“Let me have those.”
“I can—”
“I’ve done this before, Leo.”
Her brows flew up to her hairline. “You serious?”
He nodded.
“On purpose?”
His eyes crinkled.
Shit, the dude was some special kind of hardcore. She plucked at her coat. “We do our clothes too?”
Something bumped the ice they sat on, propelling it forward until it crunched into a pile of the stuff. Leo’s pulse went wild, which was funny, given that she’d thought it couldn’t get any faster.
“No time. It’ll crush us if we don’t go now.” He turned back, dipped his feet into the water, and hissed.
Before he could jump, she grasped his arm, conscious of the risk they were taking. “Thank you, Elias.” When he shook his head, she tightened her hold and leaned in, more intense than she’d ever been in her life. “Thank you.”
Something crashed behind them.
“Wha—”
“Breathe!” Elias grabbed hold of her by the lapel, just as the ice beneath them shifted into the air.
Together, they dove.
Chapter 17
The shock of ice-cold water hit his system, shutting it down for the first few seconds.
Without the benefit of oxygen, it was like he just…left his body for a bit.
He’d read about a man who grew accustomed to the cold by immersing himself in frigid water daily. Apparently, this guy trained other people to do it too, heading to polar regions to swim in the water there. He liked the challenge.
Well, he’d read about it and he’d shaken his head and thought, What a prick.
And then he’d gone and done it a few times.
What else was there to do around here?
But now? Now he wished he’d practiced every damned day until it had felt like a warm bath. Because swimming—if you could call what he was doing that—in this lake was pure hell.
When he was finally able to move, he spun, looking for Leo. What he saw was a labyrinth of ice chunks—bigger from the water than they’d appeared from above it—floating like icebergs, as far as he could see. From here, the shore looked miles away.
He did another half turn, scanning the surface. They had ten minutes before their muscles gave out. Where was she?
From behind them, Bo barked.
Shit. The dog hadn’t followed.
“Leo!” he yelled, kicking in a circle until he caught sight of Bo back on a half-submerged chunk of ice, racing from one side to the other, then hunching before doing the whole thing all over again. She whined and slid a few inches closer to the edge.
Something splashed close by. There. Leo’s head, above water. “Elias!”
“Come…on.” Every word was an effort to get out. He didn’t know if he was calling his dog or Leo or giving himself the world’s shittiest pep talk.
Bo let out another high whine.
“Do it! Come on, girl!” Each inhale brought shards of icy air into his body—tiny splinters embedded in his lungs, which he’d then have to somehow exhale again. “Don’t…make me…come back there, girl, or I’ll—”
She jumped, the splash barely audible. After that, she was quiet, going through that same terrible period of nothing before the pain hit.
By the time he turned around, Leo had disappeared again. Underwater? Or behind a hunk of ice?
“Leo!” The word was a whisper, nearly inaudible against the sound of ice grinding against ice. He pulled in the most painful breath of his life and bellowed, “Leo!”
***
Down, down, under the surface, blind and frozen and throbbing with a million aching pinpricks of cold water.
Stay still, she remembered from her training. Go still and wait for the shock to pass.
It was almost impossible. The cold wasn’t like anything she’d experienced. It was like a being dragging her straight to hell.
She kicked, hard, barely budged, and kicked again, only making it out for a single, frantic breath before the ice they’d just been on rushed at another floating chunk, the two bashing together like bumper cars. She was shoved down again, with nothing but the bubble of air she held tight in her lungs.
She spun, looking for a way up. No. No, not like this. Not trapped, drowning, in the freezing cold. In the air, yes, at the controls of anything she could fly, but not like this.
She scrabbled against the underside of what had to be a freaking iceberg. Frantic for a few seconds, before possibly her single working brain cell chimed in with just enough reason to calm her down.
In a helicopter, she would never try to power out of, say, a vortex ring state—she’d establish forward flight and ease out into clean air. Do it.
Ease forward.
Pretend it’s air.
She put her head down and kicked, easy as pie, in the direction the ice was moving. Another kick got her sliding along beneath it, her lungs full, close to bursting now.
One more kick and something gripped her collar. Not something—someone. Elias. He yanked her to the surface, pulled her to him for a few gasping seconds, during which he said things she couldn’t understand. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God, it sounded like, though that could’ve been the beating of her heart.
And then they were moving. Slowly, slogging through the slush to a shore that he swore was there, through the fog, past the next hunk of ice, just there.
Not easy when she didn’t have a body. Or a brain. Just breath entering and leaving her…and a strange heat.
Something hit her foot and she stumbled, nearly plunging again until her other numb foot encountered the bottom, and she rose, faced with a mountain of ice chunks.
Her attempt to say Elias’s name produced nothing but a hacking cough.
She spun in a full circle. Wait. When had she lost him?
From the center of the lake, ice pushed toward her, rushing her like a logjam. As fast as she could, she hefted her bag, pulled her arm back, and threw it onto the shore with all her might. It slapped down about a foot from where she stood, waterlogged and shivering like a damn jackhammer.
