Uncharted by Adriana Anders
Chapter 26
Throat tight with emotion, Elias gathered Leo closer and stared out into the beautiful night.
She didn’t speak for so long, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. When her voice broke the silence, it was like a caress in the dark.
“We’re gonna fix this, Elias. We’ll clean it up.”
He huffed. “Know how to do that?”
“Yes. I told you. I’ve got people.” He felt her smile against his chest. “My boys. Coop, Ans, Von. We’ve got others now, too. Couple of scientists, a doc. A chef.”
“Strange combination.”
“Is it?” She snuggled deeper. “It’s a great combination. Angel, Ford Cooper’s girlfriend, cooks the most unbelievable meals for us on the platform. Like—”
“Platform?”
“We’re based offshore.”
“Are you making this up?”
Her laughter bumped her chest against his side. He wanted her to slide back on top. She wouldn’t do it. And she’d be right not to. They needed to save their energy for things like, oh, survival. But wouldn’t it be nice to forget about survival for a while, to lose himself in Leo?
“It’s real. Polaris platform. It’s where our operations are based.”
“Your operations?”
“We’re a security firm.”
“Someone hired you to come here?”
She shook her head, each movement nudging that spot right over his heart. “No. This is more of a…personal mission.”
“For who?”
“All of us.” She lifted her head. “A bunch of us almost died because of Chronos and the Frondvirus. We’re not so into that. Decided to make it stop.”
He let out a cynical snort. “Good luck.”
“Got to you first, didn’t we?” There was definite pride when she spoke. “And…” She paused. “We’ve got some advantages.”
“Yeah? Like having the actual virus in your possession?”
“Exactly.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Long story.”
“They know you have it?”
Her self-satisfied “nope” allowed him to breathe again.
He stared up at the stars for a few seconds, trying to piece it all together. “Why are you here if you already have it?”
“Just because we have a sample doesn’t mean there’s not more out there. We want to stop them from getting their hands on it. To stop the killing.”
“It’ll never stop.” Hollowed out by death, despair, and hopelessness, the words were a sibilant proclamation. No vowels made it through his tight vocal chords.
“I don’t belong to that school of thought, Elias.”
He grunted a question.
“Never, can’t, won’t. I don’t believe in those words.” She yawned. Her breath reached him—warm and sweet. He could get addicted to that particular combination. “Even metal melts if you get it hot enough.”
He huffed out a laugh. His next inhale expanded his ribs and pressed her closer and maybe drew a little hope into his body. She smelled like hope. Like another chance at life. Like the sweet thrill of possibility.
Resisting fatigue, he opened his eyes wide and shut them for a few seconds before focusing on the sky again. “You should sleep.”
Her response was a sigh. At their feet, Bo echoed it.
Time eked slowly by—he couldn’t say for how long—when she spoke again, surprising him. “Wish we’d been there for you. When it happened.”
“It was a long time ago, Leo.”
“Bet it doesn’t feel like it.”
“Does.” He considered. “And it doesn’t.”
“Tell me.”
He opened his mouth to tell her it was late and she should sleep, and then he closed it. She didn’t like being told what to do. He couldn’t blame her.
“It’s like I’ve been alone forever, like that old life—the one I lost. Job. House. Family. Woman who was supposed to…” Love me. He couldn’t even utter the words. She made a little move but didn’t speak, and he kept going. “It’s like I only dreamed it. Not even a memory anymore. More vague. Like I saw it on TV.” His brain gave him a kaleidoscope of moments from back then—opening mail, paying bills, getting drinks with friends after work. Watching football—caring about football. Like it mattered who won the damn Super Bowl.
“So, that’s one side. What about the other?”
He scrunched up his face, not really adept at explaining stuff like that. “You ever lose someone special?”
She didn’t immediately reply, making him wonder if this would be a one-sided thing. Did Leo take but not give? Would he care if that was her way?
“My mom.” She swallowed audibly. “Killed herself when I was little.”
