Could she be satisfied with that?
But then, would she be happy if she didn’t give in to this wild attraction? After all they’d been through?
She pulled the food from her pack, determined to focus on something else. She laid out the vacuum-sealed pouches of thawed meat. “How did you escape, Dylan?”
“It’s kind of a blur. But mostly anger and determination. I just didn’t want those assholes to win.”
He sighed and leaned back against the wall, tossing another piece of driftwood into the stove. “I had to listen to Sylvia and Trevor talk about how they were going to cover up my death. When they agreed they’d hire someone to collect my body and toss me out to sea, I knew I had to be gone before anyone came back. No matter what it took.”
With a long stick, he poked at the fire through the open door on the side of the stove. Fiona could tell from the look in his eye that he wasn’t here, with them. He was back in the well of the chamber, after he’d fallen through the fragile floor. A place she and Dean had been just last night, and she could see it in her mind with the same terror Dylan must’ve felt.
“I couldn’t bandage my head wound right away. I mean, they might hear me moving around and realize I was still alive. So I grabbed the only absorbent thing that was easy to get to—the damn cotton Pollux tote bag—and maneuvered it so it was under my head and turned, facedown, so I’d look like I was dead while I pressed the cut into the bag.”
“We found it. The bag with your blood soaked through,” Dean said.
The brothers exchanged a look, and she wanted to hug them both. The pain and fear they’d both suffered was intense but, unfortunately, not unfamiliar to her. What she wouldn’t have done for a moment like this with Regan.
This was so many of her fantasies come true. Just not for her.
Neither man knew what she’d gone through, and she was glad for that, because it had shadowed her pessimism. Made her ache and not believe in happy endings. It was why she’d refused to tell Dean not just her thoughts but her story.
Dean and Dylan were now getting the reunion she and Regan never got. She didn’t feel bitter about that. Instead, she just felt happy that these two men—both of whom she cared about in very different ways—could have a joy denied her. Denied Regan.
There was justice somewhere, at least.
Of course, they still had to survive this and bust Sylvia and Trevor and Victor and whoever else was involved.
“After I was alone, I think I was delirious. Pain and blood loss. I ate something—I’m not even sure what, but I knew I needed to eat, then get the hell out of there. They would come back for my body. My leg hurt like a bitch, but I didn’t have anything to splint it with. I just . . . started crawling, dragging my leg. Thinking about how Jane Goodall said—at least, I think it was Jane, but it might have been Margaret Mead—that once archaeologists started finding skeletons with healed femur fractures, it was a defining moment of civilization. Or maybe a benchmark. Because leg fractures can’t be survived alone, without a community. An australopithecine breaks a leg, and they’re dead.”
“It was Mead,” Fiona murmured. “And a brilliant observation about communities and civilization.”
Dylan smiled and waved his arm in a circle in front of his chest, like he was bowing with just the arm gesture and dip of head as he lay with his broken leg spread out in front of him. “Welcome to my one-man civilization.”
Fiona’s eyes burned once again. “Thank you for being the exception to the rule.”
He gave her a cocky grin. “We Slater men are all exceptional.”
She snorted a laugh. “Your brother has dug his own hole. Let him dig himself out.”
“Roger that.” He smirked. “So I dragged my exceptional self—very painfully, I might add—across the chamber and to the nearest tunnel. I had a minimal first aid kit and wrapped my wound”—he touched his forehead, which sported a nasty, still fresh-looking scar—“in gauze and took two ibuprofen. I want it on record here that ibuprofen doesn’t dampen the pain of a femur fracture very much.”
“Noted,” Fiona said. “You are badass.”
“Damn right. Okay, so then I made it to the chamber with the escape tunnel, and . . . I’m not entirely sure. I think I passed out for only a few hours, but it might have been more? No daylight to tell and”—he waved his arm around—“I had no way to know how much time I’d lost. I didn’t have my phone, and my smartwatch battery died the first day.”