She turned and reached into the water, her hands so numb she wasn’t sure she’d even know it if she bumped him.
“Elias!” she called, her voice hoarse, no more than a whisper.
Something appeared from behind a hunk of ice. She squinted, attempting to make it out.
Oh, holy crap.
It was him, forging through the ice-jammed water like something from a postapocalyptic painting, or straight from Norse mythology, something not even human. His pack was on his head and… Jesus, that wasn’t the freaking dog under his arm, was it?
He rose, a majestic creature emerging from the deep, a waterfall sluicing off him.
“No!” he bellowed when she struggled to her feet and started toward him. It went against her grain to turn her back on a teammate. Two teammates. “To shore! Get dry!”
He was right. With her body’s uncontrollable shivering, she’d be no help at all. The best she could do was to get out and get warm. Lead-heavy from her waterlogged clothes, she fought to climb over a pile of geometric ice pieces, then slogged the rest of the way to land as the sun she’d so fervently wished for finally broke through the clouds in a late, flamboyant entrance.
The earth was a soggy, boot-sucking mess. Which didn’t stop Leo from dropping to her knees and, from there, her front, finally rolling to her back to stare at the brattily beautiful sunset, shuddering so hard she worried she might knock herself out.
Poof, the storm was gone. Just like that. A disappearing act, complete with fog and a light show, ending with a dark bank of clouds settling to the southwest.
Eyes slamming shut, she breathed through a long, deep convulsion, wondering if she’d ever feel anything again. Or move.
> “Got…to…” Elias dragged himself up the bank, slow as a swamp monster, and landed in a soggy heap beside her. Bo followed, low to the ground.
When neither human moved, the dog stood and shook herself, spraying them with water. Not that Leo could feel the difference. Whining now, Bo nudged Elias, who didn’t respond.
“Elias.”
Nothing. No sound but the frighteningly mechanical shuddering of his body on the beach. Beach, ha! Beaches were hot sand, slowly crashing waves, the easy lap of water on happy toes. Cocktails.
Caught in the fantasy, she rolled right into Elias.
This is where I die.
The dog growled. Leo opened her eyes.
“Elias, up.” She could produce the staccato syllables, she just couldn’t seem to act on them.
Together, their teeth chattered in a creepy percussion.
How much time did they have? Must have been at least ten minutes since they jumped into the water. Were they screwed? Done for? Hypothermic muscles atrophied?
No. No, forget that.
“No…way.” She ground her teeth into silence, planted her hands on the earth, and pushed. “Elias.” The word was so slurred it came out sounding like liar. She said it again. Liar. Liar. “Up. Get up.”
No movement. No reaction.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t. They hadn’t survived everything—he hadn’t been hunted for so long—to end up a shivering pile of meat on the bank of this lake.
As if in response to her thought, another crack resounded from the water’s busy surface, immediately followed by the faint echo of a scream. Holy shit, the lake was eating their pursuers. As Elias had predicted, they were stuck. And it sounded as though the ice was grinding them up like hamburger meat.
Too stubborn to give in to the cold’s pull, she rolled away from Elias, so hard she wound up with her face in the sludge. From there, getting up was a matter of life and death, since she refused to drown to death—in mud. “Come on. Move it, yeti.”
Bo slinked to her and nudged Leo on with her wet nose. She swallowed, planted her hands, and straightened her shaking elbows with a groan.
One stiff leg up and under, then she was standing on her own two feet. Wobbly but alive.
A look at Elias’s gray face told her he was too, though barely.
Chapter 18
Survival depended on lots of factors. Training played a part, at least for Leo, and overall fitness—both physical and mental. There was instinct too—that indefinable thing that told people to duck when they hadn’t yet heard a weapon being fired. In the air, instinct had saved her ass over and over again.
Led by instinct and hardheadedness, she bent, slid her numb hands under Elias’s shoulders, and let herself fall back—his weight working against gravity to keep her up. They went maybe five inches, but even that pulled his feet from the water, bringing the promise of dry ground that much closer.
Her hard exhale blew a cloud of vapor into the air.
Wet fabric clung to their bodies, held them in death’s cold grip, seeping through skin into muscles and bones.
The only thing that kept her brain moving and her lungs pumping was her will to survive.
She looked down at the man who’d saved her life, splayed out like an oversized rag doll, and amended that thought. It wasn’t just her will that kept her here. It was Elias’s.
And now it was payback time.
Another heave back and up, over rocks that dug into his heavy frame, hard enough to bruise. Didn’t matter. What mattered was getting him dry and warm. Before his heart stopped.
Talk about a shitty twenty-four hours.
For some reason, that made her laugh. The spasms started low in her belly to mingle with the shivering that still wracked her entire frame, and came out of her mouth in weird bursts, the sound nothing like her usual voice.
Another foot up, closer to the trees now. Close. Close.
Another foot, another.
Was his shivering slowing down? Oh no. That was bad. She leaned forward and grabbed his chin in one hand, said his name loudly. No response. He was cold and wet and pliable as a dead fish.
Had to get him out of those clothes.
