by Merry Farmer
He raised an eyebrow. The threat was sweet as cream, but it was still there. He mentally sorted through every personnel file he’d poured over for the last few months. Who exactly was Carrie Gartner? What was her story?
“Good to know you’ve got someone looking out for you, Grace,” he said.
“From what I’ve just seen, Grace doesn’t need anyone looking out for her.” Carrie laughed and wandered closer to his desk. She turned a full circle to get a look at his cabin. When she faced his computer, her glance rested on his monitor.
“Is that so?” He crossed the room and leaned against the desk, blocking his work from Carrie’s view, still smiling. The details he remembered about her clicked into place. Wealthy family. Father involved in politics, a member of the party in power. Scored top marks in school. Something else that he couldn’t remember.
Carrie smiled, clearly pretending she didn’t know he was hiding his work from her. “You’re lucky she considers you a friend. I’d watch out for her if I were you, or she’ll kick your ass.” She met his eyes, the message behind her words as clear as if she’d shouted it. She would kick his ass if she thought Grace was in danger.
“I am lucky,” he said. “I will watch out.”
Carrie shifted her weight, considering him with narrowed eyes.
“I don’t know what got into me.” Grace was still laughing as she picked up a book from the coffee table and flopped onto the sofa. She kicked off her shoes. If she was aware of the spike in tension between Danny and Carrie, she didn’t let on. “He just came at me like…like….”
“Like what?”
Carrie and her machinations were forgotten. Danny’s pulse soared. No fewer than a hundred computer models had put Sean and Grace together. It was getting obvious that he was deleting those models as fast as they were generated.
“Like a typical man, thinking he could flaunt a little testosterone and tell her what to do and she’d melt. He got what was coming to him.” Carrie planted a hand on one hip. She jerked her head toward his kitchen with a coy smile. “Can I have a cup of tea?”
“Sure.” He played her game and feigned innocence. “Help yourself.”
He stayed rooted to his spot, a solid wall between Carrie, her curiosity, and his computer screen. Carrie smirked so fast and so slightly that he could have imagined it. She didn’t move. Trouble with a capital T. So what was she doing with Grace?
“Here, I’ll get it.” Grace tossed aside the book and jumped up from the sofa, crossing the room and fetching a teacup as if it were her own kitchen. “Sometimes it feels like I have to do everything myself.”
“You sure do know your way around here,” Carrie commented over her shoulder, eyes not leaving Danny’s.
“It’s because I’m here all the time,” Grace gave her answer from the kitchen. “Black or herbal tea?”
“Whatever.” Now Carrie’s expression was outright impressed. She shook her head. “Who’s up to no good now, Dr. Thorne?” she spoke so Grace wouldn’t hear, sly and suspicious.
“You look like I should be asking you the same question, Miss Gartner.”
Data hacking. Carrie had one minor charge of data hacking. She’d attempted to alter her own profile to boost her leadership capability score, then scrambled data to try to hide it. It had seemed like a pointless and risky move then and it didn’t feel right now. Lucky for Carrie, no one had made a big deal of it. The only way he’d found out was by studying cases of hackers who had been caught in order to avoid a similar fate.
“Grace is my friend,” Carrie murmured. “The only friend I’ve got. I would do anything to protect her from any little tricks certain people or organizations might have up their sleeves.”
Her words set off clarion warnings in his mind. She knew about the Consistory. At least she thought she did. He covered his burst of tension by sliding his hands in his pockets.
“Lucky for you, I can say the exact same thing.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Can you?”
“Yes. I would—I will protect Grace from anyone who tries to harm her.”
“Prove it.”
Danny blinked. What was that supposed to mean?
There was only one way to find out.
“Just tell me how.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” Carrie murmured.
“You can’t, and I can’t trust you. But if Grace’s safety is at stake, I might be willing to consider…options.”
Carrie nodded, her lips twitching between amusement and deadly seriousness. “Thursday night. Meet me by the elevator in corridor sixty-three at midnight.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to protect Grace. I know someone who can help.”