All the air left him, like a ball to the gut. There it was. That feeling. He wanted to hug her, to tell her he was sorry. But he knew how little good that would do. If he could, though, he’d take the weight of it from her. That he would do.
After a bit, he found his voice. “You too young to remember waking up the next morning after it happened?”
“No.” Her voice was devoid of emotion. “I remember.”
He nodded with understanding. From his outermost layer of skin to his deepest entrails, he knew that feeling. “Every morning’s like that for me. Every day, I wake up and…”
After a couple of heartbeats, her hand moved low and found his. Her fingers slid through his and tightened into a fist.
She fell asleep like that, feeding him something he hadn’t had in forever.
Eventually, both she and Bo started snoring, the soft, steady sounds stirring up a messed-up mix inside him of equal parts warmth and the unbearable weight of responsibility.
***
Head throbbing, Leo woke in the dark, struggled to get out from under the blankets, and took a quick look around before settling back into her nest—a nest she shared with Elias—and staring up at the sky. It was brighter than before, the inky black from earlier more of a blue, the stars twinkling less, fading. She couldn’t see her breath in the dark, but she could feel the cold down to her marrow.
Elias sat quietly beside her.
“How long have you been keeping watch?” she finally asked.
His exhausted shrug gave him away.
“You planning to get any sleep tonight, Elias?”
“Wanted you to rest.”
“A lot of good that’ll do me if I have to drag your giant carcass back to Schink’s Station.” She sat up and yanked his arm until he slid into her warm spot with a sigh. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
She slapped him lightly on the arm and let her hand rest there for a couple of seconds before putting it on the ground and pushing up to sitting. “What will you do? When this is over?”
“Over? What’s that look like?”
Good question. “What if I told you there’s a place for you? With my team? A place where you’d be safe. People you can work with, for a cause. We can set you up with a new life, a new identity. You’d be—”
“On the run. Still.”
She opened her mouth to object and then shut it. “You don’t have to be alone, Elias.”
He nodded, silent. Her hand went back to his arm and stayed there. “It’s my watch. Sleep.”
After a while, his breathing evened out and Leo was left alone to think about what lay ahead. Not just the journey they’d have to complete—unless her team somehow tracked them down out here—but what they’d find once they arrived in Schink’s Station.
Would it be a massacre like the one he’d been accused of carrying out? Would another innocent person be blamed?
She dropped her face onto her bent knees and let the prospect—just the idea—run through her. For a few tortured minutes, she pictured it—arriving to find the place quiet and smelling of blood, the only sound the buzzing of flies on bodies.
Her eyes shut against the image, then opened to land on Elias’s dark form. The man’s strength was astounding. She admired it, the way she liked his preparedness and, frankly, his rough good looks. But more than all of it, she liked his heart. He’d lost so much, given so much, lived through hell. He deserved to be taken care of. To be loved.
The idea sent an uncomfortable jolt through her.
Shit. No. Not by me.
She didn’t do that nonsense. Didn’t know how. Oh, she loved her teammates. Ans and Von and Eric were stone walls she could lean on—men she’d trust with anything, go to the ends of the earth for. Literally.
And yet, in all the years she’d known them, she’d never once mentioned her mom. They hadn’t pushed, which she’d always appreciated. And God knew she’d never asked for their darkest secrets.
Now she wondered if maybe that emotional distance had paradoxically allowed her to get close to them.
Even as a kid, she’d never talked to anyone about her mom’s death. Not the counselors who’d chipped away at her—using art and music and every therapy available—and certainly not her dad. He’d pretty much sunk everything into music once Mom was gone, which had left Leo to dream, her eyes on the sky.
Shame washed over her. Guilt too. And something more elemental, something she’d never be able to describe. There wasn’t a word for this feeling, but she figured Elias knew it well—like she’d been a ghost all these years. Haunted. Doing things, experiencing them, but not really living.
Like she was equal parts flesh and blood and pain.
Bo stirred, pushing her from her morbid line of thought. Thank God, because she’d just about reached her limit of internal philosophizing. And this shit never did her any good.