Shit. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get them into the shelter of the trees and off this wet, pebbly shore.
His eyes opened. They were green, not the light brown she’d thought. Green and clear as glass in the fading daylight. They met hers, held them for three long seconds, and then rolled into the back of his head.
“Oh, no. No, you don’t,” she whispered, her voice having let out ages ago. “You stay here, Elias. Stay with me.”
Bo let out a low, mournful sound, drawing Leo’s attention back to the water’s edge. The bag. There’d be something in there she could use.
She raced down as fast as her feet would take her, half crawling and stumbling over the sharp, uneven rocks, and dragged the pack up.
In an offhand way, she noticed something pinging in her knee when she knelt beside him. Other pains popped in and out of her consciousness. Her head thrummed, as if swollen to ten times its size. Didn’t matter. Her fingers were red and raw and ached like someone had taken a hammer to them, her feet were bleeding through the cold, wet socks she still wore, leaving dark footprints in their wake. Nothing mattered but getting dry and getting warm.
Even words made a difference, so she used them, out loud. “Dry.” She pulled out the first thing she found—a boot enclosed in plastic. No. It dropped to the side. Another boot. Two more.
Something else—soft and rolled up—also in plastic.
“You get Best Prepared in high school, Elias? Huh?” No way could these ice-block fingers open the zip lock, so she brought it to her mouth and bit through it, gnawing like a beaver, then pulled the plastic apart. Sleeping bag.
She spread it out on the rocks, turned to him, hands out, and hesitated.
His clothes.
Something like despair took over when she looked at how big and soaked he was—how many layers he’d put on. How impossible it would be to undress him.
Then she remembered the knife at her waist.
The coat she unzipped. The next layer, too. She did hers, scrambling out of them as fast as she could manage. One layer, another, another, each gripping at her skin like heavy, wet eels.
Next, him. His socks came off, flung aside, his outer pants, then the inner layer—of which, she noticed, there was only one. Bastard made her put on three!
It was his shirt she had to cut off, the thinner one, too, before she stopped dead at the gash in his side, oozing blood, just above his hip.
She sagged, breathed for a second or two, then forced herself back into motion.
From his pack, she grabbed another wet bag, ripped it open, pulled out whatever item of clothing was in it and shoved it against the wound. Damn bullet got his abdomen. How was he not dead?
She swiped at the blood and eyed it again. Not a bullet hole. A graze. Something in her belly released, letting her breathe almost normally again. Blood seeped out, but she’d seen worse.
Time to move him. No, wait. Underwear. As efficiently as she could manage with lead weights for limbs, she slid her blade from his waist down his thigh, slicing the fabric open, without sparing a second’s thought to his nudity.
Back to the underarm hold, she hauled him up to the side, away from the remnants of wet clothes and onto the sleeping bag, ignoring his pained moan. Pained moans were good. If he cursed her right now, she’d be ecstatic.
Another scavenging dive into the backpack—more dry clothing that she threw on top of him, stopping when a particularly rough bout of trembling took her over. Shit. Shit, she couldn’t see straight. Panic tried to edge in.
She used action to push it back. Get dry.
Working hard to stave off exhaustion, she looked at hers
elf, tore the last clinging layers from her body, grabbed the emergency blanket from his bag… Another reach… There. Something bulky and soft. The other sleeping bag, followed by another plastic package. Oh, hallelujah! Foot warmers. She knew better than to put those right on his skin, but with a layer or two of insulation, they would help.
She turned on aching knees, caught sight of his massive, shaking form, and stuttered to a stop.
How should she…?
Never mind. There weren’t a million choices of how two people could get warm together. There was one. And she set out to do it.
***
Elias groaned at the painful wrenching of one foot, then the other. Back off! he tried to say, though all he produced was a garbled mumbling.
What the hell was pulling at his hands? He shoved at them, hard. Useless. Useless. He didn’t have the energy to protest. His eyes closed, darkness beckoning like a bridge to the afterlife.
Someone called his name.
No. No.
A jackhammer to his head—loud and abrasive. He tried to swat it away, but couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift his arm or his head or make a word with a tongue that was a big, dry slug in his mouth and—
Liquid flowed in and back out, gagging him so he turned and retched. More of it, more.
Over and over. Again. Again. Burning, pain, tingling, moaning. Low, guttural throbbing every time he breathed a fiery path from mouth to lungs. Excruciating agony.
“Come back, Elias.”
Come on. Come back. Come back come back come back.
I’m here. Here.
A hand on his shoulder, down his arm, back up. Chaffing. Firm, solid. Real.
Darkness. Warmth. Cocooned.
He shivered again, shaking the body above his. Encased in something soft and warm. Warm.
Forever passed. Years.
“Come on, Elias. Just take this and I’ll leave you alone.” He listened, tried to move. “We’ve got to get you warm. Get warm and go. We can’t stay here.”
He couldn’t open his eyes, but let her pry his lips apart, then swallowed the hard little pills, followed by a mouthful of icy water. After sputtering, he tried to settle back and let out an annoyed grunt when she forced more on him. Another swallow. Another.
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