“You don’t think hiding out for five days would be a better option?” Her pulse was picking up the pace big-time. Fear fluttered inside her like a trapped bird. She really, truly thought attempting to steal a plane from the midst of a camp bristling with killers (probably a whole lot more once the plane landed) was a terrible idea. That opinion was only influenced a tiny bit by the bitter truth that she was mortally afraid to fly.
She had not been on a plane since the crash that she had barely survived.
“What about you? Won’t anyone be coming to look for you? You said your transponder was off, but—”
He cut in before she could finish. “It’s possible, but it’s nothing I’d be willing to bet our lives on. The plane was off course, for one thing. There might be some confusion about where we went down. Or even if we went down.”
That made Gina frown. But before she could follow up with more questions, they reached the pass and started across what was basically a natural rock suspension bridge between two mountains. Sheer cliffs dropped down into nothingness on both sides, and the lowering gray sky suddenly felt so close that she could have reached up and touched it if she’d wanted to. A bucking, writhing mass of dark gray clouds churned below. Looking down at them, Gina thought that the clouds appeared solid enough that you’d almost think you could jump down on them and hitch a ride.
Without the mountain to act as a barrier, wind gusts buffeted them from all directions, some strong enough to part the clouds and the underlying fog, allowing glimpses of the silvery river that, far below, ran beneath the bridge.
“Whoa. Slow down.” Cal caught the back of her parka as she strode out on the bridge with the confidence of someone who’d crossed it before, which she had: a pair of gyrfalcons that she’d been documenting had a nest on the other side.
Gina glanced back at Cal in surprise. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“I’m not a fan of falling off heights, that’s for sure. How about you pay attention to what you’re doing?”
“I’m very sure-footed,” she said. She did slow down, though, partly because it was so windy and partly because he’d kept his hand fisted in her parka. The rock underfoot was frosted over and slick, and the natural buttresses on each side were only a few feet high: it would be easy to go over. She started paying more attention to where she put her feet. As they approached the middle of the bridge she could no longer see the mountains that anchored it. All she could see was a swirling mass of gray clouds above and below. It was like being suspended in midair. The wind blew strongly, smelling of the sea, and had an icy bite to it. She had the sudden fanciful notion that if she spread out her arms the wind would catch her up and she could fly away on it.
If only.
A few moments later they were off the bridge and trudging across the face of the adjoining mountain. It was another narrow, rocky path, only this time they were going down. She was in the lead, and was acutely conscious of the vast bleakness of the jagged, treeless mountains rising all around, as well as the potential treacherousness of the path beneath her feet. The thin patches of snow weren’t a problem: they were easy to avoid. The ice was harder to see. Snow-frosted boulders lay everywhere, blocking the path at times so that they had to skirt around them. This mountain and the next were like conjoined twins that became separate entities about two hundred feet above sea level, and that juncture was where they were heading. As they descended they plunged into thickening fog, and every outside sound—wind, sea, more honking geese—grew increasingly muffled. In contrast, Gina could hear her and Cal’s breathing and footsteps in perfect tandem. Cal stayed so close behind her that she could have stretched a hand back and touched him, and again she was glad to have him there. He made her feel far safer than she had any business feeling under the circumstances, she knew.
“So tell me what happened back there at the camp,” he said, his voice a deep rumble that cut through the increasingly high-pitched whining of the wind.
Gina knew what he meant: he wanted to know what had happened when she’d reached the LORAN station.
In careful, concise sentences that were designed to keep emotion at bay, she told him what he wanted to know. But for all her calm on the surface, as she talked she discovered that she was still shaky inside and that grief and horror had solidified into what felt like a permanent knot in her chest.
As she ended her story with his unexpected appearance in the kitchen, her heart was pounding and tears pricked her eyes.
“The guy with the Texas accent—can you describe him?” he asked.
Firmly blinking the tears away, Gina shook her head. “The only one I saw was Ivanov.” Frowning, she added, “When you got to the camp, how did you even know where I was?”