Uncharted

by Adriana Anders

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. It was all she could do not to kiss it.

  “Am I right?” Suddenly, unexpectedly, she wanted to take back the question. What if he said no? What if he preferred his old life to this one? Seriously, who could blame him? There’d been loss and death—so many prices to pay for doing the right thing.

  The problem was, if that was his wish—to go back and get a second chance—then he’d wish her away, wish all of this gone, never to have happened at all. And she couldn’t bear the idea of never meeting the man.

  In a way, she already felt bereft, as if knowing him had carved a hole inside her. But not knowing him would be a million times worse.

  Breathing too hard, she moved past him. “How much farther?”

  He didn’t answer right away. After another few steps, she looked up and realized that he didn’t have to.

  ***

  “Where the fuck are they?” Deegan barked, clearly not bothered about being overheard.

  Standing ankle deep in half-frozen mud, Ash searched the forest below and the cloud-tipped mountains above. They’d both fallen this morning—Deegan twice and Ash once, bruising his hip so badly he’d thought it was broken. Once he’d started walking, it only ached when he slowed.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t fucking know? They’re out here, aren’t they, mate? You’re the shit-hot tracker, right, mate?”

  Ash didn’t glance at the other man, whose attempt at imitation was Dick Van Dyke–level absurd. He kept his eyes on the ground, scanning, slowly, carefully. Quietly.

  Or at least, that’s what he’d have liked.

  “Are you sure they’re even out there?”

  Rolling his eyes internally, Ash turned. “They are.” He squinted up at the mountain, then down again. Maybe if you’d shut up, I could think.

  Deegan apparently expected more from him. When he didn’t get it, he made a disgusted sound, reached for his sat phone, and headed into the woods, dialing.

  Ash turned a full circle, ignoring the man. He loved this place. The harsh, ever-changing weather made it all the more beautiful, as far as he was concerned. What was more enchanting than going to sleep at night and waking to find everything frozen in place? He’d have enjoyed it a lot more if this arsehole hadn’t been with him.

  He tilted his head, listening to the low drone of the man’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was not happy. At all.

  If only he could leave Deegan behind.

  He shut his eyes for a moment, picturing taking it one step further. It would be so easy to end the fool—a clean slice to the throat. Yes, well, though the idea of cold-blooded murder had its appeal, it was not the mission.

  He must focus on the mission.

  Deegan stomped and slid back up the slope, clearly angry. “Chopper’s down.”

  Ash’s brows rose. “Down?”

  “Out of commission. Pilot’s working on it, with some geezer from town. Shit.” He sighed, his little eyes flicking around. Deegan had one of those square-jawed American faces so often immortalized in comic books and action films. He was big and blond and strong looking, as far from Ash’s physique as a person could get. And yet, even with his wonky hip, Ash could best this man in a confrontation. The trick with Ash was that he was unobtrusive. Nobody saw him and thought, operative! Nobody assumed that he was the hunter. “Look, you got a bead on them yet?”

  Rather than respond, Ash uncapped his water, leaned back, and let his gaze go soft.

  The air was cold and crisp, the wind so sharp it pushed the clouds along like recalcitrant sheep. One minute, the peaks were visible, the next, they appeared to be topped with cotton, spun from sugar. Something the other children’s parents would have got for them at the carnival. Something Emma would have begged for.

  Had she lived.

  He pulled in a breath, let the oxygen brighten his vision and stir up his senses, and tucked his canteen away before setting off again, ignoring Deegan’s muttered obscenities, his thoughts full of the past that never was.

  “They can’t have got far,” he said over his shoulder. “Not with the wounded woman, not with last night’s weather and this morning’s deep freeze.” He allowed himself an evil smirk. “Think you can pick up the pace?”

  It had been shit luck that the downpour to end all downpours had come through and cleared all trace. There wasn’t an identifiable track to be found. The rain, the freeze, the wind, they’d all come together to obliterate any signs of passage.

