Chapter Six
Ren led them, in a slightly roundabout way, to the overhang he’d found when setting up for this operation last week. He and the team had cleaned it out—not wanting to accidentally find themselves bitten or attacked by something—then carefully made it look as if it had been undisturbed.
Not that Natalie would notice. He didn’t think she would notice if there was a couch and television in the small cave.
The drugs he’d given her, a tiny injection once she’d fallen asleep to make sure she wasn’t conscious when the train “crashed,” had affected her a little more than expected.
She still seemed woozy and confused, clinging to him a lot more than he suspected she normally would.
Ren would continue to foster that closeness as long as he could. Maybe by the time the drug was completely out of her system her body would already be used to his nearness somewhat. The closer he could get to her, the more information he’d be able to glean.
He’d planned on wrapping the both of them within his coat inside the little cave. That, along with the random pieces of dry timber he and the team had placed inside that would allow him to make a fire, would’ve made for an uncomfortable but not miserable night.
She had a damn sleeping bag. She’d definitely caught him off guard with that one. Were she and Freihof planning to go on the run, literally, where they would need camping gear? A water purifier? Who carried that around if they didn’t plan to use it?
Of course, she’d also had stuff that made no sense if she was going somewhere on foot. Paints and brushes. He’d just left them in the bag.
They stepped in a particularly deep drift of snow and it came past her knees. Natalie stiffened almost to the point where her back was bowing. Ren looked over in concern.
“Natalie, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” The drug shouldn’t be causing a reaction like this. She looked like she was in pain. Not just pain, but complete agony.
“I just... The snow hurts. It hurts.” Her voice sounded odd. Distant. “Please. I’m sorry. I’ll be good, just let me out of the snow. It hurts.”
What the hell?
He pulled her a few steps forward until she was out of the drift, trying to figure out what was going on.
He’d been monitoring their time in the snow, knowing frostbite was a possibility, especially in tennis shoes.
But they hadn’t been walking long enough for it to be an issue—it shouldn’t be causing her pain.
She hadn’t said anything about it until the drift.
He ripped off his gloves and grabbed his phone to turn on the flashlight.
He leaned Natalie—who still looked dazed and frightened—against a tree.
Lifting her foot, he checked for any holes in her shoes that he hadn’t known about or some sort of wound that had caused her such distress.
She was still breathing so deeply she was in danger of hyperventilating.
There was nothing on either her leg or foot that should be causing her pain. And while she was cold, she definitely wasn’t anywhere near numbness or frostbite.
He shifted the light back up to look her in the face. Her lips were pinched with pain, her eyes closed. “No more snow. Please, no more snow. I was wrong. You were right.”
“Natalie.” He put his hands on either side of the sweater she’d wrapped around her head. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“No more. It burns so bad. Please,” she whispered. Tears were streaming out of her eyes.
Ren didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he knew it wasn’t part of his plan. They weren’t far from the cave so he whisked her up in his arms and cradled her against his chest.
“Okay, Peaches, no more snow. I’ve got you now. You’re not in it anymore.”
Her arms came up to wrap around his shoulders, and he pulled her more tightly against himself and farther from the ground. He began walking quickly toward the cave.
Was this some sort of weird phobia? Maybe just a reaction to stress? After all, she thought five other people had died tonight and they’d narrowly escaped with their lives.
She definitely didn’t know that if she’d taken another couple dozen steps toward the train when she’d decided to come help him with the “rescue” that she would’ve seen Ren talking to Philip and Madeline, both very much alive. The three-member train crew? Also totally unharmed.
As a matter of fact, if she’d come out of the circle of smoke, she would’ve seen the train hadn’t crashed at all. It was all a very elaborate smoke and light show. One car had been burning so she could feel the heat, and be scared enough not to come closer.
Damned if she hadn’t come anyway, trying to help. Ren had barely caught her in time.
After blowing the carefully laid explosives once he’d given them the signal through a single text, the rest of the team had left and were probably already down in Riverton, the Colorado town that was only about six miles away.
Ren just hoped he didn’t have to bring them immediately back up here because Natalie was having some sort of nervous breakdown or allergic reaction to the drugs.
The first he could possibly still use to his advantage as long as it didn’t get too murky.
But the second would require immediate medical attention, effectively bringing the mission to a halt.
She still had her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, trying to hold as much of her own weight as she could, as if that was very significant to begin with. He’d regularly carried more weight for much longer in the special forces. Ren just kept her close and moved quickly toward the cave.
“Here we are, Peaches,” he said. He set her down inside the overhang that sheltered them from the wind on three sides.
He’d planned to make a big production of searching it to make sure it was safe, but she seemed much more concerned about the white stuff on the ground outside than she did about anything else.
He clicked his phone flashlight back on to make sure nothing had taken residence in the last few days.
“Yeah, this will be good,” he continued. “Get us out of the elements so we can get some sleep.”
She looked around, slowly taking everything in, one of her hands still grasping his shoulder.
“See?” He took the sweater covering her head and pushed it down slightly so she had more freedom of movement of her head. Strands of her light blond hair flew everywhere. “No snow in here. Do you think you can crawl in?”
She nodded and let go of him to slide inside. He took off her backpack and pushed it toward her. She wrapped her arms around it and pulled it up to her chest. But at least she had lost that utterly hollow look in her eyes.
