It was option one in giving her time to contact Damien, and the easiest. He hoped she’d take it.
But she didn’t.
“No, that’s okay.”
Now that the fire was going, their little dwelling was already becoming more comfortable. Ren took the sweater she’d given him and unwrapped it from his head. He tried to keep any annoyance from his voice.
“You don’t want to even try? You never know. It’s worth a shot.”
She just shrugged and took a bite of her protein bar. “No, I don’t have a phone.”
What?“Not at all? Not even a really cheap one? Even eight-year-olds have a phone these days.”
“Nope. Not me.”
“Then how do you contact people? Your friends?” Maybe she’d ditched her phone before she left. Damn it, now he wished hehadn’t told her his phone had no signal. He could’ve offered it to her to use to make a call.
“I haven’t had one in years. I don’t really like talking on one, I guess. And I don’t have a lot of friends. I work a lot.”
Ren didn’t buy it. She either already had a radio-silence plan in place with her ex-husband or she didn’t trust Ren and was hiding her phone until she could contact Freihof in private. Omega would intercept that call if it came.
“Wow, that’s crazy, but I’ll bet it makes your life more peaceful.”
“Will your parents worry about you? Your brother? Since your phone won’t work?”
“No. I don’t check in with them every day. When they hear about the train, they’ll worry. But like I said, it will be days before they backtrack to where the accident happened. And hopefully we’ll be in civilization before then.”
She got that worried look on her face again.
“Is there someone who’ll be waiting for you?” he asked. “Worrying? Were you going all the way to Saint Louis?”
She shook her head. “No, there’s no one who’ll be concerned about me for a long time.”
He crawled closer as she got the sleeping bag out and began to unzip it. “You should leave it zipped up,” he told her. “You’ll stay warmer that way.”
“No, that means you’ll have nothing. We’ll share it.”
Ren had to tamp down the unexpected pleasure that bubbled through his system at the thought of lying next to Natalie. His body didn’t seem to care that she was probably a criminal and, if her ex-husband had rubbed off on her at all, she’d be able to kill him while he slept without blinking an eye.
No, his body wasn’t interested in acknowledging that at all.
He distracted himself by getting some of the snow from outside and placing it inside her water bottle—a perk he hadn’tplanned on having this early, but was willing to take advantage of—so it would be melted and ready for consumption by the morning. He’d had a large water bottle stashed in the cave when they’d cleaned it out, but now they wouldn’t have to use it and explain the sudden appearance of clean drinking water.
He helped her spread the jackets out on the ground so they could lie down on those and would be able to pull the sleeping bag over them. It wasn’t going to be the Ritz, but it wasn’t half bad.
“I’m feeling much better,” she said as she settled next to him, close enough for their body heat to help each other.
“Do you want to tell me what the whole snow thing was about?” he asked.
He could feel her stiffen. “It’s a long story. I just don’t like snow. I’ve lived in California for six years so it hasn’t been an issue. I guess I was just overwhelmed tonight. I still feel so off.”
It had been a hell of a lot more than not liking snow, but Ren let it pass. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”
He didn’t say anything else, didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. He just slid behind her on top of the jackets and put her between him and the fire. He reached down and pulled the sleeping bag over them both.
There wasn’t much room in the cave, even less in their little sleeping pallet. Although they were both on their backs, Ren was pressed up against Natalie from shoulder to knee. Between the warmth, the exhaustion from what had happened and the drugs still in her system, she should’ve been asleep pretty rapidly. But an hour later, her stiff form announced that she was far from sleep.
“Peaches, what’s wrong?”
