Her hood fell back and a bare hand landed on her forehead. It felt good—warm and cold at the same time.
“You’re burning up.”
She huffed out a weird sound that felt like a laugh. “I mention I had a stomach thing? Food poisoning, I thought. Maybe it was a bug?”
He paused, eyes wide. “Kidding me?”
“No.” She managed a woozy head shake. “Fun, huh?”
“Right.” His eyes roved over her face. “If all else fails, maybe we can get them with a stomach flu.”
No point mentioning that this whole thing revolved around a virus. “Could work.” She cocked her head. “If you don’t catch it first.”
“Guess we’d better hurry then. Here, I’m giving you meds.” He rooted around in his pack and came out with little pills that she swallowed back without hesitating. Talk about trust.
She smiled, let her head thunk against the tree, and stared up at the whispering branches, blinking at the falling snow. “Thank you, yeti.”
“You’re welcome, Leo.” He bent, grabbed her under the arm, and hauled her up. “Let’s go.”
***
They trudged over slick, uneven ground for another half hour before Elias slowed, narrowing his eyes at the still-dark sky. What a night.
“I’m…fine. Don’t…stop.” Leo caught up to him, lagging and out of breath but apparently forged from steel.
He threw the pack against the thick trunk of a black spruce and just stopped himself from pushing her hood back. Asking permission wasn’t something he did all that much anymore. If something needed doing, he just did it. “Uh, mind if I check that?” He indicated her head and hovered over her, feeling big and backward.
She pushed the hood away, lifted her ski mask, and wiped her sleeve across her snow-flecked eyes, then watched him work.
It didn’t bother him at first, but after a few seconds, he glanced down. “What?”
She blinked fast. “Nothing.”
“You’re looking at me weird.” He yanked off a glove and put his hand to her forehead. “Still feverish?”
“It’s just…you don’t look anything like…” She shut her mouth tight. “Never mind.”
He grunted. Not much of a response, but he figured he knew what she was thinking. That he didn’t look much like the golden boy whose photo the media had plastered everywhere back when it happened.
Well, he didn’t. And he was fine with that. That guy was dead. Gone. He’d done the right thing instead of the smart thing. He’d trusted people he shouldn’t have. And he’d lost his life because of it.
She shook her head. “If I had a camera right now.”
Rage welled up. “What? You’d show the world what I’ve become? How far I’ve fallen from America’s favorite college quarterback? You think I even give a—”
“No.” She faced him head-on, not backing away, despite his obvious fury. “I wasgonnasay that I’d make a fortune by proving once and for all that Bigfoot’s real.”
When she reached up and brushed a mini avalanche from his beard, it was all he could do not to back away. Not because he was scared of her, but…
Shit. Was he scared of her?
Maybe, though he wouldn’t delve into why right now. What he knew was that, even feverish and wounded, trudging through the roughest terrain in America, in some of the worst weather the place had to offer, she kept a sense of humor.
He liked that. A lot.
Self-consciously, he rubbed at his snow-crusted face, and then, because it was second nature, flicked a look at the wintry trees that clung to the side of the ridge.
His eyes narrowed. Had something moved up in the woods? They’d left tracks behind them, inevitably, but he’d assumed the sleet and wind would erase most signs of their passage. Had he been wrong? Were they blazing a mile-wide trail for whoever was after them? The storm slowing down was a relief—at least physically—but without its scouring effects, following them would be child’s play.
