Slow Burn(39)
I hugged my knees to my chest. “Every time you tell me something about yourself, Griffin, it’s so sad. When I think about what you’ve been through, it breaks my heart.”
He was quiet for a minute. Then he shrugged. “It’s not that sad, doll. My mom’s a millionaire. And I got away from Op Wraith.”
That was true. And then I had a horrible thought. “But what if Op Wraith goes after your family? You know, to get to you.”
“That won’t happen.”
“You trust them?”
“No, it’s only that I have no idea where my family is, and if I tried to find them, Op Wraith would know. As long as I stay clear, they’re safe.”
“So they hid them from you, and if they hurt them, you wouldn’t even know?”
“Yeah. It would be a useless move on their parts to try to hurt them.”
“Still,” I said. “You must worry.”
He sighed. “Sometimes, I guess. I mean, they know I’m protecting you. But they want me dead. They don’t want to torture me.”
“They might want to draw you out,” I said.
“They’re so close now,” he said. “They know you’re somewhere in West Virginia. I doubt that’s the route they’d go.”
I felt cold, suddenly. I scooted closer to the fire. “They’re going to find me at some point, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know, doll,” he said. “Maybe they’ll just give up eventually.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
He didn’t answer.
We sat in silence for a bit. I turned my sausage. Griffin turned his. I dug out the rest of our meal. Hot dog buns for the sausages and a cold potato salad from the store. I set out paper plates. I spooned out the potato salad.
“You think the sausages are done?” I asked him.
Griffin used a piece of foil to squeeze his. “Pretty much.”
We assembled our sausages, putting mustard and pickle relish all over them. And then we sat next to the fire we’d built and ate. The food tasted really good.
“I like camping,” said Griffin.
“I do too,” I said. At that moment, I did, even though everything had been kind of a pain in the ass up to that point.
* * *
I shivered in my KISS sleeping bag. Griffin and I had thought it might be dangerous to leave the fire going, so we’d put it out after roasting marshmallows and deciding to go to bed. Now it was cold. I had on a sweatshirt and jogging pants, plus thick socks, but it wasn’t enough. I remembered that I’d brought more blankets, but I wasn’t sure what bag I’d put them in out of all the stuff we’d brought. I was going to have to get up and find them soon, though, because I was freezing.
I sat up and started to unzip the door to the tent.
“What are you doing, doll?”
“Going to look for more blankets.” My voice shook from my shivers.
“You cold?”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Aren’t you?”
“Not really.” There was the sound of the sleeping bag crinkling, and I realized he’d sat up. Then I heard a zipper.
“What are you doing?”
“Unzipping my sleeping bag,” he said. “You unzip yours too. We’ll use one as a blanket and lie on the other one. All you need is body heat to warm up.”
Body heat? Like from Griffin’s body? “Won’t that be inappropriate?” My teeth were chattering.
He chuckled. “Get over here.”
I did. It took a few minutes to get everything settled, but then we both lay back down again. We weren’t touching, but just being under the same blanket with him did make everything a little warmer.
Another rack of shivers went through me.
“Jesus,” said Griffin, his voice deep and rumbly. “Are you really that cold?”
“I don’t feel so cold anymore,” I said. “I’m just shivering still.” As I said it, I started shaking again. It was involuntary and violent. I felt like I was having a seizure.