me, in the most basic, primal way possible.
But then he looked away for a second, and when he turned back it was as if the lust had been locked behind bars, contained...for now. “Here.”
He was holding something out. A stem of berries. My jaw dropped open. Food! I hadn’t eaten since my flight from Seattle and my stomach felt like it was trying to devour itself. Just the thought of food had me salivating and the berries looked juicy and ripe…. “Thank you,” I croaked, and grabbed the stem—
And as he released it, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Just for a second, a hint of a smile pulled at his mouth. Like he enjoyed making me happy.
Then he quickly turned and walked on.
The berries were delicious, exploding into little gushes of tangy juice and sweet flesh as I crushed them in my mouth. Boone stopped to pick a few for himself and, as I’d been doing all day, I drifted ahead of him on the path.
He kept giving me those looks...but he didn’t say anything, didn’t acknowledge the attraction. Maybe I’m wrong? I mean, it was obvious why I was attracted to him, but why would he be into me? I didn’t have big boobs or eye-catching blonde hair, I sure as hell didn’t have long legs and I didn’t even know how to dress sexy—I spent almost all my time in a suit. And I knew I could be work-obsessed and stubborn….
And yet...no, I hadn’t imagined it. He looked at me like—I flushed—like he wanted to push me up against the nearest tree and rip my clothes off. But more than that.
He looked at me like I was something special. That made me flush in a whole different way.
So why the silence? Was it because, after four years on his own, he didn’t remember how to flirt or make small talk? Was it because I was FBI? Because, when we got back to civilization, we’d be on opposite sides? Or was it—
I blundered through some undergrowth and found a huge, brown shape right in front of me. By the time I stopped, I was almost close enough to touch it.
That’s a—
My brain rebelled. It was so far outside my experience, I couldn’t accept it. Of course it isn’t.
That’s a—
Oh Jesus God.
The bear rose silently up on its hind legs, towering over me. And roared.
20
Boone
I reached Kate just as the bear roared. The sound echoed around the entire forest and we were close enough that we could feel the hot blast of air on our faces.
I froze. “Don’t move,” I told Kate. “Absolutely do not move.”
A brown bear, and a big one. Probably fresh out of hibernation, looking to regain some weight after using up its fat stores through the winter. Bears won’t usually attack people. Not unless you surprise them. That’s why every hiker knows to make a lot of noise as you walk so they know you’re coming. Except we’d both been so wrapped up in our thoughts, we’d done the exact opposite.
And from the look of her, she was a female. The cubs might be close by. Shit. Shit, shit shit.
Kate was close to panic, her shoulders rising and falling as she sucked in air. Her weight shifted infinitesimally as her instincts all told her to run.
“Don’t,” I told her. “She’s faster than us. If we run, she’ll chase us down.”
The bear took a step towards us. Kate was in front. It’d go for her first, falling on her with claws and teeth, locking its jaws around her head—
That deep-down urge to protect her welled up and I moved before I was even aware I was going to do it. I put my hands on her waist and swung her around, so that my back was to the bear and she was in front of me, facing the way we’d come. Then I hugged her in close, her back to my chest, and curled myself over her, wrapping her in a protective cocoon. Behind me, the be
ar let out another roar, so loud it made my ears ring. My sudden movement could be interpreted as a threat. Any second, I could feel the bear’s claws sink into my shoulders—
But at least it would be me, not her.
Kate was shaking, her whole body trembling. Her delicate ear was right by my lips. “If she takes me, run,” I told her. “Run and don’t look back.”
I felt her whole body go tense. She found my hand and gripped it tight.
There was a ground-shaking thump as the bear fell to all fours right behind me. It was now so close that I could feel each hot exhale on the back of my neck. I closed my eyes, waiting for the bite.
A wet nose brushed just below my hairline. There was a sniff and a snort, a low growl….
And then heavy footsteps, getting slowly quieter.
I kept her wrapped up in my arms for long minutes, first in case the bear was just circling around, then because she was still shaking, and then just because.
When I eventually released her and turned her to face me, her cheeks were white. She looked over my shoulder, then all around. “It’s okay,” I told her. “She’s gone.”
But she was still panting. I recognized it because I’d felt it myself, the first time I’d come face-to-face with a bear. That special kind of terror that comes when you remember man isn’t the top of the food chain, once you take away his weapons.
She needed comforting. That’s what I told myself. So it was okay to just—
I put my hands on her shoulders and then smoothed them down her back, like stroking a cat. I had no idea of the words to use. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to comfort anyone. “Shh,” I said awkwardly. “It’s okay.”
My palms swept down into the small of her back and, as I had to reach further, that kind of pulled her inward, toward me. She took a half-step forward and her leg slipped between mine. My hands slid back up...but she didn’t step back.
Alaska Wild Page 8