“I think there’s enough dry wood in here for us to start a fire. It won’t be much of anything, but it will be something. Give a little light. Warmth. But there’s no snow in here, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
He smiled and began building a small fire in the far corner so the smoke would go outward instead of toward them. She was still cradling her backpack.
“You should probably eat one of your protein bars. Your blood sugar is bottoming out, which is making everything much harder on you.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll have one in the morning, but right now I’m fine.”
She nodded. “I’ll get out my sleeping bag, too.”
“While you’re at it, why don’t you try your cell phone? I know you said you didn’t have a signal before, but you never know, sometimes you can just catch the right spot and find a signal. I’ve already tried mine but it didn’t work.”
Maybe she would make it easy and call Freihof right here and now. Omega had provided a cell signal booster to this area and had an agent monitoring the local 911 dispatch. So if Natalie tried to call someone—hopefully Freihof—the call would go through, but a call to 911 would just disconnect.
It was option one in giving her time to contact Damien, and the easiest. He hoped she’d take it.
But she didn’t.
“No, that’s okay.”
Now that the fire was going, their little dwelling was already becoming more comfortable. Ren took the sweater she’d given him and unwrapped it from his head. He tried to keep any annoyance from his voice.
“You don’t want to even try? You never know. It’s worth a shot.”
She just shrugged and took a bite of her protein bar. “No, I don’t have a phone.”
What? “Not at all? Not even a really cheap one? Even eight-year-olds have a phone these days.”
“Nope. Not me.”
“Then how do you contact people? Your friends?” Maybe she’d ditched her phone before she left. Damn it, now he wished he hadn’t told her his phone had no signal. He could’ve offered it to her to use to make a call.
“I haven’t had one in years. I don’t really like talking on one, I guess. And I don’t have a lot of friends. I work a lot.”
Ren didn’t buy it. She either already had a radio-silence plan in place with her ex-husband or she didn’t trust Ren and was hiding her phone until she could contact Freihof in private. Omega would intercept that call if it came.
“Wow, that’s crazy, but I’ll bet it makes your life more peaceful.”
“Will your parents worry about you? Your brother? Since your phone won’t work?”
“No. I don’t check in with them every day. When they hear about the train, they’ll worry. But like I said, it will be days before they backtrack to where the accident happened. And hopefully we’ll be in civilization before then.”
She got that worried look on her face again.
“Is there someone who’ll be waiting for you?” he asked. “Worrying? Were you going all the way to Saint Louis?”
She shook her head. “No, there’s no one who’ll be concerned about me for a long time.”
He crawled closer as she got the sleeping bag out and began to unzip it. “You should leave it zipped up,” he told her. “You’ll stay warmer that way.”
“No, that means you’ll have nothing. We’ll share it.”
Ren had to tamp down the unexpected pleasure that bubbled through his system at the thought of lying next to Natalie. His body didn’t seem to care that she was probably a criminal and, if her ex-husband had rubbed off on her at all, she’d be able to kill him while he slept without blinking an eye.
No, his body wasn’t interested in acknowledging that at all.
He distracted himself by getting some of the snow from outside and placing it inside her water bottle—a perk he hadn’t planned on having this early, but was willing to take advantage of—so it would be melted and ready for consumption by the morning.
He’d had a large water bottle stashed in the cave when they’d cleaned it out, but now they wouldn’t have to use it and explain the sudden appearance of clean drinking water.
He helped her spread the jackets out on the ground so they could lie down on those and would be able to pull the sleeping bag over them. It wasn’t going to be the Ritz, but it wasn’t half bad.
“I’m feeling much better,” she said as she settled next to him, close enough for their body heat to help each other.
“Do you want to tell me what the whole snow thing was about?” he asked.
He could feel her stiffen. “It’s a long story. I just don’t like snow. I’ve lived in California for six years so it hasn’t been an issue. I guess I was just overwhelmed tonight. I still feel so off.”
It had been a hell of a lot more than not liking snow, but Ren let it pass. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”
He didn’t say anything else, didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. He just slid behind her on top of the jackets and put her between him and the fire. He reached down and pulled the sleeping bag over them both.
There wasn’t much room in the cave, even less in their little sleeping pallet.
Although they were both on their backs, Ren was pressed up against Natalie from shoulder to knee.
Between the warmth, the exhaustion from what had happened and the drugs still in her system, she should’ve been asleep pretty rapidly.
But an hour later, her stiff form announced that she was far from sleep.
“Peaches, what’s wrong?”
She got stiffer. “I just...can’t... There’s so much... What if...”
When she couldn’t get any more words out, Ren did what his body had been begging him to do since they’d lain down.
He flipped her on her side so she was facing the fire, slid one arm under her so it cradled her head and wrapped the other around her abdomen and pulled her back until she was firmly tucked against his front.
And damned if her body didn’t fit perfectly with his. He wanted to groan and curse at the same time.
“You’ve been through a trauma,” he whispered in her ear. “Your body needs rest. I’m not going to let anything happen to you while you’re asleep, okay?” He pulled her a little closer to his body. “Anything that’s going to try to get to you has to go through me and that’s...”
Ren trailed off. She was already asleep.