With a sigh, he gave up on the backup generator. He couldn’t get it going. It was sloppy of him not to check it earlier. He cocked his head and listened. The house was completely silent. Freja whimpered anxiously.
“Don’t worry,” he hushed her as he heard a low humming noise outside. At first, he didn’t know what it could be. It sounded like a snowmobile, but it couldn’t be. Could the storm sound like that?
He put his tools back into the box and headed toward the stairs.
“Ambra?” he shouted.
No reply. Freja sniffed the air. Something wasn’t right. The atmosphere in the house felt different; he couldn’t explain it any better than that. He quickly climbed the stairs, searched using his powerful flashlight. The house was silent and seemed empty. Ambra wasn’t on the couch or by the fire. She wasn’t by the gas lamp in the kitchen, either.
The sound of the engine was louder now. It was outside, definitely one of the snowmobiles. It tore off. Tom went over to the front door, which blew shut at that exact moment. He turned the handle. What the hell was she doing? The sound of the snowmobile vanished. When he opened the door, the wind swirled inside. He couldn’t see a thing. Ambra and the snowmobile were already gone. But he didn’t understand. Ambra had to realize it was crazy to drive off like that. He hurried into the kitchen. Sure enough, the keys were gone.
Confusion and irritation were slowly replaced by unease. He’d been angry before, he knew that, but was it enough to drive her to this? It was hard to believe. She didn’t think he would hurt her, did she? No, he couldn’t believe that. He’d been so hurt, felt so stupid, but that was all. What should he do now? Would she manage to find the main road? Would she try to make it to the hotel? The snow was still coming down heavily, and the temperature was dropping steadily. If she didn’t make it, she could be in serious trouble.
He looked down at Freja. “What do we do now?” The dog whimpered in reply.
With growing unease, he went back into the kitchen, took down the keys for the other snowmobile, continued into the living room, and blew out all the candles. The fire was still burning, and he put up a fire shield in front of it. He pulled on his boots, took out a rucksack, and packed a foil blanket, a bottle of water, a knife, a fire striker, and a flashlight. He added a rope, too. Should he stay in the house and wait? But what if something happened to her? If she drove off the road, crashed?
He quickly pulled on a snowsuit and gloves. “Stay,” he said to Freja.
As he walked over to the garage, it felt as if he was about to be blown over. With a deepening sense of panic, he started the second snowmobile and set off. He had a really bad feeling now. Ambra was a city girl, probably didn’t realize how quickly a person could get hypothermia, how dangerous it was. How quickly you lost your judgment in the cold. He knew how to track and he knew the terrain, but if she had gone off-road it would probably be impossible to find her. He drove off, tried to stick to a slow-enough speed to track her but quick enough not to lose precious time.
After an hour or so of searching, he was starting to get seriously worried. Did he dare hope she’d made it all the way to Kiruna? He wished he could call the hotel to ask if she was there, but he had no coverage at all out here in the forest.
The question was whether he should go back to the house and try to call from there, or whether he should keep looking. But if he made it back, managed to get through to the hotel and Ambra wasn’t there, that would be crucial time he had wasted. Because there was no doubt: It could be a matter of life and death now.
He drove in wide circles. An hour and twenty minutes had passed. It had to be at least twenty below zero, but the wind chill made it feel even worse. His eyes scanned the snow.
And then he saw it.
The snowmobile. It was on its side, looked like it had crashed into a tree.
He sped up, drove over, and jumped off. Ambra was lying beside the snowmobile, curled up on her side in the fetal position.
He got onto his knees beside her. It seemed like a gentle fall. Her helmet had protected her, and she wasn’t lying in a strange position, but you never knew.
“Ambra!” he shouted over the wind. She didn’t respond.
