Uncharted by Adriana Anders
Chapter 24
He blinked up at the treetops silhouetted against the pale gray sky, like some intricate lace woven by Mother Nature herself. One of a kind. The wind shifted it, changed the pattern, drew dry sounds from the pine needles, rubbed branches together, scratching and clacking like brittle bones. Winter’s wind chimes.
He focused back in on Leo, who shook her head, muttering to herself—maybe to him, though he couldn’t quite catch individual words. He smiled. He got the meaning well enough. Whatever she was saying was punctuated by tsking sounds that he liked. All he could see was the top of her hood. He reached up and pushed it back to get a better look. Or to hear her better. Both.
She went utterly still when his fingers touched her hair, caressed it. He wanted to feel it against his cheek. His lips. His chest.
Though she didn’t push his hand off, she cast him an impatient glance and kept working, so pretty and delicate and strong, her features set in concentration. He liked that look—pure, single-minded absorption, focused on him. Imagine how that would feel under other circumstances. If they weren’t running for their lives, but had united for real. On purpose, instead of randomly thrown together. If that enthralled look were for him, instead of his wound.
Leo pursed her lips. “‘Just a scratch,’ he said. This is not just a scratch, Elias Thorne.”
“Sure it is,” he said with a smile.
“If you keep bleeding, you’ll need stitches.” She turned to rummage in the first aid kit again. “Now, why’s this feel like déjà vu?”
“Stitches? Didn’t seem that bad to me.”
“Of course not.” She let out another annoyed series of tsks.
Whatever she did made him groan, the pain shooting out to hit every nerve in his body. The next time he opened his eyes, her face was right above his, hovering.
He blinked. Had it gotten darker out?
No, they needed to get over that rise today, to a semisheltered spot and a defensible position.
He tried to crane his neck toward the west. Where was the damn sun?
“Gotta move.” His mouth was cotton, the words barely intelligible, his arms and legs too heavy.
“Drink.” She thrust a canteen in his face. “No more walking today, big guy. I used the last of the butterfly bandages, so let’s try to keep you in one piece, okay?”
He struggled to sit and took a sip of water, squinting at her. “Should have packed more butterfly bandages.”
“Or—bear with me here—we could stop getting hurt.” She smirked and stuck out her tongue.
He yawned so wide it cracked his jaw.
When she did the same, he chuckled, which made her laugh and thwack him lightly on the arm. The laugh died, leaving something else between them. Something warm and new.
I like her.The thought was so sudden and out of the blue that he could do nothing but blink dumbly for a while.
She lifted her head, showing him the sharp triangle of her chin, a tiny, warm piece of her throat, and all he could think was that he bet she’d taste good there, in that sweet, private little spot.
And though there was nothing sexual about that place, just the image of touching it with his tongue sent a strange mix of guilt and desire through him, so strong he had to clear his throat and stand.
Maybe he more than liked her.
“So, Mr. Prepared Man. You got another yeti cave close by or are we gonna have to sleep under the stars tonight?”
Sleeping. Beside her. Even with the pain in his side, he looked forward to it.
He shook his head.
She threw him a curious look. “Okay. So, camp outside?”
“Keep going. Next rise is more easily defensible. We can stay there. Take turns keeping watch.” Which meant no cozying up together.
She narrowed her eyes. “You sure you can make it any farther today?”
Nope.He wanted to pitch the tent right here, strip off his clothes, and snuggle up inside. Only this time, he didn’t want to do it to ward off death. He wanted to do it because it felt good. She felt good. Against him, beside him, talking smack with him. Yelling at him because he’d gotten himself hurt and hadn’t told her.
“Let’s go, then. Lead the way, you stubborn man.”
Man, she was one of a kind, wasn’t she? Not only beautiful, but strong, smart, and just grumpy enough to make him want to draw a smile from those lips. He’d always been a sucker for a challenge.
He wanted more than a smile, though. He wanted this to last—past the five or six days it would take to get her to safety.
Dangerous thought for a man who’d lost everything he ever touched. Pointless, too, since this—whatever it was—would be over before it began.
