Darkness(50)

Seconds later he followed her into the kitchen. He was wearing the boots and snow pants now, she saw. They appeared to fit him well enough.

“You say there are two dead in here? Where?”

Busy throwing food and water into the backpack she’d half emptied, Gina nodded and pointed.

“In there.” Her chest tightening, she did her best not to think about Mary and Jorge. “There may be more dead. Elsewhere in the building.”

He strode across the kitchen to disappear into the common room.

He came back almost at once.

“You saw . . . ?” She couldn’t help but ask when he didn’t say anything. Having finished filling the backpack, she zipped it shut while keeping her gaze on what she was doing. She didn’t want to witness whatever effect seeing the bodies might have had on him in his face. With some difficulty, since it was now considerably heavier than before, she hoisted the backpack to her shoulder, still without looking at him.

“Yeah. I got this. Let’s go.” His voice sounded tight as he took the backpack from her, slung it over a broad shoulder. Refusing to think about anything other than the need to get out of there, she hurried after him as he strode through the kitchen into the mudroom.

The fact that the gun was in his hand now told her that he thought more trouble could break out at any moment. It jacked her fear level up to the roof. It also made her feel slightly—only slightly—safer.

“I locked the door,” she said to his back.

“I saw.”

As they neared the back door, she snagged the second backpack and lugged it along by its top strap, prepared to shrug into it as soon as she got the chance. Getting out of this alive was the goal, and if they were stuck outside for any length of time Attu’s weather would kill them as surely as a bullet. Grabbing the backpacks and the extra food was her contribution to making sure they didn’t die.

Cal was already at the door, hesitating in front of the solid panel exactly as she had done earlier.

The door and the windowless mudroom walls took “see no evil, hear no evil” to a whole new place.

There was no way of knowing if someone was right outside, or where Heavy Tread or anyone else was.

Opening that door required nothing short of a leap of faith.

Glancing at her over his shoulder, Cal said, “I’m going to take a look outside. When I give you the all clear, run as fast as you can toward that mountain you came down off of earlier. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t stop for anything.”

Gina nodded, suddenly breathless. Her stomach clenched, and it felt as if her heart, which was already racing, had just received a jolt of speed. She hauled the backpack up and slid an arm through the strap.

“Give me that,” he said. Hooking a hand in the other strap, he took the backpack from her and slung it over his shoulder along with the first one. “Did I mention you need to run really fast?”

She didn’t argue. Even if she’d wanted to—she didn’t—there wasn’t time.

He unlocked the door—she tensed at the soft click—and eased it open.

The sudden blast of cold, damp-smelling air reminded Gina horribly of Ivanov bursting through the door. The roar of the tractor, the rumble of the generator, the knowledge that armed murderers were out there, the thought of her dead friends, all came together in a nearly paralyzing rush.

“Move your ass,” Cal growled.

Gina realized that she must have missed his signal. Taking a tentative step forward so that she could peek out the door, casting a single hunted glance around outside—because of the fog she could see maybe ten feet in all directions—she bolted across the stoop. Plunging into the fog, welcoming the billows of gray mist that swallowed her up and hopefully hid her from anyone who might happen to look her way, she flew back the way she had come, toward the mountain she had walked off earlier. Down in the depths of the fog she couldn’t see it or the path, but she knew where they were, knew the way.

Head down, heart pumping like a piston, she ran across the crackly ice as fast as she could. With every step she took she was conscious of the treacherous surface beneath her feet and thankful for the slip-resistant, rubber-soled boots that several times arrested an incipient slide and saved her from falling. She ran so fast she got a stitch in her side, but, pressing a hand to the place that hurt, she kept going without slowing down. The crunch of her feet in the ice-crusted snow terrified her. The sound of her own breathing terrified her.

She was mortally afraid of being spotted, and shot. What was it they said about the bullet that killed you? You never even saw it coming?

Jacked on terror, she ran like she’d never run before in her life.

Cal stayed right behind her. She could hear his footsteps crunching through the snow, too, could see the dark bulk of him looming between her and the buildings whenever she glanced back. If shooting started from that direction, he would almost certainly take the first bullet. She wondered whether he was staying behind her for just that reason.

Reaching the path that was really no more than a rut carved into the bare, rocky face of the mountain, she leaped up it like a mountain goat and kept going along the twisty trail with no thought of slowing down. Gina was so intent on putting distance between herself and the killers that she jumped with surprise and cast a startled look over her shoulder at Cal when his hand clamped around her arm and he pulled her to a stop.