"Are you psychoanalyzing me?"
"I hear you."
He reaches out. His rough hand cups the side of my face. His thumb brushes just beneath the bandage on my forehead. The touch is infinitely gentle. The contrast between the lethal man who owns a suppressed weapon and the man carefully tending my wounds is dizzying.
"You walked through hell and you came out the other side." Santi holds my gaze.
The validation hits me directly in the chest. It is not pity. It is profound respect. He sees the ugly, hardened parts of my soul and he respects them. He demands no vulnerability. He simply acknowledges my strength.
It is the most intimate thing anyone has ever said to me.
Heat crawls up my neck. My defenses crumble under the force of his dark stare. I lean my cheek into his palm. The rough calluses on his skin ground me in the present moment.
"I don't want to need you, Santi." The confession slips out before I can stop it.
"I know."
"Your world is going to drag me under."
"I will dismantle my world before I let it touch you."
He speaks the vow with terrifying conviction. He is a man who has lived a long time in emotional detachment. A man who lost his parents and absorbed the grief in total silence. He woke up the moment my helicopter crashed into the mountain. Somehow, I became the thing that made him feel alive again.
The realization terrifies me. It thrills me.
"The storm is getting worse." I whisper.
"It will break by dawn." Santi drops his hand from my face. The loss of contact leaves a cold ache on my skin. "The extraction team will arrive at the coordinates by zero-eight-hundred."
He turns away from me. He walks over to the cot. He picks up the heavy Glock.
He checks the magazine. He snaps it back into place. He checks the chamber.
He turns back and holds the weapon out to me. Grip first.
I stare at the black metal.
"Take it." His voice leaves no room for refusal.
I reach out. My fingers wrap around the grip. He releases the weapon into my sole possession.
"You keep the weapon tonight." Santi moves back toward the door. He pulls his coat tighter around his frame. "If anyone comes through that door who is not my blood, you put a hollow-point round between their eyes. You do not hesitate."
"Where are you going?"
"The wolves tracked the blood from the crash." He rests his hand on the iron crossbar. "They are circling the cabin. I’m going to clear the perimeter.”
He lifts the iron crossbar. The wind screams into the room.
"Lock it." He commands.
He steps out into the whiteout. He pulls the door shut.
I keep my finger outside the trigger guard and check the chamber the way my father taught me. Ready. The heavy click of the metal echoes in the silence. I walk to the door and drop the iron crossbar into place.
I stand in the freezing cabin, holding a Costa gun, waiting for the war to arrive.
8
