Darkness(12)

“No radio,” he said.





Chapter Six





A quiver of fear shot down Gina’s spine. Her pulse kicked into overdrive. Her heart began to pound.

Looking into the hard, handsome face of the man whose life she had just risked her own to save, Gina had a terrible epiphany: the thing about rescuing a stranger was that after the rescue, he was still a stranger.

She didn’t know the slightest thing about him. Except that she was now alone with him in the middle of a stormy sea, he was a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than she was, and he had just thrown her radio in the drink.

And now every internal warning system she possessed was going insane.

She tightened her grip on the wheel as it occurred to her that there wasn’t a whole lot to prevent him from throwing her in after the radio. Then he’d have the boat to himself and—and what? She didn’t know. Maybe she was reading too much into what he’d just done. Maybe he was hallucinating/traumatized by the crash/unaware of what he was doing?

Yeah, no. Those narrow glinting eyes—they were the color of black coffee, she saw now that she was looking into them all up close and personal—were as aware as her own. Swallowing hard, she tore her gaze from his and forced herself to concentrate on her driving as the boat bounced like a kid on a trampoline over the tall whitecaps that raced toward shore. The truth behind the old no-good-deed-goes-unpunished saying might have just hit her over the head with a two-by-four, but she had to keep her focus: if they weren’t off the water by the time the storm caught up with them, whether the guy she’d saved was up to no good probably wasn’t going to matter.

Because they were both going to be dead.

“Why would you do that?” she asked angrily. Pretending that she wasn’t disturbed by what he’d done was pointless: he had to know she was. Realizing that her shoulders had hunched in an automatic defensive reaction to having someone she didn’t trust so close behind her, she deliberately relaxed them. “I was trying to get you some help.”

“You’re all the help I need.” His voice was a ragged growl. For the first time it occurred to her that his accent was American, not that it made her feel any better. She could be harmed by a fellow countryman as easily as by anyone else. He moved closer as he spoke, which put him way too close for comfort. Having the bulk of him looming up inches behind her made the skin prickle on the nape of her neck.

He could be dangerous.

Her breathing quickened. So did her pulse.

He leaned closer. She could feel the brush of his big body against her back, and her shoulders instantly tensed again in response.

He said, “Where are the people you’re with?”

If he hadn’t been so near, she wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the escalating noise. Wind blew, surf crashed, and the motor whined with the effort of combating the increasingly massive waves. But his voice was practically in her ear, and his encroachment into her space felt—threatening. The question felt threatening. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t asking so that he could calculate the quickest route to reaching help.

As she brushed away the pelting crystals of snow that were making her chilled face tingle, her mind went in a thousand directions at once, trying to decide the best answer to give him. Confirming that the two of them were totally alone might not be smart. On the other hand, he had the same view of their destination that she did: a shallow crescent beach rising to a rocky hillside striped with areas of brownish tundra, and, beyond that, a line of black mountains powdered with snow.

Not exactly a well-populated area.

She made the decision then not to lie to him. He had no reason to harm her. She didn’t mean to give him one.

“At our camp. Most of them. Probably.” Okay, that had the virtue of being the exact truth while still leaving room for reinforcements to be lurking just out of sight.

“How many?”

Wetting her lips, she told him.

“How close is your camp?”

Again, she rejected the temptation to lie. “A few miles.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” There was a menacing undertone to that last question that sent another wary quiver snaking down her spine. Her already thudding heart thudded faster. This time she absolutely got the feeling that giving him the wrong answer might prove hazardous to her health.

Who is this guy? What have I gotten myself into?

Beating back the panicky feelings that were fluttering like butterflies in her stomach wasn’t easy, but she tried, and when she spoke, her tone was measured and calm. “My name is Gina Sullivan. Dr. Gina Sullivan. I’m an environmental studies professor at Stanford, and I’m here with a group of scientists to study the effect of pollution on birds.” Narrowing her eyes against the rushing wind as she marshaled her courage, she added tartly, “And I just saved your life.”

“Yeah,” he said, with no inflection at all. Something about that struck her as being more alarming than the menace she’d thought she’d detected in his tone before. Like her saving his life didn’t matter. Like he was the kind of ruthless opportunist who would let himself be saved, and then dispose of his savior in any way he found convenient. She was reminded suddenly, irresistibly, of that old scorpion-and-frog story where the frog gave the scorpion a ride across a pond and was stung to death by the scorpion on the way. When the dying frog asked why, the scorpion replied, “Because that’s my nature.”