Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

CHRISTOPHER

G oddammit, what the hell else can go wrong?

Maybe he shouldn’t test the universe by asking. They were rapidly losing daylight, they had to warm Jesse, and there was a pissed off, bear-sprayed sow out there somewhere. He hoped the mules were okay, especially since much of their supplies were on them, but right now he was more concerned about Jesse dying.

He wasn’t certain his pulse rate would ever return to normal after this.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of damp wood around and the earlier rain and falling snow wasn’t helping matters. If he’d been paying better attention he would have noticed that earlier.

Except he’d had other things on his mind, like how they could proposition Jesse and not end up fired.

Then he was distracted by not becoming a steaming pile of bear scat.

That’s what happens when I let myself dare to dream we’ve found our perfect unicorn.

By the time he gathered enough wood and dry tinder to lay a fire, and returned to the area he’d told Mark about, it was less than an hour from dark. Which would come earlier than usual, between the overcast skies and their position on the back side of a mountain.

Plus, it was snowing harder, more than a dusting but not white-out conditions.

Yet.

Mark had erected their tent and situated Jesse inside with their sleeping bags wrapped around her, and had cleared a spot for the fire and set up a makeshift reflector using one of their emergency blankets and tent poles from Jesse’s tent.

“Please go get the mules,” Christopher said as he dropped the wood and shed his pack. “I’ll build the fire. You’ve got your gun and mine’s on one of them. I’m also out of bear spray. My spare cans are on the packs.”

“Yeah.”

Chris peeked inside the tent at Jesse. “Hang on, sweetie,” he said. “I’ll have a fire going shortly. Don’t lay down, okay? Stay sitting up. I need you to stay awake.”

She nodded, her hair soaking wet under his own toque that he’d pulled on her head when changing her. She’d lost her knit cap and glasses in the river.

Up until an hour or so ago the idea of the three of them getting naked together in a sleeping bag wasn’t the worst fantasy.

But not under these circumstances.

Mark set off while Christopher focused on building the fire. At least in this way luck was on his side. In ten minutes, he had a good blaze going and had helped Jesse out of the tent to sit in front of the fire while he secured the reflector and foraged for more wood.

He’d just finished this task, and processed that it was fully dark, when he heard noises.

He grabbed his hatchet. “Mark?”

“Yeah.” He emerged from the dark, looking…

Uh-oh. “Where are the mules?”

“That’s a good question.” Mark tossed something that landed at Christopher’s feet. “Hopefully when they broke free they headed back to the barn and didn’t end up like this.”

Christopher bent over and picked up the object…

Which was what was left of their bear-mauled radio.

He didn’t want to know what the rest of it looked like after making its way through the digestive passage of a bear sow.

MARK

At first he thought he’d lost his way and he used his headlamp to follow their tracks.

But when he reached the clearing, with his gun in one hand and can of bear spray in the other…

There was nothing except tracks.

And the mangled remains of their radio.

In the good news column, however, there also weren’t mangled remains of mules. He tried tracking them until he realized there was no way in hell he would catch up. They’d likely broken free during the bear charge and probably headed back to their barn in a panic.

With all of their extra supplies.

And their personal locator beacon.

And the satellite messenger.

And the map and GPS.

And Christopher’s gun.

Fuuuuck.

He stood there, listening and alternately calling for the mules and hopefully warning off the bear, but he didn’t hear anything that sounded like either of those species.

Just the normal sounds he expected on a cold spring night in Yellowstone.

Could I have fucked this up any worse?

Hell, he’d be lucky if he had a damned job by the time the Thomas family finished with him. And he’d not only screwed everything up, he also nearly got their pet scientist killed in the process.

Correction, there was still plenty of time for her—and them—to die. Especially when the snow started falling heavier.

“I turned around so I wouldn’t lose the trail,” Mark told them. “It wouldn’t have taken long to obscure our tracks.” He set his pack next to Christopher’s. “We need to hunker down for the duration. We can’t risk moving until it’s daylight and the snow stops.”

