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‘It’s got nothing to do with the colour in your cheeks,’ he said, snapping a second glow-stick to activate the chemicals inside, and reaching forward to place it next to the first. Las Vegas light filled the car, and for a heartbeat the tree outside the windscreen, but the graduated darkness beyond it that didn’t show a hint of ground.
Aimee swallowed hard.
‘Look at how you’re handling yourself,’ he said. ‘You’re very calm, under the circumstances.’
She captured his eyes in the mirror. ‘It just means I’m good at denial. It doesn’t mean I’m not afraid.’
He stilled, and the intensity in his gaze reached right through the glass of the mirror and twisted around her lungs, preventing them from expanding. ‘I’m not leaving you, Aimee.’
‘I know,’ she squeezed out.
‘We’ll be out in a couple of hours.’
‘Uh-huh.’ But it sounded false even to her own ears.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I want to. I really do.’
‘Do you trust me?’
Did she? She’d believed every single thing he’d said. She’d done every single thing he’d asked, without question, and not just because he’d pulled rank on her. Sam was trained, capable and compassionate, and he’d not done anything to earn her distrust. Even though she’d known him less than an hour she felt a more natural connection with him than some of the people she’d known her whole life.
Wow. That was a bit sad.
‘I do trust you,’ she whispered. But he’d have no way of knowing how rare that was.
‘Then trust I’ll get you out of here.’
She looked at him long and hard. ‘I know you want to.’
‘And I always get what I want.’
As a kid, she’d practised for weeks to teach herself the one-eyebrow lift and she did it now, desperate to retreat from the chemistry swirling smoke-like around them. The butterfly tape over her left brow tugged slightly. ‘Such confidence.’
‘I don’t start something without finishing it. It’s a point of principle.’
So how had he coped with those people he’d not been able to save? Maybe sitting in vehicles like this one with them, knowing he’d failed? Her heart ached for the memories he must have. But she wasn’t about to ask. For his sake … and hers.
She shivered convulsively. ‘Did the temperature just drop?’
‘Hang on …’ He disappeared for a moment and then squeezed back through the gap with a tightly rolled silver tube. It unfolded into an Aimee-sized foil blanket. Together they tucked it around her as best they could. Down over her good leg. Carefully around her injured arm.
Sam stroked back her hair from the neck brace with two fingers and tucked a corner of the blanket in behind her shoulder. Heat surged where he touched and became trapped beneath the insulation. A perverse little voice wondered if it would be inappropriate to ask him to touch her every ten minutes, to keep the heat levels optimum. She might as well get some use out of the unexpected chemistry between her and her knight-in-shining-fluoro. His heat soaked into her chilled skin.
‘God, that’s good …’ Her good hand was outside the blanket, and she used it to tuck the foil tightly under her thighs to seal more warmth in.
‘Don’t cover your injured leg,’ he said, withdrawing back between the seats. ‘The cold is actually good for it.’ Then, without asking, he reached forward and took her exposed hand between his and started to rub it. Vigorously. Impersonally. Creating a friction heat that soaked into her icy fingers and wrist. He did the same up and down her bare arm.
‘How’s that?’ he murmured.
Heavenly. And it had nothing to do with the blanket. ‘Better.’
He rubbed in silence as the insulation from the foil sheet did its job. But as the minutes went by his businesslike rubbing slowed and turned into a hybrid of a massage and a hold. Just cupping her smaller hand between his own like a heated human glove.
‘So …’ The unease with which he paused made her wonder whether there was still more bad news to come. ‘Is there … anyone you’d like us to call for you? Your parents?’ He glanced down at the fingers he held within his own. ‘A partner?’
She frowned. Absolutely not Wayne. They were well and truly over. And she’d prefer to call her parents from the safety of terra-firma, when they wouldn’t have to see the immediate evidence of what heading off alone into the wilds had done to her and when they’d have less reason to tear each other to pieces. Work wouldn’t miss her for days yet—they knew how she got when she got to the transcribing stage of a project. ‘No. Not if you truly believe we’ll make it.’
‘We’ll make it.’ His certainty soaked through her just like his body heat. ‘But is there someone you’d call if you thought you weren’t going to make it?’
‘Hedging your bets, Sam?’ Maybe that was wise. She still had to get hauled out of here successfully.
His lips twisted. ‘It would be wrong of me not to ask.’
Danielle? That would get a tick in the friend box and the work box at the same time. She folded her brows and tried to make her foggy brain focus …
‘It’s not like prison, Aimee. You can have more than one phone call.’ Then he looked closer. ‘Or none at all. It’s not compulsory.’
How pathetic if she couldn’t even identify one ‘in case of emergency’ person. And how ridiculous. She sighed. ‘My parents, probably.’
He pulled a small notepad from his top pocket. ‘Want to give me a number?’
She stared at him, and then to the floor of the passenger seat. ‘Their numbers are in my phone.’
He blinked at that. ‘You don’t know your parents’ phone numbers?’
‘I have them on speed dial.’ There was no way that didn’t sound defensive. Not when she knew how little wear those two buttons actually got.
‘How about a name and address, then?’
There was no judgement there, yet his words somehow reeked of it. She glared and provided the information; he jotted it down, then called it up to all those people waiting up top. Waiting for sunrise. They confirmed, and promised to make contact with her parents. She wanted to shout out so they’d hear her: Wait until seven. Dad hates being woken. Sam held the earpiece out so she could hear their acknowledgement.