***
They hiked for another hour or so, their pace slow but constant, the ground drier and higher as they went, until they walked mostly over uneven shale. Each step was an unsteady quicksand dance over the flat, gravel-like rocks.
All the while, Leo kept an eye on Elias. And all the while, she got more anxious—although she couldn’t say whether it was his condition or something else about his demeanor that made her so.
She scoffed internally. As if she knew him well enough to gauge his demeanor.
When he finally stopped, she took a quick look around. “This where we’re staying?”
They stood at the top edge of the shale field they’d just traversed, high above the lake they’d raced across…was that just yesterday? Between them and the lake, the spikey boreal forest eased down to the water in an uneven carpet, warmed by the setting sun. The incline looked deceptively flat, as if she and Elias and Bo had just meandered up a rolling hill instead of climbing at breakneck speed all day. The trees appeared neatly spaced, too, as if the forest floor were an open, welcoming sort of place. Another of Alaska’s evil illusions.
At first glance, it didn’t appear to be an ideal location to stop for the night, but when she turned a full circle, she realized it was actually perfect. Walking over those loose stones was loud and slow. They’d hear anyone who approached long before they arrived.
When she turned back to look at Elias, she found him watching her.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Head?”
She blinked for a second before realizing what he’d meant, and touched a tentative hand to the bandage. “Seems okay.”
“I’ll look at it.”
“Sounds good.”
They unpacked a few items from the bag—tarps, tent, sleeping bags, blankets—and spread their wet clothes out to dry. After chowing down on the food Elias gave her, Bo sniffed the area with her tail up, amazingly alert for a creature who’d put in as much time walking as they had.
“This is better. You were right.” Leo did another three sixty, noting that the flat ground was dry underfoot and the cliff rising above them not only served as protection from the wind, but provided at least one direction in which no one could approach.
She leaned her head back and stared up. Unless they came from the sky. Like a specter, the thump of the spinning blades haunted her, and she listened hard before confirming that what she heard was her pulse—not their pursuers.
Not tonight at least.
He grunted a response. Or a nonresponse, as she’d started thinking of them.
“Which way do we go tomorrow?”
He pointed to the side.
“Isn’t Schink’s Station that way?” She indicated the cliff.
“Yeah. But it’s a climb. Goat paths. Not easy. We’ll go around.” He knocked a tent stake into the ground with quick efficiency. “Tomorrow.”
“Right. Tonight, we need rest.”
Heneeded rest, she meant, though she wouldn’t say that flat-out. She peered at his body and grimaced at his bloodstained clothes. Man, they could use a bath. A laundromat. A bed.
She pictured him, stretched out in rumpled white sheets, his already messy mop of hair standing up from bedhead, a sleepy smile on his wide mouth.
What the hell am I doing? He may not be the killer the entire world thinks he is, but he’s still a complete stranger.
She cleared her throat and asked the first question that came to mind. “So, how’d you end up here?”
He gave her a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder, then went back to hammering spikes into the ground.
“Not here with me.” For some inexplicable reason, her face grew hot at those words. The next ones came out louder. “In Alaska. How’d you go from West Virginia to here?”
“Family lived here.”
“Papers never mentioned that.”
“My dad got a job managing a mine in West Virginia when I was in high school. I graduated down there, went to college there. Far as anyone knew, we’d cut all ties with Alaska.”
“Except Amka.”
“Not just her. I mean, she’s my godmother, but the whole town’s like family.” He sniffed. “We never lived in Schink’s Station, but I spent every summer there. They’re the kind of relationships that don’t make it into your background file, you know? And it’s not like I ever called her or visited.”
“So, what? You picked up the phone and told her you were coming?”
“Hell no.”
“You just showed up? Hoping for the best?”
He grunted.
“What if she’d thrown you out? Or turned you in?”
His next grunt edged into snort territory.
“Okay.” Getting a response from him was like pulling teeth. “So you hopped a flight and—”
“Hiked.”
“You hiked from West Virginia to Alaska?” Now it was her turn to snort. “You’re serious?”
