#udlh

[menchevik]

Ver a una jueza de #barismo en acción ..... Uno de los momentos #epicos del día de capacitación en la #UDLH #coffeelover #coffeepassipn

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

1

Bailey Wingate woke up crying. Again.

She hated when she did that, because she couldn’t see any reason for being such a wuss. If she were desperately unhappy, if she were lonely or grieving, crying in her sleep would make sense, but she wasn’t any of those things. At worst, she was pissed.

Even being pissed wasn’t a full-time attitude; that came only when she had to deal with her stepchildren, Seth and Tamzin, which, thank God, usually happened only once a month when she signed off on the allotted funds they received from their inheritance from her late husband. They almost always contacted her then, either before to make their pitches for more money, which she had yet to approve, or afterward to let her know, in their individual ways, what a scummy bitch they thought she was.

Seth was by far the most vicious, and more times than she cared to count he’d left her emotionally bruised, but at least he was forthright with his hostility. As tough as he was to take, Bailey preferred dealing with him to having to wade her way through Tamzin’s passive-aggressive crap.

Today was the day their monthly funds were released to their bank accounts, which meant she could look forward to either their phone calls or actual visits. Oh, joy. One of Tamzin’s favorite punishments was to visit, and bring her two young children. Tamzin alone was tough enough to take, but when her two whiny, spoiled, demanding children were added to the mix, Bailey felt like running for the hills.

“I should have asked for combat pay,” she grumbled aloud as she threw back the covers and got out of bed.

Then she mentally snorted at herself. She had nothing to complain about, much less cry in her sleep over. She’d agreed to marry James Wingate knowing what his children were like, and how they would react to their father’s financial arrangements for them. He had, in fact, banked on those reactions and planned accordingly. She had gone into the situation with her eyes open, so she had no grounds for complaining now. Even from the grave, Jim was paying her well to do her job.

Going into the plush bathroom, she glanced at her reflection—something that was difficult not to do when the first thing she faced was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Sometimes, when she saw herself, she had a moment of almost complete disconnect between the person reflected and what she felt like inside.

Money had changed her—not inside so much as outside. She was slimmer, more toned, because now she had both the time and the money for a personal trainer who came to the house and put her through hell in the private exercise room. Her hair, before always a sort of dirty blond, was now so artfully streaked with different hues of blond that it looked completely natural. An expensive cut flattered her face, and fell into such graceful lines that even now, fresh out of bed, her hair looked pretty damn good.

She had always been neat, and she had dressed as well as she could on her salary, but there was a world of difference between “neat” and “polished.” She had never been beautiful, and certainly wouldn’t qualify for that level of good looks even now, but she did sometimes reach “pretty,” or even “striking.” Skillful application of the best cosmetics available made the green of her eyes more intense, more vibrant. Her clothes were tailored to fit her and only her, instead of millions of other women who were the same general size.

As Jim’s widow, she had the full and unquestioned use of this house in Seattle, one in Palm Beach, and another in Maine. She never had to fly on a commercial airline unless she wished to; the Wingate corporation leased private jets for its use, and a plane was always available to her. She paid only for her personal possessions, which meant she didn’t have to worry about bills. That was undeniably the biggest bright spot of the deal she’d made with the man who had married her and, in less than a year, made her a widow.

Bailey had been poor, and though amassing wealth had never been her life’s focus or ambition, she had to admit that having money made life much easier. She still had problems, the main ones being Seth and Tamzin, but problems felt different when they didn’t involve paying bills on time: the sense of urgency was gone.

All she had to do was oversee their trust funds—a duty she took very seriously even though they would never believe that—and otherwise fill her days.

God, she was bored.

Jim had thought of everything regarding his children, she thought as she stepped into the round, frosted-glass shower. He had safeguarded their inheritances; insofar as he was able he’d also ensured that they would always be financially secure, and very skillfully read their personalities while doing so. His plans, however, hadn’t included how her life would play out after he was gone.

He likely hadn’t cared, she thought ruefully. She’d been the means to an end, and even though he’d been fond of her and she of him, he’d never made any pretense of feeling anything more than that for her. Theirs had been a business arrangement, one he’d initiated and controlled. Even if he’d known beforehand, he wouldn’t have cared that his friends, who had dutifully invited her to their social events while Jim was still alive, had dropped her from their guest lists like a hot potato as soon as he was in the ground. Jim’s friends had mostly been in his age group, and a lot of them had known and been friends with Jim’s first wife, Lena. Some of them had also known Bailey from before, in her capacity as Jim’s personal assistant. They were uncomfortable with her in the role of his wife. Hell, she had been uncomfortable, so how could she blame them for feeling the same way?

This wasn’t the life she’d wanted for herself. Yes, the money was nice—very nice—but she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life doing nothing but growing money for two people who despised her. Jim had been certain that Seth’s humiliation at having his inheritance controlled by a stepmother who was three years his junior would shock him into stepping up to the plate and behaving like a responsible adult, instead of an older male version of Paris Hilton, but so far that hadn’t happened and Bailey no longer had any faith it ever would. Seth had had plenty of chances to apply himself, to take an interest in the corporations that funded his lavish and lazy lifestyle, but he hadn’t seized any of them. Seth had been Jim’s hope, because Tamzin was completely disinterested in and unsuited for the type of financial decisions huge amounts of money demanded. All Tamzin was interested in was the end result, which was cash at her disposal—and she wanted all of her inheritance now, so she could spend it as she wished.

Bailey winced at the thought; if Tamzin had control of her inheritance, she would blow through the money within five years, tops. If Bailey herself didn’t control the funds, someone else would have to.

The phone rang just as she turned off the shower and reached for a champagne-colored towel to wrap around herself. Wrapping another around her wet hair, she stepped out and picked up the cordless phone in the dressing room, looked at the Caller ID, and set the unit back down without answering. The number had been blocked; she had registered all her numbers on the national do-not-call list, so the blocked number wasn’t likely to be a telemarketer. That meant Seth was probably up bright and early thinking of insults he could use, and she refused to deal with him before she had her coffee. Her sense of duty extended only so far, and this was beyond those boundaries.

On the other hand, what if something was wrong? Seth partied hard, seldom getting to bed before dawn—at least not his own bed. It wasn’t like him to be calling this early. Feeling her boundaries stretch a little, she grabbed the phone again, punching the “talk” button even though the answering machine would have already picked up and started its spiel.

“Hello,” she said over the recorded message made with the canned male voice that was the system’s default. She had kept it instead of recording a message of her own because the canned one was more impersonal.

