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“Stop here,” Joe said. “No point in going farther. You won’t be using a car again for many days. The snow will cover them all by morning.”
“It’s too bad Jonah didn’t choose Key West for this little adventure,” Eden muttered under her breath. “I wouldn’t mind a little sun and sand right about now.”
“I was in Afghanistan for a while,” Nate said. “Sand is overrated if there isn’t a beach to accompany it. I’ve probably still got sand in places I don’t care to mention.”
“Maybe one day you’ll find a pearl in your shorts,” Joe said, his grin gap-toothed.
This time Eden laughed out loud and slapped her hand over her mouth to keep it inside. Nate could tell she’d surprised herself by the action, and if he could give her that then he’d let Joe make fun of him all he wanted.
“Is your house close?” he asked, pushing open the car door and stepping out into the wind and snow.
“Close enough.” Joe pulled the hood back up over his braids, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold.
Eden’s lips were pressed tight together as she tried to keep her teeth from chattering. She zipped her jacket up to her neck and pulled her hat low. They were going to need more gear if they were going to follow Jonah across Alaska. She hoped Joe could do as he’d promised Atticus.
Nate retrieved his duffle bag from the back and realized Eden didn’t have anything but the weapons on her. As if reading his mind she said, “I stashed my pack down by the docks and the Russians took my rifle.”
He nodded and then they followed Joe the rest of the way into town, hunched over and going headfirst into the wind, the snow relentless as it seemed to grow beneath their feet. They reached the end of a long narrow street. There wasn’t another person in sight—only squat buildings in various sizes with flat roofs that flanked each side of the narrow lane.
It was a surreal feeling standing on a street that felt as if it were the jumping-off place for the end of the earth. The snowflakes were fast and furious, flying down the narrow lane and heading straight for them as if they were being projected through a wind tunnel. It was terrifyingly beautiful, and he took a moment to just stand and watch nature rage around him.
Eden’s hand on his arm had him looking down at her, and he was struck again as he had been the first time he’d looked at her photograph. He decided it had to be her eyes that made him lose focus. They were big and dark and exotically tilted at the corners. She wore no makeup, but her lashes were long and black and it looked as if she’d lined her eyes with liner, but he knew it was natural.
Her face was paper white because of the cold and her lips void of any color. But still she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly and then dropped her hand back to her side.
“I’m fine.” He mentally shook himself out of the trance and busied himself looking anywhere but at her. She was dangerous. And she was still an unknown variable as far as the job was concerned. “I just had one of those moments where everything lined up exactly how it was supposed to.”
She nodded as if she knew what he was talking about. Maybe she did.
“Those moments are part of the reason I like working alone. When the world comes into sharp focus and you can practically feel the silence living inside of you. Moments like that are rare.”
It seemed she knew what he was talking about after all.
“Hey. Chatterboxes. Come, come,” Joe said, waving them forward.
The house was right on the corner and didn’t seem to be much bigger than an overgrown shoebox. The roof over the wide front porch sagged dangerously beneath the weight of the snow, but Joe didn’t seem overly concerned about it collapsing on him.
Navigating the stairs to the front door was a challenge. Nate caught Eden’s arm and held her up against his body when she stepped into the empty space between the steps.
He held on to her until she found her footing and he realized at that point that it had been much too long since he’d had a woman that close to him. He’d spent the last few years working almost nonstop, and he was past the age where finding any willing woman was enough. He wasn’t a monk, but he’d stopped thinking he could have a normal life outside of the agency. Why was he having those thoughts about Eden Kane?
The siding of the house was bright green, and two square windows not big enough for a body to fit through flanked each side of a peeling wood door. Joe pushed against the door, swollen with age and damp, and they all shuffled into a cozy room with a blazing fire that took up almost the entire wall to their left.
One room was all it was, and Nate figured he could touch both sides if he held his arms straight out. A wood table and two chairs were pushed against the wall and a little kitchenette was set up in the corner.
A woman at least as old as Joe was stirring something that smelled good enough to have Nate’s stomach rumbling loudly, and her smile lit up her face as they came in, making Nate think she must have been a very pretty woman in her youth.
She hustled over and spoke to Joe quickly in their native tongue, and then Joe looked to them for introductions.
“This is my wife, Ahnah. She says to hang your coats on the pegs and take these blankets over by the fire and strip out of your clothes. She will wash and dry them for you before your journey.”
He shoved two heavy blankets at them and gave them a push. Nate ducked his head to hide his grin at Eden’s perplexed look, but she followed him over to the fireplace while Joe and Ahnah huddled in the kitchen area, whispering softly to each other.
Nate unfolded the blanket and saw it was more than large enough to cover him from head to toe, so he wrapped it around his shoulders and then turned his back before stripping out of his clothes and boots. He tried not to think of Eden doing the same. There was no room in either of their lives for entanglements. After everything she’d been through she deserved peace and quiet and comfort. She deserved to be loved.
He wanted to get his hands on Jonah Salt for what he’d done to her, and every time he thought about the level of betrayal it took to pretend to love someone and then shoot them in cold blood, it made him boil with hatred for a man he’d never met. And if Eden didn’t kill Salt, thenhewould.
