“Call you what?” She sounded confused.
“Ford.”
“It’s your name.” Her head tilted at an angle. “Isn’t it?”
“People call me Coop.”
“Oh, right. Coop.” She popped the finalp, clearly displeased with the sound.
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that I don’t li—”
“Why don’t you like it?”
“Because you’re a man, not ahenhouse.” She sighed. “Not to mention, it rhymes with poo—”
A gruff laugh erupted from his lungs, surprising them both. It relaxed his muscles and broke him from the spell of almost losing her.
Jesus, this woman.
“And I like Ford. The name suits you. You’re…” There was something awkward, almost embarrassed about the way she turned away now, but because she was courageous, honest Angel Smith and not cowardly Ford Cooper, she finished. “I don’t know. Fording streams, forging a path for us. Coop is too…small a name for you.”
“All right then,” he managed to say before his bout of embarrassment clogged up his throat. “You want a break?”
“No. Keep going.”
“You’ve got to watch that knee, Angel. I see how you’re favor—”
“You heard it too, didn’t you?” She didn’t have to pull off her goggles for him to know she had that narrow-eyed look on her face. “The engine noise. They’re still after us, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we keep moving.”
“You need to rest, or we’ll—”
Ignoring him, she skied ahead, leading the way. Stubborn woman.
He grinned, the feel of it unfamiliar on his features, and took off. They’d been going maybe five minutes, skiing beside one another instead of in a line, when he slowed and half turned. “Speaking of names,” he said, enjoying the novelty of being heard after days of howling against the wind. “Angel’s pretty presumptuous, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” She slowed to match his pace.
“You live up to your parents’ expectations with that name?” He figured she had. Maybe she wasn’t saintly in the biblical sense, but she was kind, good, generous. And beautiful, though he worked to ignore the pulse of want that went through him, turning to stare at the increasingly textured ice. There was a pattern to it that reminded him of something. Striations breaking up the windblown desert. To avoid falls, they’d have to watch their pace with variations like these. He turned, thinking he’d mention it, but she was still laughing at his comment.
“Ha! Right.” She pushed off hard, more confident on her skis than she’d been that first day. Graceful, in fact, and faster.
They hadn’t heard the plane again, though the weather was holding, with the sun bright enough to warm the air and his body and even his insides.
Who knew? Maybe they’d get those thirteen miles in today and make it to Volkov after all.
He’d just set off when she screamed, loud, primal, and frantic, then disappeared—swallowed up by the ice.
* * *
For a few valuable seconds, Coop stared at the spot she’d just vacated, mind blank.
It was fear that knocked him out of it, reaching in to twist his innards like a bony fist. Before his brain had begun to process things, he unclipped his skis and ran. Stupid, considering she’d just been eaten by the earth, but he couldn’t slow his pace.