The answering system halted in midsentence when she picked up, then beeped, and clicked off.

“Hi, Mom.”

Sarcasm was heavy in Seth’s voice. Mentally she sighed. Nothing was wrong; Seth was just trying out a new way of annoying her. Being called “mom” by a man who was older than she didn’t bother her, but dealing with him at all certainly did.

The best way to handle Seth was to show no reaction at all; eventually he’d get tired of his needling and hang up. “Seth. How are you?” she responded in the cool, even tone she’d perfected while working as Jim’s PA. Neither her tone nor her expression had ever given anything away.

“Things couldn’t be better,” he responded with false cheer, “considering my money-hungry whore of a stepmother is living large on my money, while I can’t touch it at all. But what’s a little theft between relatives, right?”

Usually she let the insults roll off her back. “Whore” was one he’d pulled out the second he’d heard the provisions of his fa-ther’s will. Seth had gone on to accuse her of having married his father for his money, and taken advantage of Jim’s illness to persuade him to leave even his children’s money in her control. He had also promised, threatened, to contest the will in court, at which time Jim’s lawyer had sighed heavily and advised against such action as a waste of time and money; Jim had capably handled the reins of his empire up until the last few weeks before his death, and the will had been signed almost a year before that—the day after his marriage to Bailey, in fact.

Learning that, Seth had turned dark red, said something so filthy to her that everyone else in the room had sucked in a breath, and then he’d stormed out. Bailey had schooled herself by then not to show any reaction, so a simple “whore” now wasn’t likely to get a rise out of her.

On the other hand, being called a thief was beginning to get under her skin.

“Speaking of your inheritance, there’s an investment opportunity I want to investigate,” she said smoothly. “In order to maximize the gain, I’ll need to put as much as possible into the venture. You won’t mind if your monthly allowance is cut in half, will you? Temporarily, of course. About a year should do it.”

A split second of silence greeted that proposal, then Seth growled in a voice thick with rage, “You bitch, I’ll kill you.”

This was the first time she had countered his insults with a threat of her own, shocking him out of his own set pattern. The threat didn’t alarm her. Seth was big at making threats he didn’t carry out.

“If you have other investment proposals you’d like me to consider I’ll be happy to look at them,” she said as politely as if he’d asked the particulars instead of threatening to kill her. “Just research them fully, and put your proposals in writing. I’ll get to them as soon as possible, but that will probably be a few weeks. I’m going on vacation day after tomorrow and expect to be gone for a couple of weeks.”

Her answer was a phone slammed down in her ear.

Not a great way to start the day, she thought, but at least her monthly encounter with Seth was now behind her.

Now, if she could just avoid Tamzin...

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

2

Cameron Justice gave the small airfield and parking lot a swift, encompassing glance as he pulled his blue Suburban into his allotted slot. Though it wasn’t yet six-thirty in the morning, he wasn’t the first to arrive. The silver Corvette meant his friend and partner, Bret Larsen—the L of J&L Executive Air Limo—was already there, and the red Ford Focus signaled the presence of their secretary, Karen Kaminski. Bret was early, but Karen made a practice of getting into the office before anyone else; she said it was the only time she could get any work done without being constantly interrupted.

The morning was bright and clear, though the weather report called for increasing cloudiness during the day. Right this minute, though, the sun shone brightly on the four gleaming J&L planes, and Cam paused for a moment to enjoy the sight.

The custom paint job had been expensive, but worth the cost in the image presented by the shining black slashed by a thin line of white curving upward from the nose to the tail. The two Cessnas—a Skylane and a Skyhawk—were paid for, free and clear; he and Bret had busted their asses the first couple of years, working side jobs as well as flying, to get them paid off as fast as possible and to improve their debt ratio. The Piper Mirage was almost theirs, and after it was paid for they planned to double up on payments on the eight-seater Lear 45 XR, which was Cam’s baby.

Though in reality the Lear was fairly close in length and wingspan to the F-15E Strike Eagle that Cam’s partner had flown while in the air force, Bret had since become accustomed to the much smaller Cessnas and the midsize Mirage, preferring their agility. Cam, who had flown the huge KC-10A Extender during his time in the service, preferred having more aircraft around him. Their favorites illustrated the basic differences between them as pilots. Bret was the fighter-pilot, cocky and with lightning-fast reflexes; Cam was the steady Eddie, the guy whose hands you wanted on the yoke when a plane needed refueling thousands of feet in the air, at hundreds of miles an hour. The Lear needed every available inch of runway the small airfield provided in order to take off, so Bret was more than glad for Cam to be in the pilot’s seat on those flights.

They’d done well for themselves, Cam thought, while doing something they both loved. Flying was in their blood. They had met in the Air Force Academy, and though Bret had been a year ahead of Cam they’d become friends, and remained friends through different deployments, different career tracks, different postings. They had seen each other through three divorces—two for Bret and one for Cam—and a number of girlfriends. Almost without really planning it they had somehow, through phone calls and e-mails, decided to go into business together when they left the military; what type of business was never in question. A small air charter service had seemed tailor-made for them.

The gig had turned into a good one. They now employed three mechanics, one part-time pilot, a cleanup crew consisting of one full-time and one part-time, and Karen the Indispensable, who ruled them all with an iron fist and a total lack of tolerance for bullshit. The company was solvent, and both of them made a good living from it. The day-to-day flying didn’t provide the thrills and chills of military flight, but Cam didn’t need an adrenaline rush to enjoy life. Bret, of course, was a different type; fighter pilots lived for the burn, but he’d adjusted, and got his occasional doses of drama by joining the Civil Air Patrol.

They had lucked out on the location, too. The airfield was perfect for their needs. It was convenient, most of all, to the corporate headquarters of the Wingate Group, J&L’s main client. Sixty percent of their flights were with Wingate, for the most part ferrying high-ranking executives to and fro, though sometimes the family used J&L for private excursions. Other than convenience, though, the airfield offered good security and an above-average terminal building in which J&L had a three-room office. It was Bret’s connections that had got them the Wingate business, and he usually flew the family members, while Cam took care of ferrying the corporate suits around. The arrangement suited both of them fine, because Bret got along with the family better than Cam did. Mr. Wingate had been a nice guy, but his kids were assholes, and the trophy wife he’d left behind was as warm and friendly as a glacier.

