Chapter Fifteen #2
Lily stared at him. He couldn’t read her expression, between the goggles shielding her eyes and the fleece gaiter pulled up to her nose.
But her shoulders slumped with fatigue, and she was surely as cold as he was.
“The sooner we reach the resort, the sooner we can get other people out here looking for Jackson and the dogs,” he said.
She nodded. “Right.”
They reached the bottom of the ridge—and the almost impenetrable walls of trees.
He had hoped to find the path through the woods they had followed before, but fresh snow had obscured their tracks, leaving them to fight their way through the heavy growth, sinking in snow to their knees at times, and tripping over hidden logs and boulders.
When she had fallen for the sixth time in an hour, Lily pushed to her feet once more with a curse.
“We need to stop and build a fire,” Scott said.
“I thought you said we need to keep going.”
“We can’t keep going like this. We’re both clumsier than usual because we’re so cold. We’re getting hypothermic. We need to stop, have a hot drink and try to plot a course out of here.”
He expected her to argue, but instead, she merely sat down on a snow-covered log and slumped forward, elbows on knees.
He cleared snow from a hollow in front of the log on which she sat, piling more snow in a wall to shield the blaze from the wind.
Then he dug beneath a tangle of fallen logs and pulled out drier kindling.
“What do you have in your pack to start a fire?” he asked when he had the beginnings of a campfire laid.
She removed the pack and opened it, then pulled out a plastic bag containing a lighter, waterproof matches and an old prescription bottle.
He popped the cap on the bottle and found it filled with cotton balls coated in petroleum jelly.
“After you told me what you used as a fire starter, I decided that was a good idea,” she said.
He nodded and shoved a couple of the cotton balls in among the kindling and flicked the lighter.
Five minutes later, he was feeding slightly larger pieces of wood into the bright flames. Lily still hadn’t moved. “It’s going to be okay,” he said gently.
“Jackson is nine!” The fierceness of her words had him sitting back on his heels. “He’s just a kid. He’s cold and hungry and afraid.” Her voice choked. “His mom died. His dad works all the time. I was one person who always tried to be there for him and now even I’ve let him down.”
She began to sob. Scott moved onto the log beside her and pulled her close. “You didn’t let anyone down,” he said. “You couldn’t have done anything about whoever was shooting at us. Jackson did the right thing, running away from the shooter. It’s no one’s fault we got separated in the snowstorm.”
She sniffed. “I’m worried about Shelby and Hunter, too. They’re cold and hungry. What if they freeze to death?”
“They’re both healthy, thick-coated dogs. They won’t freeze to death.” At least he hoped not. “Our job now is to keep from freezing to death ourselves and get to help.”
She said nothing, so after a moment he pulled his arm from around her. “What have you got to eat in your pack?” he asked.
She took out several packets of electrolyte drink powder, the instant coffee, some jerky, plastic pouches of peanut butter, some tea bags and a single metal mug. He considered the array, selected the peanut butter and the electrolyte packets, and the mug. “I’ll melt some snow,” he said, and stood.
They passed the mug of hot electrolyte drink back and forth between them, and each had a stick of jerky. By the time they were done, Lily was sitting up straighter and Scott could think more clearly. “Are you ready to keep going?” he asked.
“Yes. But which way?” She gestured to the woods surrounding them. “All I can see are trees.”
“We still have the compass.” He took the instrument from his pocket. “We just have to keep heading east until we reach Axis Ridge.”
They set out again, Lily in front, Scott trailing. He sighted in the compass. “Head for that tall ponderosa with the broken limb hanging down,” he said.
When they reached the ponderosa, they checked the compass and set a course toward a large blue spruce. So far, keeping due east had been easy. But then they had to fight their way around a thicket of scrub oak and wild roses, the thorny canes of the roses snagging their clothing.
Scott crashed through the underbrush behind her, attempting to keep them on the right path, but after the fourth time he told her she was veering too far left she turned and glared at him. “If you think you can do better, you walk in the front.”
He didn’t fare much better breaking trail, and by four in the afternoon he was dazed with exhaustion.
Lily stumbled after him, silent. All he could see was more trees, trunks sprouting like hair on the head of a giant as far as the eye could see.
Which proved how exhausted he was, if he was thinking in those kind of fanciful metaphors.
He stopped, and Lily walked right into him.
He caught her by the shoulders to keep her from falling, then just held on to her. “We need to stop,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“How did Jackson and his kidnapper ever survive out here for a week?” she asked.
“They were really lucky,” he said. “And not that bright to have come up with that as a plan.”
“I guess if Denny’s suspicions are right and a foreign power is behind the attempt to get the weapons technology, maybe they have no concept of what winter is like here. Or what a mountain wilderness is like.” She hugged her arms more tightly around herself.
“You’d think they would do more research,” he said.
“Maybe greed makes people take shortcuts,” she said. “Or they thought it would only take a day or two before Denny would give in to their demands.”
If Jackson had frozen to death, or died in the avalanche, would that have ruined the kidnappers’ plans?
Or would they have gone forward anyway, lying about Jackson’s fate?