How badly hurt was she? He lowered his cheek to her mouth to check if she was breathing. He felt a faint breath and almost shouted with relief. He took off his gloves and wrapped his hand around her wrist, but he couldn’t feel a pulse. When a person’s blood pressure fell, that was where it vanished first. Instead, he managed to bring a finger to her neck. He felt a pulse, weak but regular.
“Ambra? Can you hear me?” No reply. He unzipped her jacket and managed to get through all of her layers, placing his knuckles against her breastbone. He hated the idea of hurting her, but if she didn’t wake up she would need to go to the hospital. She didn’t seem to have hurt her neck. The ground beneath her was soft and she looked okay, but he wasn’t sure. He pressed his knuckles against her breastbone and saw her face twist into a grimace. “Ow.”
“Ambra,” he said, relieved beyond all words. If she was breathing and had a pulse, he wouldn’t need to give her CPR, which would have been a nightmare in these conditions.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Tom,” she said. Then she fell silent. The question now was whether to take her to the hospital or back to the house. The journey to the hospital would be long and dangerous; she was talking normally and her pupils reacted to light when he shone the flashlight in her eyes.
“Ambra,” he said as he started to wrap the foil blanket around her. He left her helmet as it was. “Do you know where you are, what happened?”
“Stop asking stupid questions,” she muttered, and he smiled despite the terrible situation. She sounded like herself, and that was all he wanted to hear.
“I’m taking you back now,” he said.
When he picked her up, she seemed lifeless again. He climbed onto the snowmobile with her in his arms and started the engine. He drove off as quickly as he dared.
The minutes back to the house felt like hours. Ambra didn’t stir once in his arms, but he focused on the ground ahead of them, on what he would do when he made it back, how he would do it.
He drove up to the door, quickly carried her inside, and laid her down in front of the open fire, still wrapped in the foil blanket.
The house was cold and dark, but he had to get the snowmobile back into the garage—it was the only means of transport he had if the storm continued, cutting them off from the outside world. And it was also better to warm her up slowly. Her heart might stop otherwise.
Tom parked the snowmobile in the garage and ran back to the house as quickly as he could. Ambra was where he had left her, with Freja by her side.
He pulled off her gloves, sat down, and managed to take her helmet off.
“Are you awake?” he asked. When she didn’t reply, he pinched her cheek gently.
“Stop it,” she mumbled. He stroked her forehead, carefully checking for bumps or cuts. Nothing. Her chest was moving slowly, and the sense of relief made his heart ache.
But she was far from being in the clear yet. The house had no power, no warm water. The risk of a collapse was huge if she didn’t get the right care; Tom knew that, he had covered this kind of thing countless times in his training. Get the body temperature up, slowly and steadily. He grabbed his Swiss army knife and started to cut off her clothing, first her overalls, then her jeans, from her ankles up to her waist, careful that he didn’t nick her skin. She would probably be furious that he had ruined her clothes, he thought as he took off the belt, without damaging it. In fact, he almost hoped she would be. Because an angry Ambra meant a living Ambra. And there was no other way of getting soaked jeans off.
He couldn’t get her shoes off, and so he had to cut those off, too, after which he pulled off her socks. Next, he cut her shirt open. She was wearing a camisole beneath it, and that went the same way. He didn’t even think. He just pulled off her panties and bra, looked away, covered
her with a blanket, and then started to search for frostbite on her hands and feet. It was hard to say, but she didn’t seem to have any serious damage. She had a few marks that would turn into deep bruises, but she didn’t seem to have broken anything, and her chest was still rising and falling.
After he went to fetch another blanket, he spent more time looking for wounds, swellings, anything that might suggest internal injuries. She seemed fine, but he didn’t dare say that for certain.
Once she was dry and properly bundled, he started to work on building up the fire. As it burned, he went to get pillows, which he placed beneath her head. Her face was no longer quite so gray, and Tom finally felt confident enough to go take his own outer clothing off. He pulled on a dry T-shirt and pants.
