For the third time in two days, Maddie woke up feeling like she was lost inside a dream.
She was too cold, but also too hot. An unfamiliar weight was draped across her waist, and she really, really needed to fluff her pillow. But then Maddie’s eyes flew open, and she saw a stove that was full of hot coals and not much else. She shivered and realized that she was wearing her base layers and a threadbare robe and lying on a scratchy blanket. There was another blanket and some coats on top of her. But the most disturbing things were the arms. Two of them. One was beneath her head and one was wrapped around her waist, heavy and sure. And her hand was holding its hand and something inside of Maddie swore to never, ever let it go.
It wasn’t a dream, Maddie realized. And she couldn’t decide whether that should make her terrified or ecstatic.
Then there was a too-deep voice in her ear. “Good morning.”
Maddie bolted away like maybe she’d been stung. “Yes. Um. Good morning.”
Logan pushed upright. At some point in the night he must have gotten up to check his clothes, because he was wearing dry jeans and socks, a white T-shirt stretching across his broad chest.
Very broad.
Oh, so utterly broad that it didn’t look at all like the chest that he’d had when they used to go swimming at the White House.
The sun was up, and light filled the little shack, filtering through holes in the walls and the roof and the small, grimy window. But they’d lived. And as soon as they were out of this mess Maddie was going to come back and fill this place with so much firewood and kindling that it might crumble under the weight of it all.
Then she realized Logan was eyeing her like maybe she looked as awful as she felt.
“What is it?” she blurted.
“I didn’t know it was possible for hair to even point in that direction.” He reached for her head, but she batted his hand away and he burst out laughing.
Maddie tried to run a hand through her hair, but her curls were too wild and windblown. It was all she could do to tuck it behind her ears.
“Better?” she asked.
“Oh, much,” he said with so much sarcasm she hit him again. Just for good measure.
But then they both stopped smiling, stopped laughing, and Maddie realized they were still holding hands. It was like they had frozen that way, dried together in some kind of knot just like her hair.
“Did you sleep okay?” Maddie asked, even though she couldn’t remember whether or not she’d asked it already.
“Yes. I slept perfectly.”
“Oh. Okay. Uh …” She looked down at the place where she’d spent the night, wrapped up in him. “Your arm didn’t fall asleep, did it?”
“No.” Logan shook his head. The awkward was palpable. Maddie was practically drowning in it, but Logan seemed as cool as the wind. “My arm is perfect.”
Then he pulled the blankets and the coats back over Maddie and went to put more wood on the fire. He froze in the act of putting a log on the coals and asked her, “Is this okay?”
Maddie glanced at the dirty window. “I think so. It looks overcast and it’s still spitting sleet. No one’s gonna see a little more smoke.”
“Good.” He tossed the log onto the fire, then hopped on the cold floor, jumping over Maddie’s legs to land behind her. He sunk down and dragged her back into his arms and wrapped the blankets and coats around them both again. It was like a cocoon. Outside the blankets, the world was cold and scary and awkward. Seriously, Maddie thought. A person could spontaneously combust from so much awkward. But inside the blankets the world was warm and safe and she didn’t have to think about anything. Not about Russian kidnappers or unanswered letters. Not about the bullet or the fall or the lie that hurt more than anything else.
She wanted to close her eyes and sleep again, but when she moved, her shoulder felt like fire and a fresh wave of nausea ran through her body, and she knew that sleep wouldn’t save them. For six years, mornings had started with chores, and Maddie knew that she could lay there in Logan’s arms and make believe. Or she could get up and do something about it.
So Maddie got up.
“Logan, do you remember the map?” she asked before even really realizing that she’d been thinking about it. Even though some part of Maddie’s brain had never stopped thinking about it.
“Yes,” he said slowly. It was like he was wise to Maddie’s cocoon analogy and he was very much Team Stay Inside Where It’s Warm.
“Good,” Maddie said.
At some point someone must have tried to make this little shack a home because one wall was covered with peeling, faded wallpaper. Maddie reached for her jeans and pulled them on. They were filthy and stiff but they were dry. She slipped off the robe and pulled on the second of her three shirts, then walked to the wallpaper and ripped. A piece came off in her hands.
There were pieces of old burnt wood around the base of the stove, and Maddie found one that turned her fingers black and handed it to Logan.
“I want you to draw it—as much of it as you can. I want to see what he sees.”
She reached for her boots.
“Where are you going?” He acted almost hurt, like he didn’t want to be left behind. Again.
“I’m going to go see what I can catch to eat.”
“I’ll go with you,” Logan said, looking around and starting to pull on more of his own clothes.
“No.” When Maddie realized she’d snapped she tried to soften her voice. “It’s better if I go alone. I need the map. And we need food and we don’t have enough time, so—”
“Mad Dog, it’s okay.” He nodded toward the door. “Go. Bring home the bacon.”
There wasn’t any bacon.
But there was a stream filled with fish, and Maddie had braved the cold long enough to pull off her pantyhose and catch some (a feat she never could have done in front of Logan).