Maybe that’s what the note Denton Endicott had received after the avalanche had been—a lie to make him hand over the information the kidnappers wanted.
Scott tended the fire while she rummaged through her pack. “Looks like coffee and peanut butter for dinner,” she said. “Or you can have tea.” She held up one of the bags.
“Coffee,” he said.
“Then I’ll have coffee, too,” she said. “It’s easier to share if we choose the same thing. Besides, I think I need the caffeine.”
He sat beside her on a log while they waited for the water in the cup to boil. “I’m trying really hard not to think about Jackson out there alone in the cold,” she said. “But I’m not doing a very good job.”
He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. All the boundaries that had made him careful not to touch her in their everyday life had vanished here in the woods. “How are you feeling?” she asked after a moment. “I mean, where you were shot?”
“A little bruised,” he said.
“Let me look,” she said. “I mean, what if you have a bullet in you after all?”
“I think I’d know if I had a bullet in me.”
“I’ve read that adrenaline can mask pain.”
He swiveled so that his back was to her and shed his jacket. The cold air traveled quickly through his fleece and base layer top, and he shivered involuntarily.
But the shivering ceased when Lily pushed his clothing up to his shoulders and trailed her bare fingers up his back. Heat scorched him along the path of her touch. She stroked lightly at a place near the middle of his spine. “There’s a bruise here,” she said.
“Yeah.” Though what he felt wasn’t exactly pain. Every part of him had tensed at her touch, fighting the urge to lean into her.
She traced the line of one of his ribs. “You have a scar here,” she said.
He had to think a minute to remember. “Rock climbing accident. I was seventeen. Fell and broke a couple of ribs. Decided it wasn’t for me.
” He had lost the capacity to form complete sentences as her hand drifted lower.
If her fingers felt this good, he imagined what it would be like to have her kiss her way down his body…
She pulled the shirts down. “You can put your jacket back on now,” she said.
THE WEATHER WAS FREEZING, but warmth flooded Lily. The sight of Scott’s bare back sent a liquid heat through her. Smooth skin and firm muscle sculpted over a masculine frame left her breathless. Even as she indulged in the sensation of her fingers gliding over him, she longed to touch even more.
She told herself she was being absurd. Inappropriate even, lusting after her boss.
But Scott hadn’t been authoritarian or demanding today—only kind and encouraging.
His bravery made her less daunted by their circumstances.
She was still afraid. Still worried and grieving.
But being with him comforted her. And thinking about him—how she wanted to pull off the rest of his clothing, kiss her way down his body and have him kiss her—was a welcome distraction from the fears that threatened to overwhelm her.
They shared their meager meal, passing the cup of coffee back and forth between them, then making a second cup.
Even without sugar and creamer the bitter caffeine was a welcome jolt, the hot liquid beating back the cold.
They built up the fire until it was a roaring blaze, then huddled before it on the fallen log, soaking up the heat.
Neither of them mentioned the risk they were taking—that the blaze might lead pursuers to them.
But without the warmth of the fire, they would surely freeze to death.
“How are you doing?” Scott asked after a while.
“I’m warmer now,” she said. “Not as hungry as I was. What about you?”
“I’m okay. Warmer is most important. And the coffee helped, too.”
“I take supplies in my pack every year, hiking and skiing,” she said.
“It’s been drilled in to me by every wilderness guide I ever read and every instructor I ever had.
But I never had to use them before this week.
This is the second time in a few days that I’ve had to spend the night out when I didn’t intend to. ”
“I’ve spent nights out on missions,” he said. “I stayed out two nights before they found Clark.”
His words were matter-of-fact, but she heard the loss behind them. “Were you alone?”
“I didn’t really want to be around anyone else.”
“After my brother, Ben, died, I didn’t want to talk to anyone else either,” she said. “It’s like grief put a wall between me and other people. I was angry that Ben was gone—and angry at everyone else because they couldn’t understand how much I hurt.”
“I was mostly angry at myself. That I couldn’t save him.”
She wanted to tell him his friend’s death wasn’t his fault.
But people always said things like that to suffering people, and the words didn’t help.
Instead, she slipped her hand into his and leaned on his arm.
He held on tightly. They didn’t say anything for a long time.
The fire popped and sent up orange sparks, and the wet wood on the edge of the blaze sizzled and steamed.
She breathed in the sweet, smoky aroma of burning pinion and juniper and felt her eyes drifting shut.
“We should try to get some sleep,” Scott said. He unwound his fingers from hers.
“We should share my sleeping bag,” she said. His was with his pack, up on the ridge.
“I’ll just sit up and tend the fire.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She stood and grabbed the bag from her pack, unrolled and unzipped it and spread it by the fire. “Two of us will generate more heat than one.” Then she bit her lip, holding back laughter at her unintentional joke.
Maybe he was thinking the same thing. She thought his cheeks flushed, though perhaps that was merely from the cold.
She turned her back to him and stripped down to socks and thermal top and pants, then lay down on the sleeping bag and beckoned him.
“Come on. If I let you freeze to death I’ll never get out of these woods. ”