Gina felt her heart start to thump. She remained motionless, staring at him like a bird hypnotized by a cobra as his eyes bored into hers. They were about as expressive as the rock he leaned against.
It had to have happened right before the plane crashed—on the plane?—because the wound was clearly fresh, still bleeding, with no evidence of significant clotting or that it had received any kind of treatment. And besides the one on Attu, the next closest airport was almost seven hundred miles away.
Remembering the rapid descent of the plane before it exploded, Gina suddenly had a radical new vision of what was happening in those last few minutes on board.
He’d said there were three others on the plane with him. That they were dead.
Now she found herself wondering whether it was the crash that had killed them.
At the one other glaring possibility that presented itself to her, the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
Is he a killer?
Her heart thumped at the prospect.
His eyes narrowed as they held hers. His mouth thinned. From that, Gina took that he was getting a pretty accurate reading as to the gist of her thoughts. That he wasn’t happy about her speculation. About her knowledge.
The hardening of his face left her in no doubt whatsoever about one thing: the man was definitely dangerous.
While the storm raged she had no way to escape from him, nowhere to go. To run off into it would be suicidal.
The only thing she could do was stay put and play out the hand she’d dealt herself.
Her pulse raced. Her stomach fluttered. Her lungs ached with the need to expel the breath she’d been holding.
She let it out slowly. Carefully. Panic was her enemy.
Something her father had said to her once when they were in one of his all-too-frequent tight spots came back to her: when your head is in the mouth of the bear, the only thing to do is say, nice bear.
“I have a first aid kit in my backpack,” she said matter-of-factly, as if finding bullet holes in scary men she was trapped with were something that happened to her every day. “Once you’re in the tent I can bandage that up for you.”
As she spoke, she deliberately refocused her gaze on his chiseled abs and tugged his pants down his lean hips. It said a lot about her state of agitation that she didn’t even really see a single ripped inch of him.
He pulled the Mylar blanket across his lap.
That caught her attention, made her blink.
Not a creep, then, she thought, then followed that with a sardonic, Oh, yay. Like the fact that the threatening guy with the bullet hole in him doesn’t seem to be a perv makes this all better.
That’s when it hit her: if he had a bullet hole in him, then somebody might really be hunting him.
Through the storm. On Attu.
Her stomach knotted. Her breathing quickened. She had her fingers hooked in his shorts—soggy, icy boxer briefs—as well as his pants and was pulling both off him at the same time. Her cold fingers clenched in a death grip around the freezing wet cloth as she darted a nervous glance out past their small circle of light, at the gusting, swirling fog of snow and ice. The near-whiteout conditions partially reassured her: it was inconceivable that anyone would be hunting him in this. Besides, if the three who’d been on the plane with him were dead, who was left to track him down?
Good question. With, she realized with a sharp increase in her anxiety level, nothing but bad answers. Because clearly he was convinced someone was.
“I’m not going to hurt you, you know,” he said. She’d ducked her face to try to keep her thoughts hidden as she dragged his pants down long, hard-muscled legs. His words were so unexpected that she looked up, and thus inadvertently met his gaze. His eyes were bloodshot, and heavy-lidded with what she thought was a combination of exhaustion and pain and the effects of too much cold and too much sea. “You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
Great. Clearly her efforts to keep her thoughts hidden from him had failed, and just as clearly he was trying to reassure her. His gaze was calm and steady. But she thought she detected a stillness behind it, a predatory stillness, as though a part of him were crouched and waiting.
To see what she was going to do.
And God help her if she did the wrong thing.
Should she believe him, trust in the truth of what he was telling her? Trust that he wouldn’t hurt her, that she didn’t need to be afraid of him?
Only if she were dumb as a box of rocks.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she lied. One thing she’d learned over the years was that showing fear to a predator was never a good idea. “I never thought you’d hurt me. Why would you? I’ve done nothing but help you. And without me, you’re toast.” With that less than subtle reminder, she pulled his pants the rest of the way off. “Can you get your shirt off?”