Cam climbed out of the Suburban. He was a tall, broad shouldered man, and the big vehicle suited him, giving him the leg- and headroom he needed. Crossing the parking lot in his loose-limbed, unhurried stride, he let himself in the private door on the side of the terminal building, swiping his ID card to unlock it. A narrow hall led to their office, where Karen sat industriously tapping away on her computer keyboard. Fresh flowers sat in a vase on her desk, the fragrance mingling with that of coffee. She always had flowers, though he suspected she bought them herself. Her boyfriend—a black-leather wearing, motorcycle-riding, bearded pro wrestler—didn’t seem like the flower-buying kind. Cam knew she was in her late twenties, he knew she liked to dye black streaks into her short red hair, and that she made the office run like oiled silk, but beyond that he was afraid to ask. Bret, on the other hand, had made it his life’s mission to flap the unflappable, and teased her relentlessly.

“Morning, Sunshine,” Cam greeted her, because, what the hell, he wasn’t above teasing her either.

She gave him a squinty-eyed look over the top of her monitor, then returned to her typing. Karen was as far from being sunshiny in the mornings as Seattle was from Miami. Bret had once voiced the theory that she moonlighted as a guard dog in a junkyard, because she was as mean as one and didn’t turn reasonably human until around nine a.m. Karen hadn’t said anything, but Bret’s personal mail had disappeared for over a month, until he got a clue and apologized, whereupon his mail began being delivered again, but he was a month behind in all his bills.

Opting for caution over valor, Cam didn’t say anything else to her; instead he helped himself to the coffee and wandered over to the open door of Bret’s office. “You’re early,” he said, propping a shoulder against the door frame.

Bret gave him a sour look. “Not willingly.”

“You mean Karen called and told you to get your ass down here?” Behind him, Cam heard a sound that could have been either a chuckle or a growl. With Karen, it was hard to tell the difference.

“Almost as bad. Some idiot waited until the last minute to book an eight o’clock.”

“We don’t call them ‘idiots,’ ” Karen said automatically. “I sent you a memo. We call them ‘clients.’ ”

Bret was taking a sip of coffee when she spoke, and he half choked, half laughed. “ ‘Clients,’ ” he repeated. “Got it.” He indicated the sheet of paper he’d been scribbling on, which Cam recognized as a schedule form. “I’ve called Mike in to take the Spokane run this afternoon, in the Skylane”—Mike Gardiner was their part-time pilot—“and that’ll free me up to take the Mirage to L.A. if you want to take the Eugene run in the Skyhawk—or we can swap if you’d rather do the L.A. run.”

Whoever got into the office first was the one who had to start on the paperwork, which was one reason why Bret was seldom there so early. He was matching the range of the planes to the length of the flights, which was only common sense because it saved time if they didn’t have to stop for refueling. Normally Cam would have preferred the L.A. run, but he’d already flown a couple of long trips this week and he needed a little break. He also needed a few hours in one of the Cessnas; he flew so much in the Lear and the Piper Mirage that he had to make an effort to get his hours in on the smaller planes. “No, it’s fine the way it is. I need the hours. What’s on for tomorrow?”

“Just two. Tomorrow’s an early day for me, too; I’m taking Mrs. Wingate to Denver for a vacation, so I’ll be deadheading back unless I can pick up something. The other one is …” He paused, looking through the papers on his desk for the contract sheet Karen had written up.

“A cargo run to Sacramento,” Karen said from the outer office, not bothering to pretend she wasn’t eavesdropping.

“A cargo run to Sacramento,” Bret echoed, grinning, as if Cam hadn’t heard her perfectly well. The growling sound came again. Bret scribbled a note and pushed it across his desk; Cam ambled forward to put one finger on the piece of paper and twirl it around.

Ask her if she’s had her rabies shot, the note read.

“Sure,” he said, and raised his voice. “Karen, Bret wants me to ask you—”

“Shut up, you asshole!” Bret lunged to his feet and punched Cam on the shoulder to stop him from completing the sentence. Laughing, Cam left the room to go to his own office.

Karen gave him the squinty-eyed look again. “Bret wants you to ask me what?” she demanded.

“Never mind. It wasn’t anything important,” Cam said innocently.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” she muttered.

The phone rang as he sat down, and though technically it was Karen’s job to answer calls, she was busy and he wasn’t, so he punched on line one and answered.

“Executive Air Limo.”

“This is Seth Wingate. Does my stepmother have a flight booked for tomorrow?”

The man’s voice was abrupt, raising Cam’s hackles, but he kept his own tone neutral. “Yes, she does.”

“Where to?”

Cam wished he could tell the jerk that Mrs. Wingate’s destination wasn’t any of his business, but when it came down to it, jerk or not, he was a Wingate and would have a lot to say about whether or not J&L kept the Wingate Group’s business. “Denver.”

“When is she coming back?”

“I don’t have the exact date in front of me, but I believe it’s around two weeks.”

The only reply was the line being disconnected, without a “thank you,” “kiss my ass,” or anything else.

“Bastard,” he muttered as he clicked the receiver down.

“Who?”

Karen’s voice floated through the open door. Was there anything she didn’t hear? The hell of it was, the tap-tap of computer keys never stopped, never hesitated. The woman was downright scary.

“Seth Wingate,” he replied.

“I’m with you on that, boss. He’s keeping tabs on Mrs. Win-gate, huh? I wonder why. There’s no love lost between those two.”

No surprise there; the first Mrs. Wingate, whom he’d known briefly but really liked, had died barely a year before Mr. Wingate married his personal assistant, who was younger than both his children. “Maybe he’s going to throw a party in the house while she’s gone.”

“That’s juvenile.”

“So is he.”

“That’s probably why Mr. Wingate, the old one, left her in charge of the money.”

Surprised, Cam got up and went to his office door. “You’re kidding,” he said to her back.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, her fingers still flying over the computer keys. “You didn’t know?”

“How would I know?” Neither any of the family members nor the executives in the Group talked personal finances with him, and he didn’t believe they confided in Karen either.

“I know,” she pointed out.

Yeah, but you’re scary. He bit back the words before his mouth got his ass in big-time trouble. Karen had her ways of finding out stuff. “How do you know?”

“I hear things.”

“If it’s true, no wonder there’s no love lost between them.” Hell, if he was in Seth Wingate’s shoes, he’d probably be acting like a bastard toward his stepmother, too.

“It’s true, all right. Old Mr. Wingate was a smart guy. Think about it. Would you have left either Seth or Tamzin in charge of millions and millions of dollars?”

Cam had to think about it for maybe one thousandth of a second. “No way in hell.”

“Well, neither would he. And I like her. She’s smart.”

