He saw her, surprise on his face. “Sam?”
But then the plane was moving.
Thor took something from the overhead compartment—a first aid kit—and sat beside Samantha. The frost from his eyelashes had melted, dripping down his face like tears. “You know him?”
She held out her palm, which was now bleeding freely and had stained the blanket. “I met him at McMurdo when we first arrived. A group of us researchers got together. There may have been drinking.”
He opened the kit, cleaned the wound, his fingers cold, his brow furrowing when the sting of the antiseptic made her gasp. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” She watched him work. “You’re not what I was expecting.”
“Oh, how so?”
“You’re kind. No swagger or chest-thumping or sexist jokes.”
He chuckled. “You were expecting a shitting jerk, then. You don’t have a very high opinion of military guys, do you?”
She suppressed a smile at his syntax error. English speakers didn’t use the wordshittingquite like that. “I guess not.”
He bandaged the cut and put the kit under the seat in front of him just as the little plane lifted off, shaking in the wind.
* * *
Thor passedthe O2 mask to Samantha, their heads close together so as not to waste oxygen. As soon as they’d gotten airborne, Jones had gone to the back to reconfigure the oxygen system, giving the seven Russians four tanks to share, while he, Segal, Samantha, and Thor split two between the four of them.
It wasn’t ideal, but they’d had no other choice.
Thor could never have abandoned anyone in those temperatures. Rarely had his time on the ice of Greenland involved wind chill that extreme. When it had, he and his teammate, Bengt, had staked the dogs, put up their tent, and crawled into the same sleeping bag for warmth.
The dogs with their thick coats could survive it.
People couldn’t—not for long.
Samantha handed the mask back, her fingers accidentally brushing his, the contact human and warm. He knew she was afraid, but she was handling it well. For someone who hadn’t wanted to be a part of this mission, she’d done a great job.
If the flight out had been turbulent, the return trip demonstrated exactly why people didn’t fly in Antarctica in the winter. Twice, the plane had suddenly lost altitude, seeming to free fall before the pilot was able to gain lift again. The man deserved a medal as far as Thor was concerned. In a lesser pilot’s hands, they’d already be dead.
So far, their Russian guests hadn’t tried to pull anything. Then again, without safety belts, they had to hold on to the straps that secured the ferry tank or risk broken bones. None had spoken a word since takeoff.
The plane shook and bounced like a plaything.
Samantha handed the mask back to Thor, her gaze meeting his. She was so close he could smell the sweet floral scent of her shampoo.
“You should drink. You’re probably dehydrated.” He nudged the seat in front of him with his knee. “That goes for you guys, too.”
Jones elbowed Segal. “The Viking says to drink.”
“Water—or does he have something stronger?”
Samantha reached for the bottle of water she’d tucked into the seatback pocket, opened it, drank deeply. “Where do you live when you’re not saving people?”
Thor gave the mask back to Samantha. “In the mountains about an hour and a half west of Denver. I bought a house up there—”
The plane dropped again, losing altitude all at once.
Samantha gasped, grabbed Thor’s hand, their guests grunting and shouting in alarm as inertia flung them against the overhead compartment.
But just as quickly as it began, it was over, the plane still aloft.