“Do y—”
“Danny, you don’t mind if we hide out here for a while, do you?” Grace asked as she came around the corner carrying two steaming cups. “Sean’s still a little peeved and probably out to find us and lecture us into next Tuesday.”
Carrie spun to meet her halfway across the room, taking one teacup from her.
“Not at all. You know you’re welcome to spend as much time here as you’d like.”
He leaned back, studying Carrie. Chances were that she was bluffing. But if she wasn’t, he might have a shot of saving Grace from the Terra Project after all.
The site of their former camp in the woods near the orchard Beth had found was like a ghost buried under snow. Mounds that had been stones and stumps made into chairs were the only markers of where fire pits and social circles had been. The lean-to that had been his first laboratory was nothing more than a pile of sticks poking up from an icy, smothering blanket like broken bones. The mouths of the caves some of them had lived in were blocked with drifts, barely distinguishable from the rest of the landscape. It was as alien as the glittering orange rings of Chronis above.
He knew exactly where Grace’s cave was in the midst of it.
The relief that poured through him at reaching his goal, loosening his muscles and curling his breath in puffs of frost, was short-lived. He slogged through the wet snow, legs aching. There wasn’t much time. It had taken him three quarters of an hour to reach their old camp, but Stacy could only be about fifteen minutes behind him. Once he took what he needed, he didn’t want her slowing him down.
He pulled the scarf off of his face to catch his breath as he reached the mouth of Grace’s cave. Bracing himself against the frigid stone, he crouched and started to dig out the half-clogged entrance. A gust of wind swirled the snow he tossed aside into the gaps around the hood of his parka. The snow was heavier and wetter than it had been since winter started and sent icy fingers down his neck. Sense told him to stop and fasten his parka more tightly, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen to it. He needed to get in and out as quickly as possible.
The snow shifted under him, giving way as he leaned forward. He flailed and tumbled through the opening of the cave, sprawling head down in the drift that buried the spot where he and Grace had sat to talk so often. It took several moments of panicked struggling to squirm out of the suffocating snow and scramble deeper around the bend of the cave. His snowshoes forced his knees into the solid floor at a painful angle.
The cold, dank space was almost too dark to see. Icicles rippled down the walls that had once felt so warm. Using the thread of sunlight that reached in through the half-blocked entrance, Danny fumbled for his backpack. He tossed off his mittens to sort through its contents with stiff fingers. The matches he’d brought with him were the last of the supply he’d planted in the treasure chests. He struck one and held it up, searching for one of the torches he’d left in the cave. He found one dry enough to catch, lit it, and fastened it to a rung in the side of the cave wall.
Firelight revealed the inside of the cave, barely touched since the day Grace left. Her bearskin filled the back corner and her spare dress was still lying out and waiting for her to come home and change. Baskets and wooden bowls lined the shelves made from the cave’s
irregular walls. The space still smelled like her in spite of the winter bite. He breathed it in as he inched deeper toward the bearskin, dragging his snowshoes at awkward angles behind him.
When he reached the bearskin he collapsed and rolled to his back, closing his eyes and breathing in Grace’s essence. The cave was frigid, the single newly-lit torch doing nothing to penetrate months of freeze, but he could still feel warm memories of summer surround him. He could hear Grace breathing as she tried to sleep, feel the silk of her hair through his fingers, the curve of her hips and thighs. Wonderful, painful memories. He could have lain there and listened to them and gone mad forever.
Purpose was all too quick to nag him to action. He rolled over and crawled across the bearskin, knees goring into the hard rock beneath it. He threw aside a pile of Grace’s other clothes and shoes and peeled back the bearskin.
The locked wooden box that Carrie had stashed in his treasure chests was hidden underneath. Beside it was one of the guns from their emergency ship and what was left of the bullets, tucked safely in a felt pouch. The rest of the ammunition they had crashed with was long gone and the impotent guns had been repurposed, but he had saved this last gun and six final bullets in case he needed them. If Kutrosky had lied to them, then those bullets were about to serve their purpose.