“I hope she’s smart enough to have changed the locks on the doors when Mr. Wingate died,” Cam said. And to watch her back, because he wouldn’t trust Seth Wingate not to put a knife in it, if he had the chance.

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

3

The phone jarred Cam awake the next morning and he fumbled for it without opening his eyes. Maybe it was a wrong number; if he didn’t open his eyes, he’d be able to go back to sleep until the alarm on his wristwatch went off. He knew from experience that once he opened his eyes he might as well get up because sleep wasn’t gonna happen. “Yeah.”

“Boss, get your pants on and get down here.”

Karen. Shit. He forgot about keeping his eyes shut and bolted straight up, a shot of adrenaline clearing his brain of cobwebs. “What’s wrong?”

“Your idiot partner just showed up with his eyes swollen almost shut, barely able to breathe, and he thinks he’s capable of flying to Denver today.”

In the background Cam heard a thick, hoarse voice that didn’t sound at all like Bret saying something unintelligible. “Is that Bret?”

“Yeah. He wants to know why I call you ‘boss’ and him ‘idiot.’ Because some things are just evident, that’s why,” she snapped, evidently replying to Bret. Returning her attention to Cam, she said, “I’ve called Mike, but he can’t get here in time to take the Denver flight, so I’m giving him your flight to Sacramento and you have to get your butt in gear.”

“I’m on my way,” he said, disconnecting and dashing for the bathroom. He showered and shaved in four minutes and twenty-three seconds, threw on one of his black suits, grabbed his cap and the overnight bag he always kept packed because things like this sometimes happened, and was out the door in six minutes. He backtracked to turn off the coffeemaker that was programmed to begin brewing in about an hour, then, because he didn’t know if he’d have time to stop for breakfast he snatched some trail mix bars from the cabinet and dropped them in his pocket.

Shit, shit, shit. He swore under his breath as he wove through the early-morning traffic. His passenger today was the frosty Widow Wingate. Bret got along with her, but Bret got along with almost everyone; the few times Cam had been unlucky enough to be around her, she’d acted as if she had a stick up her ass and he was a bug on the windshield of her life. He’d dealt with her type before, in the military; the attitude hadn’t set well with him then and it sure as hell didn’t now. He’d keep his lip buttoned if it killed him, but if she gave him any lip he’d give her the roughest ride of her life; he’d have her puking her guts out before they got to Denver.

He made good time; he lived on the outskirts of Seattle, plus he was heading away from the city instead of toward it, so his side of the road was relatively clear while the other side was a solid ribbon of vehicles. He pulled into his parking slot a mere twenty-seven minutes after hanging up the phone.

“That was fast,” Karen said when he entered the office, overnight bag in hand. “I have more bad news.”

“Lay it on me.” He put down the bag to pour a cup of coffee.

“The Mirage is in for repairs, and Dennis says it won’t be ready in time for the flight.”

Cam sipped in silence, thinking through the logistics. The Mirage could have made it to Denver without refueling. The Lear obviously could, but they used it for groups, not just one person—and though he could fly the Lear by himself, he preferred having a copilot. Neither of the Cessnas had the range, but the Skylane had a service ceiling of about eighteen thousand feet, while the Skyhawk’s ceiling was thirteen five. Some of Colorado’s mountain peaks topped fourteen thousand, so the choice of aircraft was a no-brainer.

“The Skylane,” he said. “I’ll refuel in Salt Lake City.”

“That’s what I figured,” Bret said, coming out of his office. His voice was so hoarse he sounded something like a frog with sinus congestion. “I told the crew to get it ready.”

Cam looked up. Karen hadn’t exaggerated Bret’s condition at all; if anything, she had understated it. His eyes were red-rimmed and so swollen just a narrow slit of blue iris showed. His face was blotchy, and he was breathing through his mouth. All in all, he looked like hell, and if his miserable expression was any indication he felt like it, too. Whatever it was he had, Cam didn’t want it.

“Don’t come any closer,” Cam warned, holding up his hand like a traffic cop.

“I’ve already sprayed him with Lysol,” Karen said, glaring across the office at Bret. “A considerate person, with half an ounce of common sense, would have stayed home and called, instead of coming to work to spread his germs around.”

“I can fly,” he croaked. “You’re the one who insists I can’t.”

“I’m so sure Mrs. Wingate would want to spend five hours cooped up in a little plane with you,” she said sarcastically. “I don’t want to spend five minutes in the same office with you. Go. Home.”

“I second that motion,” Cam growled. “Go home.”

“I took a decongestant,” Bret wheezed in protest. “It just hasn’t kicked in yet.”

“Then it isn’t going to kick in in time for you to fly.”

“You don’t like flying the family.”

Especially Mrs. Wingate, Cam thought, but aloud he said, “It’s no big deal.”

“She likes me better.”

Now Bret sounded like a sulky kid, but then he always pouted when something interfered with his flight time. “She can tough it out for five hours,” Cam said, unrelenting. If he could, she definitely could. “You’re sick, I’m not. End of discussion.”

“I pulled up the weather reports for you,” Karen said. “They’re on your computer.”

“Thanks.” Going into his office, he seated himself at his desk and began reading. Bret stood in the office doorway, looking as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. “For God’s sake,” Cam said, “go to a doctor. You look as if you’ve been Maced. You may be having an allergic reaction to something.”

“All right.” He sneezed violently, then went into a coughing fit.

From where Cam was seated he couldn’t see Karen, but he heard a hissing noise, then Bret was enveloped in a mist. “Oh, for God’s sake,” the sick man wheezed, flapping his arms to drive the mist away. “Breathing this can’t be good.”

She simply sprayed more. “I give up,” he muttered after a futile few seconds of flapping, because he was losing ground against the cloud. “I’m going, I’m going. But if I develop lung failure because you’ve Lysoled me to death, you’re fired!”

“If you’re dead, you can’t fire me.” She got in the last shot, delivered to his back as he slammed out of the office.

After a moment of silence, Cam said, “Spray some more. Spray everything he touched.”

“I’ll need a new can. This one’s almost empty.”

“When I get back, I’ll buy you a whole case.”

“For now, I’ll spray the doorknobs he’s touched, but other than that stay out of his office.”

“What about the bathroom?”

“I’m not going in the men’s john. I used to think men were human, but I went in a jock john once and almost passed out from shock. Going into another one would probably throw me into psychotic episodes. You want the bathroom sprayed, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

He pondered for a moment on the faintly unbelievable detail that she worked for them, then he also considered the probability that the office would fall into complete chaos if she weren’t there.