Was the sky getting lighter?
Good. Though she was still exhausted and every bone and muscle hurt like hell, she couldn’t wait to get back on her feet again. To get moving and tackle another leg in this unexpected journey. To face whatever the day would bring.
With Elias by her side, that prospect didn’t scare her at all.
***
Maybe this sunrise—from the dark blue haze on the horizon to the flames eating up the sky—could cleanse the night’s ghosts. Maybe, Leo thought, the new day would bring something good. If nothing else, it would wipe away the vestiges of all that unintended intimacy. Like a bad hangover, the embarrassment of having over-shared weighed her down. She could only hope that the light of day would wipe the memories away, rather than shining a spotlight on them.
There was something hopeful about all that beauty, ancient, but fresh. The birth of a new day. Like snowflakes and human faces, no two sunrises were the same, and this one was hers. Just hers.
A cloud skittered across the rising sun, forever changing the view. She swallowed back a wave of premature nostalgia, already missing this bittersweet moment, this time and place, with this man to whom she’d already given too much of herself.
“Oh, shut up,” she whispered, rolling her eyes at her excessive sentimentality.
She took a bolstering breath and let herself look down at Elias. And then, it seemed wiser to wake him than to stare at the trail-worn lines of his face. Each one of them hard-earned. Each one deep and beautiful.
“Elias.” She spoke louder than she’d meant to, pushing every shred of longing from her voice. Hopefully. “Got to move.” The words puffed hot vapor into the cold air, and she shivered at the prospect of moving away from his warm body.
Her words pushed him deeper into sleep, into his firm pillow. Which was actually her lap. He’d wake up if she shook him or rolled out from under him, but that would dump him on the ground.
He made a low, sleepy noise, gripped the blankets, and pulled them up around his head, leaving only his eyes and his thick, wavy hair visible.
She gripped her hands together to stop herself from tunneling her fingers into it.
“Elias.” If she made her voice firm, she wouldn’t have to touch him…or pull away. “We need to get going.”
His eyes opened, focused on her, and then creased at the corners. He was smiling—a sweet, intimate expression—and she almost died from it. It put an actual pain in her chest while she did her best to catch her breath.
Better get some distance.She shifted out of the blankets and got up in a rush, immediately regretting it when dizziness overwhelmed her. With an undignified oof, she flopped down again, practically on top of this man she barely knew.
Except she knew him now, didn’t she? She knew the smell and the feel of him, the taste of his skin under her tongue, and most importantly, she knew how it hurt to be him.
“Got water?” His eyes narrowed, as if he had seen her thoughts and didn’t like them. Or was trying to get a read on her and couldn’t. Or maybe he thought she’d—
Shut it down, Eddowes.
“Okay?” The two syllables rumbled from his chest.
For a few seconds, she didn’t move, didn’t respond, just let herself be close to him.
“Sure.”
Slowly, he twisted the top, put the canteen to his mouth, and drank, gasping at the cold. When he returned it, she was disquieted to see that her hand—her whole arm—shook from the weight of the light plastic bottle.
“Feeling okay?”
“Fantastic.” She gave him her biggest, smartassiest smile. “You?”
“Million times better now that I slept.” He stretched, reminding her of a big, sleepy bear waking up from hibernation. Or of what she imagined a bear to look like, since she’d been lucky enough to avoid them so far.
He eyed her and finally sat up. “Let me look at your head.”
With closed eyes, she sat through his examination, half-sad and half-relieved when he patted her shoulder. “Looks good. Let me rebandage it and we can take off.”
“Thanks.”
“I should…” He pointed awkwardly in the distance. “You know. Take a leak.”
“Oh. Right.” She shifted away from him, mortified to realize that their legs had been entwined—hers on top. Of course he needed her to move. Otherwise, he’d have been up and moving minutes ago.
He stood and quickly turned his back to her, but not before she got a look at the prominent erection tenting his pants. Her mouth tightened into a perfect, silent O, and her skin went all hot and dry. Much like her mouth, actually.
