by Cindy Dees
“Ribs. Your buddy worked me over pretty good.”
“He isn’t my buddy. Yousef is a psychopath and a terrorist.” He added, “If you’ve got broken ribs, we shouldn’t try this climb.”
“Your makeshift padding worked, as far as I can tell,” she grunted as she hauled herself upward. “My ribs are just bruised.”
“Still. If this climb is going to hurt too much, we can go around.”
“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” she commented absently as she eyed the next handholds above her.
He snorted. “The rest of that saying is, ‘Unless you’ve served in the military. Then it’s probably arthritis.’”
A burst of laughter escaped her. “Don’t make me laugh. I’ll lose focus and fall.”
Grinning, he continued climbing behind her, privately enjoying the view of her tush and long, lean legs.
They were mostly silent during the climb, communicating only to warn each other of loose rocks, or to point out a possible change to their route up the wall. It took nearly a half hour to make the climb, and as they flopped on their bellies on the flat ground above, they were both breathing hard.
“Well. That should slow down Mahmoud and company a bit,” he commented.
He climbed to his feet and helped Piper to hers. He noticed that she was moving distinctly more creakily than before. “Do you need to stop and rest for a while?” he asked quietly.
“No. Let’s press on.”
As impressed as he was by her fortitude in the face of pain and exhaustion, he said, “Look, we can’t walk straight through for the next week. You’re going to have to rest sometime.”
“They’re following us by now, right?”
“I expect so.”
“Then now is the time to press on. Our tactical advantage will come from moving farther and faster than they can possibly expect us to. When they don’t find us right away, they’ll get frustrated. The rigors of tracking us will start to weigh on their minds, and we’ll have won.”
“Okay. Who are you?” he blurted. “That’s seriously military-trained thinking.”
“I told you. I’m in the army.”
“Well, yeah. There’s army and then there’s army. Not that many women run around with field infantry units.”
“There are plenty of women in the infantry, thank you very much. And we keep up with the boys just fine.”
He threw up his hands. “I meant no offense. Suffice it to say I’m impressed by your training.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that on to my instructors.”
He shook his head. “Fine. We’ll press on a little while longer. But tonight, we stop, find or build a shelter, and get some proper rest.”
“Fair enough.”
She met his gaze, smiling a little as she did so. Hark. Was the ice queen’s wall of suspicion actually beginning to thaw?
Chapter 9
Pain, exhaustion, relief and fear pulled at Piper in about equal amounts. The idea of building a nice fire, getting dry and warm, and curling up for a long nap sounded better than just about anything on earth. But she wasn’t wrong. Now was the exact time to press on and push the hardest. When other people would stop and rest, this was the moment to put distance between herself and her captors.
The Medusas had a long history of capitalizing on their foes underestimating the capabilities of women, and this was definitely one of those times.
Thankfully, Goldeneyes was insanely fit himself and able to keep up with her as she pushed herself to her prodigious physical limits.
A CIA officer, huh? That certainly explained a lot. She was inclined to believe him. After all, he’d been unflaggingly protective of her from the very beginning, and he, too, had kept his cool in multiple high-stress situations.
It started to rain again as darkness fell. The rain became a downpour, and the temperature dropped precipitously.
She knew it didn’t have to get colder than about sixty-five degrees for hypothermia to become a threat, and it was definitely colder than that now. Neither she nor her companion had proper clothing for cold, and their blankets were soaked, too.
Vaguely, it occurred to her that they should probably consider stopping and trying to find shelter. But where? She looked around and saw only trees and more trees. If they had a parachute they could build a great shelter. She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do if she didn’t have one.
Alarm shot through her. Something was wrong with her.
She stumbled just then, and barely managed to right herself without face planting. Hmm. That was unlike her. She wasn’t usually clumsy.
“Are you okay?” Goldeneyes asked from behind her.
“Uh, yeah. Fine.”
“What’s eight times nine?”
“What?” She turned around to peer at him in the thick darkness. The heavy cloud cover made it nearly impossible to see out here.
“What’s eight times nine? Quick. Just tell me the answer.”
“No fair. I suck at math.”
“Answer me. Right now.”
“Um...fifty-six—no. Seventy-two.”
“Too slow. We’re stopping,” he announced.
“No! We have to keep going!”
“You’re either exhausted or hypothermic or both. We’re stopping. Now,” he said firmly.
“Speak for yourself. I’m keeping going.” She turned to face forward and disorientation swirled around her as she stared at the thick trees in every direction. Where was she supposed to go?
A hand closed on her upper arm. It was gentle but strong enough that she couldn’t ignore it. “Listen to me, Piper. You need to take care of yourself now if you’re going to be able to keep going tomorrow.”
“But Mahmoud—”
“Mahmoud is no hero. He’ll call it quits if the weather gets this nasty. He’s just a guy doing a job. But his number one priority is saving his own hide and his own comfort and well-being. We’ve got some time to rest.”