She noted he still wore the dead watch on his wrist. Which was kind of sad but also endearingly sweet.
“I woke up at some point and realized I needed to go through the tunnel and hope for an escape. With my leg broken, it wasn’t like I could back up and find a different route. All balls in one basket.”
She guessed his choice of the word balls over eggs hadn’t been a mistake, and really, they were the gender equivalent of the same thing.
“It was the most painful . . . who knows how long . . . of my life, but in the end, I found myself delirious and in a ton of pain but outside the volcano. I remembered visiting the World War II village with you, Fiona, and knew it was the closest shelter. Plus, it was by a sheltered cove. I could fish when the MREs ran out.
“All I had to do was survive. So I crawled, knowing I was going in the right general direction thanks to the water when it was clear and the sound of the water when it was not. I had a heavy coat, hat, gloves, and a couple of emergency shelter tents. I holed up against tephra mounds in my pathetic Mylar shelter for two nights. Frankly, I thought the emergency tent was ridiculous that first night, giving me false hope. But it saved my life. Mad respect for it by the second night. I was ready to name it Wilson and declare it my best friend after that, but then I reached the base and moved into this sweet little condo.”
He nodded to a shredded pile of Mylar and rotting piece of canvas far enough from the fire to prevent the tent from melting and cloth from burning. “I only use the Mylar when I don’t dare risk a fire in case the smoke will be spotted. But the weather here is more fog than clear, and I’ve had plenty of wood and coal.”
Her heart ached at all that Dylan had needed to do to survive. The pain he must still be in with an improperly set leg.
She cleared her throat. “And food? How have you gotten enough to eat?”
“I tried spearfishing in the bay. When that failed, I found some old nets in the ruins. Way easier and more effective. Rodents when I couldn’t fish.”
He was lean—far leaner than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, but that was hardly a surprise. The fish he’d been able to catch probably hadn’t been large. Just enough to keep him going.
Dean brushed aside her efforts to help and cooked the steaks, dropping them on the hot stove. The meat smelled utterly delicious, sizzling on the flat grill top. But when the time came to eat, Fiona found she couldn’t enjoy more than a few bites, and she passed the remainder to Dylan. “Please. Eat this.”
He resisted, but then Dean did the same. Finally, Dylan said, “Listen, I’ll eat Fiona’s, but you two split the other one. My stomach couldn’t take more anyway.”
She and Dean split the remainder of his steak, and it was more than enough to fill her belly, knowing that they’d be limited if they didn’t figure out how to get off the island sooner rather than later. Dylan needed medical help. Sheer will could only carry a man so far.
That night, they opened the sleeping bag, and the three of them slept on the cold ground, sharing the not-nearly-wide-enough thermal pad beneath them with the open sleeping bag as a blanket above. Fiona slept in the middle, with each Slater brother pressed on either side against her.
THIRTY-FIVE
Dean slept deeply for the first time in weeks. As he drifted off, he had Fiona pressed to his side and could hear the even breathing of his brother just inches away. He’d never quite lost hope, but at the same time, he didn’t know if he’d ever quite believed this outcome was possible.
He was almost
afraid to wake up and find it was a dream. But when the gray light of dawn penetrated the small opening of the short entrance tunnel, he opened his eyes to see Fiona and Dylan, facing each other and curled together in sleep. Fiona had shifted closer to Dean, with her backside against Dean’s hip, giving Dylan as much of the thermal pad as possible, which meant Dean was completely pushed off the pad on his back on the cold, hard ground. He was glad for this, as there’d been much arguing the night before as they tried to convince Dylan to take both pad and sleeping bag. The current arrangement was a compromise.
Seeing his brother and Fiona entwined triggered a mild ache, but it wasn’t jealousy or anything negative toward either person. It was just the ongoing question if Fiona and Dylan might be better suited. After all, Dean wasn’t interested in anything more than a fling. What if Dylan could offer her a future?