“How many emergency blankets do you have in your pack?” Chris asked, emptying his own.

“Several.” They took inventory, also opening Jesse’s pack and removing everything. Between them they had eleven, three of which Mark used inside the tent to line the ceiling and walls to help insulate it. Christopher rigged another from the top of the reflector to the top of the tent entrance to help keep the snow out.

Jesse still shivered, but at least she was sitting upright and talking. “How much food do we have?” she asked.

Mark exchanged a glance with Christopher.

“We have enough we can stretch it for several days,” Mark said. “Right now, let’s focus on drying out.”

Christopher helped Mark gather more sticks and branches to drape their wet clothing over. Fortunately, most of Jesse’s spare clothing was either dry or only slightly damp thanks to the zippered bags she’d packed them in.

She watched them, not speaking until they’d laid everything out. “Do you want me to give you back your clothes?” she asked Christopher.

“Not right now, honey,” he said. “We need you thawed out first. We can put yours in the sleeping bag with us and they’ll be warm by morning.”

“My sleeping bag got soaked.”

“We’ll zip ours together and can fit all three of us inside,” Mark said. “As long as you don’t mind sharing.”

JESSE

She’d never felt so cold in her life but she managed a smile for them. “I don’t mind sharing with you as long as I get to be in the middle.”

Fuck professionalism. She’d just barely survived being eaten by a bear and drowning and hypothermia, although the outcome of the third in the unholy hat-trick was still questionable.

Both men laughed. “I’ll be our pleasure,” Chris said.

“Definitely not a hardship,” Mark added. “Unless you stick your cold feet against me.”

“I only did that once,” Chris playfully shot back. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”

Mark leaned in. “It was like having two frozen chicken feet against my legs.” He playfully winked.

Okay, if the men were joking around she couldn’t be dying.

Right?

While the men arranged everything, including repacking their packs and hanging their food and trash from a tree, she pulled off Christopher’s gloves and held her hands out to the fire. They’d put one of the emergency blankets under her to protect her from the damp ground, and at least she was finally starting to feel a little warmer. Her fingers tingled in a nearly painful way, but she’d recovered feeling in them, and in her toes and the men said it looked like she didn’t have frostbite.

They shared a protein bar and a couple of pieces of jerky before the men gathered more wood, cut and set stouter branches to reinforce the campfire reflector, and then joined her after they’d completed those tasks.

“Now what?” she asked.

Mark looked at his watch. “We should get you in the tent. The two of us will take turns keeping watch.”

“For the bear?” she asked.

He looked grim. “Yeah. Hopefully she didn’t follow us, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more. I’ll take first watch.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t mind being in the middle,” she said.

The men exchanged a glance she couldn’t decipher and didn’t have the available brain cells at that time to even try.

“Don’t worry,” Chris said. “We don’t mind you being there.”

The men had her strip and don her own thermal underwear that had survived the dunking before putting her inside the sleeping bags with extra emergency blankets. Christopher also stripped to his thermals and she didn’t think twice about spooning against him. His body felt deliciously warm next to hers.

She wasn’t sure she’d sleep, but the next thing she knew, she lay on her other side, now spooned against Mark’s warmth, so she closed her eyes again. When she finally awakened, she was comfortably snuggled between both men and dim light filtered through the tent’s fabric.

“What time is it?” she mumbled, processing she also hurt all over.

“Nearly six,” Mark said. “We’re not going anywhere, so you might as well go back to sleep.”

“Okay…”

When she awoke again it was lighter, she was alone in the sleeping bag, but they’d tucked her inside it like a snuggly burrito. Fully dressed, the men sat at the entrance to the tent, in front of the fire, which look recently built-up.

But something felt…wrong.

They turned when she sat up. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why didn’t you wake me up? Shouldn’t we get started?”

They wore identically grim expressions. “We’re not going anywhere right now,” Chris said.

“Why?” she asked.

“We’re snowed in,” Mark said. “And I have a feeling it’ll only get worse.”

She looked around them and finally processed it was really coming down out there.

Oh, fuuuuck.