Darkness(57)

It was all good unless he turned on her.

“Thank you,” she said. “For coming after me.”

His eyes met hers. She could read absolutely nothing in them. “Like I said, I mean to get you out of this alive.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” she told him.

A sudden updraft sent the fog swirling. As her eyes dropped away from his—she was afraid the sudden guardedness in hers would be all too easy to read—she got another look at the glinting silver ribbon that was the river, which, having passed beneath the natural bridge, curled around the base of the mountains before meandering off into the interior of the island.

There was an orange boat in the river: a Zodiac. In the Zodiac was a splotch of bright neon yellow. The splotch was moving, and it had a dark head, arms and legs attached. By this time she and Cal had descended until they had almost reached two hundred feet and were very near to the place where the mountains fused. From Gina’s perspective the boat and its contents were rendered small by distance, but she was as sure as it was possible to be about what she was looking at.

The boat conceivably could have been any orange Zodiac, but the splotch of neon yellow in it was unmistakable: that was Arvid’s parka. She would recognize it anywhere. They’d all been teasing him about its Day-Glo color since they’d first gotten a look at it.

Gina’s eyes widened in surprised recognition. She stopped, grabbed Cal’s arm, pointed, and said excitedly, “Arvid! There’s Ar—”

From somewhere above them a shot rang out, as clear and sharp and unexpected as a thunderclap on a clear summer’s day.

The neon yellow splotch that was Arvid jerked, spun, and toppled from the Zodiac into the river.





Chapter Twenty





He’s been shot.

Realization was almost instantaneous. Gina screamed.

Or at least, Gina would have screamed. A scream tore into her throat. Whether she would have stopped herself before letting loose with it was something she was never destined to know: Cal’s hand clamped tight over her mouth, smothering any sound before it could emerge. At the same time his arm shot around her waist and he yanked her against him.

“Shh,” he hissed. Her back to his front, his hand still clamped over her mouth, he lifted her clean up off her feet with his arm around her waist and bounded a few yards up the steep, uneven rise behind them. She was tangentially impressed with his strength and agility even as her head swam with denial and her heart burst with pain. His fingers dug into the soft skin of her face. His arm around her was so tight that it was difficult for her to breathe. She must have made some slight sound, because he whispered “Shh” again, fiercely, before pushing her down behind a formation of boulders and dropping to his knees beside her. A heartbeat later they were lying chest to chest on the rocky slope. Her back was pressed against a boulder, her face was buried in his coat and held in place by his hand on the back of her head, and his hard body covered hers. There was snow beneath them, a shallow drift that had gotten caught by the boulders. With her head pillowed on his arm, Gina was only aware of it because of its cushioning properties and the cold scrunch of it beneath her as they settled in.

Shock and horror held her immobile. The image of Arvid tumbling into the river replayed itself over and over in her mind’s eye. Inside she was screaming. Cal’s hand was no longer clamped over her mouth and she pressed her lips together to keep from making a sound. Her hands fisted in the front of his coat.

“Don’t move.” It was the merest breath of sound. The arm that he had wrapped around her tightened in silent warning an instant before she heard voices coming toward them and understood that someone was hurrying down the path they’d just vacated. She felt something hard in the small of her back: the gun. Cal was holding the gun. Aiming the gun, presumably up toward where any attacker coming from the path would first appear. She could tell by the way the grip dug into her.

Fear shot through her, colder than the snow in which they lay.

“Penyal yego!” It was a man’s voice, full of exuberant exclamation, speaking Russian that she was too rattled to even try to translate. Nearby, footsteps crackled on the icy crust that covered the path. Full recognition of the danger she and Cal were in hit, and Gina froze, lying as still as a corpse in his arms. Her heart raced wildly as another man, sounding like he was practically on top of them, replied in a congratulatory tone, “Khorosho s’yemki.”

All of a sudden the gist of the Russian words came to her. They’d said something on the order of:

“I got him!”

“Good shooting.”

Her stomach cramped with sudden nausea. Her pulse pounded so hard it made her dizzy.

The thud of footsteps, the sense of people passing nearby, the sound of more voices coming from farther away, farther down the slope, sent a fresh wave of fear through her. She could feel goose bumps rippling over her skin.

Cal lay heavily against her, his body as unyielding as a brick wall, the steady expansion and contraction of his chest as he breathed the only movement he made. He was big enough to both shield her completely if more bullets should start to fly, and hide her completely from view. She could feel the steel bands of his arms around her, the pressure of his muscular thighs against hers, the hard length of his shins, the slickness of the tops of his boots where her toes rested against them. His coat was rough against her cheek. The raucous honking of more geese overhead made Gina start, and his arm tightened around her once more in warning.