  After a long day’s slog, they’d come to a crossroads. Three possible paths toward Schink’s Station, none of them direct. None of them the obvious choice.

  A sign would be nice right now. Not that he believed in divine intervention. There’d been times when his life had depended on some kind of goodwill—whether Ganesh’s, God’s, or Mother Nature’s, he frankly hadn’t cared. Of course, the last time he’d looked to the heavens for help, he’d lost everything that mattered. But then, he had more faith in nature than in any god. In his mind, the two were intertwined, he supposed.

  Maybe he should have brought Emma here, when all was lost. Maybe this place would have healed her when the medicine hadn’t.

  Shaking that silly notion from his head, he let the past wash out of him and focused on today. At this moment, he wished for a sign—not to save face in front of Deegan, but to finish this thing once and for all.

  The clouds parted and he spotted it then—high in the sky: a bald eagle, the bird slow, wide winged and graceful. Its lazy, circular descent brought it to alight at the very top of the mountain before him, where it perched proudly, framed by clouds on other side, like a painting, or a dream.

  Or the very sign he’d been seeking.

  “Up it is,” Ash said with a smile, feeling lighter than he had all day.

  Muttering curses behind him, Deegan scrambled to keep up.

  Chapter 33

  Holy crap. Leo couldn’t believe what she was seeing. This was a hallucination. It had to be.

  Her eyes flicked back to where Elias waited, watching as she climbed over the last rocky rise. From below, he was a bulwark—a silhouette flattened by the dark and outlined by the sunset, which would have been breathtaking enough on its own. But what lay just beyond him made everything all the more surreal.

  He stepped over the stream and reached for her hand.

  “Come on.” His grip tightened, he moved forward and she let him pull her up beside him. For a breathless handful of seconds, she took in the sight of the iron-red structure, built into a shallow dip in the mountain. Not once had she spotted this place from the air, which wasn’t surprising, given how the trees had grown around and even inside it.

  “Parts of the roof look intact,” she said, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “Yep.”

  “There a fireplace in there?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Too risky anyway.”

  Her excitement ebbed, leaving her feeling dull and deflated. “You really think someone’s close?”

  “Not close,” he said, his voice rising on the end. That inflection told her he had his doubts.

  “But you feel safe here.”

  “Can’t be seen from the sky, only one way in, so it’s easy to keep watch.” He eyed the path they’d taken to get up here. Not that path was the right word for it. Incline might work, although devil stairs was closer. The path was there; it was just so well-hidden among the sheer rocks that it was almost impossible to spot. “And those traps I set will help. For now, we rest.” He looked up at the sky. “And wait out the weather.”

  Her heart sank. “Again?”

  He turned back to eye her with a smile and a wink. “Yeah. But I bet you won’t mind it so much here.”

  After placing that mystery at her feet with as mu
ch pride as a cat with a kill, he continued up into the tight little valley.

  The structure—rambling and rickety looking—was pure Alaska. Hopes and dreams beaten, time and again, by nature. It climbed up along what looked like a crack in the mountain, which revealed itself to be a river, loud in its bubbling, frenzied rush to the bottom. She couldn’t tell if the place was a house or a factory or a mine, but the multiple levels and sloping metal roof made her think the latter.

  Bo followed Elias at a run, yipping with excitement, while Leo went more slowly, caution making her careful—although she wasn’t sure what she was most worried about: her bones or her heart.

  At the bottom, water flowed from an unseen source and gathered in small, strange-colored pools. “What’s that smell?” She squinted. Was the water steaming?

  “Sulfur.”

  She turned just in time to see Elias drop the pack and start stripping like his clothes were on fire.

  “Hey, what are you…” Understanding set in—a little late, granted, but it wasn’t like she’d ever seen anything like this before. “They’re hot springs?”

  “Yep.” His grin was enormous, his eyes so bright, she knew exactly what he’d looked like as a child. “Come on.”