His hand brushed across the wooden box as he reached for the gun. He spread his palm flat on its smooth top, glancing up to the shelf beside the bearskin. The key was tucked away along with a bundle of dried flowers he’d brought Grace in a small basket Carrie had woven. Grace had driven him mad with her refusal to open it. Grief had kept him from trying after she’d left. There didn’t seem to be any point in drawing out the mystery now. Carrie had planted the box in the treasure chests without his knowledge. It could be connected to her warning about Kutrosky. He reached for the basket with the key.
A loud clatter sounded from the front of the cave followed by a thump and “Shit.”
Danny abandoned the box and grabbed the gun, twisting to the entrance, eyes wide and panicked. He aimed at the pile of snow and fur that tumbled into the wall at the elbow of the cave. His heart pounded in his throat in the time it took his mind to recognize Stacey wriggling to break free. He huffed out the breath he’d been holding and tossed the gun aside to crawl to her aid.
“I told you not to follow me,” he growled, scooping his hands under her parka-clad shoulders.
Stacey replied with a muffled curse.
It was harder to pull her out than he expected. Instead of snowshoes, she had long, broad slats strapped to her feet. Skis. They scraped the walls and bent her legs in ways they didn’t want to go.
“Ow! Ow! Watch it.”
“Why did you follow me?” he demanded when he had her as upright as she was going to get.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” she shot back. “No one goes out alone. Isn’t that your rule?”
“This is different.” He stopped trying to prop her up and stretched to retrieve the gun.
“What the hell, Danny?” Stacey gestured to the gun then tried to straighten her parka and tuck her wild black hair back where it belonged. “Even if it wasn’t a useless hunk of metal, who are you planning to shoot? Me?”
He arched an eyebrow at her, lifting the hem of his parka to shove the gun in his waistband. Ignoring Stacey, he squatted and shuffled to the back corner of the bearskin. He quickly palmed the pouch of bullets, shoving it in the hidden pocket of his leather pants. Stacey was watching, so he feigned straightening Grace’s things and smoothing the skin back over the locked box. Opening it would have to wait until he returned. With more care he refolded and replaced Grace’s dress.
“Goddammit, Danny! You owe me one answer at least,” Stacey barked when he turned to face her.
“I don’t owe anyone anything.”
He scooted past her and maneuvered his snowshoes so that he could stand. He found his mittens and pulled them back on, then grabbed the torch off the wall, gesturing for Stacey to follow him to the cave’s mouth.
Stacey was forced to back toward the drift of snow at the entrance, unable to turn around with her skis. Her fall had widened the snowy ramp leading out of the cave. Danny extinguished the torch in the snow, tossing it around the bend of the cave, then adjusted his scarf and hood. He could make a break for it once he was out in the open. It would take Stacey several long minutes to work out how to get out of the cave. He could get far enough ahead of her that he’d reach the source of the smoke signals on his own.
“I know you’re not gonna leave me to get out of here by myself,” Stacey called after him when he was halfway free.
Danny stopped, face pinching. Every instinct told him to run, to act alone. He owed nothing to anyone.
Grace would never let him live it down if he did.
“No, I’m not leaving without you.” He sighed and drooped, skittering back into the cave. “Lean this way.”
Stacey squatted over her skis and he grabbed hold of the ends, yanking her up the slope of the drift. It was sweaty, struggling work. Stacey weighed more than she looked with her heavy parka and whatever else she’d brought with her. At least the effort it took to pull her free warmed him up. It would have been easier to make her take the skis off and risk sinking in the deep snow, but he wasn’t in the mood to do things the easy way.
By the time they were both up and out in the open, he was ready to move on. He hitched his backpack over his parka and started north once more.
“For the love of God, wait!” Stacey screamed after him and pushed away from the cave.
Danny didn’t look back, but a minute later she had skied her way up to his side, using two long sticks as poles.
“Don’t make me stop you, Danny. I may be a mother now, but I still have a mean right hook.”
