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“Exactly so.”
“Mine are pretty sharp,” she said, and her smile hit him like a magnetic field, as if he had been flung up and outward, and then landed hard. Breathless. Yeah. She rendered him fumbling and awkward, as he hadn’t been since his undergrad days.
Full dark fell before they reached Salango. He didn’t think they could get lost, sticking to the road, but her steps had slowed to the point that they were making almost no progress. So he called a halt.
“I’m thinking we make camp for the night.”
She glanced around, brow raised. “Where?”
“What’s left of that palapa, a few hundred meters down the beach. It’ll keep any rain off us, if not the wind and the insects.”
The structure had been built of palm fronds—withered dry now—and driftwood. It looked to him like a squatter’s hut. Half of it had pitched down, doubtless because of the shocks from the quake, but it was such a simple structure that it wouldn’t take him long to shore it up. They’d have to sleep on the sand, but compared to the lab, it would be heavenly. The sea air alone made up for any number of deficiencies.
“Hungry?” she asked.
He nodded as he went to work. The
re seemed no point in whining about it, though. Without another word, she went off down the beach, stooping to study the sand every now and then. For long moments, Silas watched her instead of repairing the hut. Pure distraction, she was.
Eventually, she returned with a couple of crabs, beaming in the moonlight. She dumped them in his hands and pulled out a pocket-knife. Without visible fear or disgust, she took care of the cleaning, cutting away the inedible bits. She cut the meat and then pierced them with a sliver of driftwood.
“If you can find some more dry wood, I can build a fire.”
She hadn’t been kidding when she said she’d be a help. He’d resigned himself to privation during the long walk. Though Silas had traveled a lot, both before and after his incarceration, he’d never done so as a wilderness type. He’d preferred riding the bus—people watching; disconnecting from the high-stress university job for three full months, and staying in hostels. But he always had a duffel bag and money in his pocket. Not this time.
Nodding, he went down the beach to look for firewood.
The world had changed in five years, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with it. Maybe some day he’d apply for a job at a college again. Hell if he knew what he’d put on his resume about his long disappearance off the grid. God knew it bespoke a certain instability. Some academic types were prone to that, vanishing to live in a trailer in the Arizona desert for ten years and then popping up with some new earthshaking theory that made the erratic behavior acceptable. He didn’t have a new hypothesis. He couldn’t chance working in that place, though it would’ve offered some solace. He couldn’t risk giving away the fact that their experiments hadn’t ruined his mind, as they thought. No, he had to maintain the façade at all times.
As long as Rowan believed he was broken, he had some hope of minimizing the collateral damage. If they’d managed to re-create their success in him for mass production, his ability would’ve been weaponized. Unthinkable. He’d had no choice but to keep the truth from them: he wasn’t their biggest failure. In strictest terms, besides T-89, he was the most powerful subject they’d ever produced. He was also the only one who’d successfully prevented them from discovering what he could do.
The walk took him a far ways before he thought he had enough wood to cook on, not that he could be sure. He returned at a run, worried now about leaving her alone in the dark so long. Granted, she was more capable than most, but she’d come with him for protection. If nothing else, his size deterred trouble.
He found her waiting with makeshift crab skewers in each hand. Nothing to fear. The beach flowed empty in all directions, and the ocean sang to him in rhythmic cadence. Soothing. Restful.
“Build a tent with the wood, if you can. Kind up propped up at an angle? That lets the oxygen flow through better.”
“Like this?”
Silas did as she asked and then took the skewers. With her lighter, dried palm fronds, and a lot of patience, she got it to catch. He watched with naked admiration, enjoying the sight of her bent over the flames. They glazed her skin, highlighting her curves. Juneau had long legs; he couldn’t help but notice, though it had been so long since he’d been with a woman that he wouldn’t know what to do with her even if she presented herself naked. But he could look. No harm in that.
Exhausted, he dropped onto the sand and listened to the night. Seabirds called. Insects chirruped. The crabmeat smelled so good, juices crackling in the fire, that he almost moaned.
“Here. Be careful. It’s hot.”
And he laughed. God, it had been so long. “I just watched you cook those. You don’t think much of the wits I’m supposed to survive on, do you?”
To his surprise, she ducked her head, sheepish. “It’s not that. I just thought you might be too hungry to remember to be careful. My stomach feels like it’s eating my spine.”
“Delightful image.” But he took her warning to heart and blew on the seafood kebabs long enough not to sear his tongue.
It was sweet and a little gritty. Not nearly enough to sate his appetite, but it did take the edge off. They should reach Salango by midmorning, and then they’d figure out what to do next. Funny how he’d come to include her in his thoughts, even though he didn’t make plans.
Later, they lay back to back on their sides. It gave him a strange feeling, nothing he could put a name to, but less alone, though as she’d said, alone was not always the same as lonely. For him, it always had been. Until now. Until tonight.
Until Juneau.
FIVE
