When the tears kept coming, she pushed her hood back and unzipped her coat and dried her cheeks on the edge of her thermal shirt. She took off her gloves and poured some of the water from the bottle into her cupped hand and splashed her face with it. Several times. It was cold, bracingly so.
That seemed to do the trick. The tears stopped. She dried her face on her shirt again, sniffed mightily, and dug in her pocket for her ChapStick, which she applied to her lips. It tasted of cherry, which was nice. Next she pulled her comb out and started methodically working the tangles out of her hair.
Concentrate on mundane tasks: another lesson learned in how to carry on after a tragedy.
She saw the stripe of light that was Cal coming back and pocketed her comb.
“This is a hell of a cave,” he said when he reached her. The stripe of light hit her face, causing her to flinch. The light lingered, and she got the impression that he was staring hard at her.
She threw up a hand in protest.
“Would you turn that off?” Her voice was sharp.
He did. It was suddenly so dark that she could barely see him. He made a movement that she thought was him pocketing the gun. Easing down to sit beside her, he said, “You crying?”
Oh, God, she couldn’t believe that he’d noticed what must be the telltale signs.
“No.” Her voice was sharper than before.
“Thank God. Crying women scare the hell out of me.”
That made her smile. A little. Reluctantly. “In that case, maybe I am.”
She could feel him looking at her. Taking another drink of water, she concentrated on the wall opposite them instead of looking back. The wall she absolutely couldn’t see because it was too dark.
He took the bottle from her, drank. He’d taken off his gloves, she saw. The better to handle a weapon? She didn’t want to think about it.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Pretty upsetting, seeing your friend killed like that. Several of your friends.”
“Who are you, Dr. Phil?”
“If you need me to be.”
She shot him a look. Not that he saw it, she thought, or that she saw him as anything other than a solid patch of darkness looming beside her. He was being nice, and right now nice was something she couldn’t take. Especially from him. He’d come out of the same mold as the bad guys chasing them, she was pretty sure. The only difference was that right now he happened to be on her side.
She said, “I don’t need you to be anything. Except quiet.”
He didn’t reply, just meditatively sipped her water. Gina’s eyes narrowed as it occurred to her that he was waiting. For her to break down and pour her heart out to him. Which wasn’t going to happen.
“That’s annoying,” she said.
“What’s annoying?”
“You. Sitting there like that.”
“You mean, being quiet?” Was there a hint of humor in his voice? “I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”
If he’d been able to see it, the look she turned on him then would have fried his eyeballs.
“Why don’t you go explore more of the cave?”
“I don’t like leaving you here alone in the dark.”
“So give me a flashlight.”
“It’s the leaving you alone part I don’t like.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything more. He sipped more water. She tried to keep her mind blank. But his words sent a fresh niggle of fear slithering through the mental barriers she was busy erecting.
“You think somebody could be in here?” She cast a nervous glance toward the impenetrable darkness he’d just walked out of.
He shrugged. “Possible. Not likely. I didn’t see signs that anybody’s been here in years, and as far as I can work out, unless somebody already knew this cave was here, they haven’t had time to find it. And they’d have no reason to be looking for it. We just got here ourselves, and they can’t know that this is where we’d head.”
That made her feel a little better.
“You think they’ll find it?”
She could feel his shrug. “If they look long enough.”
“It’s pretty well hidden.”
“Yeah.”
From the tone of that, Gina gathered that he thought that wasn’t an insurmountable barrier. He sipped more water. She tried, unsuccessfully, not to think.
“Do you think Arvid was dead?” She couldn’t help it: the words pushed themselves out before she even knew she was going to say them, a result no doubt of the thought continually preying on her mind. “I mean, obviously he is dead. I know those men will have made sure of it. But do you think he was dead when we left him there in the river?”
“Yep. Believe me, he was dead before he hit the water.”
She slanted a look up at him. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I know, okay? Trust me, I know.”
Funnily enough, she did trust that he knew, although what that said about him, and about her for not being horrified that she was sitting here so companionably with him, she didn’t care to think about.
Still, she couldn’t just leave it. She needed more. “How do you know? The tough-guy version of female intuition?”