“Can you get your clothes off?” she asked as she began assembling the tent. He was still in danger from hypothermia despite the space blanket, the hand warmers, the water, and the fire, which hissed and smoked as stray flurries reached it from the eddies of snow and sleet that rose and swirled in miniature whirlwinds around the outcropping. His face was too deep in shadow to read, but his eyes slid her way. He had, she thought, been warily probing the darkness beyond their sanctuary. She didn’t like to think about what—or who—he was looking for.
“As soon as the tent’s up,” she continued when he didn’t reply, snapping another support into place, which suddenly made the crumpled pile of weatherproof gray nylon that was the tent start to take on size and shape, “we’re getting in it, and you can’t go inside it like you are. You’ll get everything wet and we’ll freeze. You need to strip.”
“You want me . . . naked.” Something in his harsh voice brought her gaze whipping up to meet his.
Too dark to read his eyes. Didn’t matter.
Gina rocked back on her heels to point an I-mean-business index finger at him. “Take another step down that path, and I really will take my tent and find somewhere else to ride out the storm.”
It wasn’t her imagination: one corner of his mouth ticked upward in what might have been the slightest of smiles.
He held up a placating hand.
“Just clarifying,” he said innocently.
The look she gave him was ripe with warning. “I have a pair of dry sweatpants in my backpack you can put on.”
“Ah. Got it.”
She watched him narrowly as his hand disappeared beneath the Mylar to start on his shirt buttons, then returned her attention to the tent. Two more fiberglass ribs locked into place, and the thing was done. Long and low, it was a two-man tent with zippered entrances at both ends and a vestibule to keep the weather out as you crawled into it. On her hands and knees, she pushed it as close up against the outcropping as she could in hopes of protecting it from the worst of the weather. As she had suspected, the rocky, frozen ground made staking it impossible. Instead she lugged a quartet of large rocks from their resting places nearby and placed them atop the stake loops. Dragging her backpack behind her, she crawled partway inside, being careful to keep her wet and dirty boots out of the main part of the tent. Quickly she spread out and inflated the vinyl pad that formed a barrier between the sleeping bag and the floor of the tent. With that done, she unrolled and positioned the sleeping bag on top of it.
Finished, she surveyed the space, which was the approximate shape of a hot dog bun, just about tall enough for her to kneel in with an inch or so of clearance above her head, and wide enough for two people to sleep side by side. One of them—that would be him, because he was the one with no clothes and incipient hypothermia—would get the sleeping bag. The other would sleep in her outdoor gear. With the addition of her improvised furnace, the arrangements should be sufficient to get them through the storm alive.
Crawling out of the tent, she was fuzzy-headed with fatigue until a wayward gust blasted her in the face. The arctic coldness of it was enough to shock her back into wakefulness. Pelting down just a few feet beyond the edge of the tent, a wall of sleet reflected orange from the fire. She knew it was mostly sleet now because of the sharp pattering sound it made as it hit. The small fire looked pitifully inadequate against the raging, shrieking blizzard surrounding them. The heat it put out was a puny defense against the encroaching cold. The smell of smoke was strong; her senses hurriedly reached past it to latch onto other smells—dampness and the sea.
Beside the fire, draped in the Mylar blanket, the man was a hulking shape slumped against the rocks. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was looking out into the storm again. As if he was afraid someone might be out there.
Not liking the anxious feeling that thought gave her, she aimed her flashlight at him.
“Ready?” she asked as he blinked and looked her way. Teeth chattering, she moved toward him. The sweatpants and spare socks from her backpack were tucked beneath her parka, where, in theory at least, they were being warmed by her body heat. Her plan was to get him dried off fast with the hopefully not too bloodied turtleneck, get him into the sweatpants and socks and then the tent, and take care of whatever else needed doing—like, say, treating his injury—in there, where there was less chance of both of them expiring from exposure to the cold.
He didn’t reply.
She reached him and saw why: he was not naked. Not even close. Even with the Mylar blanket draped over him, she could see that he was still struggling with the buttons on his shirt. As far as she could tell, not one stitch of his clothing had been removed.
“Oh, my God,” she said, exasperation in every syllable. She was so tired she could barely move, aching all over, and cold to her bone marrow. The weather was growing worse by the minute and the fire that was warming the air was spitting and hissing in warning that the next influx of blowing snow that landed in it might well snuff it out. The only thing she wanted to do was curl up inside her sleeping bag in her tent and wait the storm out.