  Without waiting for a second invitation, she got undressed and followed him into the water.

  ***

  “I’m never leaving,” Leo groaned in a voice that Elias felt to the tip of his cock.

  This place was pure magic. Oh, it might stink of sulfur, but everyone knew that was good for your skin. Being warm and clean now that they’d soaped up, soaking aching muscles, reclining beside the most beautiful woman he’d ever known… He’d take a little sulfur smell in exchange for those things any day.

  She shifted, her leg brushed his, and he got impossibly harder, painfully so, though the pain was all relative, given that it felt good at the same time. So good to sit beside her, to watch her truly relax, easing lower and lower until her breasts no longer bobbed at the surface.

  Which was a shame.

  She moved again subtly, her hip connecting with his and staying there. He couldn’t complain. Could only luxuriate.

  “Still hungry?” he finally worked up the energy to ask.

  When she didn’t respond, he slitted his eyes and watched her turn, bringing their faces close enough to almost touch. Her sigh enveloped him like a siren’s call—beautiful, all-consuming, and impossible to deny.

  And, hell, why should he?

  With a slow inhale, he leaned in, put his nose to hers, and drank in that sigh, made it his like something he could take inside and hold forever.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Don’t thank me, thank…”

  She pulled back to give him her shut up look and he amended his statement. “You’re welcome.” He turned forward, set his head back on the rock ledge, and smiled lazily up at the sky, uncaring as rain pelted his face.

  “Ever see passenger jets fly over here?”

  “Sometimes. Rarely, but sometimes.” He shut his eyes. “More often bush planes.”

  “Not the same feeling.”

  He glanced at her and then watched, transfixed. Her rain-slick face glowed from the barest of lights from above. It limned her elegant forehead, highlighted those cheekbones, already more sharply cut than when he’d first seen her, shone bright on the sweet curves of eyelids. She looked, in this liminal place, like something otherworldly, straight from his dreams. But the feel of her was pure, solid earth. Reality and fantasy in one.

  Strange to see her still for once.

  “What feeling?” he murmured, wishing he could touch her without breaking the spell.

  “Of everything out there. Everything to see. All the people going places, traveling, cities, worlds… Other places to be.” She inhaled audibly, the exhale shaky. “Always wanted to be someplace else. Go farther, higher, faster, you know? Just go.”

  Which made this stillness all the more unexpected.

  He met her eye and gave a tiny nod, though he didn’t truly understand. He didn’t thirst for the same things she did.

  She snuffled out a laugh. “Always heard the story, growing up, about going to day care and watching the planes fly by. Apparently, the personnel carried me all the time.” She glanced his way, one side of her mouth lifted in a smile. “I was pretty darned cute.”

  He pictured a tiny Leo, round-headed, with fat cheeks and those chubby baby thighs, big brown eyes playful and soulful in equal measures. Of course they carried her everywhere. He’d bet baby Leo’d had every adult she ever met wrapped around her fat little finger. “Sounds familiar.”

  “That’s right. You think I’m cute.”

  “You are. You’re also…” He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t open himself to her like that. “I meant the carrying you everywhere part.”

  She made a wry noise and elbowed him gently.

  “As I was saying…” She pointed up at the sky. “Planes would fly by and I’d point at ’em before I could even talk. I’d look at the women, all excited, eyes wide, like, Hey! D’you see that? See!? They’d nod. Okay, Leo. As soon as the plane disappeared, I’d give them the baby sign for more.” She tapped the gathered tips of her fingers together like two beaks pecking. “More! More!”

  He laughed, the feeling lazy and warm in his gut, so easy he almost didn’t notice how rare it was. “You were addicted to planes even then.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Always wanted to fly.” Another sigh and she laid her head on his shoulder. He didn’t dare move. “After Mom…died, Dad was convinced I’d be an opera singer, like her.”

  “Wait, what?” he asked, careful not to dislodge her. “Your mom was a singer?”

