Chapter 10
10
Ani scolded herself for treating a grown man—a real-life protective detail—like a child with a scraped knee. Once a pediatrician, always a pediatrician, apparently.
Silently, she picked up her oar and joined the rhythm of his strokes. Behind them, she heard the crackle of flames eating at live wood. If they’d stayed in the Institute facility just a little longer, they would have been inside when that … whatever it was … hit. A bottle rocket? A missile?
A missile?
Her hands shook and her breath rattled in her chest. “They…they…” she gasped. All of a sudden she pictured men with shoulder-mounted missiles filling the forest, just waiting until they could get a shot at them. “Do you think they were…” Aiming at us? She couldn’t complete the sentence.
“No.” A firm hand gripped her shoulder. A brief touch, but enough to bring her out of her panic. “I don’t think they’re after us. I think this has to do with Victor, and they’re trying to destroy his research. That’s what I think.”
“Okay. Okay. That makes sense.” It did, right? In a surreal kind of way, a different world kind of way. “They haven’t fired again.”
“Exactly. They hit the building, and that’s all they wanted.”
“Who’s they?”
“The hell if I know.” He ducked his head as they glided under the branches of a cottonwood tree whose roots were clinging to eroding soil, its trunk tilted precariously over the lake. “But maybe those military guys make sense now.”
She gasped. “You don’t think…?”
“That they’re the ones who fired that missile? No. But maybe they knew someone was in the area with that kind of firepower. A foreign entity, say.”
Her head swam at the thought. “Someone from another country is chasing after Victor and his research?”
“It’s a possibility.”
It seemed beyond surreal to talk about foreign missiles while they were quietly paddling across the most serene body of water she’d ever seen. She glanced back at the column of smoke rising above the treetops. Smoky Lake was certainly living up to its name.
“Great. Now we’re in a spy movie. Any chance you can James Bond us out of this mess?”
“I have to be James Bond now? I was hoping MacGyver might be enough.” His dry tone made her giggle, but she quickly suppressed the sound. It was bad enough that they were whispering away as they rowed. Her laugh would really give them away. She possessed one of those full-body laughs she had no control over. If she started laughing, Gil would think she’d lost it completely. Maybe he’d toss her overboard.
“MacGyver would be even better. Where are we going, by the way?”
“There’s only one other structure out here. I thought we could go there for now, until it seems safe. Then we should get back to town and find the soldiers who wanted to talk to us. This just got serious, and they need to know what happened if they don’t already.”
She nodded in agreement. “This is way out of our league. My league,” she corrected herself. “Maybe you do this kind of thing all the time.”
“Yup, it’s all in a day’s work.”
Ani smiled to herself. She liked his dry sense of humor. Even though he’d seemed standoffish at first, he didn’t take himself too seriously.
“For pediatricians, too,” she told him. “One minute you’re telling a three-year-old to say ‘ah,’ the next you’re dodging missiles fired by mercenaries. Happens every day.”
They reached a curve in the lake, as it widened out to nearly twice the expanse of the narrower section where the Institute was located. She saw no hint of a cabin anywhere along the shoreline. That was probably a good thing, since it meant their safe haven was nice and hidden.
“In the winter, all of this freezes over,” Gil said, in tour guide mode now. “See that little island?” He pointed to a rocky pile populated with dead trees and a few saplings. “We haven’t had a j?kulhlaup in a few years, which is why those saplings are still alive. When the j?kulhlaup comes through, it’s like a freight train running over everything in the way. That’s why the tree line is so far back from the shore here. The flooding is that intense.”
“Have you seen one?”
“No, I’ve just heard stories from my brother.”
Her arms were getting tired. She paused for a moment to catch her breath and he followed suit. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine. I just need a second.”
He cleared his throat, seemed uncomfortable. “I’ve been watching you and I’ve decided that you’re an impressive person.”
“Oh. Well, it’s too bad you weren’t around during my divorce.” Her face flamed; where had that stupid comment come from? She didn’t want to talk about her divorce with this seriously attractive man. “Sorry, slip of the tongue. I didn’t mean to bring him up.”
Gil nodded and dipped his paddle back into the water. She did the same, and they propelled the craft forward across the surface. In this wider section of the lake, a slight wind was blowing. It held a chill that surprised Ani.
“That wind comes right off the Korch glacier,” Gil explained. “Do you need something warmer than that jacket?”
Her camel suede jacket hadn’t been designed for wilderness adventures. “Yes, please,” she told him. “All this rowing is keeping me warm, but that wind…Are we close?”
He handed her his jacket, which she draped over her own. The red-and-black wool shielded her from the wind, but she still felt it on her cheeks and exposed skin. “Not far.”
So…pretty far, she figured; he just didn’t want her to lose heart. “Do you think we can talk normally now? I can’t even see the fire anymore.”
“You want to talk?”
“Distraction,” she explained. “Also, I can’t stop thinking about Victor. I keep going over my conversation with him. He was rambling a lot. I even wondered if he was in an altered state of consciousness. Drugs, maybe? Did he do any drugs, as far as you know?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, but I can’t say for sure. Victor was very curious about a lot of things. If he did drugs, it would probably be as an experiment, or for an experience. He might have mentioned ayahuasca, come to think of it.”
Through the ache of fatigue in her arm muscles, a theory formed in Ani’s mind. “Maybe he discovered some new form of hallucinogen that people are after. Drug running is big business. If it’s crossing international boundaries, then the military could get involved. Maybe that’s why those soldiers came.”
