'That's sad. Family should stay together.'
she added silently. 'Where did you grow up?'
'All over. Dad wasn't exactly known for his ability to keep a job. What about your folks?' She was silent for a moment, then sighed. 'I was adopted. They were good people. I still miss them.' She drew a design in the dirt with her finger. 'When we didn't show up in Seattle last night, would someone have notified the FAA?'
'They're probably already searching. The problem is, first they'll search the area I should have been over when I filed my flight plan.'
'We were off course?' she asked faintly. It just kept getting worse and worse.
'We went off course looking for a place to land. But if anyone is searching this area, eventually he'll see our smoke. We just have to keep the fire going during the day.'
'How long will they look? Before they call off the search?'
He was silent, his golden eyes narrowed as he searched the sky. 'They'll look as long as they think we might be alive.'
'But if they think we've crashed—'
'Eventually they'll stop looking,' he said softly. 'It might be a week, a little longer, but they'll stop.'
'So if no one finds us within, say, ten days—' She couldn't go on.
'We don't give up. There's always the possibility a private plane will fly over.'
He didn't say that the possibility was slight, but he didn't have to. She had seen for herself the kind of terrain they'd flown over, and she knew how narrow and easily missed this canyon was.
She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, staring wistfully at the languid curls of gray smoke. 'I used to wish I could go someplace where no one could find me. I didn't realize there wouldn't be room service.'
He chuckled as he leaned back on one elbow and stretched out his long legs. 'Nothing gets you down for long, does it?'
'I try not to let it. Our situation isn't great, but we're alive. We have food, water and shelter. Things could be worse.'
'We also have entertainment. I have a deck of cards in the plane. We can play poker.'
'Do you cheat?'
'Don't need to,' he drawled.
'Well, I do, so I'm giving you fair warning.'
'Warning taken. You know what happens to cheaters, don't you?'
'They win?' 'Not if they get caught.'
'If they're any good, they don't get caught.'
He twirled a finger in her hair and lightly tugged. 'Yeah, but if they get caught they're in big trouble. You can take that as my warning.'
'I'll be careful,' she promised. A yawn took her by surprise. 'How can I be sleepy? I got plenty of sleep last night.'
'It's the heat. Why don't you take a nap? I'll watch the fire.'
'Why aren't you sleepy?'
He shrugged. 'I'm used to it.'
She really was sleepy, and there was nothing else to do. She didn't feel like setting up the tent, so she dragged her bag into position behind her and leaned back on it. Silently Chance tossed her sweater into her lap. Following his example, she rolled up the sweater and stuffed it under her head. She dozed within minutes. It wasn't a restful sleep, being one of those light naps in which she was aware of the heat, of Chance moving around, of her worry about Margreta. Her muscles felt heavy and limp, though, and completely waking up was just too much trouble.
The problem with afternoon naps was that one woke feeling both groggy and grungy. Her clothes were sticking to her, which wasn't surprising considering the heat. When she finally yawned and sat up, she saw that the sun was beginning to take on a red glow as it sank, and though the temperature was still high, the heat had lost its searing edge.
Chance was sitting cross-legged, his long, tanned fingers deftly weaving sticks and string into a cage. There was something about the way he looked there in the shadow of the overhang, his attention totally focused on the trap he was building while the light reflected off the sand outside danced along his high cheekbones, that made recognition click in her brain. 'You're part Native American, aren't you?'
'American Indian,' he corrected absently. 'Everyone born here is a native American, or so Dad always told me.' He looked up and gave her a quick grin. 'Of course, 'Indian' isn't very accurate, either. Most labels aren't. But, yeah, I'm a mixed breed.'
'And ex-military.' She didn't know why she said that. Maybe it was his deftness in building the trap. She wasn't foolish enough to attribute that to any so-called Native American skills, not in this day and age, but there was something in the way he worked that bespoke survival training.
He gave her a surprised glance. 'How did you know?'
She shook her head. 'Just a guess. The way you handled the pistol, as if you were very comfortable with it. What you're doing now. And you used the word'reconnoiter'.'
'A lot of people are familiar with weapons, especially outdoorsmen, who would also know how to build traps.'
'Done in by your vocabulary,' she said, and smirked. 'You said 'weapons' instead of just 'guns,' the way most people—even outdoorsmen—would have.'
Again she was rewarded with that flashing grin. 'Okay, so I've spent some time in a uniform.'
'What branch?'
'Army. Rangers.'
