Darkness(15)

Gina’s lips tightened. The state he was in would have roused her utmost compassion if he hadn’t given her reason to be wary of him. But he had given her reason to be wary of him, and she wasn’t about to simply forget about that because right at this moment he needed her. She had many faults: stupid wasn’t one of them.

So it was decided. Flinging first one leg and then the other over the side of the boat, she slid the three feet or so down the slippery rubber rolls onto the beach. The coarse sand crunched beneath her boots as she landed. Because it was (semi)dry land, she silently blessed it.

“Hey,” he said. She didn’t know whether he meant it as a question or a protest. She didn’t care.

“You need to get off the beach in case of a storm surge.” Turning to face him, she shrugged into her backpack. Because he stood in the center of the boat and she was now some six or seven feet away from it, she found herself yelling again to be heard over the wind whipping in from the bay. “There are abandoned structures all over the island. Finding one of those and taking shelter in it would be your best bet.”

Turning, she started walking quickly away, head down, back to the wind, pulling her hood up and securing it in place as she went. She needed to get well away from the beach before she pitched her tent, and there wasn’t much time.

“Wait,” he called after her. Hunching her shoulders defensively, she lengthened her stride. Her conscience did not smite her. She was not, not, not going to even so much as look back.

He let out a whoop, the sound high-pitched and startling. It was followed by a heavy thud.

She looked back and got sandblasted in the face by snow mixed with sleet for her trouble. Swiping a hand across her face to get rid of the snow and then shielding her eyes as she tried to make out what had happened, she saw that he was sprawled flat on his face in the wet, grainy sand. Clearly he’d tried to get out of the boat and fallen.

Grimacing, she looked beyond him. Black and ominous, already halfway across the bay, the bulk of the storm hurtled toward them. The wind was now strong enough to pick up small rocks and send them flying across the beach. The waves crashing against the shore and sending spray flying skyward were huge. Even as she watched, the boat was caught up by the rising tide and pulled into the surf. A receding wave whirled it away.

He lay unmoving, inches from the surging foam.

Indecision rooted her to the spot.

If she left him where he was, he would die. If he didn’t get pulled into the surf like the boat and drown, the storm surge would get him. If nothing else, he’d certainly die of exposure.

Damn it to hell.

Muttering every curse word she knew, Gina ran back toward the stranger’s prone form.





Chapter Seven





Somewhere he’d read that freezing to death didn’t hurt, Cal reflected groggily. Whoever had written that was wrong. He was freezing to death as he lay facedown in the grit on that bitterly cold, storm-swept beach, and the process hurt like a mother. His skin burned as the icy blast of the wind froze his sea-soaked clothes to his body. His bones and muscles ached as if a dozen thugs armed with baseball bats had just worked him over. His head pounded unmercifully. His throat was parched and dry.

He didn’t think he could get up. No, he was pretty sure he couldn’t get up. It didn’t help that he didn’t see much point in it. He’d gotten a good look at the desolate terrain before the boat had pitched up on it and there was no shelter from the elements in sight.

If he did manage to get to his feet, he could stagger a few yards, even a few hundred yards, and then collapse and die.

Seemed like a lot of effort for the same result.

Upon discovering that his purported savior in the boat was a young woman, his first reaction had been a feeling of immense relief. He’d let go of the suspicion that she was a cog in the plan to murder Rudy and everybody who might be party to the information he had possessed, and accepted at face value his good luck at having an innocent civilian in a boat available exactly when and where he’d needed one.

Lying there in the bottom of her boat, he’d been so exhausted, so wet and cold and nearly drowned, in so much pain and, he saw now, so close to going into shock, that it had taken him a little while to remember that his luck had never been that good.

To remember that the world was a violent and unpredictable place where trusting anybody was a good way to wind up dead.

The last harrowing minutes aboard the plane had underlined that for him. He’d been in the back with Rudy, in the small, private, windowless, lockable room that the plane had been outfitted with for the precise purpose of transporting individuals like Rudy who were untrustworthy and needed to be contained. Some people might have called it a cell, but no one who had ever been in a real cell would have done so: this one had four big leather chairs that reclined into beds, with basically all the comforts of a very luxurious home readily available. He and Rudy were alone. Rudy was chatty, proud of his exploits and eager to talk about them. One of the reasons Cal personally had been tapped for this job was because of his background in avionic military weapons systems, something he’d studied at the Air Force Academy. He’d been tasked with evaluating Rudy’s claims as to what had happened to Flight 155. His opinion as to the plausibility of Rudy’s story would be included in the oral briefing he would give his employer upon handing Rudy over. He’d been prepared to coax/scare/bully the details out of Rudy, but as it turned out he hadn’t had to do anything but sit there and listen. Among a whole lot of nonessential information, Rudy told him exactly what he was claiming had happened to the plane.