If that were the case, he’d have to step back. Fiona deserved a man who’d love her until the end of time, and he had no doubt she could and would fall in love with Dylan, given the chance.
It was bizarre to have these thoughts, even as he woke with her in his arms for the third morning in a row, their survival still far from assured.
But dammit, he’d get her and his brother to safety. Whatever it took. Whatever sacrifice necessary.
He scooted back, attempting to extract himself from her side, and she shifted at the loss of his body heat, her eyes fluttering open with reluctance.
He pressed his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Sorry I disturbed you. Don’t wake up. It’s early still, and you both need more sleep.” Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he did the thing he’d wanted to do the previous mornings they’d woken together and pressed his lips to her neck, kissing her soft skin and breathing her in at the same time.
She let out a soft, contented sigh and wiggled her ass, brushing against his hip. If they were spooning, her ass would be fully met with his ready erection, but as it was, he fought the urge to roll to his side and pull her back against him so he could grind into her.
Decidedly not the time or place for it.
Later. When they were alone. With a full box of condoms.
Setting his reservations aside, it was exhilarating to know he could have her. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She wasn’t Dylan’s and never had been.
He kissed her exposed neck one more time, then slid away, slipping out from under the open sleeping bag and tucking it around her to keep her warm.
As quietly as possible, he pulled on his outer layers and boots, then crawled through the opening to face the day.
He rose to his feet and was greeted by sunlight undimmed by clouds or fog. Bright and clear and, he knew, a rarity in the Aleutians.
But clear skies would bring new problems. Smoke from the coal stove would be readily visible. Dylan had been careful to keep the smoke to a minimum when the weather was clear.
At some point, someone had returned to the cave to recover his body, and they must’ve freaked out when they’d realized he was not only alive, but he’d escaped. When had that happened?
Weeks ago, he guessed. Given the difficulty of getting to the island, perhaps Sylvia and Trevor had managed to plant someone on the team hired to fix the generator. Those repairs had begun a month ago, and it was someone from that crew who’d reported the gray bunting call that led to the ornithologist job posting.
Was Victor supposed to pose as an ornithologist so he could search for Dylan, but Dean was hired instead? It would explain Trevor’s last-minute replacement.
Was Trevor the man who had been above the natural bridge? If so, how did he get here? Was there a boat offshore, or had he arrived on the helicopter before the camp was evacuated?
Whoever Victor was, Dean suspected he was on Chiksook to tie up Sylvia and Trevor’s loose ends before they could start harvesting the meteorite in earnest. Somehow, he’d figured out Dean was Dylan’s brother, so separating him and Fiona from the team had been necessary.
Trapping and killing them in the volcano had been plan A.
Did Victor guess they might have escaped, or had he simply returned to the task of searching for Dylan?
According to Dylan, a vehicle had driven to the World War II base yesterday morning. Dylan had been inside the magazine and heard the engine. He always left the front covered with the rusty camouflage and had extinguished his fire with the dawn. He didn’t worry about heat signature because no heat would be noted from the steel magazine buried under several feet of dirt.
The vehicle had stopped, and he’d heard footsteps just outside the magazine. Fifteen minutes later, the vehicle had driven off.
In the previous weeks, Dylan had woven together mats of leaves and vines to cover a few of the deeper debris pits that lined the road. Some were small, collapsed structures, and others were storage pits where the military had tossed debris in a feeble attempt to clean the place up when they’d abandoned the base. He’d hoped anyone searching for him would stumble into one of the pits, but as far as he could tell from the footprints and tire tracks, the person had stuck to the road.
Fiona and Dean had been caught because they’d been actively avoiding the open road. But thankfully it hadn’t been one of the debris pits, or they could have found themselves landing on jagged metal parts of rusty vehicles, sharp rebar, or even coated in diesel fuel if they’d landed in the pit with the leaking barrels. Luckily, they’d dropped through a now-roofless magazine, the floor of which had filled in with a thick layer of soil and vines, cushioning their landing at least a little.