Should she believe him? As she considered that, it gradually dawned on her that her brain was fuzzier than it ought to be. A lot fuzzier. “I don’t know...” she mumbled.
“There’s a rock face about a hundred meters in front of us. Maybe we can find an overhang that’s reasonably dry. Come on. Let’s go have a look.”
For lack of any better ideas, she fell in behind him. He followed the line of the cliff for a little while and stopped in front of a long, narrow ledge about waist high. It jutted out, forming a flat roof over an indentation caused by long-term erosion of the layers of sandstone below.
He announced, “It’s not great, but this will have to do.”
They crawled under the narrow overhang, which was only about eight feet deep. The good news was the dead leaves and debris collected at the back of the space were more or less dry. Which meant the ground beneath was dry.
He made her go in first, and then he stretched out beside her with the garbage bag draped over his back to buffer the worst of the rain that blew in under the ledge.
As soon as they quit moving, the chill and the wet caught up with her, and she started to shiver. Over the next few minutes, the shivering worsened until her teeth chattered and her entire body shook violently.
Goldeneyes put his arms around her, but he didn’t feel much warmer than her. After a couple minutes, he announced, “This isn’t working. We’re both getting more hypothermic. We’ll be in serious trouble soon if we don’t do something.”
Hypothermia. That was bad. Deadly if not dealt with. She’d memorized something having to do with it somewhere before, a lifetime away from this moment.
She recited, “Dry clothing. Hot food and drink. Heat source. Share body heat.”
“Did you get a merit badge in scouting for survival?” he asked humorously.
“Scouting? No. Medusas.”
“Medusas? What?”
“Never mind,” she mumbled.
He ticked off her list. “We have no dry clothing, and it’ll take a fire to heat up drinks or food. For that matter, we could use a fire for the heat ourselves.”
“Fire’s a beacon,” she mumbled.
“True. But we could die if we don’t build one,” he replied. “I don’t think we have any choice.”
“Shield it,” she responded.
“Gotta build it first,” he replied humorously. “And everything out here is wet.”
“Not everything.” She reached into her front jeans pocket and pulled out a handful of cattail fuzz.
He peered between their bodies for a moment, obviously working to figure out what she was holding in her fist. “Where did you get that?” he finally asked.
“Crossing one of the streams this morning. I grabbed some in case we needed a fire starter. My body heat dried it through the day.”
He shocked her by dropping a fast, hard kiss on her mouth. “You are a goddess. You may have just saved us both.”
She blinked, startled.
“Stay here while I go gather the driest wood I can find for a fire. I won’t be long.”
“Don’t go far,” she said quickly as fear of being alone out here roared through her. Weird. She didn’t fear forests, and she certainly didn’t fear being by herself.
“I won’t.”
And then he was gone. Only the sound of rain batting at leaves and water dripping nearby broke the heavy silence. She huddled inside the damp blanket, her fingers and toes numb with cold, and her brain at least as numb.
She had to move. Do something to increase her circulation. Otherwise, she was going to drift off to sleep and her core body temperature would drop even more. Gritting her teeth, she threw off the blanket and crawled out of what little warmth the thing had provided.
She cleared a wide space on the ground under one end of the overhang, collecting the relatively dry leaves and debris for starting their fire. In the center of the space, she used a stout stick and her hands to dig a hole. When it was knee-deep, she worked on widening it.
If they built the fire in the bottom of the hole, the worst of its light would be hidden from distant eyes.
To additionally protect the flame from being spotted, she draped one of the blankets over bushes just beyond the firepit. She left a small gap between the top of the blanket and the rock face so smoke and heat could escape without setting the blanket on fire.
Not only would it act as a light shield, but it would also protect the fire from wind and the worst of the rain. They’d sacrifice some warmth from the blanket for themselves, but the payback in heat from the fire should more than make up for the loss.
She was just finishing up when a shadow loomed suddenly, startling her badly. Goldeneyes. Wow, she was seriously off her game.
He dumped a big armload of wood on the ground and nodded in approval at her preparations.
“I’ve got one more thing to do before we hunker down and get warm,” he murmured. He dug in his pack and came up with a plastic grocery bag.
“What’s in that?” she asked curiously.
“Fishing line and mousetraps.”
“You’re going to trap the perimeter?” she blurted in surprise. “Do you need help?”
“Nah. You’re too cold. Do you feel comfortable starting the fire by yourself?”
She threw him her best “are you kidding?” look and asked dryly, “Do you have some matches, or am I rubbing sticks together?”
He tossed her a cigarette lighter from his pack, which she snagged neatly in midair.
He grinned. “Good luck.”
Smart-ass. She would show him.
She piled up her dry cattail fluff and a few of the dry leaves and small twigs to prepare a fire. Using her body as an additional shield against the wind and rain, she used the cigarette lighter to start it.
She bent close, blowing gently on her fledgling blaze and feeding in more leaves. It smoked heavily, but gradually, the twigs caught fire. She fed it more twigs, and then sticks the diameter of her fingers. It took perhaps ten minutes for the fire to really get established. But eventually, she laid down branches the diameter of her wrists and held out her hands to warm them over the growing flames.