“Sorry,” she whispered, though it wasn’t clear if he heard.
When he returned, she considered saying something but then let it go. Morning wood was a thing. She knew that, given that she’d worked alongside men for much of her life, though she’d never experienced it quite so closely before.
“Other side of this mountain, there’s a place where we can clean up.” He was all business now. “Get a better night’s rest before heading into the easy part.”
“Oh. The end’s the easy part?”
“Well, it’s not this crappy broken shale. And we move to lower altitudes, so that’s easier. Flatter, too, and hopefully not quite so badly flooded as up here.”
“So, better.”
“Unless we’re being hunted by helicopters, of course.”
Her nerves pricked. “Why’s that?”
“Well, we’ve got the mountains here and…more mountains. We can call ’em foothills farther west.”
“Right.”
“And what’s past that? You flew here. Remember?”
She closed her eyes, going back over the area around Schink’s Station and her flight here.
“The river feeds into the lake at Schink’s Station.”
“Exactly.” He nodded. “Mountains, mostly bare, and the taiga’s a lot sparser there. Just that and the river.” His shrug was apologetic. “No place to hide.”
“Well, crap.”
“That’s about right.”
***
It was a long, hard hike west, over treacherous, half-frozen ground. They walked throughout the day without a hitch, which Elias was just paranoid enough to find worrisome.
Where was the search party? The reinforcements? Why weren’t they back out, tearing up the sky with their helicopter?
He glanced over his shoulder and forced his gaze past Leo to scour the landscape. Was there someone out there, right now, following in their footsteps?
Something tickled at the nape of his neck and, without hesitation, he pointed to the side, pleased when she continued to follow precisely in his footsteps—using rocks and branches and dry ground whenever available—veering slightly south from their direct westerly path.
Something wasn’t right. He had no idea what it was or how he knew it, but one of his senses was sounding the alarm.
When he paused to scope out their surroundings again, Leo watched him closely, eyes wide. She lifted her eyebrows and shoulders in a silent query.
He gave his head a little shake and continued to search.
She drew close and whispered, “Hear something?”
“No.”
“See something? What is it?”
“Don’t know.”
Though her nod looked a little hesitant, she joined in his search. The problem was that, even after five minutes spent in perfect silence and stillness, watching and waiting, there was no physical sign of what he sought.
Dark clouds had gathered in the sky by the time they started moving again, and still he wasn’t confident. A good tracker wouldn’t show themselves. They could be out there, biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to strike. To come for the virus.
That he and Leo didn’t have.
At first, the rain was so gentle it was almost undetectable. A cold mist seeping into hoods and under gloves, covering his beard so subtly he didn’t notice until he ran his hand over it and found it dripping water.
He didn’t want to stop, couldn’t shake the feeling that something was out there, slowly and inexorably tracking them.
Then there was the constant burning in his side and, worst of all, the worry that he’d drawn Leo into something she wouldn’t survive.
She whistled low and he turned, adrenaline spiking.
“Can’t go much farther with the rain.”
“Call this rain?” He leaned his head back and got a frigid face full, then shook himself like a dog, pleased when she smiled in response.
“Even if it’s just a drizzle, it’s a cold drizzle.”
“Yeah.” He searched the darkening shadows again, not happy with the roiling clouds or the quickly cooling air and really not happy with the itch at the nape of his neck. “Let’s find a place out of the wind to pitch the tent.”
“We done for the day?”
Gaze bouncing left to right and back, tension ticking a muscle in his cheek, he replied quietly, “We keep going, we risk exposure.” His attention flicked up at the darkening sky. “It’s about to come down.”
“And if we stay?”
“Don’t know, Leo. There’s something...” He blew air out his mouth. “There’s something.”
“Okay,” she whispered, her eyes big and skittish. Maybe she felt it, too. “I need a few minutes of privacy.”
Stay close, he wanted to say, but she knew what she was doing. Instead, he nodded and forced himself not to watch her walk away, despite an overwhelming desire to stop her.