Not If I Save You First by Ally Carter (6)

Maddie

Maddie didn’t turn the light on. Maybe because days were always short in winter, and even though she knew the solar panels would still get some sun and the wind never would stop blowing, she didn’t want to drain their batteries just the same. Maybe it was because she knew she should be trying to sleep because at least eight hours was absolutely essential for good skin and clear eyes. All the beauty magazines said so.

Or maybe Maddie just didn’t want anyone to see the light that she would shine beneath the curtain of her “room.”

That’s why she lay, unmoving, for what felt like hours in the little nest her father had built during their first winter in Alaska. It was always warmer up where she slept and safe away from any animals that might come calling in the middle of the night. But Maddie liked it mostly because she could pull the curtain and have some privacy, even if it was the kind of privacy one couldn’t stand in fully upright and enjoy.

But that night Maddie stayed perfectly still, staring through the darkness until she couldn’t take it anymore. Then she couldn’t stop herself from reaching down between the mattress and the wall and wiggling her fingers until she found it.

The picture was folded into quarters, and thick lines creased the image. She knew each and every inch of it by heart … and still she reached for her emergency flashlight, risked a little light in order to look at it again.

Maddie still had that dress. Or parts of it. Their second winter in Alaska, Maddie had read every book the Juneau library had on learning how to sew, and over the years she’d turned all of her old clothes into new clothes. She’d saved the shiny white dress with the silver sequined sash for last. Now it was a jacket that might still fit, but Maddie had never, ever worn it except when she wanted to feel pretty sometimes in the darkest parts of winter.

It was hard to believe that it had once been such a pretty dress. Or that she’d been that happy girl. She wanted to believe that she’d forgotten Logan’s face, but she hadn’t. She knew him as soon as she saw him. Even though he now looked like a version of Logan that had been stretched and pulled and maybe dosed with some kind of magic potion to make him approximately three times his original size.

But in the picture—in her mind—they were the same height, and he had deep dimples and a mischievous grin and he kept his arm around her, the two of them ready for whatever adventures lay ahead.

As long as they could face them together.

Maddie’s cheeks were wet then, and she reminded herself for the millionth time that she was never going to cry over Logan. Never, ever again. Then she took the photo and held it at the creases. It was time, she knew—time to tear it right down the center, rip it into a million pieces and throw them on the fire.

But she slipped it back between the wall and the mattress instead, back where it wouldn’t hurt her anymore.

She closed her eyes and rolled over in her bed. She was going to sleep, she told herself. And when she woke up, maybe it would all just be a dream.

But that’s when Maddie heard it.

There’s a certain kind of noise that people make when they’re trying not to make any noise at all, and right then the cabin was full of it.

Feet scraping and banging against chair legs, cabinet doors opening and closing in the dark. Maddie eased down her ladder and flipped on the floor lamp by the desk, but her father didn’t whirl. He wasn’t surprised. He’d made a career out of never, ever being surprised.

“How’s the weather?” Maddie asked.

Her father shook the match in his hand, forcing it out, and Maddie saw the kindling in the stove catch. Soon the cabin would be filled with the smell of wood smoke and coffee.

“It’s holding,” her dad said with a glance out the window, as if it might have changed in the twenty seconds since he’d last looked. “Go back to bed, Mad.”

It wasn’t that early. Days are just short in Alaska at the beginning of winter. And the truth was, Maddie was the kind of tired that sleep couldn’t really fix.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“Tonight. If the weather holds.”

She heard what he wasn’t saying—that this was a big storm. It had to be to scare people who had lived in extreme weather most of their lives. But she also knew that nothing would keep her father from her. Absolutely nothing. And sometimes that was the scariest thing of all.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll be okay. So don’t take any chances. Please. If it’s bad, don’t risk it. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s worried.”

“You’re about to fly a plane the size of a large car over mountains and glaciers and through what might possibly be the storm of the year. In Alaska. So I’m allowed some trepidation.”

“Well, I’m leaving my teenage daughter alone with a boy, so I’m allowed some, too.”

Maddie couldn’t help it—she glanced at the closed door to her father’s room. Logan was in there on a small cot the Secret Service guys must have brought with them when they set up their little base camp near the trees.

Logan.

“You going to be okay without me?” her father asked. Maddie forced herself to look away from the door.

