Those unreadable taiga eyes held hers. “You did good.”
A tiny bloom of warmth spread behind her sternum, stubborn and entirely unrelated to temperature. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out but chattering teeth and a shaky breath.
Two hours to the cache. They wouldn’t make it like this.
Sodden fabric was stealing heat from her body faster than she could generate it. Her thoughts were already slowing at the edges, the world going soft around her. Hypothermia was gentle, and the cold was getting quieter inside her body.
“Need a fire,” she forced out. “Two hours in wet clothes at this temperature and altitude—we…we won’t make the cache.”
He gave a clipped nod. “We need a fire. Smoke’s a risk. But wet clothes will kill us faster than anything else.” He pointed through the trees. “There.”
A rocky overhang backed by dense pine, sheltered from the wind and screened enough to break the smoke.
He moved immediately, dropping to a crouch beneath the overhang and shrugging off his pack. From it he pulled a survival blanket—a square of thin silver foil that looked like nothing and meant everything.
One blanket.
He shook it out, wrapped it around her shoulders, and pressed gently until she sat. She sank gratefully on legs that had gone loose and unreliable beneath her.
Goosebumps pebbled his exposed forearms and throat, but he moved as if unaffected. “Wait here.”
He headed into the trees, snapping dead limbs from the underside of conifers where the needles were dry. When he returned, he built the fire quickly—pine needles first, then thin twigs, then thicker branches. One spark from the flint around his neck and the flame caught.
Small at first, then growing. Resin snapped in the flames, sweet enough to cut through the cold metal taste in her mouth. The warmth touched her face, and her body leaned toward it with desperate instinct. Her skin burned as sensation returned—a thousand needles stabbing through deadened flesh.
Pav shifted closer to the fire, putting himself between Harper and the wind sliding down the river valley.
“We need to get out of these wet clothes. Wet fabric against skin speeds up heat loss.”
His expression remained neutral. “So.”
He met her eyes.
“Clothes off.”
16
Pav waited.
Somewhere in the trees beyond the overhang an owl called—two low notes that hung in the silence before the forest swallowed them. The fire crackled and spat, resin popping in the flames, sending up tiny showers of sparks that died in the frigid air.
“Turn around.” Harper had her arms wrapped around herself, the survival blanket clutched against her chest. Her face was flushed, and her eyes landed on him, then moved away with a speed that was almost violent.
Pav turned.
He stripped first because hesitation would make it awkward.
Fleece first, the fabric sopping with river water over his head. Thermal base layer next, peeled from his skin in one cold, clinging pull. He laid each piece across the flat rock he’d positioned near the fire, close enough to steam but not scorch.
The cold hit his bare chest and shoulders like a slap, every nerve firing at once. He unbuckled his holster and set his handgun on the rock beside his knee, grip angled toward his hand.
Boots next. The wet knots fought his stiff fingers as soft sounds reached him. Wet fabric peeling off skin. The dull slap of soaked clothing hitting rock. A sharp breath—involuntary, bitten off.
For half a second his brain blanked on the sound of Harper undressing.
He killed the thought before it took shape and kicked off his sodden boots and socks. Then he straightened and unbuckled his belt. Stripped his pants, the wet fabric dragging against his thighs, and hung them across the branch he’d wedged between two rocks over the fire. He kept his shorts on.
Woodsmoke drifted into his nostrils, sharp and resinous, mixing with the metallic smell of the river still clinging to his skin.
