If You Loved Me by Grant Vanessa

Author:Grant, Vanessa [Grant, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Muse Creations Inc
Published: 2012-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Gray woke to a silent morning. No wind stirred as he fed the fire and boiled water for coffee. Even the animals seemed to be on holiday, motionless or gone to the next inlet.

He let Emma sleep while he got the coffee ready, then poured it into a thermos he fetched from the plane. He'd been aware of her restlessness through the night. When he'd come back from his midnight walk, he'd known she was awake, holding herself stiff and silent.

Although his fury at her continued denial that Chris was his son had cooled to ice along with his ardor, he wasn't going to lie beside her, listening to her silence.

He'd grabbed the sleeping bag and spent the night on a bed of cedar branches near the fire. Eventually he'd slept. From the sounds of tossing and turning in the tent, Emma must still have been awake when he dropped off.

He left the thermos and a mug by the fire, went down to the plane and turned on the radio, but couldn't raise Prince Rupert Coast Guard. He hadn't really expected to make contact; he figured the hill on the north side of the inlet would block the radio signals. He'd check in after they took off.

He untied the Jerry cans he'd hung from the wings, dumped the seawater from three of them back into the ocean, then stored those cans and the rope in the back.

The tide was lower than it had been last night, exposing a couple of deadheads, waterlogged boom logs that would be in the way when he tried to run the plane out into the water. They were too big to shift, so he dug into the back of the plane for his chain saw, pulled it out, fueled it and checked the chain, then fired it up.

He knew the chain saw's roar would wake Emma when it split the quiet morning air. He was frustrated and angry enough that h didn't give a damn.

He cut four pieces off the logs, each about a foot long, and rolled them up the beach above the high tide line where they wouldn't float off on the next tide, one more hazard to navigation.

When he got back to the campfire, he found Emma up and dressed, struggling to roll her sleeping bag. He left her to it while he collapsed the tent.

"Coffee in the thermos," he said.

"Thanks."

In silence, he collapsed the tent and packed it up, then doused the fire with the Jerry can of water he'd carried up from shore.

"Let's go," he said.

* * *

It was a good day for searching, bright enough to see details on shore easily, while a light cloud formation in the east masked the sun's glare. From the activity on the radio, Gray knew twenty miles to their south the Coast Guard helicopter was flying its search pattern over the area Gray and Emma had searched the day before. Setting out from Kxngeal Inlet, he and Emma would be covering ground the chopper had searched yesterday.

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