It had to be Victor or his unknown crony who’d searched the base. But if not Trevor, was it possible his partner was John or Roy? Neither Dylan nor Fiona knew of any connection between either engineer and the meteorite find. And Fiona’s boss had only mentioned Victor as being the third party who was supposed to be picked up by the helicopter, which meant John and Roy were probably accounted for. Cara too, for that matter.
Everyone was a suspect at this point.
Dean was convinced the second man had arrived on the helicopter just before the camp blew up. There had likely been a lot of confusion in the off-loading of supplies followed by whatever had triggered the initial evacuation of the camp.
There’d been misdirection in telling the people on the boat that the helicopter would pick up some people and telling people in the helo that the boat would wait for the missing team members. It would be easy for the new arrival to get lost in the same shuffle, which made Trevor the most likely suspect.
Dean kept coming back to the same questions: Who was Victor Neff? Who else was involved in the scheme to harvest meteorite debris from Mount Katin? And had the conspirators found the mother lode?
With no answers to be found in the cold morning sun, Dean visited the Quonset hut Dylan had established as the latrine and shower, then stepped out again into the chill daylight. He could happily spend every moment in the daylight after almost twenty-four hours of being trapped underground. Stories of miners being trapped would have new resonance now, as his and Fiona’s experience was minor compared to what others had faced.
Hell, what Dylan had faced, crawling down a mountain with a busted leg. Dylan had always been his hero, but now, the guy had just added super in front of the word.
Yet he knew more than anyone how mortal Dylan was, which only made it all the more amazing.
Dean walked to the beach, the protected cove where Dylan had collected driftwood and fished, always on the lookout in case a boat chose this port for shore. The sea was a crisp, cold blue today with larger waves breaking outside the cove. If they were at a more southern latitude, the deep-blue water would look inviting for a swim. A fish jumped, and Dean wished he’d grabbed Dylan’s homemade spear or, better yet, the net he’d used to good effect these last weeks.
Hunger had driven Dylan to enter the water without the benefit of waders and stand there, up to his thighs in icy water, waiting for a fish to swim near. His legs must’ve been numb with cold—poss
ibly a benefit for the broken one—as he waited for his meal.
Success meant a fresh fish cooked on his potbelly stove, the coal fire inside drying his clothes and thawing his frozen leg muscles. Failure to spear or net a fish meant risking hypothermia for nothing.
How did he do it?
Sheer will. Desperate survival instinct.
He needed to get Dylan real medical attention. ASAP.
They couldn’t wait for a rescue. They didn’t even know if Fiona’s boss had called for an emergency search. They hadn’t seen any helicopters yesterday, but then, clouds were low, and what were the odds a helicopter search would include the coastal side of the volcano?
They needed a plan.
Dean looked at the piles of driftwood on the beach. Dylan said there was half a fifty-gallon barrel left of coal. Between that, their remaining Sterno, and the remaining whiskey, could they create enough smoke to get attention? But should they dare to risk their fuel that way? Fire was survival here.
Plus, there was one big drawback to sending smoke signals: it would draw Victor and his crony to their hideout before the real rescuers could arrive.
Team Victor had guns and explosives, whereas Team Slater—and Carver—had knives, a trowel, and whatever tools they could round up here.
They had a flare gun, but that should be used only if they spotted a helicopter they knew was friendly.
What they needed more than anything was a vehicle. Then they could drive to the village and call for help or simply take a boat to another island. To Adak, where they could fly to Anchorage and a hospital.
It was too far for Dylan to walk on his busted leg, but if they couldn’t get a vehicle, they’d have to try it. Without a tent, though, the journey could kill all three of them.
No. Walking wasn’t an option with Dylan. And leaving Dylan behind was absolutely not an option.
Everything was risky. They needed to look for an escape while preparing for an attack. He looked toward the water, where fish were jumping in the morning sun, in no danger of being caught or speared.
Dangerous Ground Page 30
