A glacier cave—majestic and soaring and absolutely enchanted. Blimey, what a sight. He took a step, nearly fell, and righted himself. Then slowly slid around the space, running a gloved hand over curved ice, taking in the bumps and dips with the wonder of a child. Hefeltlike a child here, younger than he had in ages, and utterly alive, which was sweet and tragic. Tears clouded his vision. It was beautiful, utterly still, frozen in time, like a wave at its apex.
He shut his eyes and fought the pain that tried to tear into the hard black diamond of his heart. After a few steadying breaths, he moved on.
Close to halfway round, he found a second way out—a low, tight tunnel, showing clear signs of passage. Outside, he stepped down, straight onto the frozen river, and took one last, longing look at the gem hidden just inside. The perfect juxtaposition of nature and mathematics, a wave, as symmetrical as a nautilus shell, hidden beneath the surface of this innocuous wash of ice. Not a crystal out of place. The most perfectly designed architecture on the planet.
With a sigh, he let his assessing gaze sweep the chilly scenery. It took a while, but eventually, he spotted what he was looking for through the hard-driving snow, which was lovely as confetti but as painful as tiny shards of glass. A series of peg holes, too even to be random. It could be another animal, of course. But a wolf would have to be absolutely daft to be out in this weather—and those tracks had been made in the last few hours. Heknewhe was onto them.
He put a gloved hand out and watched, transfixed, as a mix of flakes and ice settled on his palm, some rushing to land while others meandered as if they had all the time in the world, both covering the ground with mesmerizing efficiency.
With a single overloud slap of his hands, he sent so many little masterpieces puffing away to join the others on the smooth ground and followed the dog’s prints west.
Chapter 14
Leo’s gaze remained fixed on Elias’s back as they picked their way along the slippery boulders and geometric ice chunks lining the river. He’d given her one of his poles, which made walking marginally easier, and used the other to test the ground every few steps.
Though visibility was basically nil, Elias walked and climbed as easily as if this were a nice stroll in the woods instead of a constant battle against wind and snow, water and ice and rock formations clearly designed by the devil.
Elias Thorne. His name hit her like a surreal punch to the gut. The whole situation was so out of left field that she wondered if she’d lost her mind. Had she? Was this the fever talking? Was she actually tucked in bed back at Schink’s Station, suffering through an epic flu? If that was the case, wouldn’t her brain have made Bo a blue zebra? Or, hell, her reincarnated mom?
She watched Elias’s sturdy silhouette for a few more minutes, mesmerized by the steadiness of him, his constant, unerring progress. No way she’d invent someone like him, who tromped through the storm with the easy confidence of the local wildlife, in well-used, top-of-the-line boots and a worn mud-colored, fur-lined parka that could have come from another century. His pace was almost mechanical in its constancy, as if he were barely human—or so at home here that neither the terrain nor the weather affected him. Only the occasional glance over his shoulder altered his pace. He was checking on her every hundred feet or so.
None of this was the erratic behavior of the mass-murdering psychopath the media had made him out to be back in the day.
She did a quick gut check and came up with nothing but respect for the man. He’d saved her life after all. And even without that, hell, she kind oflikedhim.
Except not just kind of.
She took in the world around her. Nothing was visible aside from the flat line of the river to her left and the almost sheer vertical rise they’d spent the last half hour skirting. The storm turned everything, including the now nearly invisible shape of the man in front of her, into an almost uniform gray, flattening distances and tamping down sounds. There could be an army out there and she wouldn’t know it.
She needed to hurry or he’d get swallowed up by the weather, a ghost fading into the landscape.
It wasn’t a comfortable feeling—being entirely dependent on the man.
On they trudged for maybe another fifteen minutes, the snow-sleet mix turning so gradually to rain that Leo didn’t notice the change until her clothes were soaked. Ironically, she shivered with cold now that the atmosphere had warmed. Beneath her feet, the ground was turning to soup, the surface of the river dangerously waterlogged in places and deadly slick. The light was so odd, it was hard to tell if it was day or night.
Stopping to catch her breath, she looked right, where the high rock wall they’d followed had tapered off. Left, as far as she could see, was nothing but flat snow. She squinted through the pelting rain.
Nope. That wasn’t snow. It was ice.
“Hey,” she stage-whispered. “Hang on.”
He turned, his coat completely dark, what features she could see pinched, his eyebrows, nose, and beard dripping water.
Slipping and sliding, she caught up to him. “Isn’t this dangerous?”
“What?” he deadpanned.
“Walking on the river in this downpour.”
“Not a river.”
She blinked. “What?”
“We’re on the lake.”
“But isn’t that…” Whatever she was going to say frittered to nothing on the tip of her tongue as she spun in a slow, dizzying three sixty. Was it just yesterday that she’d considered landing on this lake? “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Fastest way to the other side is across. Going around would take at least two days. This, we can manage in a few hours.” He threw a look back in the direction they’d just come from. “Need to get there before the pea soup clears and that helicopter catches us smack in the middle.”