Probability, hell; she’d make damn certain it did. When he weighed those two viewpoints against each other, he concluded that bathroom spraying wasn’t on her list of duties. “I don’t have time right now.”

“The bathroom isn’t going anywhere—and I use the ladies’.” Meaning she didn’t care if the men’s got de-germed or not.

He stared through the open door, only now realizing how many of their conversations were carried on with her in the outer office and him in his office, and most of the time he couldn’t see her at all. “I’m going to put up a big round mirror,” he said. “Right there next to the outer door.”

“Why?”

“So I can see you when I talk to you.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“To tell if you’re grinning.”

+

Cam stowed his bag in the luggage compartment then inspected the Skylane, circling it, looking for anything that was loose or worn. He tugged, he pushed, he kicked. He climbed into the cockpit and ran through the preflight procedures, checking each item off on a list on his clipboard. He knew this procedure by heart, he could do it in his sleep, but he never relied on his memory alone; one moment of distraction, and he might miss something crucial. He went by the list so he knew he covered everything. When he was two miles high was the wrong time to discover something wasn’t working.

Checking his watch, he saw that it was almost time for Mrs. Wingate’s arrival. He started the engine, listening to the sound as it caught and smoothed out. He checked the instrumentation display on the monitors, double-checked that all the data was normal, then checked the area traffic before idling toward the chain-link gate in front of the terminal where he would pick up his passenger. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement in the direction of the parking lot, and he glanced that way just long enough to verify that a dark green Land Rover was pulling into the closest available slot.

Seeing her in the Land Rover always surprised him. Mrs. Wingate didn’t look like a utility-vehicle or SUV type of woman; if he’d been meeting her for the first time, he’d have pegged her for someone who preferred a big luxury model—not a sporty type, but one of those that someone else drove while she sat in the backseat. Instead she always drove herself, wheeling the four-wheel-drive around as if she intended to take off across a field at any moment.

He’d cut it too close. Normally Bret would already be at the gate, and he’d help her get her luggage out and stowed. Cam saw the way she stood for a moment, eyeing the Skylane coming closer, then she closed the door and went around to the back to begin hauling out her luggage herself. He was still a good sixty yards from the gate; no way would he get there in time.

Great. She’d probably start the flight already pissed, because no one was there to help her. On the other hand, at least she hadn’t stood there waiting, with her nose in the air, until someone did show.

Once he was in position he cut the engine and climbed out. As he turned toward the gate he saw her coming out of the terminal building, pulling a suitcase behind her with one hand while she carried a large tote bag with the other. Karen, of all people, was with her, rolling two more suitcases along.

Mrs. Wingate watched him stride closer, and turned to Karen. “I thought Bret was supposed to be my pilot,” she said in her cool, even tone.

“He’s sick,” Karen explained. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want him anywhere near you.”

Mrs. Wingate didn’t shrug, or let her expression give away even a hint of what she was thinking. “Of course not,” she said briefly, her eyes completely obscured by the black sunglasses she wore.

“Mrs. Wingate,” Cam said in greeting as he reached them.

“Captain Justice.” She stepped through the gate as soon as he opened it.

“Let me take your bags.”

Silently she relinquished her hold on the suitcase before his hand got anywhere near the handle. Following her lead, he didn’t speak as he stowed it and the two other bags in the luggage compartment, wondering if she’d left any clothes behind in her closet. The bags were so heavy she’d never have made it on a commercial airliner without paying a hefty fee.

When there was only one passenger he or she often opted to sit beside him rather than in one of the four passenger seats behind the cockpit, partly because talking to him was easier while wearing the copilot’s headset. He helped Mrs. Wingate into the plane, steadying her as she stepped on the strut and then inside; she took the seat behind him, making it evident she didn’t want to talk to him.

“Would you take the seat on the other side, please,” he directed, his tone of voice making it a demand rather than a request, despite the “please” he’d tacked on.

She didn’t move. “Why?”

He’d been out of the air force for almost seven years, but the military habits were so deeply ingrained that Cam almost barked at her to move her ass, now, which would likely have resulted in their contract being canceled within the next hour. He had to grit his teeth, but he managed to say in a relatively even tone, “Our weight will be balanced better if you sit on the other side.”

Silently she moved into the right-hand seat, buckling herself in. Opening her tote bag, she pulled out a thick hardback and immediately buried her nose in it, though her sunglasses were so dark he doubted she could read a word. Still, her message was received, loud and clear: Don’t talk to me. Fine. He didn’t want to talk to her any more than she wanted to talk to him.

He climbed into his seat, closed the door, and donned his headset. Karen waved before returning inside. After starting the engine and automatically checking that all the data reads were normal, he taxied from the ramp onto the runway. Not once, even during takeoff, did she look up from her book.

Yep, he thought wryly, it was going to be a long five or so hours.

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

4

GREAT, Bailey thought as soon as she saw Captain

Justice climb from the cockpit of the Cessna and walk toward the gate. There was no mistaking his taller, leaner, broad-shouldered form for that of Bret Larsen, the pilot who usually flew her on her trips. Bret was cheerful and gregarious, while Captain Justice was grim with silent disapproval. Since marrying Jim Wingate, she’d become acutely attuned to when that attitude was directed at her, and though she would never characterize herself as thin-skinned, it still pissed her off.

She was damned tired of being looked at as a coldhearted gold digger who had taken advantage of a sick man. This whole situation had been Jim’s idea, not hers. Yes, she was doing it for the money, but damn it, she earned the salary she was paid every month. Seth’s and Tamzin’s inheritances were not only safe under her directorship, but growing at a healthy rate. She wasn’t a financial whiz by any means, but she had a good head for investing and she understood the markets. Jim had thought she was a little too conservative in her personal investments, but when it came to preserving trust funds that was exactly what he’d wanted.

She supposed she could take out an ad in the paper explaining all that, but why should she have to justify herself to people? Screw ’em.

That was an easy philosophy to take with Jim’s old friends who were now too good to socialize with her, and she was glad she didn’t have to spend time with them—she’d never thought of them as her friends anyway. She did, however, have to spend several hours cooped up in a small plane with Mr. Sourpuss, unless she wanted to cancel the flight and wait until Bret was well again—or book a commercial flight to Denver.

The idea was tempting. But she might not be able to get on the next flight out, assuming she could even get to the airport in time to make the flight, and her brother and sister-in-law were already on their way to Denver from Maine. Logan was supposed to have a four-wheel-drive rental waiting and ready to go by the time her flight landed. By eight this evening they were due at the outpost they’d selected, for two weeks of river rafting. The whole idea sounded like heaven to Bailey: two weeks of no cell service, no cold or disapproving looks, and most of all no Seth or Tamzin.

