them. Or in the middle of texting, or... You never know for sure. I mean, people step in front of buses or get struck by lightning...”
Thomas put his hand on the side of her face, his palm and fingers somehow warm, and Tasha leaned into it, into him, before she realized he hadn’t done it to comfort her. Oops. He was making sure she hadn’t gotten too cold. For most of the afternoon, the temperature had been dropping steadily.
Still he didn’t pull his hand away until she leaned back and essentially released him.
“I’m okay,” she said, managing to meet his eyes and force a smile. “We should keep going.”
He shook his head. “I’mma build another hide, dig another fire pit, light it and let us both get warm. Okay?” She nodded. “After I put the fire out, I’ll make sure this area is secure before I go—alone—to surveil the compound.”
Tash felt her eyes widen. “You’re gonna leave me here?” God, she couldn’t’ve made herself sound more like a seven-year-old if she’d tried. Her voice had actually squeaked. “That’s okay,” she quickly added. “I’ll be okay.”
“Just so I can move more swiftly and silently,” he said.
“I know,” she said. She’d practically grown up with the teams of SEALs and BUD/S candidates on the Coronado Navy Base. She’d been completely aware, all day, that Thomas would’ve been moving much more quickly if she hadn’t been slowing him down.
“I’ll be back,” Thomas said.
And this time her smile was a little less forced. “I know. Come on, Terminator, I’ll help you build the hide.”
“Don’t you dare English Patient me.”
Tasha’s last words echoed in Thomas’s head as he headed back to the hide where he’d left her. He knew exactly what she’d meant, because they’d watched the DVD of the classic movie together—must’ve been when she was around fifteen. They’d both had the same reaction to the Oscar-winning film—the main romance felt weird and the hero read to them as stalkerish, but the secondary storyline was worth the time-investment, mostly due to Naveen Andrews, the actor who played the explosives expert.
Still, he knew Tash had been referring to the part of the movie where the hero left the injured heroine in a cave, went to get help, and instead had a massive fail, due to getting his ass locked up in prison. Spoiler alert: that did not end well for the heroine.
An irony was that Thomas had found a cave—more like a glacial dump of huge slabs of granite and feldspar that created a cavern-like space—on the path he’d taken from the newly built hide to the ski lodge. He’d made note of it as a potential Plan B shelter—and now that he was in full Plan B mode, it would certainly be better than the hide as the temperature continued to drop.
The sun had long since set and it was dark, but the clouds were finally thinning enough to give a hint of the moon as Thomas narrowed his perimeter circle around the hide. When he was close enough, he gave Tasha the signal they’d agreed upon before he’d left—a double owl, basic, true, because face it, his beach-boy upbringing gave him a masterful seagull, which wouldn’t play well here in the mountains.
The clouds parted for the moonlight with perfect timing as Thomas pulled back the branches of the hide. Tasha’s relief was clearly visible in her wide eyes as he slipped in beside her.
“I knew you’d find me,” she said. “I didn’t know how you were going to do it in the dark, but worst case you’d find me in the morning. Assuming you weren’t, you know, in prison somewhere.”
“I’m sorry I took so long. Are you freezing?”
“Not too badly. The rocks lasted for a while.”
He put the branches in place overhead, and that plus a shift in the clouds plunged them back into full shadow.
But not before she’d seen the hunting rifle he was carrying—and the boots on his feet. Boots that were too small, so he’d cut holes in the toes to give himself the needed room. She was smart, so she surely realized that meant he’d also picked up a knife.
“Whoa,” she said. “You stopped at the 7-11, but you didn’t get me a coffee?” She put her arms around him in the darkness, hugging him tightly. “What happened? Are you all right?”
As Thomas hugged her back, he knew what she thought—that he’d bumped into one of her abductors and took him out. He also knew that killing one of