Chapter 3 #2
"I'm fine. It's just the temperature change.
" I refuse to acknowledge how my body fits against his side.
I snap the space blanket open. The loud crinkling sound shatters the quiet of the forest. I drape the reflective foil over our heads and tuck the edges under our legs, sealing us in a tiny, silver cocoon. Then I drag the coats over the top.
The heat inside our makeshift tent begins to rise immediately, trapped by the foil. But the chill seeps up from the ground, biting at my boots and the canvas of my flight suit. My head throbs with a rhythmic, sickening pulse.
Santi is solid against my back. He pulls my legs back against his thighs, wrapping me in warmth. His chin rests briefly on the top of my head.
"Sleep, Reese," he commands softly.
"Someone has to stay awake," I argue, my eyelids suddenly feeling like they weigh fifty pounds each. "If the snow drifts over the opening, we could suffocate. We need to check the air flow every two hours."
"I'll take the first watch."
"You need to rest too. You carried the bag. You broke the branches."
"I'll handle the airflow," he states. The tone leaves zero room for debate. "Close your eyes."
I’m too exhausted to fight him. The adrenaline finally cracks. The wave crashes over me, pulling me down into a dreamless state. I don't want to trust him. I don't want to rely on the solid beat of his heart against my shoulder blades. But his scent is a sedative, and I fall under.
I pull my cell phone from my pocket—the screen is shattered into a spiderweb of dead pixels, a useless brick after the impact. I shove it back and close my eyes. His scent is a sedative, and I fall under.
The bitter wind wakes me.
My eyes snap open. The space blanket is still secure, but the air inside our cocoon is freezing.
I shift slightly. Santi's arm is an iron band across my stomach. He hasn’t moved an inch. He’s awake. I can feel it in the tension of his muscles and the hypervigilant stillness of his breathing.
"What time is it?" I whisper.
"Four in the morning." His voice is low. Stripped clean.
"You didn't sleep."
"No."
I turn my head slightly. My nose brushes the collar of his shirt. "You can't function on zero sleep, City Boy. Not out here."
"I function perfectly."
I huff a quiet, frustrated breath. "Stubborn."
He tightens his grip on my waist, pulling me flush against him again. "Go back to sleep. The sun will be up in three hours."
I close my eyes, but sleep doesn't come back. The throbbing in my head has settled into a dull, manageable ache, but the freezing air bites at my toes. I listen to the wind whistling through the spruce branches above us.
I think about the crushed helicopter. My father’s tools were in the cargo hold. The last physical pieces of him I had left. Crying over tools while freezing to death is a waste of energy.
Three hours pass in agonizing, shivering slowness. The blackness outside the space blanket finally turns to a bruised gray.
"Time to move," I announce, throwing the coats off us.
The freezing air rushes in, stealing all the warmth we managed to build. I shove the space blanket aside and crawl out from under the rock overhang.
The world is white.
The snow fell heavily through the night, burying every trace of our path. The trees sag under the weight of the fresh powder. The sky above the jagged mountain peaks is overcast.
Santi steps out behind me. He shrugs into his torn suit jacket. His torn suit looks absurd against the violent landscape, yet he stands straight, scanning the horizon. He does not look chilled. He looks furious.
"The storm isn't over," I say, pointing toward the churning black clouds rolling over the northern ridge. "That's a secondary front. It's moving fast. If we get caught out in the open when that hits, we won't survive."
He tracks my finger, assessing the sky. "How long?"
"Two hours. Maybe three." I grab the survival bag, but he reaches out and takes it from my hands before I can lift the strap. I glare at him. "I can carry it."
"I am carrying it." He slings it over his shoulder. "Where do we go?"
I pull the small compass from my pocket. I check our heading, trying to visualize the topographical maps I memorize before every flight.
"There’s an old ranger station about ten miles northeast of the crash site.
Blackwood Ranger Station." I say, chewing on my bottom lip as I calculate the distance versus our speed in deep snow.
"It's a functional cabin. Wood stove. Bunks.
Four walls. If we can reach it before that storm front hits, we have a chance to ride this out. "
Ten miles in thigh-deep snow, uphill, with a head injury and a brewing blizzard. It might as well be a hundred miles.
"Then we walk." Santi steps past me. He takes the lead this time, breaking the fresh snow with his long legs, creating a trench for me to follow. He doesn't look back. He simply expects me to keep up.
I watch his back for a second, a sharp spike of irritation mixing with grudging respect. He took the hardest physical job—breaking the trail—without asking for permission or praise.
I step into his footprints.
We walk for an hour. The silence between us is dense, broken only by the crunch of snow and the ragged sound of my own breathing. The incline gets steeper. My thigh muscles burn. The air is so thin it feels like swallowing razor blades.
Santi never slows down. He marches like a machine, plowing through drifts that reach his waist.
I keep my eyes locked on his back. I focus on pushing forward.
Then, he stops abruptly.
I crash into his back, my face smacking against the solid ridge of his shoulder blade. I stumble backward, swearing quietly. "Why did you stop?"
He doesn't answer. He is staring at the snow just ahead of us.
I step out from behind him and look past him.
The trench he is cutting through the snow intersects with another set of tracks. Large, deep depressions in the powder, trailing off toward the tree line on our right. They are fresh. The edges of the prints haven't started to blur yet.
Wolves. A pack of them. And based on the spacing and depth of the prints, they’re massive.
The wind suddenly shifts, blowing straight into our faces. The storm front is accelerating. The temperature drops another five degrees. A low, haunting howl echoes off the canyon walls, bouncing off the rocks until it seems to come from all directions at once.
Santi turns his head slowly. He looks down at me. His gaze is calm. He reaches under his torn coat and pulls a matte-black Glock from a shoulder holster I didn’t know he was wearing, the threaded barrel fitted with a compact suppressor.
"Change of plans, Reese," he says, the cold wind whipping the words from his mouth.
I stare at the gun. A Shadow's weapon, stark and lethal against the pristine snow.
The mountain just raised the stakes.