He sighed just as Sampson ended the call, looking pissed.
“She didn’t need to speak to me, I gather?” Clive asked, nonchalant now that things were out of his hands.
Sampson ignored him and turned instead to his men. “Head out at zero six hundred hours, storm or not. Tonight, we prep.”
Without another word, the men stalked out of the communication center, leaving Clive to slug back the rest of his coffee with a fatalistic sigh.
* * *
Day 4—230 Miles to Volkov Station—18 Days of Food Remaining
A couple hours into the next day, Angel began to hate the ice. Not the way she had before, like an object or an idea, but like a person.
She cursed it with every slide forward, every painful drag on the sled.
And the bitch spoke to her in return.
It crackled beneath her skis, the pops and hisses as vicious and alive as a creature from the underworld. So big its back curved off in the distance. So vast she’d never meet it head-on.
Swoosh, slide, crack. The wind, still working against them, whistled hard and loud. Even covered as she was, it ate at her skin, tore at her flesh, chapped her lips, and sucked the blood from her veins.
Behind her fogged-up goggles, she could barely see Ford, which left her alone with her thoughts.
And, honestly, her thoughts were a mess. Along with pain and hunger was the thrill of last night.
The more time passed, the more she doubted her own sanity. Had she hallucinated the whole thing? It had sure felt like it this morning, when she’d unstuck her eyes to find him stoic and cold again. As if nothing had happened between them.
How could he be so normal when everything was in such turmoil, inside and out? It had been business as usual for His Royal Stiffness.
She was mad about it, actually. So riled that her pace picked up, every sliding step drawing her closer to that wide, straight back. In fact, when she caught up with him, she’d let him know it wasn’t okay. Between the stupid ice and the stupid wind and the stupid man who wouldn’t even throw her a morning-after smile, she wanted to—
Her ski caught on something, wrenching her leg to the side and slamming her body painfully to the ice, so hard it forced the air out of her lungs.
Wheezing, she rolled onto her back, stared dumbly at the sky, and waited for her eyes to focus. Her arm throbbed from breaking her fall and her head smarted. How about her knee? Slowly, she shifted to the side, taking stock as she attempted to put weight on it. Oh hell.
Maybe she could stay here for a second or two. Just a few minutes to catch her breath and rest.
The wind, bastard that it was, said her name, trying to get her to come up and play, toying with her like some evil force from the deep.
“Leave us alone!” she managed to get out.
When something grasped her arm, she pulled away, then froze for a few confused seconds.
Ford, not the wind.
Oh. Okay. So, this is it. I’ve officially crossed into delirium.
Maybe it was time for a snack or something.
“Here,” he said as he reached for her again. “Let me ge—”
She put out a hand to stop him.
No. She was done with the weakness and the falling and accepting help from this man. Done craving things she had to pull out of him by force.
She hadn’t fought her way to the top of the restaurant food chain to let this place turn her to mush.
It was do this or die trying. Which was almost funny, because if there was one place she could actually die trying, it was here.