She still hadn’t moved, but she was a much better color now, and her chest was moving regularly. When he took her pulse, it already felt much stronger. He quickly went to grab a flashlight and a thermometer. He boiled some water and filled a cup, added spoonful after spoonful of sugar. Back in the living room, he checked her pulse again, and noticed she had more color in her face.
“Ambra, open your eyes,” he said. Her eyelashes fluttered, and her pupils contracted when he shone the light into them. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m freezing. I hate freezing.”
“I need to take your temperature,” he said, sticking the thermometer into her ear. He heard a beep and looked down: ninety-three degrees.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
“Think so,” she mumbled. She sounded like she had just woken up, slightly confused, but not like she was hallucinating.
He quickly lit all the candles he could find and placed them around the room. He would let her stay here, where it was warm, he decided. He carried two thick mattresses down from upstairs and laid them next to one another. He made up a bed by the fire.
“I’m going to pick you up now,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. He lifted her onto one of the mattresses. She looked so small, weighed almost nothing in his arms.
Still shaken, he looked down at the woman who could easily have died out there in the forest. Was there someone he should call? What would he say? That he had terrified Ambra so much she’d risked her own life to escape him? He checked his cell phone. There was no service in the storm, so that decided that.
He touched her skin; she was still cold, and he took her temperature again. It was rising. He sat down next to her. She needed to drink some liquid.
“Ambra, you need to wake up.”
“Why?” Her voice was drowsy and slightly irritated.
He lifted her head and placed another cushion beneath it. “Open your mouth,” he ordered, and when she eventually did as he asked, he gave her half a teaspoon. “Three of these, then you can sleep, okay?”
She sighed deeply but opened her mouth and allowed him to feed her. “Now I need to rest,” she mumbled, and then she was gone again.
Tom watched Freja, who was wagging her tail miserably. He carefully lay down next to Ambra. She didn’t react. He felt her forehead and her hands. She was slightly less chilly. He pulled gently at the covers he had placed on top of her. She was so still. He glanced at Freja, who gave him a wretched look and laid her head on her front paws. “It’ll be fine, girl,” he promised. The best source of heat was actually skin-to-skin contact, but he made do with creeping in beneath the covers so that there was a sheet between them. She felt warmer. He shifted closer.
“I’m so scared,” she suddenly mumbled. Her voice sounded small, and since her eyes were still closed he doubted she knew where she was or what she was saying. She frowned and then sobbed, a silent, tortured sob. “Don’t say a word, please.”
“Ambra, you don’t need to worry,” he said, struck by the fear in her voice. Was that his doing?
She shook her head but didn’t say any more. After a moment’s hesitation, he took her hand and held it, listened to her breathing. It wasn’t quite steady, but he thought she was sleeping, not unconscious. She was so small beside him, giving off practically no warmth at all.
“Sorry,” she said after a moment. Her voice sounded tortured. “I was stupid, I know, sorry. Please.”
“It’s fine, Ambra,” he said, stroking her hand.
A concerned look had appeared on her face again. “Just don’t tell Tom, I was so scared of him.”
“You don’t need to worry,” he whispered, over and over again.
All his life, he had tried to help people. And as a soldier, he had always seen it as his duty to protect women and children in particular. What he’d subjected Ambra to . . . He felt ruined. Wretched. She was under his roof and she had fled. Out of fear of him. Because he scared her. He had betrayed everything he believed in, all of his ideals.
After a while, she started to stir, and she turned with a groan, her back to him. Tom waited, a breath in his throat, but it seemed she was still asleep. He didn’t want to leave her, and it seemed as if his closeness helped to calm her, so he lay down on the mattress beside hers. His hand lingered on her slender shoulder. She was breathing calmly now, no nightmares, no anxiety. But he really didn’t want to leave her, wanted to keep an eye on her, and so he pulled a blanket over himself and lay there next to her. If anything happened, if she felt afraid or in pain, he would notice immediately. The fire crackled. Freja moved over to his feet, and they lay there like that, all three of them, until eventually he fell asleep.