“Figured I’d blend in best on the Appalachian Trail, so I took that north. Geared up and started off in West Virginia, got myself a trail name, grew a beard.” He ran his fingers over his facial hair, as if remembering life before becoming a yeti. “Far from the most direct route, but most through-hikers have no idea what’s happening in the outside world. Nobody recognized me. That got me up to Maine. Crossed into Canada on foot.”
“How long did it take you?”
“With some hitchhiking in Canada and some pretty intense wilderness crossings, took me close to a year.”
She stayed still for a few long beats, trying to put herself in his shoes, imagining that slow, cold journey overland, with a destination that might be welcoming or—if he’d grossly miscalculated—not. She felt like hell after two days of this shit and he’d done it for months. She’d just opened her mouth to ask what it had been like when he spoke again.
“You shoulda seen her face when I knocked on her door. I was rough, tired, filthy. Like something the cat had maybe thrown up a few times before dragging it in.”
A wide grin split Leo’s face. “Gross.”
His answering grin made him look a decade younger and crushingly handsome. It left her breathless.
“She saw right past the beard, though. Knew who I was in a heartbeat. Everybody said I was dead, but she knew. No fooling Amka. Ever.” His smile was bright in the fading light. “Looked me up and down, totally expressionless, and said Bet you’re hungry, then waddled into her kitchen, like she’d been expecting me. Like she…” He swallowed hard, closed his mouth tight, and breathed audibly. Waiting for the emotion to pass, she guessed. Not surprising given how much his story was affecting her. She could only imagine what these memories dredged up.
The wind whipped around them, chilling her now that they’d stopped.
“What time do you think it is?”
He tilted his head back to take in the sky and her chest went tight. God, he was beautiful, even with the beard and the unruly hair—or was it because of them? Even more handsome now, knowing what he’d gone through to get here, the sacrifices he’d made. Although she still didn’t understand quite what had happened. He’d tell her, she figured. For some reason, her need to know wasn’t as urgent as it had been.
“Nine? Sun’s almost down, so it’s at least that. Although the days are getting longer now.”
She forced her eyes from his profile and sought a way to occupy her hands. “What’s the plan? Are we doing protein bars again?”
“Wanna heat something up?” The question made her stomach growl, and then she salivated at the idea of hot food sliding down. It was all she could do to keep in a moan.
“Love you some MREs, Leo?”
She looked up. “What?”
He shook his head. “You looked sort of…excited.”
In a flash, heat burned a path up her skin from her chest to her face. Had he caught her thinking about food? Or about him? Avoiding his gaze, she reached into the bag and pulled out what she’d need to make dinner, relieved when he went back to work, knocking the last peg into the ground with a piece of wood, quiet and efficient.
“We having a fire?” Please say yes. “Or…”
Slowly, he stood and turned to look back out the way they’d come. “Best not.” His voice was hushed.
“You think there’s someone out there?”
He shrugged, though the movement was much too casual for her taste.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Don’t know. There’s something…” He glanced her way, the movement just barely visible now. “Yeah. I think there’s someone out there.”
She repressed the shiver that tried to work its way up her spine. “Camp stove?”
At his nod, she set to work—not as quick or quiet or confident as he was, but she got water heating while he prepared their tent and disappeared for a while. When he returned, he made a sound with his feet and she wondered if he’d done it on purpose—so as not to startle her. As if he was so quiet usually that he walked like a ghost.
“Smells good.”
She smiled and held up two bags of hot, rehydrated food. “Think this one says Chili Mac, though it smells almost the same as this lasagna. Got a preference?”
“Eenie meenie?”
“Want to do half and half?”
“Yeah. Variety sounds good.”
She shut down the camp stove, leaving them to eat in darkness and silence, the specter of whoever or whatever was out there all around them. Or somewhere below. It was quiet, aside from the wind in the trees, and it was cold, a jittery, bone-jarring cold.
“Fire would be nice.”
Without a word, Elias set down his food, went over to the backpack, and pulled some kind of fur from a plastic bag. He rummaged around and returned to lay it over Leo’s shoulders. The flashlight went on next, only he turned it on upside down between them, giving them the barest glow to see by.