White-water rafting was Logan’s thing; he and Peaches, his wife, had even met while rafting. Bailey had done a little rafting in her college days and liked it, so this had seemed an ideal way to spend some time with them. Her family was scattered and had never been big on get-togethers, so she didn’t see them a lot. Her father lived in Ohio with his second wife; her mother, whose third husband had died almost four years ago, lived in Florida with her second ex-husband’s sister, who was also widowed. Bailey’s older sister, Kennedy, was ensconced in New Mexico. Bailey was closest to Logan, who was two years younger, but she hadn’t seen him since Jim’s funeral; he and Peaches were the only members of her family who had attended. Peaches was a sweetheart, and Bailey’s favorite of all her in-laws or step-whatevers.

The whole trip was Peaches’s idea, and e-mails had been flying for several months as they worked out the details. The plan was they would rent the bigger items, such as the tents and camp stoves and lanterns, that they would need for two weeks of camping on the banks of the river, and they would pick up food and water and other essentials—such as toilet paper—in Denver, but still Bailey’s suitcases were jammed with things she thought she might need.

Her limited experience with rafting had taught her that she’d rather have something and not need it than need it and not have it. On the second of her two previous excursions, she’d gotten her period a few days early, and she’d been completely unprepared. What should have been fun had instead been misery, because she’d had to use her extra socks as pads, which meant she’d endured cold, wet feet for almost the entire trip. Not fun. This time she had pored over travel-oriented mail-order catalogs beforehand, and ordered everything she could imagine using, such as a pack of disposable sponge toothbrushes, waterproof poker cards, and a book light.

Logan would tease her about overpacking, but she’d have the last laugh if he happened to need anything from her cache. She even had a small roll of duct tape in case her tent sprang a leak, which had alsohappened on that last, miserable trip. She liked rafting, and when she was in the raft being wet and cold was part of the fun, but when she wasn’t actually in the raft she wanted all the comforts of home. Okay, so she was being a girly-girl, but she was sure Peaches would also prefer the aloe body wipes over the joys of washing with a bucket of river water and a bar of soap.

She’d been looking forward to this trip so much that she couldn’t bear the idea of a delay, even if being on time meant she had to endure the company of Captain Justice. She wanted to snort in derision every time she heard the name. Captain Justice, for God’s sake. It sounded like the title character of a comic book.

He’d hefted her three bags into the luggage compartment without even a grunt, but though his expression looked set in stone she’d known what he was thinking; that she’d packed her entire closet. If he’d been human he’d have at least looked a little incredulous, or asked her if she had rocks in there; Bret would have grunted and acted as if the suitcases weighed even more than they did, made a joke out of it. Not Mr. Stone-face, though; she’d never seen him so much as smile.

When he helped her into the plane, the firm grip of his hand had been so unexpected she’d almost faltered. Bret didn’t help her, she realized; for all his easygoing camaraderie, he was very careful not to encroach on her personal boundaries, which admittedly had expanded a lot since she’d married Jim. She simply didn’t trust most people now, which made her stiff and unapproachable. Captain Justice either hadn’t noticed her “do not touch” signs, or he simply didn’t care. His grip was strong, his hands harder and rougher than those of the business executives and stockbrokers with whom she usually associated. The shock of being touched, the heat of his hand, actually made her heart lurch.

She was so dismayed she barely registered his order to move to the other seat. As soon as she’d belted herself into the seat he’d indicated, she dug out her book and pretended to be absorbed in it, but mentally she was kicking herself.

How pitiful was she that she would respond so easily to the simple touch of a man’s hand? Not just any man, either, but one who clearly disliked her. Okay, so her love life was currently nonexistent; it would remain that way as long as she had to deal with Jim’s children, because she refused to give them either ammunition or a target. Yes, there were times when she felt incredibly horny, but she hoped she had enough pride not to ever reveal that to someone like Justice, to allow him to think she had such a low opinion of herself that any man would do.

The hell of it was, physically, he was an attractive man—not handsome, not a pretty boy at all because his face was too rugged for that, but definitely … attractive. There was something compelling about gray eyes, and his were a lighter shade than usual, with just a faint hint of blue. The expression in those eyes was usually cold and remote, as if he had no feelings at all.

He and Bret were evidently good friends, though she couldn’t imagine him in any sort of real friendship with anyone. When Bret talked about him, though, he sounded as if he really liked and respected Justice. “A pilot’s pilot” was how Bret had once described him. “Completely cool. I swear, there’s not a nerve in his body. He could hold a KC-10 steady in a hurricane, and not break a sweat.”

Bailey had been curious enough, later, to go online and find out exactly what a KC-10 was.

It was easy, now, to imagine him in the cockpit of the huge supertanker, holding it steady while plane after plane swooped up behind him to be refueled. She hadn’t read exactly how that worked, but she didn’t think it could be easy, not at hundreds of miles an hour, being buffeted by high winds.

She surfaced from her thoughts to realize she’d stopped staring at her book and was instead staring at his hands, so sure and steady on the controls. Mortified, she snapped her gaze down again. Thank God she had on sunglasses, so he couldn’t tell she’d been staring at him—though he probably wondered how she could read through the dark lenses. She couldn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.

She felt self-conscious and uncomfortable, which wasn’t like her at all. She needed to relax and get her mind on other things. If she pulled off her sunglasses she would actually be able to read, and the book was a good one, but when she reached up to remove the glasses she didn’t get them all the way off before shoving them back in place again. They were a good shield, and she felt as if she needed one.

Okay, reading was out. A nap, maybe?

It was too early in the day, barely midmorning. She could pretend to nap, the way she’d been pretending to read, but that wouldn’t redirect her thoughts.

If she’d brought her laptop she could have played some games, but she’d left it at home. She wouldn’t have Internet access for the next two weeks, so after its battery died the computer would have been useless weight she’d have to lug around, unless she’d also wanted to carry spare batteries, which she hadn’t, not when she was already taking so much stuff. Their guide was supposed to have vehicles that took their camping gear and personal items from site to site, but there were three rafts, each with six people, so that meant the gear and paraphernalia of eighteen people had to be carted around. She hoped the guide had some damn big vehicles.

The prospect of the next two weeks filled her with excitement. Some of the rafting would be fun, some would be exciting, some of it downright dangerous, but for two weeks she wouldn’t have to watch every word she said, and she wouldn’t be surrounded by people who either openly despised her or looked askance at her. She would be able to relax, to laugh and have fun, to be herself. For two weeks, she was free.

