gap closed, blocking the chilled air from leaking inside.
Despite her terror at being held captive, she didn’t want to die of exposure. Until she learned more about the man she lay next to, she’d do well to appreciate the warmth and gather her strength if she had to fight for her life.
“How do you feel?” the man asked.
“Cold. Incredibly cold. And frankly, a little scared.”
“You should be scared, but not of me. You almost died of exposure. You’ll probably feel cold for a long time.”
Her teeth chattered as she tried to form questions. “What happened? Why are we in this bag together?”
“I found you under a snowdrift by the river and brought you here to warm you. I only had one bag, so you had to share with me.”
Her face burned. She stared around at the rock walls surrounding her. “Where are we?”
“In a cave.”
“In what country?”
The man frowned. “The U.S., of course.” No of course about it. She’d been racing across the country for two days, never on a straight route, always varying her direction, hoping to shake the man following her. If the man currently holding her captive was one of the people after her, they could be practically anywhere. She took a deep breath before asking her next questions. “Who are you? Who do you work for?”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “You’ve been asking all the questions. It’s my turn. Who are you?” His deep, resonant voice filled the inside of the cave with its ruggedness.
Katya hesitated. His avoidance of her question didn’t set her mind at ease. She didn’t know who she was dealing with and trusted no one with her identity. Especially after what had happened in Minneapolis. She’d been on the road ever since, until she’d been forced to ditch her car and steal a snowmobile. “Am I still in the Badlands?”
“Yes, ma’am. The Badlands of North Dakota, to be exact.”
“My name is Kat,” she said tentatively. At least she wasn’t lying. Kat was only part of her name, but people she’d gone to school with in Minneapolis had used it as her nickname. “Kat Evans.” Evans was an out-and-out lie. Hard lessons had taught her not to give out truth until she knew where she stood. Especially with the colossal accusation of terrorism hanging over her. Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, the FBI and every law enforcement agency would be on the lookout for her.
She squirmed against his body, extremely aware of her bare skin rubbing against his bare skin. He was completely naked and she was practically naked herself, except for her bra and panties. “Oh, my!” She tried to scoot away from him, hampered by the close confines of the bag they both occupied. A waft of icy air scraped across her body and she found herself pressing against his skin to re-create the warmth she’d felt a moment before.
“Sorry. You weren’t awake for me to ask permission. In these temps, skin to skin is best to bring up body temperature the fastest. Yours was bordering on death.”
After straining for a minute to keep from leaning into his chest, she gave up and let her cheek rest against the hard muscles of his smooth chest. “Well, then, I guess I should thank you for saving my life.”
He chuckled. “Please, don’t strain yourself with your gratitude.”
With nowhere else to put her hands, she rested them against his chest, her fingers smoothing over the hard planes, liking his laughter and the contours of his muscles way too much. “Point made. I am grateful you did not leave me out there to die.” She settled into the warmth of his arms, awkward about their nakedness, but too cold to climb out of the bag.
“You’re welcome.” He rested his chin on the top of her hair, a position both comforting and intimate. “Nothing like waking up in the dark with a stranger, huh?”
“Precisely.”
“What were you doing out by the river on foot?”
She swallowed, hating that she had to lie to the man who’d saved her from freezing to death, but she had no other choice. “I was out snowmobiling and my snowmobile broke down.”
The man stiffened. “What about the others in your party? Most tours stick together.”
“I got separated. I drove around for a couple hours…trying to find them. That is when my machine quit on me.” Her words came out in a rush as the lie grew bigger. What if he didn’t believe her? What if he was the man who’d been after her and he was just fishing for more information? She couldn’t let on that she was Katya Ivanov, just in case he really didn’t know. Surely the entire United States had been alerted to a possible terrorist at large.
“I didn’t see a snowmobile.” His voice had hardened, as though he didn’t really believe or trust her.
“I followed the river to see if I could find help. I suppose the snowmobile is a mile or so downstream from where you found me.” She had hoped to hide it among the boulders, but had to abandon the heavy machine where it had come to a grinding and permanent halt, in order to save herself from a shooter’s aim.
“The closest town to us is Medora and I don’t recall anyone there offering snowmobile tours.”
“It was a special tour out of…” she grasped for the name of a larger town in North Dakota. “Bismarck!” she said in a rush. How much bigger could the lie grow? And would she be able to remember all the details?
“Still, most tours wouldn’t leave a rider behind.”
“I am sure the weather cut them short on searching for me. I will bet they notified the authorities as soon as they got back. Assuming they did not get stranded too.” Kat couldn’t look into his eyes. Lying didn’t come naturally to her, one reason she could never be a good politician. The question was: Did this man believe any of the lies she had just dished out?
“So really, who are you?” he asked, answering her question. “Kat Evans isn’t right. You speak English too proper to have been born in America, and I detect an accent.”
She stiffened against him. Like it or not, she couldn’t tell him the truth. Not until she unraveled the mess her life had become. “I am from…Russia. And as long as we’re stuck in this bag, can we leave it at Kat Evans?”
“Why? Are you wanted for murder or peddling drugs to children?”
“No. Nothing like that. I would just rather not talk about it.”
“Running from an abusive husband? In which case, I’d offer a separate sleeping bag, but I don’t have one.”
“No. No husband.” She stared across the cave’s interior, wishing he would stop asking. “Is that a horse over there?”
“Consider him our chaperone. Bear is very good at keeping secrets. The stories he could tell, but won’t, would shock you.”
Katya laughed, although a little breathlessly. “I feel much safer, knowing he is here guarding my virtue.” And he gave her a good diversion from the stranger’s questions and naked body.
“Damn
