Darkness (23 page)

“Quit looking back at me. Watch where you’re going,” he said irritably.

“What, are you afraid I’m going to die?”

If she’d ever been afraid of him—and she had been at first, he knew, and was also forced to admit that her fear hadn’t been without reason—she was clearly over it. Her eyes snapped at him. Her tone was caustic.

“Falling off a cliff works as well as catching a bullet for that.” His response was mild.

She made a
hmmph
sound but focused her attention on the trail. Climbing behind her, Cal absentmindedly admired her ass, admired her legs—he was nothing if not a multitasker—while turning the pieces of the nightmare they were trapped in over in his mind, trying to make sense of them. Seeing the bodies in that building, seeing the firepower that had turned out, the only conclusion he could reach was that they—the nameless
they
he couldn’t quite pin an identity on yet—somehow knew or suspected that someone had survived the crash. It was possible that pictures of his rescue had been picked up by satellite. Remembering the cloud cover, he thought it was far more likely that someone on the ground, most likely whoever had fired that surface-to-air missile, had spotted Gina pulling him from the water. They would have had to have been close enough to see what was happening, but too far away to do anything about it—like, say, shoot him and Gina both and be done.

“Tell me something: are you with the military?”

There she went again, frowning back over her shoulder at him. As precarious as the trail was, her inattention to it made him nervous. And annoyed.

“No.”

“Some kind of government agency? CIA? FBI? Something like that?”

“No.”

“You must work for somebody. Who?”

That much he could tell her. “I work for myself.”

“Is that another way of saying you’re a mercenary?”

He shrugged. “We’re all mercenaries, one way or another.”

“You know, someday I’d love to engage in that philosophical debate with you. Right now, I’d just like a straight answer.”

“I’m a private contractor. Okay? End of discussion.” His tone was short, and she made another of those
hmmph
noises in response. But they’d come upon a patch of ice, and she let the conversation lapse as they picked their way over it.

In the ensuing silence, he had an epiphany: if they knew someone had survived the plane crash, they probably knew it was him. He, Ezra, and Hendricks might all prompt the degree of firepower that had been summoned to deal with the threat a survivor posed—Rudy’s survival would have merited the response equivalent of a flyswatter—but Ezra and Hendricks had presumably been on the other side. Unless they’d been tricked, which he considered possible. Surface-to-air missiles had a range of only fifteen thousand feet, and there was a chance that the thirty-million deal for Rudy had been offered as a way of getting the plane to descend under that ceiling so that it could be shot down.

For safety’s sake, however, he had to presume that his sole survival was known, and all this was in his honor. The intensity with which they were going about ensuring his demise made him think, too, that this wasn’t just about Rudy’s information, or the crash of Flight 155. The way they were going full scorched-earth here, in attempting to wipe out not only him and the others on his plane but a dozen civilians as well, set off all kinds of alarm bells in his mind.

Rudy had said that there was chatter that what had befallen Flight 155 was being set to happen again to another plane. For his survival to merit this kind of response, that almost had to be true. Whoever was behind this was prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect whatever was getting ready to go down.

Cal was willing to bet all his money that another civilian airliner was getting ready to fall out of the sky.

If he was right, it wasn’t just his and Gina’s lives at stake. Hundreds of others could die.

Cal blew out a frustrated puff of air. “I’ve got to get off this damned island.”

HAVING REACHED
the edge of the patch of ice she’d been negotiating with such care, Gina responded to the first words Cal had said in several minutes with a skeptical “By stealing a plane.”

“Yep.”

“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?”

He shrugged. “I headed for the building with the lights. Luckily, I was still a fair distance away when three men walked out the door. I gave them enough time to get clear and went in. I made it as far as the kitchen when I heard somebody coming and ducked behind the table thing. You ran through. I stayed where I was for a minute to make sure you weren’t being chased, and then I started to come after you. Only by then you’d encountered our friend Ivanov and were running back through the kitchen the other way.”

“How many of them were there? At the camp?”

“I saw the three who came out of the building, plus one other. But from the footprints I came across, I think there were at least six. The dinghy holds eight.”

Gina was assailed by a terrible thought. “Oh, my God, the dinghy probably just docked and nobody had a clue that there was anything wrong.” Her throat constricted, making it difficult for her to get the words out. “They probably walked up to the camp and started shooting people. No, whoever saw them pull up probably went down to the dock to meet them and
invite
them up to the camp. Mary—Jorge—none of them would even have dreamed that they could be in danger. Ivanov
talked
to Mary. I know he did, because he knew about her accent—she had this heavy Brooklyn accent. She would have had no clue what was going to happen. None of them would have had a clue. They were just
slaughtered
.”

Gina’s voice quavered on the last word. The thought of Mary and Jorge as they had looked lying there on the floor refused to leave her head. Fighting to banish the image, she took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Hey.” The path wasn’t really wide enough for two to walk abreast, but he caught up to her anyway. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her face but she didn’t look up at him because that damnable prickle of tears was back. But he clearly realized that she was upset. He caught her hand, squeezed it gently. Until she looked down at his black-gloved hand holding hers, she hadn’t realized that her fingers were clenched into tight fists. Having his big hand wrapped around her fist was almost ridiculously comforting. “I’m sorry this came down on you and your friends. I can’t do anything about the others, but I’m going to do my best to get you out of this in one piece.”

She took a deep breath.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “You didn’t deliberately crash your plane.”

“No,” he agreed. “I didn’t.” He was still holding her hand, and she realized that her fingers were relaxing in his, instinctively responding to the solace he offered. She freed her hand before her fingers could do something stupid, like, say, clutch at his. Or entwine with them.

“None of that explains where you got the coat.” Her voice was deliberately crisp. Succumbing to sorrow was the last thing she meant to do. Right now what she needed most of all was to keep a clear head.

“Coat?” His genuine confusion earned him an exasperated up-flick of a look. Exasperation, she decided, was a far preferable emotion to everything else she’d been experiencing.

“This one. The one you’re wearing.” She gave his sleeve a tug.

“Oh,” he said. “A second dinghy dropped two men off near the rocks where I was hiding. One of the men headed down the coastline, like he was going to walk around the point. The other went right on past me and took the same trail you did. I followed him, and when I got the chance I took him out. His gun went over a cliff in the struggle, but I got his coat before I pitched him after the gun. I would have taken his boots, too, but they were too small. Then I got to thinking that you might run into somebody like him, so I followed you.”

Gina looked at him. He must have found a knit cap somewhere, probably in a coat pocket, because he’d pulled on a black one that hugged his head and almost touched his eyebrows in front. Below it, his eyes were as dark as the mountain behind them. His square, unshaven jaw was set and hard. His mouth was unsmiling. He looked tough. Capable. Dangerous, just as she’d suspected from the first.

And so handsome her heart beat a little faster just from looking at him.