Darkness(71)

To that point, they’d been busy eating and hadn’t been talking, or at least nothing more substantive than “This is good” and “Shame we don’t have bread,” that sort of thing. But at the look in his eyes as she accidentally encountered them, after she’d watched with close attention for what was probably the two dozenth time as he raised his arm to take another bite of stew, she felt a rush of flustered consternation and hurried to think of something to say that would send his thoughts in another direction.

“You know, if we could locate Keith, that would give us one more person on our side,” she said. “If those rifles work, he would even be armed. There would be three of us. Can’t have too many people shooting those weapons.”

Having turned his words back around on him, she watched his eyes narrow at her: distraction completed.

“Another civilian would be a liability, not a help.” His gaze slid over her face. When he continued, it was in a tone of careful patience. “Gina, look: trying to warn your friend is out. If we start running all over the island like chickens with our heads cut off, we’re way more likely to run into the guys who want to kill us than we are into him. You know that.”

She did know it. She just hated to face it—and what it meant for Keith. “If we don’t warn him, he’ll be killed.” The thought made her feel sick. She put down her spoon abruptly, wishing she’d waited to bring the subject up. She’d never meant to let the matter go, but if she hadn’t been so intent on refocusing his attention on something other than the way she had been looking at him, she would have held off until morning.

“We’ll be killed if we try. For all you know, somebody else in your group managed to warn him. Got a call out to him over the radio or something. Before—”

He broke off, but she knew what he meant: before the person doing the warning, Mary or Jorge, say, or one of the others, was killed.

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know one way or the other. And you don’t, either.” Something in her face made his mouth twist. “Once we get off this damned island, we can send help back, okay? Anyway—”

He broke off again. Gina frowned at him. His expression had suddenly become closed off, unreadable.

“Anyway what?” she demanded.

He shook his head. Clearly he didn’t mean to elaborate.

“Either we’re in this together, or we’re not,” she said, looking at him hard. “It’s not going to be just you running the show. It’s you and me, partners, or else it’s nothing.” He’d put down his spoon, too, which would have been a more impressive indication of the effect of her speech on him if he hadn’t eaten all his stew by that time. Observing that, her eyes narrowed at him. “So you want to finish what you started to say? Anyway . . . ?”

His eyes were dark and intent as they met hers. His mouth was suddenly grim. “If you’re so eager to share everything, why don’t you start by telling me about the plane crash that killed your husband?”

Pain twisted through her. She’d known he was going to want to talk about that. And she couldn’t. Just could not.

So she strong-armed past the pain, gave him a level look, and said, “I asked you first. Anyway what?”

His eyes slid over her face. His jaw tightened. “Okay, partner, here it is: my plane didn’t just crash. It was shot out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. Given our altitude and location when we were hit, someone here on Attu or in the waters right around it had to have done it. It’s possible that one of this group who’s coming after us now was already on the island at that point, but I don’t think so, because storm or no storm, if they had been on the island, it wouldn’t have taken them until the next morning to show up. I think they got called in after my plane was shot down. As far as I know, your people were the only ones on the island at the time, and if that’s the case, then one of you had to have fired that missile.”

It took a moment for what he was saying to click into place.

“You think Keith shot your plane down?”

“I don’t know. If you and he are the only ones left—and we don’t know that; without eyeballing the bodies there’s no way to be sure—then I’d say he’s at the top of the suspect list.”

Staring at him, Gina mentally reviewed all she knew about Keith. He was a scientist, and a physician, and—

“He was the last person added to the team,” she said slowly. “That was about a week before we left. I thought at the time that he was going to have to scramble to get everything he needed together in order to do the project he meant to do here.”

“Tell me about him. Everything you know.”

Gina did. It wasn’t a lot.

“So you’d never met him before he joined your group on Attu?” Cal asked, and Gina shook her head no. “Did any of the others know him?”

Gina thought back. “I’m pretty sure Arvid didn’t.” The thought of Arvid made her wince, but she determinedly kept her focus on where it needed to be: the present, in which she was remembering everything she could about Keith. “I don’t know about anyone else. He didn’t seem to have any particular friends among the group.” She frowned at Cal. “It’s difficult to get permission to conduct research on Attu, you know. We all had to go through this unbelievable application and screening process. If there was anything wrong with Keith’s credentials—with any of our credentials—the screening process almost certainly would have caught it.”