An hour after she’d left she was warm again and in front of the fire. Logan was sitting beside her and they both looked at the fresh fillets that laid atop the big, flat rocks that Maddie had placed directly on the red-hot coals.
“No offense to the White House culinary team, but that’s the best thing I’ve ever smelled,” Logan said.
They would have both been perfectly willing to eat the fish raw and call it sushi, but the smell was doing Maddie almost as much good as the fire. It was warming her from the inside out. Or maybe it was just the way Logan sat closer to her now, their arms touching. Sometimes his hand was on her back. A time or two she caught herself leaning against his chest. When their hands touched neither moved away, and they just stayed like that.
Was that weird?
Or was it more weird to move her hand now for no apparent reason? Maddie knew the protocol for moving the president from the Oval Office to the Situation Room during a national security crisis, but she didn’t know exactly how long one could—or should—touch the first son before one was at risk of offending the touchee or embarrassing the toucher. Or even really which one she was. She didn’t remember touching him, after all. She just kind of was.
She just kind of couldn’t stop it.
And, Maddie was starting to realize, neither could he.
“Tell me you forgive me, Maddie. Please. You don’t even have to mean it. Just say it. For now.”
“Logan …”
“I thought I was doing it for you.”
And, with that, Maddie finally found it easy to move away.
“I needed you. I didn’t have anyone.”
“Which is better than having someone who’s just going to get you hurt,” Logan said, then looked around the cabin and laughed. “Lot of good that did you.”
“Logan?” Maddie said, and slowly he turned to her.
“Tell me you forgive me, Mad Dog. Lie if you have to. I can’t go out there thinking you don’t know how much I … How much we … I need you to know that I’d do anything for you. Even give you up.”
“Logan.” Maddie looked up and found his eyes. The fire crackled and the snow fell, but all Maddie could ask was “What did he say? When he was on the phone?”
And just like that the spell was broken. Maddie missed the warmth of his fingers against hers, but she acted like it didn’t matter.
She told herself it couldn’t possibly matter.
The fish sizzled as Maddie took a long stick and moved the fillets around on the big rocks. She watched as Logan wrapped his hands around his knees.
“He was supposed to meet someone somewhere. Maybe last night? Maybe this morning or sometime today? I’m not sure. I don’t think he ever said. It was a plane, I think. He said the boat wouldn’t be fast enough. I don’t know what he meant by that exactly. Seems to me like a plane would stand out.”
Maddie turned on him. For a really smart boy, sometimes Logan could be really stupid.
“There are more people with pilot’s licenses in Alaska than there are people with driver’s licenses. No one’s gonna notice one more small plane. And besides, the Secret Service will start looking for you today if they haven’t already. The Russians are running out of time.”
He shook his head and pulled his legs tighter. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes.” Maddie forced herself to her feet. She’d already spent too long sitting, waiting. Leaning against someone who might not be there to catch her next time.
“Logan, you are the president’s son. And you’ve been off the grid for almost twenty-four hours. And there’s no reality where that goes unnoticed.”
He was moving as she spoke, a subtle, rocking shift that he probably didn’t even know he was doing. But when she finished he stopped and looked up at her. “And once they notice?”
Maddie pulled on her gloves and used the sleeve of her coat to pull the rocks from the coals. She sat them on the top of the stove and it was all she could do not to fall on the fish fillets and eat them in one gulp.
“Once they notice, they’ll try to reach my dad, who is either back and going crazy or is on his way back and will begin going crazy anytime now.”
She reached down and picked up a piece of flaky fish, put it in her mouth, and almost moaned with the taste of it. Logan stood and joined her.
“Then they’ll pull up all the satellite footage from around the cabin to make sure no one flew you out. After that, they’ll know you’re on foot. And they’ll start looking. We could start a signal fire—if we can find enough dry wood, which is doubtful. And even if we did, the bad guys would probably get here before the good guys, and we don’t want to signal the wrong side.”
After a few bites, he asked, “Do we head back for your house?”
Maddie thought about it for a long time before admitting, “I don’t know. There are weapons there. And the radio. And maybe one of your agents survived? But Stefan could be expecting us to go there, so …”
All her life Maddie had heard stories of close calls and bad decisions, lucky breaks that made the difference between life and death. How would history judge this morning? She had to wonder. Would they be the idiots who turned back or the fools who didn’t?
Maddie had no idea.
“I think if I were him, that’s what I’d expect us to do. But I didn’t spend as much time with him as you did.”
Logan considered it while he ate another piece of fish and then took a sip of the fresh water that they’d melted on the stove that morning.
“Stefan found us there once,” he said at last. Then he considered the tiny cabin. “Do we stay here?”
But there was something else in Logan’s voice. Maddie felt it, too, as she glanced to the floor where they’d slept, wrapped up in each other, unaware of the world going totally to pieces all around them.
In the light of day, she could see it for what it was: a shack with peeling wallpaper and a soot-stained ceiling, but there were other things, too: a cracked vase on a shelf, a row of oddly shaped rocks, like some child’s treasures.
This place had saved their lives, but life was going to be different outside the safety of its four walls. Maddie didn’t want to think too hard about how or why.