He ignored her, trudging on.
Her gloved fist smacked against the side of his head. His hood kept the blow from having any impact, but it pushed him off-balance. He tumbled into the snow, sinking a foot down until the hard-pack stopped him. Shocked more than wounded, he twisted to his back and blinked up at her.
“Think you can get out of there by yourself without smothering?” She crossed her skis over the indent he’d made in the snow, staring down with hands on her hips. He remained silent. “Christ, Danny, I knew you were stubborn, but this…this just isn’t healthy.”
He tried to push himself up but only sank further in the snow. It heaped in on him, collapsing deeper with each move he made. When he reached up with his arm, his back sank further, when he lifted his legs, his head tilted down. Every attempt he made to pull himself out was like drowning in quicksand. If he kept struggling he would bury himself alive.
Heart racing with panic, he stopped and glanced up through the walls of a snowy grave at Stacey. His panting breath frosted above him. “Please help me,” he spoke in a flat voice.
He could see her smirk behind her scarf. “That’s more like it.”
Keeping her skis crossed and anchored, she braced herself and held one of her poles down to him. He grabbed it and pulled. It was sloppy and slow, but between the two of them they managed to free him from the snow and get him on his feet without Stacey sinking. It took too much time, and they were both doused head to toe in damp white powder by the time it was done. They brushed each other off and moved away from the churned snow toward a stand of trees where they could lean as they caught their breath.
“Now talk,” she glared at him.
Humiliation gnawed at him. If Stacey hadn’t been there to rescue him, he would have drowned in snow. He was in her debt now, and she would only keep after him until he relented.
“All right.” He would talk, but he didn’t have to be happy about it. “Yes, Carrie got to me. The scouts think the smoke signals were coming from the area of Kutrosky’s old camp. I’m going there to see if I can find him and kill the bastard.”
“Well then.” Stacey crossed her arms, brow shooting up.
The effect
made him feel petty and overdramatic. “Barring that, I want to find out what I can about Vengeance and the beacon. I want to know why it hasn’t come for all these months. And yes, I want to know what Kutrosky was wrong about.” He scowled and shifted to stare out at the frozen landscape instead of at her.
“There. Now that didn’t hurt at all, did it?” Her tone was far nicer than he would have used. “So what are we waiting for, Boss? Let’s get going.”
She used to call Grace “Boss.” He could still see the wary resignation in Grace’s eyes at the term. He didn’t like being saddled with it any more than Grace had.
“If we skirt the edge of the forest and walk through the fields and over the hills, we should get there faster.” Still not looking at her, he pushed away from the tree and began the long trek.
Even across the open fields, it was still slow going. Stacey’s skis had the potential to be faster, but the sheer volume of snow, its drifts and textures, meant she hit soft spots and sank every now and then. As often as not, though, she could ski far ahead of him across the crust coating the deep snow where the sun beat on it. Danny made mental notes as they journeyed. Snowshoes were better now, but if Gil was right and the seasons were changing, if the top layers of snow formed ice, then skis would be a better option.
He didn’t know why it mattered. If Vengeance wasn’t a lie, odds were that he would never see this much snow again. He’d never see summer again either.
They pushed on as the sun climbed to its zenith. By that point they were both exhausted and hungry. They moved closer to the forest, sitting on low branches that had been at shoulder level and higher in the summer to eat.
Food stores had dwindled in odd proportions during the last five winter months. They’d eaten through their fresh fruit and grain stores first, before the winter solstice. Their crops had been a success, but there hadn’t been enough available labor to plant more than a token amount to provide seeds for the following year. The dried fruits and vegetables had disappeared next, but for the ones that had been stored and packed away for later. Meat was still plentiful and there was enough snow that water wasn’t a problem in spite of the river being frozen solid in all but the deepest places. But a diet of meat, dried fruit, and milk and cheese from the herds they’d barely managed to keep alive through the winter was getting old. Danny had never craved strawberries and bread more in his life. He would have killed for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.