Now and then a gust blew a sheet of rain under the overhang and the fire guttered. But it had established a bed of coals and, tucked down in the bottom of the hole she’d dug, was mostly protected. She broke all the branches she was strong enough to crack into smaller lengths, and ringed the firepit with the wet wood to dry out some before she had to stack it on the blaze.
Heat began to roll off the fire, but it wasn’t enough to beat back the violent cold making her shiver uncontrollably.
Gradually, though, her hands dried, warmed and regained feeling. She stripped off her soaked tennis shoes and socks and draped them over logs near the fire. Her toes were white and wrinkled with wet and cold, and she held her feet close to the fire to dry and warm, as well. It hurt like crazy as circulation returned to them, but at least they were thawing and warming.
Goldeneyes was gone a solid half hour before he called out from the woods, “I’m coming in now.” Which was kind of him. She would have hated to break his neck in reflexive reaction if he successfully sneaked up on her.
“Wires set?” she asked.
“Yes. The mousetraps won’t be very loud, but they should silence all the critters around them. I set some about four hundred yards out and another group about two hundred yards out.”
He was correct. Abrupt cessation of sound out here would be as noticeable as a loud noise. Assuming the rain didn’t drown out all sound. The good news: Mahmoud and his men had probably hunkered down in some sort of shelter to ride out this downpour.
“Give me your water bottles,” Goldeneyes directed her. He set those beside the fire to warm up the water inside.
Good idea.
But then he stripped off his sweatshirt and T-shirt. His bare chest looked primal in the flickering firelight. He reached for the hem of her sweatshirt, as well.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she blurted.
“You said it yourself,” he said. “We have to get dry. We need to dry out our clothes if we’re going to have any chance of warming up.”
She frowned at him, trying hard to come up with some reasonable argument to refute his logic.
Damn. She had nothing. She reached for her hem and winced as her ribs gave a mighty protest.
“Let me do that for you,” he said quickly. Very gently, he slipped his hands under the wet cotton and pushed it up to her neck. He grabbed the cuffs and tugged while she pulled her arms free of the sleeves. A grunt of pain slipped out of her mouth.
“Easy,” he murmured. He stretched the neck of the garment with his hands and lifted it very carefully over her battered face. The cold air hit her bare skin and she gasped.
He sucked in a hard breath as well, but it was probably the sight of the copious bruises across her torso that made him suck wind like that. She gathered the white cotton of her shirt across her middle, clutching it for a second in embarrassment before she steeled herself to shuck it off in turn. Still, after she took it off, she reflexively wadded it in her hands, clutched at her throat, clinging to its meager protection.
Carefully averting his eyes from her bruises and bra, he spread her sweatshirt out next to his on the far side of the fire, and then he held out his bare arm to her in invitation. He never once looked her way.
It was a small courtesy, but it meant a lot to her. She hadn’t realized how embarrassed she would be by the evidence of her beating. Maybe it was a reflection of the helplessness she’d felt while she’d been tied to that chair taking punches.
Appreciation that he didn’t force himself upon her in any way also registered. He
waited patiently, his arm extended, not a muscle in his body moving. She stared at his chest for a long moment. It was muscular. Strong. It shouted of danger to her.
And yet she realized with a start that she trusted him. He had never hurt her before, and he wasn’t about to start now. All at once, she shook out the torn cotton shirt and spread it on the ground. Then she scooted over close to him.
He gasped involuntarily as she pressed her side against his. “You’re an ice cube, Piper. Why didn’t you tell me earlier that you were freezing?”
“W-was t-trying t-to ignore it.”
“While I admire your efforts to be tough, we’re in this together. Please tell me if you’re cold or hungry or thirsty or tired, so I can take care of you.”
“I’m all of th-the above,” she admitted against his chest.
His arm tightened around her shoulders, protectively but not restrictively. An odd sense of comfort flowed over her, gradually sinking into her. Or maybe that was just his body heat.
“We probably need to take off our jeans, too,” he sighed into her hair. “Mine are soaked, and I assume yours are, too. I didn’t want to freak you out by suggesting all at once that we strip down.”
She considered his words. What he said made sense. At least her mental functions seemed to be returning a little bit.
“You can take your jeans off and I’ll leave mine on if you want,” he offered.
“But that would mean you’d be sitting around in wet pants, not warming up,” she objected.
“I put you through hell the past several days. It’s the least I can do for you.”
“We’ll both take our pants off,” she declared.
It was awkward working in the tight confines of the narrow space, and the wet denim clung to their legs stubbornly. They ended up having to take turns lying on their backs and holding their legs up while the other one peeled the jeans off.
Piper giggled as she yanked at his pants and accidentally got a fistful of his tighty-whities. He made a fast grab to preserve his modesty.
“It’s not as if I haven’t been exposed to all of your...equipment...already,” she announced.