Then they both fell into uncomfortable silence. It stretched out endlessly and echoed with what he wasn’t saying.
She pressed back against her seat. ‘Go ahead, Sam. Just say it. We can’t sit here in silence.’
‘Say what?’
‘Whatever’s making you twitch.’
Even with full permission, and all the time in the world to tell her what he thought, Sam refrained. It was sad how surprised she was about that. Men in her life didn’t usually withhold their opinions. Or their judgement. Not even for a moment.
‘I watched my parents raise my brothers and sisters. Eighty percent of it was guesswork, I reckon. Parents don’t get a manual.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re from a big family?’
He nodded. ‘And my folks got a whole lot more right with my younger brothers than with me, so maybe practice makes perfect?’
‘What did they get wrong with you, Search-and-Rescue-Sam?’ He seemed pretty perfect to her. Heroic, a good listener, smart, gentle fingers, and live electricity zinging through his bloodstream …
‘Oh-ho … Plenty. I made their lives hell once I hit puberty.’
She studied him. ‘I can see you as a heart-breaker with the girls.’
He smiled. ‘No more than your average teen. But I was a handful, and I ran with some wild mates.’
‘Another thing I don’t have trouble seeing.’ Maybe it was the uniform. Maybe it was the torn-out-of-bed-at-midnight stubble. Maybe it was the glint in those blue eyes. He had the bad-boy gene for sure. Just a small one. Not big enough to be the slightest bit off-putting but just big enough to be appealing. Dangerously appealing.
‘Fortunately my older brother intervened, and turned me into the fine, upstanding citizen you see before you.’
She laughed, and her spirits lifted a hint more. Insane and impossible, but true enough. She shifted in her seat to remind herself of where they were and how much danger they were still in. ‘Tell me about him. I’m sick of talking about me.’
And of thinking about the wrong turns she’d made in her life.
‘Tony’s two years older than me. The first. The best.’
‘Is that your parents’ estimation or yours?’
He looked at her. ‘Definitely mine. He was everything I wanted to be growing up. The full hero-worship catastrophe.’
She smiled. ‘I can’t imagine having siblings.’
‘I can’t imagine not.’
‘You want kids? In the future?’ she added, in case her breathless question sounded too much like an offer.
He shrugged. ‘Isn’t that why we’re here? As a species, I mean? I like my genes, I’d like to see what else could be done with them.’
She was starting to like his genes, too. Very much. He had a whole swag of good-guy genes to go with the bad-boy one. And the dreamy eyes. Silence fell, and she realised into what personal territory they’d strayed. She was practically interviewing him for the job of future husband. ‘Sorry. Occupational hazard. I get way too interested in people’s lives.’
‘Why? What do you do?’
‘I’m a historian. Oral History. For the Department of Heritage.’
‘You talk to people for a living?’
‘I swing between talking endlessly to people and then spending weeks alone pulling their stories into shape.’
‘What for?’
‘So they’re not lost.’
‘I mean what happens with them?’
She shrugged. ‘They get archived. Locked away somewhere safe.’
‘No one ever hears them?’
‘Sure they do. Every story is catalogued by topic and theme and subject, so they can be accessed by researchers into just about anything anywhere in the world.’
‘Do you get to see the end results?’ he asked.
‘Not usually. Just my own research.’
‘So your work just goes on file somewhere? To gather dust, potentially, if no one ever looks for it?’ he mused.
‘Potentially.’ She shrugged. ‘You think something’s missing from that equation?’
‘Isn’t it a bit … thankless?’
She stared at him, wondering if he realised what he’d just revealed. Search-and-Rescue-Sam liked to be appreciated. This was exactly why she loved to do what she did. For the moments a person let a bit of his true self slip.
She smiled. ‘Not at all. Our jobs aren’t too dissimilar.’
He frowned at her.
‘We both save lives. You preserve their flesh for another few decades,’ she said. ‘I preserve their stories for ever. For their family. For perpetuity. There’s more to people’s time on earth than genetics.’
Which was why it was such a crime that her life was only just beginning at the ripe old age of twenty-five. She’d wasted so much time.
He considered her. ‘So what’s your story, Aimee Leigh? What are you doing up here in the highlands?’
‘Working. I’ve just finished a history, and the next few weeks I’ll be pulling it all together.’ She glanced around. ‘Or I would have been.’
‘You always do that in remote parts of the state?’
‘I wanted some time alone. I rented a house at Brady’s Lake.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘How’s that time alone working out for you?’
Laughing felt too good. She went on longer than was probably necessary, and ended in a hacking cough. Sam reached out and slid his warm fingers to her pulse again, counting, then saying, ‘Nothing makes you reassess your life quite like nearly losing it.’
True enough. She’d planned on doing some serious soul-searching while up in the highlands and really getting to grips with how she’d let others run her life for so long. She refused to think it was because she wasn’t capable.
Well, she’d wanted space to think and she’d got it. Above, below and on both sides.
The pause fell again. But then she had a thought. ‘Can you see my handbag, Sam?’
He looked around. ‘Where is it?’
‘It was on the passenger seat.’ Not any more.
‘What do you need? Your wallet?’
‘That’s all replaceable. But I have someone’s life in there.’
‘The person whose history you were about to start working on?’
