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She made a face. “Both better and worse than I expected. Do you have any water?”
“Yeah.” He secured a bottle from one of the bags and helped her to sit up, though she didn’t really need it. She didn’t even wince. She drained an entire bottle of water, barely pausing for breath.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “There’s food, too.”
When she nodded, he unwrapped a prepackaged peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam sandwich. She tore into it.
He knew the feeling. He’d done the same thing to three of them earlier. So had Casper.
Halfway through the sandwich, she paused. “Did you take my pants off?”
“Bill helped.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Did you get a good look?”
Her voice was light, not bitchy. “Watching him put stitches in your thigh kinda stole the allure.”
“Stitches?” Her hand moved under the blanket. “Wow. I slept through that?”
“I’m not sure I’d call it sleeping.”
Wind tore across the water to make the flames flicker. Hunter shivered. There’d been clean jeans and a T-shirt in the bag Bill had provided, but nothing warmer than that. His fleece pullover was soaked with her blood, rolled up by the fire.
“Cold?” Kate pulled the edge of the sleeping bag back. “There’s plenty of room.”
If she’d said it in a dirty way, he wouldn’t have taken her up on it. But because he was cold and her voice was casual, Hunter scooted until his legs were under the top blanket and he was sitting up beside her.
Now that they were close, however, he didn’t know what to say.
Kate’s hand found his under the blanket. “Thanks,” she said. “For saving me.”
He turned his hand and laced his fingers through hers. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Silver pointing a gun at us.” She paused. “I didn’t expect to wake up.” Another pause, a longer one. Her voice was heavy. “Your dog . . .”
Hunter whistled. Casper came tearing up the beach from whatever he’d been investigating.
Kate’s face broke into a smile. “He’s okay!”
Hunter rubbed the dog behind his ears until he started the rawr-rawr-rawr. “He’s tough.” He stroked a finger down the line of Casper’s muzzle. “He’s the one you should be thanking. He attacked Silver.”
Kate took him up on that and started scratching Casper behind the ears herself.
The dog flopped over in the sand, looking for a belly rub. Kate obliged him.
Then she said, “So what’s the plan?”
“Staying alive? I don’t know.” Hunter pressed his fingers into his eyes. “I don’t have anywhere for us to go.”
“What do we know?”
“Not much.”
“Let’s lay it out and make a plan.”
Hunter looked at her in surprise.
“What?” she said with a spark of irritation in her eyes. “You think you’re going to figure all this out on your own?”