She looked out the window for a while, watching Washington’s vast expanse beneath them. Commercial airliners were fast, but she preferred flying in smaller craft because she could see so much better at the lower altitudes. The loud drone of the engine was hypnotic and she actually did doze a little, her head resting against the back of the leather seat. The morning sun hit the windshield, warming the interior of the plane until she began to feel too warm and removed her lightweight silk jacket. She wouldn’t wear silk again for two weeks, she thought drowsily; the silk bed-sack she’d brought, in case her sleeping bag got too hot or too cool, didn’t count.

When she glanced at her watch, she saw with surprise that they’d been in the air almost an hour and a half; time had seemed to be crawling, but maybe she’d dozed longer than she’d thought. “Where are we?” she asked, raising her voice so he could hear her.

He lifted one earpiece of his headset and glanced over his shoulder at her. “Ma’am?” he asked; his expression was cold, but

his tone was polite. Barely.

“Where are we?” she repeated.

“Coming up on Idaho.”

She looked through the windshield and saw enormous whitecapped mountains looming straight ahead. Her heart jumped and she couldn’t contain a gasp; they were on a collision course with the mountains unless this little plane could go higher—a lot higher.

He replaced the earpiece, but she thought she saw a flicker of satisfaction in the set of his mouth. From her angle she couldn’t really tell, but if he’d heard her gasp she had no doubt he was amused. Of course the plane could go higher; they wouldn’t be in this one if it couldn’t. Jerk, she thought irritably.

Settling back in her seat, she stared at the mountains. They were still a good distance away, but their size was so overwhelming that they seemed to be crouching right in front of her, like huge prehistoric beasts, waiting for her to get closer before they rose up and pounced.

What was it about mountains? They had always tickled her imagination. In reality they sat there, big wrinkles in the earth. From the air they reminded her of a piece of paper that had been badly crumpled, then halfheartedly straightened. Unless they were volcanoes, the mountains never actually did anything, so why did they always seem so alive to her? She didn’t mean “alive” as in they had trees growing on them, or animals both small and large prowling around, but alive as in the mountains themselves seemed to live and breathe, to each have a personality, to communicate with one another. When she was little, she had thought hills were a mountain’s children, that when the hills grew up they would become mountains, and as they grew all the houses that had been built on them would go sliding off. She could remember being terrified any time she visited a home on even the teeniest slope, thinking that at any minute the ground would start rising beneath their feet and they’d begin sliding to their deaths.

By the time she was ten she knew better, but she never quite lost the feeling that the mountains lived.

Gray clouds were building ahead, butting and surging against the mountains as some weather system tried to build enough momentum to make it up and over. The old ladies were dressing up, she thought; the clouds draped around the mountains’ shoulders like a dirty boa, with the snowcaps jutting above and the broad green bases below.

As they droned closer to the mountains, Justice began taking them to a higher altitude. The pitch of the engine changed as the air grew thinner. Thin wisps of clouds wrapped around them, then blew away; the aircraft hit a few bumps in the air, jolting her.

Leaning forward, she tried to make out the altitude reading, but they hit another rough patch and she couldn’t focus on the numbers.

“What’s our altitude?” she asked loudly.

“Thirteen-five,” he said without taking his hands from the controls or looking at her. “I’m taking us up to sixteen.”

The air smoothed out as they climbed above the bumpy thermal layer. She looked down, doing the math in her head. They were two and a half miles high. The Titanic had sunk almost that deep in the ocean, about two and a quarter miles. That was a long way down, she thought, thinking of the glittering ocean liner with its lights extinguished, drifting down, broken and dark, all life gone. She shivered, suddenly cold, and reached for her jacket. She paused before putting it on, though, watching the first giant earth-wrinkle slide past beneath them.

The engine coughed.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach as if she were on a roller-coaster ride. Her heartbeat was suddenly thumping hard in her chest. Bailey leaned forward again. “What was that?” Her tone was a little tight, edged with alarm.

He didn’t answer. His posture had changed, going from relaxed to completely alert in a millisecond. That alarmed her more than the slight break in the engine’s monotonous drone. She gripped the edge of the seat, her nails digging into the leather. “Is something wrong?”

“All the readings are normal,” he replied briefly.

“Then what—”

“I don’t know. I’m taking us down a little.”

A little was right, she thought numbly, staring at the enormous, jagged mountains that abruptly seemed way too close beneath them, and coming closer. He couldn’t take them down very far or they’d be skimming the mountaintops. But the engine seemed to have smoothed out; if that little hiccup had signaled anything serious, wouldn’t it have continued?

The engine coughed again, hard enough that the airframe shuddered. Bailey sat frozen, watching the blur of the propeller blades, listening to the motor as she willed the sound to even out again. “Keep going, keep going,” she urged under her breath. “Just keep going.” She imagined the steady sound, pictured the propeller turning so fast she couldn’t see it. In her mind the plane lifted up and over the mountains, if she just concentrated fiercely enough it would actually happen—

The engine sputtered a few times … and stopped.

The silence was sudden, and complete. In wordless shock she watched the blur of the propeller slow, become distinct blades, and then it … stopped.

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

5

“SHIT!”

Captain Justice spat the word through clenched teeth; his hands moved swiftly as he tried to restart the engine, tried to keep the nose up. They were so close to the mountains that if the nose dropped, they would go straight in. The landscape below was a study of stark, inhospitable contrasts: snow-covered crags and boulders, the snow so white it was almost blue, the shadows so dark they were black. The slopes were steep and jagged, dropping away in sharp, almost vertical angles. There was nowhere to land, nowhere even remotely flat.

Bailey didn’t move, didn’t breathe. She couldn’t. The awful paralysis of absolute terror and helplessness seized her body, her voice. There was nothing she could do to help, nothing she could do to change the outcome. She couldn’t even scream a protest; all she could do was watch, and wait to die. They weregoing to die; she saw no way out of it. In a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds, they were going to crash on the rocky, snow-covered top of this mountain. For now, for a precious frozen moment, they seemed to float in place, as if the plane hadn’t quite given in to the laws of gravity—or the mountains were playing cat-and-mouse games with them, letting her feel a faint, unreasonable hope before snatching it away.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!”