“Hmm.”
She stole a glance at Gil’s face. At least he wasn’t dismissing her theory outright, even though it sounded pretty crazy.
“I suppose that could explain that note in your pocket,” he said slowly. “He could have been under the influence when he wrote it. Although why he put my name down?—”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “There were two different pens used. Maybe he just wrote your name on a scrap of paper that was already in his pocket. He wanted me to come find you.”
“Then why not just say so?”
She thought back to the scene in the little airport. They hadn’t been the only ones there. A mother had kept chasing down her toddler. An older man wearing a fedora held a cane tucked under his arm. Then there was the girl who weighed the baggage, and of course the pilot. All had seemed perfectly unremarkable to her eyes. But Victor hadn’t talked to any of them; only her.
“He seemed kind of paranoid. Maybe he thought people were watching him. Maybe I was the only one he trusted.”
“Why would he trust someone he’d never met before?”
“I helped him. Also, I’ve been told that I have a trustworthy face.” Ani jokingly framed her face with one of her hands, nearly losing her oar in the process. “Which is a huge advantage for a pediatrician. Kids warm up to me quickly, and that relaxes their parents.”
“You have a beautiful face.”
The words, spoken so simply and matter-of-factly, sent her jaw dropping. Never would she have pegged man-of-action Gil McGowan as a sweet-talker. “You don’t need to flatter me to keep me rowing away from deranged missile-firing mercenaries hunting for a new hallucinogenic.”
“I’m not.”
She glanced at him curiously. “Do you always say that kind of thing to women?”
“No.” He set his jaw and focused forward, no doubt scanning the shore for their destination.
Okay. Apparently he’d decided to turn monosyllabic at the most interesting possible moment.
They didn’t speak for a long time after that. The trip felt endless to Ani, her muscles aching with each stroke. Now and then she rested, but Gil never did. He kept paddling, keeping the boat going all on his own. Down to the bone, she felt his silent support, his rock-solid presence, the safety he offered.
“There it is,” he said, finally. “The cabin’s behind that spruce grove. There’s an old pier post we can tie the boat to.”
Praying her arms wouldn’t fall off, Ani helped paddle the last few strokes toward the old steel post that had once been part of a pier. Yet another eerie feature of this lake, she thought. The ghost of the boat dock joined the spirits of the saplings that couldn’t survive the ice flooding. And now the ghost of the research facility would join them.
No wonder Smoky Lake had such a timeless feel. So much had come and gone here.
“I don’t see a place to tie up to on shore. I’ll have to use one of these posts. I’ll drop you on the shore, then swim from the boat,” Gil said.
She wanted to protest, but since the alternative would likely be for both of them to swim, she didn’t.
When the bottom of the boat touched silt, she climbed over the side. But her hip betrayed her, as it sometimes did in stressful situations. With a terribly timed awkward move, she knocked the Igloo cooler over the side. It splashed into the water and drifted away.
“Oh no!” She cried. “There’s smoked salmon in there. That might be our only food.”
Gil didn’t hesitate. “Be right back.” He dove into the water and stroked toward the cooler. But the wind kept pushing it just out of reach. He swam after it, barely touching, then losing his grip.
“Never mind!” she shouted. She knew he must be absolutely freezing in that pure glacial water. “It’s not worth the hypothermia!”
But he kept going until he disappeared around an outcropping.
Suddenly she felt extremely alone. Safely on shore, she grabbed the bow-line of the boat so it didn’t drift away, and wondered for a mad moment what unlikely life choices had brought her to this moment, lost in the wilderness except for missile-toting foreign adversaries.
A few minutes later, Gil trudged out of the woods, soaking wet from head to toe, shivering, and without the cooler. His shirt clung to his torso, revealing an even more muscular physique than she would have predicted. And those thighs, thick and strong…she shivered, ironic since she wasn’t the one who’d just swum through ice water.
She met him at the shoreline with the jacket he’d left with her. It was a good thing he’d been so chivalrous. “Are you okay?”
“I’m alive, and right now, that feels like something. Sorry about the cooler.” His teeth chattered as he spoke, and his skin looked blotchy.
Visions of hypothermia and numb fingers swam through her mind. She switched into doctor mode. “Don’t worry about it. You should take that shirt off and use this jacket instead.”
He did as she said, while she avoided directly looking at his chest.
“The pants should really go too, but let’s get inside and see if we can find some blankets.”
“Yes, Doc.”
She stiffened. John used to call her “Doc” when he wanted to belittle her. Even though Gil’s comment held no hint of any mockery, it still triggered her.
“Are you making fun of me?”
Gil was busy wrapping the plaid wool jacket around his shivering body. “The path to the cabin is past those alders,” he said when he was done.
Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Good. She was embarrassed that she’d reacted so quickly to something so innocent.
They picked up their bags and headed toward the path. It wasn’t until they were halfway up that she heard Gil say in a soft voice, “I would never make fun of your profession, Ani. It would never occur to me, and even if it did, I’d rather dive back into that lake than do anything so disrespectful.”
Wow. Okay then.
A sense of warmth spread throughout her system. She’d excused John’s mockery because she knew he was actually insecure about the fact that she had a medical degree. He preferred to demean it rather than respect it, because that made him feel better about himself.
What would it feel like to be with someone who didn’t need to diminish her to pump himself up?
Getting a little ahead of yourself , she scolded herself. She and Gil weren’t…well, anything. Just two virtual strangers brought together by an even stranger twist of fate.