We stand there for a minute, breathing. The adrenaline crash is hitting me hard, making my hands shake.
"Come on," Nash says, kissing my temple. "Let's go meet the cavalry. I have a feeling Reid brought beer."
"I hope so," I say. "I have two weeks of adrenaline to burn off."
We start the descent toward the water, leaving the wolves, the caribou, and the fear behind us on the ridge.
The data is safe. The grant is safe.
And I have answered the question Thaddeus left me.
He isn't just surviving. He's winning.
And so am I.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
NASH
Adrenaline is a liar.It's a seductive, chemical con artist that whispers you can run forever, that you can fight wolves with your bare hands, and that the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to you. It tells you that twenty degrees below zero is just a number, a suggestion rather than a biological ultimatum.
But when it leaves, it doesn't just fade; it evacuates. It takes the heat, the strength, and the hope with it, leaving a vacuum that the cold rushes to fill.
By the time Aris and I stumble down the final rocky incline to the shoreline below the ridge, the physiological debt has come due. My legs don't feel like muscle and bone anymore; they feel like bags of wet sand dragging through the deep drifts. The cold, which I managed to ignore during the firefight and the long descent, is now biting through my layers with a vengeance. It finds every seam, every tear in my parka, seeking the sweat on my skin to turn it into ice. My hands are stiff claws inside my gloves, frozen into the shape of the shotgun stock I no longer hold.
Aris stumbles on a patch of slick, tide-washed shale, her boot skidding on the black rock. Her weight hits my side hard.I catch her, but just barely. I'm swaying, too, the horizon tilting dangerously.
"We're … there," I wheeze. The air burns my throat, tasting of copper and frost. We're alive, but we're wrecked.
She doesn't answer. She leans her head against my shoulder, her breath coming in shallow, white puffs that crystallize instantly on her eyelashes. She is fading, the shivering that has racked her body for the last hour slowly stopping. That scares me more than the wolves.
Then I look up, and there she is, holding station in the dark water right where Reid swore he'd put her, and the sight of her warms me faster than a shot of straight whiskey.
The Kingfisher.
It holds station against the dark current, looking completely out of place and absolutely beautiful. Forty feet of battered aluminum, dents, and attitude, its twin diesels are idling with a deep, throat-rattling burble that vibrates in the soles of my boots. The spotlight mounted on the cabin cuts through the spindrift blowing off the ridge, a beam of artificial hope in a gray world.
Reid noses the bow gently against the rocks, holding it steady with a touch on the throttles that borders on surgical. The boat rises and falls with the swell, the metal groaning as it kisses the stone.
Standing beside Reid on the foredeck is his twin, and the two of them are currently in the middle of a shouting match over the wind.
"You scraped the keel," Rhys shouts, jabbing an accusing, gloved finger at the waterline. "I heard it grind, Reid!Thunk.That was the sound of your insurance premium going up."
"I did not scrape the keel," Reid counters, waving a flare gun around like a conductor's baton. "I was aggressively parking. Itwas a tactical maneuver, Rhys. And anyway, look at the paint job. It adds character. It tells a story."
"It adds drag," Rhys snaps, leaning over the rail to inspect the aluminum. "You're burning fuel like a cruise ship."
"Stop whining about the fuel! We just saved lives! We're heroes!" Reid throws his arms wide, the neon yellow of his suit searingly bright against the black water. "Heroes don't worry about miles per gallon, Rhys! Batman doesn't check the gas gauge on the Batmobile!"
I stop at the edge of the water, the spray hitting my face. The absurdity of the scene, the domestic bickering juxtaposed against the blood and terror we've just survived, makes me want to laugh, but I don't have the air for it.
"Hey!" I croak. My voice is wrecked, a raw scraping sound from a day of shouting at wolves and wind.
The twins stop arguing instantly. They turn in unison, a synchronized movement born of three decades of sharing a face. They have the same dark hair as Finn and me, the same sharp Hollister jawline that looks cut from granite, but their energy is diametrically opposite.
Reid, Yellow Suit, Chaos Incarnate, breaks into a grin that could power a lighthouse.
Rhys, Green Parka, Order and Metrics, visibly sags with relief, though his eyes immediately narrow, scanning us for blood, broken bones, or missing limbs.
