“What’s it like in there?”
“Bare bones—just an insulated steel hut and a generator. Which is…” He pointed to the other building. “There.”
“You think…”
“I don’t know, Angel. I don’t know.”
There was a chance, after all this, that it would be empty, without a crumb, a lick of fuel, or a spark of hope inside. He remembered with surprising clarity that when he’d been here, someone had left one of those megapacks of cheese puffs. The little balls that melted on your tongue and provided absolutely no nutritional value.
His mouth watered as he let himself go a little, picturing all those foods he’d never gotten to eat as a kid. Dad was strict about junk food. Sugar, as far as he was concerned, was utterly useless. He shook his head and did his best to blink back the memory, which was harder than usual.
It didn’t make it any easier, knowing that this was hunger playing tricks on him. As if, while his body metabolized its own musculature, his brain turned to memories for sustenance. Big, fat, unexplored memories, so long-buried they felt new. So new, he could taste them.
Forty-five minutes later, they’d uncovered the door. It was frozen firmly closed. After a good fifteen minutes’ struggle, bringing into service their hands, then the axe, and finally the shovel, it still wouldn’t budge. Hopelessness had just started to settle over them when Angel disappeared and returned, holding one of her chef’s knives like a magic wand.
She chiseled away at the seam, he yanked, and…halle-freaking-lujah!
The door flew open to reveal…more snow. A three-foot pile of it right in their path. Angel groaned, but he’d expected this, since he’d seen storms shove ice through cracks in doors and windows. The layer of ice around the door was probably the only reason the inside hadn’t packed any fuller than this.
He didn’t care, though, because beyond the obstacle, the place was remarkably clear. And there, at the farthest end of the room, was a kitchen corner. On the shelves were boxes and cans and bags of food. He stepped over the mound and stomped across the snow-dusted floor, hoping against hope that the boxes weren’t empties left by some lazy asshole. He picked up a can. Full. A package of what looked like cookies or crackers or something—impossible to tell from the Cyrillic writing—also full. Beside it, some kind of dried stew, Indian food, curries in packets… Food for days.
He turned, startled to find Angel right beside him instead of back in the doorway. She’d come in so quietly.
His mouth opened and closed when he met those big warm eyes fixed not on the food, but on him.Him.
And her expression—he couldn’t explain it exactly, but it did something to him, made him feel…different. Alive and whole and responsible, somehow, for this miracle.
“I didn’t put this here,” he said, one hand up to keep her from putting too much faith in him. “Didn’t even remember this place.”
“I know,” she said with a funny half smile and a nod. She stepped around him and reached for a can, which she slapped onto the counter with a satisfying thud. “Let’s eat.”
Chapter 34
Day 13—Norwegian Field Research Camp, 142 Miles from Volkov Station
There was a strange thing happening in Angel’s body. Or maybe her mind.
The feeling, she thought, might be happiness.
They’d eaten first, scarfing crackers like animals in the frigid hut, then found the generator and fuel. Not a lot, but enough, maybe, to warm the place for a couple days and, probably most important of all, to charge up Ford’s sat phone.
He was out there now, hopefully getting the generator up and running.
She emptied the packet of freeze-dried whatever it was into the pot on their camp stove. Now that they’d slaked that first rabid hunger with some dry, bark-like crackers, they’d eat something hot.
A few seconds later, she groaned at the moist warmth wafting up to her. She had no idea what it was she was heating. It could have been dog food for all she knew. Didn’t matter.
Just as she spooned the contents into two bowls, an engine started growling, the sound so out of place it took her a dozen beats to realize what it was. Breath held, hope suspended, she waited for a few seconds for it to sputter out. When it didn’t, she put down the pan, turned—
And there he was in the doorway, like magic. He slammed the door shut and took a couple steps inside.
Holy crap, the generator worked.
But that wasn’t what made her heart clench. It was the smile on Ford’s face when he wrenched off his mask—wide and open and honest, an echo of that boy he’d described, fishing on the island with his brother.
That smile split his face and hit her with the blinding force of a gale.
It took every bit of willpower not to run and throw herself into his arms. And then, because willpower was for staying alive, not for fighting the inevitable or denying the truth, she tripped forward and let her body collide with his, wrap around it, sink into him. She wanted to celebrate every vital, warm piece of him, to revel in him as ifhewere the feast.
