Chapter 5 The Pursuit #2
“I mean it, Cassie. It’s going to hurt like hell. Your muscles will cramp. Your lungs will burn. You will want to stop.” He pauses, his hands still holding my foot. He looks up, meeting my gaze. “You cannot stop. If we stop, they catch us. If they catch us, we die.”
It’s not a threat. It’s gravity.
“I won’t stop,” I say.
He holds my gaze for a second longer. Assessing.
Then he nods. “Okay.”
He releases my foot. The loss of contact is immediate. The cold rushes back in.
He stands and offers me a hand.
“Up.”
I take his hand. His grip is iron. He pulls me to my feet.
For a moment, we’re close again. The wind whips hair across my face. Stubble darkens his jaw, gray flecks in his dark eyes visible even in the gloom.
“We go west,” he says. “There’s a river in the valley. We walk in the water to kill the scent.”
“That sounds freezing.”
“It is.” He turns away, adjusting his pack. “Welcome to the suck. Embrace it, and you live.”
The next four hours are a blur of misery.
We descend into the valley. The terrain changes from rocky ridge to dense undergrowth. Rhododendrons slap at my legs. Thorns tear at my jeans.
Diego sets a brutal pace. He doesn’t look back, but he pauses every time I fall more than twenty yards behind, waiting just long enough for me to catch sight of him before moving again.
He is a ghost leading me through purgatory.
We reach the river around noon. It’s not a river, really—a wide, fast-moving creek swollen with snowmelt. The water is clear and impossibly cold.
“In,” Diego says.
“You’re joking.”
“Dogs,” he says simply.
He steps into the water. It comes up to his calves. He doesn’t even flinch.
I step in.
The cold is a physical shock. It clamps around my ankles like a bear trap. I gasp, stumbling.
“Breathe,” Diego says over his shoulder. “Keep moving.”
We wade upstream. The rocks are slippery with algae. Twice, I almost go down, flailing arms to catch my balance. The water numbs my feet, then my shins. My toes are gone, replaced by blocks of ice.
After a mile—an eternity—Diego angles toward the bank.
“Out.”
I scramble onto the rocky bank. My legs feel heavy, like blocks of wood. I collapse onto a fallen log, shivering violently.
“Change socks,” Diego orders. “Now. Trench foot is a legitimate threat.”
I strip off the wet socks. My feet are pale, wrinkled, blue-tinged. I dry them with the sleeves of my sweater and pull on the last pair of wool socks from Diego’s pack.
Pain rushes back as the blood returns. Pins and needles.
“How …” My teeth chatter. “How much farther?”
“Five miles to the shelter point.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No. I really can’t.” I wrap my arms around my knees. “My legs won’t work.”
Diego turns. He looks at me.
Then he walks over. He crouches in front of me.
“Look at me.”
I look up. His face is grim, dirt-streaked.
“You survived the apartment,” he says. “You survived the jump. You survived the drive.”
“This is different. I’m exhausted.”
“You are carrying a twenty-pound emotional load.” He unbuckles his pack.
“What are you doing?”
“Give me your sweater.”
“What?”
“It’s cotton. It’s wet. Cotton kills. It holds moisture against your skin.” He opens his pack. Pulls out a thermal tactical shirt. “Put this on.”
“I’m not stripping in the woods.”
“Cassie, look at your fingernails.”
I look. They are blue.
“Hypothermia,” he says. “Stage one. Confusion. Shivering. Poor coordination. If you don’t get dry and warm, your heart stops. Put on the shirt.”
He turns his back again. “I’m watching the perimeter. Change.”
I fumble with my sweater. Pull it over my head. The cold air bites my skin. I’m wearing a thin camisole underneath, soaked with sweat.
I peel it off. For a second, I am bare in the freezing woods. Vulnerable.
I pull on his shirt.
It’s massive on me. The sleeves hang past my hands. But it’s dry. And it’s warm. It smells like him—gun oil, cedar, and man.
The scent wraps around me. It feels safer than the cabin. Safer than my apartment.
“Done,” I say.
He turns back. His eyes sweep over me, checking the fit. He nods.
“Better?”
“Warmer.”
“Let’s go.”
He shoulders his pack.
“Diego?”
He pauses, doesn’t correct me.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We still have five miles.”
He sets a killer pace. Hours later, the sun is dropping when we stop for a break.
The woods have changed again. Pines give way to hardwoods. The ground is steeper.
“Here,” Diego says.
He points to a depression under the root system of a massive fallen oak. It’s a natural shelter, protected from the wind, hidden from above.
“We camp here?”
“We hold here. No fire. Too risky.”
He drops his pack. Starts clearing debris from the hollow. He moves dead leaves, checks for snakes, and lines the ground with pine boughs.
It’s nesting. Primal and efficient.
“It’s going to freeze tonight,” I say. The temperature is already plummeting.
“Yes.”
He pulls out a silver emergency blanket. “We share this.”
I stare at the flimsy foil sheet. “That’s it?”
“Body heat is the only heat source we have.” He looks at me. His expression is guarded. Careful. “It’s tactical. Not romantic.”
“I know.”
“If we sleep apart, we freeze. If we sleep together, we maintain core temperature.”
“I said I know.”
He spreads the blanket over the pine boughs. “Get in the back. Against the wood. I take the outside.”
I crawl into the small space. It smells of earth and decay. I want to curl up, pull my knees to my chest, but there’s no room for that. For him. So I stretch out on my side.
Diego slides in beside me.
The space is tiny. There is no way to avoid contact.
He lies on his side, facing away from me, his back to my chest. He positions his body to block the wind from the opening.
“Close,” he says.
I scoot forward until my chest presses against his back. Do I wrap my arm around his waist? No. That feels too intimate. I tuck my hands between us.
He’s rigid. Tense. A wall of muscle.
“Relax,” I whisper. “I’m not going to bite.”
“I’m armed,” he says. “Safety’s on, but—don’t startle me.”
“Noted.”
He pulls the foil blanket over us. It crinkles loudly.
Underneath, the heat begins to build.
It takes a few minutes. My shivering slows. His body is a furnace. Warmth radiates through his tactical gear, soaking into my frozen limbs.
“Diego?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it really the crow?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew?”
“Nature has a baseline,” he says softly. His voice rumbles in his chest, vibrating against me. “Predators disturb the baseline. Birds fly. Insects go quiet. If you listen, the world tells you where the bad things are.”
“Is that how you survived?”
“It’s how I kept breathing.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
He doesn’t answer.
I rest my forehead against his shoulder blade. The scent of him is overwhelming here—earth and sweat and the faint metallic tang of the gun he’s clutching against his chest.
It should be terrifying. Sleeping in the dirt with a killer.
But the fear is gone.
“You were right,” I whisper.
“About what?”
“About the truck. About the chaos.”
“Chaos is the only truth.”
“No.” I shift, pressing closer to his warmth. “You are.”
He stiffens.
“Go to sleep, Cassie.”
“You saved me.”
“Sleep.”
I close my eyes. The wind howls outside our tiny burrow. The woods are dark and full of things that want to kill us.
But here, under the silver blanket, anchored by the weight of the man who calls himself a ghost, warmth finally returns.
My hand drifts. Without thinking, I unclench my fist and rest my palm flat against his stomach.
He inhales sharply.
He doesn’t push me away.
He covers my hand with his own. His fingers lace through mine.
Holding on.
“Goodnight, Halo,” I whisper.
“Goodnight, Cassie.”
And in the dark, the ghost holds my hand while I sleep.