“Better?”
She smiled and nodded, then went back to her dinner, all the while watching him eat from the corner of her eye.
What would he look like without that beard? Or even just cleaned up? Shampooed and shaved with a fresh set of clothes?
“Hold on. Got something else.” He got up and returned with a chocolate bar, broke off a square for each of them, then put it away again. Careful, thoughtful. Competent.
As she scraped the bottom of the chili bag, she pictured him sitting in, or rather overflowing from, one of those old-fashioned barbershop chairs. Suddenly, in her mind, Elias was dressed in hipster regalia—maybe a plaid button-down shirt, rolled up to the elbows. He wouldn’t be wearing that fur-lined parka hood and ratty wool beanie that looked like his grandma made it. Instead, he’d have a short back and sides—no hat. Glasses maybe, although those would have to be horn-rimmed, which would distract from his unusual, mottled-green irises and…
What the actual hell am I thinking right now?
She shoved the chocolate in her mouth, shocked at how good it tasted. “This is perfect.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s no five-star restaurant, but we like our treats, Bo and I.” The dog came up and nudged him, expecting cuddles, which he gave with gusto.
“I’d like to speak to the manager, then.”
He yawned, covered his mouth, and put his head back to look up at the stars. “Hey, lady, you’re the one who asked for the yeti special.” He glanced at her, that irresistible smile in his eyes.
She laughed, hard. A belly laugh that she had to quiet quickly or risk giving their location away.
They cleaned up and brushed their teeth in silence, their gazes never quite meeting.
“You’re so cute.”
That stopped her cold. “Cute?”
“Don’t like that word?”
She opened her mouth to respond and then hesitated. “It’s not a word anybody’s used to describe me before.” Just him saying it made her feel fragile, which she wasn’t prepared to explore.
“Really?”
“Really.”
He cocked his head, looked her up and down, and stood. “Just ’cause you’re deadly doesn’t mean you can’t be other things, too. You’re…” He opened his mouth and shut it. “Look. I realize you’re a complex individual. But let’s just say that cute’s definitely in there.”
He eyed the tent where they’d both sleep for the night.
“Go on in.” A shiver ran through her to the tips of her fingers and toes. It was quickly doused when he said, “You sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”
***
Amka sat quietly in a dark corner of the hangar, staring at the helicopter like a cat at a mouse.
The dang thing squatted there, ripe for the picking.
If you knew how to pick that type of fruit.
A yawn cracked her jaw.
How was she supposed to disable a monster like this one? Was there some wire she could cut in the engine? A control she could break off or something?
Carefully, she made her way to the door and pulled it open, surprised to see that it wasn’t locked. Then again, who’d they have to lock it against? Wasn’t like anyone could steal it.
She stepped up and in, grasping the metal frame for balance while her eyes tried to adjust to the lightless interior.
Finally fumbling out her flashlight, she shone it over the space—which was big and cavernous as a damn bus, with jump seats lining the sides. She turned right to find the cockpit door standing open.
Idiots.
Her smile quickly melted from her face when she took in the instrument panel. Five black screens stared back at her, like mini TVs. More dials and buttons and levers than she knew what to do with—and not a single one of them spoke to her.
Like flying a goddamn spaceship.
She pointed the light at a dial and squinted. Crap. Without her glasses, she couldn’t read a solitary thing.
It didn’t take her long to realize there was only one solution. It’d be loud and probably get her caught, but it would ensure that those bastards couldn’t get off the ground. One less thing to worry about.
First, she needed something big and heavy. A baseball bat would be ideal, but she could make pretty much any tool work. She’d just turned to head back into the hangar in search of something she could use to smash the hell out of this thing when she bumped straight into something.
Someone.
Shit, where’d they come from? She hadn’t heard a damned thing.
She backed up a step, heart pumping too fast for someone her age. The silhouette was large, dark. Her mouth opened—to yell? Hell no, she couldn’t yell. She didn’t have time to get the pistol from her coat pocket before he was on her. Thick arms tightened around her and a hard hand pressed over her mouth.
You were right, Daisy. Shoulda had my ears checked.