Darkness(21)

Crouching beside him, she looked at him with concern. His eyes were closed. She thought he was conscious still, but barely. He looked totally spent.

Thankfully, the outcropping provided a small sanctuary where the blasting wind couldn’t reach them and only small amounts of snow and sleet sifted in from the tempest howling all around. The air was freezing, though, and the lichen-covered ground beneath them was equally cold. She was shivering to the point where she had to periodically clench her teeth to keep them from chattering, and she was dressed for the weather. She couldn’t even allow herself to think about how cold he had to be. The only positive element to the situation was that the now very obvious bloodstain on his shirt no longer seemed to be growing. She put that down to the cold, too, because it restricted blood flow.

“What—now?” His words emerged between uneven breaths as she shrugged out of her backpack and went down on her knees beside him to open it up. His head rested back against the rock as if his neck no longer had the strength to support it. He was looking at her through dark glinting eyes that were barely open. The grim set of his jaw and mouth left her in no doubt that he knew the score: without shelter, and warmth, he would shortly be beyond help.

“Here.” Pulling out a white cotton turtleneck, part of a set of spare clothes that included sweatpants, underwear, and socks, she bundled it into a makeshift pad and passed it to him. “Press that against the injury on your side.”

His hand was unsteady as he took the shirt from her. Moving like it required tremendous effort, he lifted his shirt to press the pad gingerly to his side.

He said, “We can’t stay—in the open.”

“I have a tent.” She extracted the bag containing it from the backpack. The night before she’d slept in that same tent and the sleeping bag that was also rolled into its carrying case in her backpack, just as Arvid had slept in his, while caring for the oil-soaked eagle. She was profoundly grateful for the practical experience that had given her in setting this particular kit up. Under the circumstances, with him in the state he was in and the storm worsening by the second, there was no time to waste. “We’ll have shelter in a few minutes.”

He was breathing heavily and exhaling frosty clouds with each breath. His free hand was tucked beneath his armpit in an effort, she thought, to find some warmth for his frozen fingers. As she reached for her backpack again his head lifted and he seemed to do a slow visual sweep of the snowy maelstrom beyond their small oasis. Then his eyes closed. His head once again rested back against the rock. She could sense how weak he was growing. She was light-headed and wobbly with exhaustion herself, but her own survival as well as his depended on her taking care of their essential needs before she allowed herself to even begin to crash.

What she needed was stashed in one of the backpack’s side pockets: two packets of chemical hand warmers. Crushing the packages to start the heat, she said, “This should help a little,” and placed them on top of his chest, over his shirt—badly chilled skin burned easily, and so the insulation provided by his shirt was vital—and, roughly, over his heart.

Returning to that same pocket, she next grabbed the Mylar blanket that had been packed with the hand warmers. Ripping open the tiny package, she shook the aluminized sheet out with an explosion of metallic crackling that had him opening his eyes to check it out.

“Space blanket,” she explained, tucking it in behind his shoulders. His hand had already moved from his armpit to rest atop the hand warmers. He badly needed to lose the wet clothes, but that could come later. For now, this would have to do. Inches away, dark and penetrating, his eyes fastened on her face.

“You came back.” His voice was gravelly and harsh. “Why?”

It took her a second, but then she understood him to be asking why, having run away from him when they’d reached land, she’d gone back for him when he’d collapsed getting out of the boat.

“Because you’re a human being,” she answered shortly. The shrieking, writhing snow beast that was the storm had enveloped the world around them completely now, and their shadowy hollow had turned as dark as night. Grabbing her backpack, she groped around through the various items in the main compartment for the flashlight she knew was in there.

He said, “You’re out here watching birds—in November?”

She flicked a look at him. Silhouetted against the silvery curtain of the storm, his features were intensely masculine. There was something in his voice—mistrust? suspicion?—that gave her a prickle of unease. As though he thought there might be another reason why she was on Attu besides the one she’d given him. Once again she was reminded that she was saving the life of a man she knew nothing about, and her heart beat a little faster even as her eyes narrowed at him.

“Yes.”

As answers went, it was terse, but at the moment she wasn’t really feeling like having a lengthy conversation. The situation was too dire, and she was too tired and cold and otherwise miserable. However, given the fact that she had saddled herself with the man, and he might very well be dangerous, and he definitely seemed to be up to no good and mixed up in something she absolutely did not want to know anything about, letting him know that she was exactly who and what she said she was and not any kind of a threat to him probably would be wise.

She continued, “Look, as I told you, I’m an assistant professor at Stanford, I’m here on Attu with a group of scientists to study the effect of pollution on birds, and I happened to see your plane crash. And I fished you out of the sea and saved your life and here we are. That’s it. The whole story.”