When she cautiously lifted her hand again to study the gauze pad beneath it—she didn’t want to lift the pad to look at the wound itself in case lifting the pad caused more bleeding—she was relieved to see that only a small spot of blood had leaked through to the top layer.
“I think the bleeding’s slowed,” she said as she tore open an extralarge Band-Aid. “You probably need to stay as still as possible for a while. When I finish with this, you can just lie there and go to sleep.”
And if he was still asleep when the sun came up, then getting away from him and going for help just got that much easier.
“Thursday’s Thanksgiving, isn’t it?” His question was seemingly out of the blue. She nodded, and he continued, “Pretty big holiday, stateside. Why aren’t you home celebrating with your family?”
Lots of reasons. None of which she cared to share. “Because I chose to come here instead.”
“You got a husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, in the group you’re with?”
She stopped smoothing the edges of the Band-Aid into his skin to sit up straight and frown at him. “Are you really asking me about my love life?”
“I’m just having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that you—a whole group of you—would spend a major holiday here in the frozen North looking at birds.”
“Nobody’s asking you to wrap your mind around it.” Having finished with the Band-Aid, she opened another one and clapped it down crosswise over the first. Smoothing it out with a lot less care than before, she shot him an exasperated look. “It’s a government-funded research project. We’re here over Thanksgiving because we’re college professors and that’s when we get time off.”
“I see.” The skepticism in the look he gave her was unmistakable even through his pained grimace at her Band-Aid smoothing.
Tight-lipped at the seeming futility of trying to convince him that she was, in fact, precisely what she said she was, she finished with the Band-Aid, flipped the edge of the sleeping bag back over him, cleaned her hands with another of the alcohol wipes, and returned the first aid kit to the backpack.
“You’re American, too,” she stated, in the spirit of taking the battle to the enemy. “Why aren’t you home for Thanksgiving?”
His expression lightened marginally. “Not a big fan of turkey.”
A deliberate nonanswer answer that didn’t tell her anything at all. He didn’t even admit his nationality. Well, she was as certain he was American as it was possible to be, and, anyway, she didn’t really care.
A muffled peal of thunder accompanied by the rattling of the tent reminded her of the storm raging outside and made her suddenly extremely thankful for the protection of their cozy cocoon.
Cozy, that is, except for the man in it with her.
She shot him a disgruntled look. She was tired of *footing around with him, tired of being afraid of a man who owed her his life, and tired—exhausted, actually—in general. So tired she ached with it. She supposed that up until now she’d been experiencing an adrenaline rush, too, and that, like his, it was fading.
“So when did you start making arrangements for this trip?” he asked.
“We’ve been working on it for six months,” she answered shortly. Then, despite knowing he was probably going to make something of it, she added, “Final approval for the funding came through two weeks ago.”
He did. Doubt narrowed his eyes. “What you’re telling me is that your entire twelve-person group was able to get it together and get here on two weeks’ notice.”
“Two weeks’ final notice. I told you, we’ve been planning the trip since the end of last semester.” Straightening her spine, she scowled at him. “What is it, exactly, that you suspect my colleagues and me of anyway? I’d like to know. It can’t be of shooting you.” She pointed a finger skyward. “You were up there”—her finger reversed itself to point at the ground—“and we were down here when it happened. Anyway, I doubt my colleagues even know you exist. How could they? I’m as sure as it’s possible to be that none of them were close enough to see your plane crash, because if they had been they’d be all over us by now. If somebody’s after you, it isn’t any of us.”
He didn’t answer. Instead he gave her an inscrutable look and took the backpack from her. She hadn’t been holding on to it, precisely, but to have him snag it and pull it toward him without so much as a hint of a “May I?” made her bristle.
“Hey,” she protested. He’d picked up the flashlight and was shining it inside the backpack. As she watched he began to rummage through the contents. “What are you doing?”
No reply. Having apparently exhausted the possibilities of the main compartment—the backpack was relatively empty at that point—he started going through first the inner and then the outer pockets. She was watching him with growing indignation when the truth smacked her in the head.
“Oh, my God,” she said incredulously. “Are you searching my backpack?”
“Thought you might be holding out on me about the water,” he said. His search apparently finished, he tucked the backpack behind his head, where it served as a makeshift pillow. “Or maybe even the Tylenol.”