“It’s been six years, Dad. If I weren’t okay without you here, I’d be dead by now.”

“That’s not what I mean, Mad. And I think you know it.”

Maddie turned away from the door and the boy who had turned away from her. “Whatever.”

“Mad—”

“I’m not going to kill the president’s son.” No matter how much I might want to, she silently added.

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Her father eased a little closer. Outside, the sun was coming up, and the cabin was the color of glowing coals. “Are you okay?” he tried again.

“I’m fine.”

Her father filled a thermos with coffee, took it to his pack, then added his satellite phone and his wallet. “I thought you’d be happier to see him. You two were always so close.”

“Yeah.” Maddie filled a cup of coffee. “We were.”

The cabin was bright enough that her father could see her face, read her eyes.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“No. You have to go. You know you do. We’re fine.”

“There are two agents in the tents outside. They’re in charge of security, but Logan … Logan’s supposed to be roughing it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s in the lap of luxury.”

“I mean it, Maddie. Make him haul wood. And tote water. And clean fish and fix the roof and whatever else you were going to do. His parents want him to carry his weight. I didn’t mean to put this on you but …”

“I’m okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”

“If you’re sure,” her dad said.

Maddie forced a smile. “Of course.”

How many times had Maddie watched her father fly away? Too many to count, that was for sure. In the beginning, he took her with him. Her first taste of Alaska came at six thousand feet, soaring over glaciers, skirting above mountains, touching down on lakes so clear and cold that you could practically skip across them on bits of glacier ice, live like the seals that lay sunning themselves on the cold, wet land.

And then Maddie got older and was allowed to stay on her own for an hour. A day. A night. Her father was never, ever gone more than forty-eight hours, though. That was a rule that neither of them ever said aloud. He’d also never left her Not Alone before. And Maddie wasn’t at all sure how to take it.

She crept to the closed door of her father’s room. There was no light. No movement. It was almost like it was empty, just like always. But it wasn’t, and that was a fact that Maddie could never, ever let herself forget.

She started the day’s work by drawing the curtain over the kitchen door and heating the water. If the storm was bad, then this might be her last chance for a while, and she felt like she needed her armor for what was coming.

To Maddie, armor meant nail polish. And lip gloss. Really, lip gloss was essential to a girl’s self-defense, she was certain. And clean hair. Oh, have mercy, did she ever need clean hair.

She worked as quickly and quietly as she could, and soon she was sinking into a tub full of hot sudsy bubbles, leaning her head back and letting the warm water wash over her.

She was never really warm in Alaska. Sure, sometimes she was hot. And sometimes she was freezing. But a nice, comfortable warm was something she only found in the bath, and so Maddie let herself close her eyes and sink lower and …

“Hey, Mad. I— Sorry!” the voice came from behind her, and Maddie found herself bolting upright and then sliding down beneath a thick blanket of bubbles.

She hadn’t really fallen asleep. She’d just entered into a kind of it’s-early-and-I’m-still-sleepy-and-this-water-feels-really-really-good kind of trance.

She’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.

“Logan!” she yelled, and glanced behind her at where he stood with his back facing her, both hands over his eyes.

“I’m sorry! I— Why are you taking a bath in your kitchen?!”

“It’s also the bathroom,” Maddie was still yelling. “Stay turned around!”

“Right!”

“And put the curtain back!”

She watched Logan grope blindly behind him until one of his big hands found the curtain and pulled it closed again. Only then did she let herself relax. Which was the good news. But that also meant she had time to really think about what had just happened.

Which was the bad.

Hurriedly, Maddie stood and rinsed her hair and her body and wrapped herself in a big towel. She was halfway into her base layer when Logan’s voice rang out from the other side of the curtain—too close—like he hadn’t moved.

“Maddie, why were you taking a bath in the kitchen?”

“Because this is where we heat the water and take the baths. Bath. Room.”

“Okay,” Logan said in the manner of someone who didn’t think it was okay at all. “So if this is the bathroom, then where do I—”

Maddie jerked her head through the curtain, then pointed. “It’s about forty feet out that door.”

Logan looked to the door outside, then back at Maddie. The look that crossed his face in that moment was almost worth having him there, listening to his stupid deep voice and staring at his stupid broad shoulders and putting up with the stupid little jerk that her heart made when he smiled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

Maddie smirked. “Welcome to Alaska.”