Darkness(51)

Chapter Eighteen





Hold up,” Cal said. “Let’s take a break.”

He was breathing hard, and Gina realized that she was, too. Gasping for air, actually, and still troubled by the stitch in her side. She grimaced and bent over, rubbing the place where it hurt.

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded, too winded and in too much pain from the cramp to speak. They were in an area that she’d passed through on the way down, when her biggest concern had been making his phone call and she’d had no idea of the horrors awaiting her. This part of the mountain had apparently experienced a landslide at some point, because large boulders lay all around, partially blocking the path and also, she saw now, blocking them from the view of anyone who might be looking their way from above or below. Of the same near-black, volcanic composition as the mountains themselves, they were dusted with snow.

Good choice of location if they had to stop, Gina thought, then sat down abruptly on a boulder that was the approximate size and shape of a low bench. She had no choice: now that she’d stopped, her legs had turned to jelly and were refusing to support her.

You are not going to lose it.

It was an easy thing to tell herself. She was light-headed, though, and wobbly, and the boulder and the path and the steep, snowy slope behind her suddenly seemed as insubstantial as the drifting feathers of mist. Some eiders were nesting in the rocks nearby. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear and identify them from the soft rrr, rrr sounds they made.

Closing her eyes, Gina hung her head, breathing in the thin blue air, waiting for the dizziness to recede, for the stitch in her side to pass.

Cal didn’t say anything, simply sat down beside her. Never mind that she’d just seen him kill a man with a butcher knife, which officially made him the scariest person she’d ever met: he was big and solid and armed, all good things. Plus she was pretty sure they were on the same side. The warmth of his body so close against hers made her feel anchored, grounded. An instant, involuntary flashback to the way he’d kissed her heated her blood. That brief moment when their eyes had connected in the kitchen told the story—somehow in the midst of chaos and horror they had formed a bond. Despite everything—her uncertainty about how much she could trust him, the inescapable truth that if he hadn’t fallen out of the sky on top of her, none of these dreadful things would be happening—she took comfort in his presence.

She opened her eyes, saw that he’d put the backpacks on the rocky ground near his feet, and was relieved to discover that the backpacks, and his feet, and the path, and the mountain, and everything except the fog, remained stationary. The wind had picked up. Cold and damp, it blew in gusts from the bay, smelling of the sea, sending clouds of fog scudding past them like sailboats in a regatta.

“What are you doing here?” Her question emerged as a gasp as she fought to catch her breath.

His reply was a sardonic “Saving your ass.”

Gina frowned at him impatiently. “I’m serious.” Her still-ragged breathing created a hitch in her words. “How did you wind up in the kitchen?”

“I followed you.”

“What? Why?”

“To make sure you were safe.”

She must have made an interrogative sound to go with the look she threw at him, because he added, “Not long after you left, a boat showed up to check out the crash site.”

“A boat?” she interrupted on a hopeful note, because it was fixed in her mind that Arvid and Keith Hertzinger—if they were the two other survivors; oh, God, she still could not wrap her mind around the idea that the rest of her colleagues were dead—might be out in a boat looking for her.

“Believe me, it wasn’t your friends. This was a fishing trawler. A big one. It stayed at the crash site, along with two of its dinghies. Another dinghy with four men aboard went on around the point. I’m assuming that’s where your killers came from.”

The thought of that made her stomach sink. “What makes you think so?”

“I saw it when I came after you. First thing I did when I got off the mountain was check out the bay to see if the dinghy was there, and sure enough it was, tied up at the dock. So I got a little worried and came looking for you. And that’s how I wound up in the kitchen.”

She was sure there was a lot more to the story, but they could talk specifics later, Gina decided. At the moment, she had more pressing concerns.

“They could find Ivanov—at any minute.” Stark terror twisted her insides at her next thought. “Then they’ll come looking for us.”

“They’ll come looking for whoever killed Ivanov. At this point, they don’t know who that is. I don’t think.” While Gina tried to work out whether that was supposed to make a difference, he added, “Anyway, unless we’re really unlucky it’ll be a while before they find him.”

The look she gave him was wry. “You know, I’m feeling pretty unlucky right now. Just sayin’.”

That earned her a glimmer of a smile. As another gust of wind blew past, he reached out and tugged her hood up over her head with the clear intention of protecting her from the icy blast. Nodding her thanks at him, she secured her hood in place, then retrieved her gloves from her pocket and put them on as he unzipped a backpack and rooted around for a bottle of water. She knew what he was looking for because he found it almost immediately, pulled it out, unscrewed the cap, and passed it to her. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how parched her throat was. She drank thirstily and passed the bottle back. He took a drink, then screwed the cap on and stuck the bottle in the backpack. Then he produced a protein bar, which they shared.