“The tide’s coming in. You’ll drown if you stay here.” Her voice was sharp. “You have to get up and walk. We have to go.”
The wind had taken on a high-pitched keening sound, and daggers of lightning lit up the bay. The sky over the water was black and boiling. The sea was blacker still, ruffled with gargantuan whitecaps that pounded the shore. Snow blew in thick and fast. The air grew colder by the minute, and yet the stranger stayed unmoving on the ground.
“We have to go,” she repeated urgently.
He blinked. Snowflakes were caught in his lashes, which were stubby and black. More settled in his hair and landed on his alarmingly slack face. They didn’t melt, which was more alarming still.
“I can’t carry you.” Gina found herself shouting against the wind. She crouched over him. Her fingers dug into his arm as she shook him once more. “You have to get up.”
He breathed in with a harsh wheezing sound. His face tightened, hardened. With what she could tell was a tremendous effort, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, and from there managed to lurch to his feet.
“That’s good.” She rose with him, still gripping his arm. He staggered drunkenly, a symptom of progressing hypothermia, she suspected, and she wedged herself beneath his arm to steady him. It draped across her shoulders, hard and heavy and practically immovable, giving her the uncomfortable sensation that she was his prisoner. Shaking off that unpleasant feeling, she grabbed the thick, masculine wrist hanging from her shoulder to steady him and wrapped her other arm around his waist, careful to keep clear of his injury.
So much for not being stupid, she reflected bitterly. Apparently she hadn’t changed as much as she’d thought.
Not that she was surprised at herself. From the beginning, in her heart of hearts, she’d known that it wasn’t in her to leave him to die, whether she suspected he might be dangerous or not. The good news was, his condition had deteriorated to the point where he wasn’t in any condition to harm her even if he wanted to.
She didn’t think.
In any case, she was just going to see him safe, just going to get him out of the storm.
“Walk,” she ordered with a fierceness that reflected her anger with herself, and walk he did. He seemed to be having difficulty controlling his legs, she discovered to her dismay. His gait was stiff and clumsy. Supporting him across the gritty, uneven sand was beyond difficult. They tacked back and forth, their forward progress owing much to the force of the wind.
“Where—to?”
She could barely hear him over the wind, but—God help her, was that a note of wariness in his voice?
“Away from the water,” she snapped, with no breath to say anything more. He seemed to accept that, or at least he, too, had no more breath to waste on speech, because he didn’t reply.
With him leaning heavily against her, they staggered up the beach. Clearly they weren’t going to make it very far: he was too heavy, the going was too hard, and the storm was blasting in too fast. Already the rising surf lapped almost at their heels. Intermittent bursts of sleet bombarded them along with the snow. Even with her back to the wind, her nose and cheeks were growing numb. She could taste the faint tang of melting snow on her lips. Somewhere she’d lost her snow mask; otherwise she would have used it to protect her face.
Her clothing kept her from physically experiencing the full extent of how cold and wet he was, but she knew anyway. He was so close she could feel the chill emanating from him. His skin had the grayish pallor of a corpse. He staggered as if each step might be his last.
Casting desperate looks toward the open fields and necklace of hills that fell away from the beach, she spotted a rocky outcropping rising like a black wall through the gloom. Extending from the base of one of the smaller hills, it sat atop a small rise to their right, maybe half a city block away. It offered the only possibility of shelter she could see, and it had the additional advantage of being on relatively high ground. Like the boat, the tent was small and lightweight, no match for the current extreme conditions even if she was able to stake it—which, given the rocky, frozen ground, it didn’t look like she could do. That being the case, they would need protection from the wind. The outcropping would, she hoped, provide that protection. Its elevation should keep them safe from any storm surge as well.