Darkness(40)

The snow was crusted with ice that glittered even in the absence of any direct sunlight and crackled underfoot with every step.

Taking a deep breath of the moisture-laden air, Gina exhaled a soft, barely visible cloud: it was cold, but not freezing-to-death cold. Typical Attu early-morning midthirties cold. The air smelled of damp, and the sea. She looked out beyond the breakwater, where flirty whitecaps now broke in layers of ruffles against the rocks, to the sea itself. Nothing of the crashed plane could be seen from where she stood. She couldn’t even tell whether the tail was still there. What was visible of the sea undulated serenely, whispering rather than roaring, with no sign of having been disturbed. Last night’s violence had been replaced by a muted calm. Fog covered land and water alike, stretching as far as she could see, blocking out much of the horizon and most of her surroundings. Feathery tendrils of mist drifted across the iron-gray surface of the water, over the snowy tundra and around and over the black, rocky ridges that rose in increasingly majestic layers to peak in tall mountains in the center of the island. Sandpipers darted in and out of the foaming surf line, hunting breakfast. Kittiwakes and gulls swooped over the bay. There were no other signs of life. Gina found herself wondering about the eagles: had they made it safely back to their nests? Or, like her, had they been forced to shelter in place to survive the storm?

“How long will it take you to reach your camp, do you think?” Cal came up behind her, tall and solid in the pale dawn light. A quick, comprehensive glance over her shoulder took him in: he had the sleeping bag wrapped around him like a blanket. The waterproof bags that the tent and sleeping bag had been stored in had been drafted for use as temporary shoes. He’d bound them in place with surgical tape from the first aid kit. His eyes were bloodshot and tired looking, a day’s worth of black stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, and a bruise purpled on his left cheekbone.

He should have looked ridiculous. He didn’t. He looked big and tough and formidable.

He looks like a thug.

For all she knew, he was a thug.

A thug she did not want to know. A thug she would shortly never see again. Gina realized that she was resisting even thinking of him by his name, because he—nameless he—would shortly disappear from her life. For her, he would for all intents and purposes cease to exist.

It was a good thing. She welcomed it.

“Two, two and a half hours,” she replied. Abandoning her fruitless search of the sea, she stepped around him and headed back toward the tent. He made her uncomfortable. She didn’t know whether it was his size or what she knew about him or what she didn’t know about him or the fact that he had kissed her and put his hands on her body and made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time or some combination of the above. She was anxious to get away from him. Anxious to put this whole traumatic episode behind her and get on with her safe and orderly life.

“Don’t forget to destroy that number as soon as you use it,” he cautioned, following her.

“I won’t forget.”

“You can just wad it up and throw it in the trash. Which I assume is burned daily.”

“I will,” she agreed. When he’d first emerged from the tent, he’d caught her hand, pushed up the sleeve of her coat and shirt, then smoothed a Band-Aid onto her wrist as if to cover a cut or other injury. The use of the Band-Aid was just in case, he’d told her. When she’d warily asked, “Just in case what?” he’d replied, “In case someone searches you. They’re not going to look on the inside of a Band-Aid on your arm.”

What was inside that Band-Aid was the phone number for her to call, plus the code he wanted her to type in after the number. Using the pen from the backpack, he’d written it on the Band-Aid’s inner sterile white pad.

At the prospect of encountering the “someone” he was referring to, Gina’s stomach dropped like a stone.

He’d instructed her—multiple times—to punch the numbers in once only, then get rid of the Band-Aid and forget she’d ever done such a thing or seen him or the plane. When she’d pointed out that she thought the phone would very likely keep a register of every number dialed, he’d told her not to worry about it: a computer program on the machine that the number reached would erase its number from the phone she used.

She so did not want to know who would have an answering machine that could do something like that.

“If you should run across anybody—” he began for what must have been the twelfth time. They were facing each other in front of the tent now. She was leaving it, as well as the sleeping bag and backpack and binoculars and what remained of the supplies, for his use. She would tell the others that everything had been too wet and bedraggled from the storm to carry back with her.

“I’ve got it,” she interrupted, knowing that he meant anybody who might be looking for him, and repeated the instructions he’d given her. “Stay away from them. Hide if I can. If I can’t, I know nothing about a plane crash, or you.” He already had her thoroughly spooked by the idea that nameless bad guys might be scouring Attu for him. At the thought that she might have a close encounter with them, her insides quaked.

“Don’t look so worried,” he said. “I’m not positive they’re here, and if they are you’ll almost certainly never see them, especially since you’re not going to be with me. They’ll know the plane went down, and the logical assumption they’ll make is that everybody on board is dead. They’ll check out the wreckage, maybe take a quick look around to try to make sure nobody survived, but they’ll probably stay as far away from you people and your camp as possible.” He paused, then added, “Civilian casualties are always a bitch.”