  “Yeah. Pretty well-known too.”

  The weight of her loss settled on him with devastating familiarity. “I’m sorry, Leo.”

  He reached for her hand, landed on her slick, naked thigh instead, and moved away. A second later, she delved into the water and found him, threaded her fingers through his in that way that felt perfect, and let him hold her—or held him. He couldn’t tell. Wasn’t sure he even cared.

  That was the way with her, wasn’t it? Sharing, trusting.

  “What about you?” She shifted closer, pressed their sides together.

  His first attempted What? didn’t clear his vocal cords, so he tried again. “What about me what?”

  “Did you know who you were? What you were? When you were a kid.”

  A fugitive from the law? An accused murderer? A recluse roughing it solo in the wild? He didn’t say the words. It wasn’t what she’d meant and he refused to drag the moment down. Instead, he considered, long and hard.

  “I wasn’t anything special. You know, my dad worked for the oil company and Mom stayed home with me. I didn’t go to school till I was in first grade, I think. Childhood was just this. Being outside.”

  Her little noise of acknowledgment wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was close.

  “Right? Got recruited to play ball in high school, ’cause I was big and fast. In shape from…just being, I guess.” He wrinkled his brow in thought. “Dependable? Is that too boring? Is that sad? Even as a kid, I was big and dependable.”

  “You’re not boring.” Her sniff made him think she was crying, but it was impossible to tell with the rain in the mix. And what was there to cry about anyway? “You’re so fucking beautiful, Elias.”

  In the next split second, he was on her, tasting her, drinking up her… Damn, this couldn’t be love, could it? Already? It felt like it, though. It felt warm and real and urgent in a way he couldn’t ignore. Didn’t freaking want to.

  He gripped her waist with one hand and cupped her far hip with the other, pulled her onto his lap, and used every bit of willpower to keep himself from sliding right inside this body that had, in such a short time, become the absol
ute center of his existence.

  Though he wanted that. More than anything right now. More than life, probably, and that was big coming from a guy who had nothing to his name but a brain and a beating heart.

  ***

  “Okay, Jack,” Amka muttered to herself. “You better be ready, boy-o.”

  She pulled a helmet over her head and squinted through the dark plastic as dogs barked everywhere, so loud and hungry that you’d think there were fifty of ’em instead of the couple dozen she’d released from the kennels. She couldn’t help a little chuckle at that. Poor dogs. Those bastards better not hurt a hair on the dogs’ hides.

  She wouldn’t give them the chance to anyway.

  “Here I come, Daisy,” she muttered under her breath as she turned the key and revved the engine. “Coming to get you, baby.” She exhaled. “Sorry about the window.” A laugh escaped her, half-hysterical.

  “Sorry, Ben.” Though it was about time he replaced this piece of shit truck.

  With that, she took her foot off the brake and let the old Explorer roll down the hill toward the lodge.

  She took another slow, deep breath in and let it out. Nope. Not gonna be nervous about this. Not gonna let it scare her. If this was it, this was it. Hell, she’d always liked the idea of going out in a blaze of glory.

  One of the dogs howled, then more joined in and it turned into a frenzy. She accelerated.

  Too bad Daisy wasn’t here beside her. It’d be one hell of a Thelma and Louise moment. Except in their story, they’d survive and raise hell together for the rest of their days.

  The old Explorer picked up speed, bouncing over rocks and ruts on its way downhill.

  She gripped the wheel tighter, fighting hard to keep the vehicle in line. Wouldn’t do them a lick of good if she wound up in the lake, would it?

  Somewhere not too far off, one of her makeshift bombs exploded, making her jump. Her breath came in nervous, excited little gasps. Hell, if it startled her, the baddies at the lodge must be jumping out of their skins by now, right?

  Did they see her yet? Were those dicks aiming at her? Or would they be caught with their pants down when she plowed through the lodge’s back window?