“Once the clouds clear, someone’s bound to see the smoke.” She looked down at the last fish fillet, took a tiny piece, and then pushed the rest toward Logan. “I don’t like the idea of … sitting. We wouldn’t freeze to death here. Probably. But we could die here just the same. And I don’t want to die waiting.”
“Me either.”
Logan’s voice was sure and steady. He sounded like his dad, Maddie thought, but she didn’t say so.
“You’ve got the map?” she asked. He pushed it toward her.
“I think we’re somewhere about here.” He pointed to a ridge that wasn’t far from the river.
“Closer to here,” she said, pointing to a spot nearer to the burned-out bridge.
“It felt like we walked longer last night.”
She glanced up at him. “That’s because you were walking for two.”
“I’d do it again,” he told her, but he was too serious. Too close. Maddie had to find a way to push him away without touching him, so she laughed.
“I hope I don’t have to hold you to that,” she said.
“Mad—”
“Dad didn’t want me on this side of the river,” she cut him off, pointing to the vast, empty places on the map—the nothingness that surrounded them.
“Why?” Logan asked, and Maddie shrugged.
“There was plenty of trouble on our side. I didn’t need to go looking for more. What’s this X?” Maddie asked, pointing to where Logan had marked the spot. “Was that on his map? Had he drawn it on there?”
“Yes and yes. Or, at least, someone had drawn it on there. But what he was hoping to find in the middle of a lake, I don’t know.”
Maddie knew. “That’s where he was taking you. If they’re flying you out, that’s their rendezvous point. Land a small floatplane on that lake and load you up. You’d be in Russian airspace in just a few hours.”
“Well, let’s try to avoid that if at all possible,” Logan teased.
“Good plan.” Maddie pointed to the opposite edge of the map and thought about their options. “Canada is that way. We could be there in a couple of days. No one would expect us to walk to Canada.”
“You were shot yesterday, Mad. You need a hospital. I’m not dragging you through the forest for two days just to get to Canada where who knows how many more days we’d have to walk to find some help.”
“You could do it.”
“That’s true.” Logan nodded, sounding sure. “I could carry you. That could—”
“No! You could walk to Canada. Logan, listen—I’ll slow you down, but you’re the one they want. If I could keep him distracted, then—”
“No! I am not leaving you out here with a madman.”
“It was just an idea.” Maddie shrugged.
“Well, it was a bad one. I’m never …” He trailed off, but there was something in his gaze. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I didn’t want you to be out there on your own either, you know.”
“Good,” Logan said, as if he didn’t quite realize that they weren’t arguing anymore.
For a long moment the cabin was silent except for the cracking of the tree limbs outside, the sparks from the dying fire.
“We’re going to have to go back for it.”
Neither of them said what it was. Neither of them had to.
Logan had almost run onto a burning bridge last night because that pack and the phone inside of it were so precious.
That phone was help. That phone was civilization. That phone was a helicopter and a complete squad of Army Rangers or Navy SEALS or whoever happened to be closest.
That phone was a warm bed and a hot meal and a shower. Oh have mercy—what Maddie wouldn’t have done for a shower.
But that phone was also the second-most-obvious source of help, and if they were thinking about it, then Stefan might be as well.
Logan seemed to read Maddie’s mind and her worries. “It’s suicide.”
But Maddie was shaking her head. Logan’s fears were still rattling around in there, and despite her best efforts, some of them were even taking root.
“My dad has a sat phone. He’s the one person we know we can trust.”
“You’re right,” Logan told her. “And he’s already on his way.”
“Probably,” Maddie said. “I mean, there’s no way he risked flying in last night in all that weather. But when he does get back, he’s going to come for us. I left markers, but who knows how many of them made it through the storm. They could be under three inches of ice and a foot of blowing snow by now. Dad might not find them. He may need backup. But if we can call him, he can fly to get us. The river will be frozen in places, and Dad can land there. Dad can land anywhere. He can get us and we can get out of here.” Maddie studied him. The fire was cooling down, but neither of them went to get more wood. They wouldn’t be there long enough to need it, they both seemed to know.
Then Logan shook his head. “I have to try for it.”
And for the first time in her life Maddie didn’t argue.
Maddie made Logan turn his red coat inside out so the light blue liner was what showed. They ate the last bites of fish. When Maddie opened the door, the sun was bright overhead, reflecting off the smooth, clear palate of white. It was almost too perfect to disturb, so for a moment they both stood on the threshold of the shack and looked back at the dying fire, the old stove, and the place on the floor where they’d slept.
“I live in the most famous house in the world, but …” Logan trailed off.
Maddie put her hand in his. “This is my favorite, too,” she told him.
He squeezed, and they took a step out into a world that was too white—too clean, too new. There were animal tracks in the snow, but no footsteps. Maddie hated that they’d be leaving their own, but there was nothing they could do about that.
All of her senses were on high alert, but she could smell no other fires, see nothing but trees. There was nothing at all man-made for as far as the eye could see.
It felt to Maddie like they were all alone in the universe.
But they weren’t.
And that was the scary part.