Chapter 36
Ambra woke slowly with a terrible feeling inside her. Something was wrong, she knew it before she was even awake, long before she opened her eyes. All she wanted was to stay asleep, didn’t want to face whatever had scared her.
Was she a grown woman, or was she a child?
It was one of her recurring nightmares, that she was still a foster child at the mercy of someone else. But no, she didn’t live with the Sventins anymore, nor anyone else for that matter. She was a grown woman; she’d had her own home and a real job for years.
So why was she so scared? Was it a nightmare, or had something actually happened? Was she sick?
Something had happened, she could feel it, something she didn’t want to think about. She was so cold last night, must have forgotten to close the window. And she almost felt as if she had been drugged. Was she hungover?
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. She would never be able to get back to sleep now anyway.
She wasn’t home; she saw that immediately. The room was dark, but she wasn’t home. Where was she? She was genuinely disoriented. How could she not know where she was?
She tried to blink the sleep and the grit from her eyes, but it was too exhausting. And she couldn’t get her brain to work. She gave up, closed her eyes, felt herself float away. So good.
“Ambra? How are you?”
Someone was touching her forehead, forcing her to come back. A low, worried voice. “You slept for twenty hours. Are you awake? You need to drink a little more.”
All she wanted was to sleep; she was completely exhausted.
“Ambra?” Someone was shaking her now, not hard but firmly. “You need some liquid.”
“I’m so tired,” she whispered. It sounded more like a croak.
“I’ll help you sit up.”
“Tom?” she asked, confused. What was Tom doing here? Wasn’t he in Kiruna? Wait. She was in Kiruna. Or was that just a dream?
“Don’t go back to sleep. Come on, I’ll help you.” He pulled her arm and helped her to sit up against the pillows. She was so drained that she slumped backward. But then she realized she really was thirsty. Her mouth was so dry she could barely swallow.
“Drink this. Slowly,” he said, handing her a cup of tea. She pulled a face when she tasted it. It was far too sweet.
“Drink.”
She drank half of it before he took the cup away from her. “You can have some more in a minute,” he said.
She licked her lips. They were dry. “What happened?”<
br />
“Do you know where you are?” His eyes were serious.
Ambra looked around. “Your house,” she said. But she still didn’t understand. What was she doing in his living room? On the floor? Had she fainted? She couldn’t remember a thing.
“You took one of the snowmobiles and drove off. I found you in the forest just in time. You’d crashed, and you were lying in the snow, freezing cold and unconscious.”
His words were difficult to decipher. It was hard to see the logic in them. Ambra reached for the cup, and he handed it to her.
“You can have some soup later,” he said as she drank more of the tea. He spoke slowly, but Ambra still couldn’t quite keep up. Jesus, she had such a headache. It was like an iron band around her head. And her body hurt so much.
She moved and realized she was naked. Did they have sex? She really couldn’t remember, she thought with panic. But she could remember that she’d been afraid, terrified. She pulled the blanket around her. “Why aren’t I wearing any clothes? What happened? Did we . . . do something?”
Tom shook his head. “Nothing happened—you have my word—nothing like that. We fought, I got mad. Then you drove off on the snowmobile. You don’t remember?”
She racked her memory. Snowmobile. Snow. It did sound vaguely familiar. She looked over to the window. Snowstorm. She remembered.
“You just disappeared,” Tom continued. “I drove around looking for you. When I found you, you’d crashed into a tree. I brought you back here. Your clothes were soaked through, so I had to take everything off. I swear nothing else happened,” he repeated.
She believed him. She twisted a little, felt the sheet against her ass and her breasts; as far as she could tell, she wasn’t wearing a stitch. Maybe she should focus on something else, but had Tom undressed her? Everything? She cleared her throat. “I’m still thirsty,” she said.
High Risk Page 31