What was immediately, abundantly clear was that there wasn’t going to be time to get anywhere that could actually be considered safe. They were lucky they’d made it off the water.
Pulse racing, Gina swung her legs around on the seat, stood up, and stepped quickly past him. In the process of laboriously getting to his feet, he made no move to stop her. She could feel his gaze on her as she ripped off the binoculars and stuck them in her pocket, then shucked the life jacket and crouched by the stern to free her backpack from its hidey-hole.
It was a big backpack, weighing in at a little over thirty pounds. A similar one had been issued to each of the scientists when they had arrived on Attu. All the expedition members were expected to take their backpacks with them whenever they left camp as a precaution against Attu’s unpredictable weather (her current situation provided clear proof of the advisability of that). The Eskimos who’d once made Attu their home had called the sudden, fierce storms that blew in without warning williwaws, which in Gina’s opinion was way too poetic a name for the violence of what was happening around them. At first she’d been skeptical of the need for so much stuff. Now she thanked God for the basic survival gear that the backpack was loaded with, including a small pop-up tent and a sleeping bag, in addition to food supplies and extra water. It should be enough to allow her to ride out the storm, provided she was able to find a spot relatively shielded from the wind where she could deploy the tent.
“We need to find shelter,” he said as she straightened with the backpack slung over one shoulder. His voice was a harsh rasp, and he was starting to slur his words. Standing to his full height, he was, indeed, as tall and athletically built as she’d thought, and as attractive. Under other, better, conditions, she might even have been slightly bowled over by him. As she watched, he bent a little to one side, grimacing, a hand pressed to his injury. His clothes clung to him like a second skin, and she was reminded of how wet he still was, and how deathly—and deathly was the word—cold he had to be. The color of the stain had deepened and brightened so that it was now clearly red, clearly blood.
As she looked at him, a particularly strong gust of wind hit. It caught them both, and he took a stumbling step backward before recovering. At what she calculated was about six-four and two hundred–plus pounds, he was way too big to be blown backward by the wind, especially when the same blast hadn’t moved her. He was also way too buff to be the kind of fat-cat businessman that his clothes seemed to indicate, or that she would have expected to find on a high-end private jet like the one he’d crashed in. Once again she wondered who and what he was, and could come up with nothing that she found even mildly reassuring. Ordinarily she didn’t think any wind short of hurricane force would have been enough to budge him. But his strength was clearly waning: even through the storm-created twilight and blowing snow, she could see that his eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull and his rugged features were pinched and drawn. Every bit of him that she could see that wasn’t pasty white was tinged with blue.
He was hurt and bleeding. Possibly suffering from other injuries that didn’t show. Probably in the throes of hypothermia. Certainly traumatized by the plane crash and perhaps on the verge of collapsing, of going into shock.
In desperate need of help.
Her help. Because she was all the help there was.
Gina’s lips tightened. The state he was in would have roused her utmost compassion if he hadn’t given her reason to be wary of him. But he had given her reason to be wary of him, and she wasn’t about to simply forget about that because right at this moment he needed her. She had many faults: stupid wasn’t one of them.
So it was decided. Flinging first one leg and then the other over the side of the boat, she slid the three feet or so down the slippery rubber rolls onto the beach. The coarse sand crunched beneath her boots as she landed. Because it was (semi)dry land, she silently blessed it.
“Hey,” he said. She didn’t know whether he meant it as a question or a protest. She didn’t care.
“You need to get off the beach in case of a storm surge.” Turning to face him, she shrugged into her backpack. Because he stood in the center of the boat and she was now some six or seven feet away from it, she found herself yelling again to be heard over the wind whipping in from the bay. “There are abandoned structures all over the island. Finding one of those and taking shelter in it would be your best bet.”
Turning, she started walking quickly away, head down, back to the wind, pulling her hood up and securing it in place as she went. She needed to get well away from the beach before she pitched her tent, and there wasn’t much time.
“Wait,” he called after her. Hunching her shoulders defensively, she lengthened her stride. Her conscience did not smite her. She was not, not, not going to even so much as look back.