Dimly she heard Justice on the radio, calling out the distress signal, their plane designation, and current location, then he cursed viciously and fell silent as he fought the inevitable. The plane dropped suddenly, a move that sent her stomach climbing into her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut so she couldn’t see the rocky peaks rushing at them. Then the left wing rose as the right one dipped and they rolled to the right, a nauseating maneuver that made her swallow convulsively. A few seconds later the right wing rose and for a brief—very brief—time they were level. Then the left wing dipped and they swung to the left.

Her eyes popped open. For a moment she couldn’t focus on anything; her vision was narrowed, dim, and her chest hurt. Distantly she realized she was holding her breath, and with an effort she exhaled, then sucked in oxygen. Another breath, and her vision cleared a little, enough to let her see him. He was all she could see, as if his image were magnified and everything else remained lost in the fog. She could see his right jaw, see the clenched muscles working, the sheen of sweat, even the curl of his eyelashes and the faint shadow of newly shaved whiskers.

An agonized thought shot through her brain: he was the last person she would see! She caught another breath, pulling it deep. She would die with him, this man who didn’t even like her; a person should at least die with someone around who cared. The same could be said of him, though, and she felt a deep sadness for both of them. He was … he was … The thought splintered, her attention caught. What the hell was he doing? Realization dawned, sharp and incredulous. He was guiding the plane, with the rudder and skill and ruthless determination, and also every prayer he knew, probably. The engine was dead, but he was still flying the damn plane, somehow keeping it under rudimentary control.

“Hold on,” he said harshly. “I’m trying to get down to the tree line, but we might not make it.”

Bailey’s brain felt like sludge, barely able to move, to function. Tree line? What did that matter? But she shook off the terror-induced brain fog enough to pull her seat belt tighter, press her head against the back of the leather seat, and hold on tight to the sides of the bottom cushion.

She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the sight of oncoming death, but she could feel the plane tilt first one way, then the other. Thermals, she thought, the single word swimming into focus. He was using the movement of the air currents to give them some lift, buy them precious seconds. The plane was too heavy to function like a glider, but the layers of air were slowing their descent somewhat; whether it would be enough to make a difference, she didn’t know, but Captain Justice must have something in mind, mustn’t he? Why else would he be fighting so hard to control the plane? If the end result was the same, then why bother?

With a sense of doom she waited for the overwhelming crush of impact, the last split-second of awareness. She hoped dying wouldn’t hurt much. She hoped their bodies were found fast, so her family wouldn’t suffer through a long search. She wished … she wished for a lot of things, none of which would happen now.

She felt as if an hour had passed since the engine stopped, though logically she knew mere minutes had gone by … no, not even minutes. Less than a minute, surely, though that minute seemed endless.

What was taking this damn plane so long to crash?

Him. Justice. He was the reason this was dragging out. He was still fighting the laws of gravity, refusing to give in. She felt an irrational urge to punch him, to say “Stop prolonging this!” How much terror was she supposed to take before her heart gave out under the strain? Not that it made any difference, under the circumstances—

WHAP!

The jolt jarred her teeth; it was followed instantaneously by a horrendous, deafening roar of screeching metal and thunderous cracks, more of those weird whapping sounds, and an impact so hard everything went black. The seat’s shoulder strap jerked almost unbearably tight. On some level she was aware of tilting to the right, then dropping, falling; the seat belt held her in place though her arms and legs were flopping like those of a broken doll. Then the right side of her head cracked against something rigid, and she was swallowed by darkness.

+

Bailey coughed.

Her brain faintly registered the involuntary response. Something was wrong; she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. She felt a vague sense of alarm and tried to move, tried to get up, but neither her legs nor arms worked. She concentrated, hard, her entire being focused on moving, but the effort was too much and she drifted back down into nothingness.

The next time she surfaced, she struggled and concentrated and was finally able to twitch the fingers of her left hand.

At first she was aware only of small things, immediate things: how hard it was to move, how her right arm felt as if something was cutting into it, the need to cough again. Saturating all of those small things was pain, insistent and unwavering. Her entire body hurt, as if she’d fallen—

Falling. Yes. She’d been falling. That was it. She remembered hitting—

No. The plane … the plane had crashed.

Realization filled her, a realization mixed with both wonder and trepidation. The plane had crashed, but she was alive. She was alive!

She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to see the extent of her injuries. If she was missing any body parts she didn’t want to know about it. If she was, she would die anyway, of shock and blood loss, on this isolated mountaintop both miles and hours from any possible rescue. She wanted to just lie there with her eyes closed and let whatever would happen, happen. Everything hurt so much she couldn’t imagine moving and risking pain that was more intense.

But it was annoying, the way something was interfering with her breathing, and her right arm really hurt where something sharp was digging into it. She needed to move, she needed to get away from the wreckage. Fire. There was always the danger of a fire in a plane crash, wasn’t there? She had to move.

Groaning, she opened her eyes. At first she couldn’t focus; all she could see was a brownish blur. She kept blinking, and finally the blur became some sort of fabric. Silk. It was her silk jacket, covering most of her head. Laboriously she lifted her left arm and swiped at the jacket, managing to drag it away from her eyes. Pieces of glass made small tinkling sounds as the motion dislodged them.

Okay. Her left arm worked. That was good.

She tried to push herself upright, but something was wrong. Nothing was where it should be. She made a few more feeble, futile efforts to sit up, then made a low sound of frustration. Instead of struggling like a worm on a hook, she needed to take stock of the situation, see exactly what she was dealing with.

Concentrating was difficult, but she had to focus. Taking deep breaths, she looked around, trying to make sense of what she saw. Mist, trees, occasional glimpses of blue sky. She saw her own feet, the left one sans shoe. Where was her other shoe? Then, like a bolt of lightning, another thought shot through her brain. Captain Justice! Where was he? She lifted her head as much as possible, and immediately saw him. He was slumped in his seat, his head dropped forward. She couldn’t make out his features; they were covered by what looked like a sea of blood.

Urgently she tried to surge upright, only to fall back once more. Her position confused her. She was lying on the floor of the cabin—no, that wasn’t right. Fiercely she concentrated, forcing her brain to make the adjustment from what it expected to the reality of her position, and abruptly things made sense. She was still buckled in her seat, and she was lying against the right side of the plane, which was resting at a fairly sharp angle. She couldn’t sit up because she needed to haul herself up and to the left, and she couldn’t do that unless she could use both arms, but her right arm was trapped and she couldn’t free it unless she first got her weight off it.

If Justice wasn’t already dead, he soon would be if she didn’t get in a position to help him. Get out of the seat. That’s what she needed to do. With her left hand she fumbled for the seat belt, popped the clasp open. When the belt released, her lower body rolled off the seat and dropped with a painful thud that made her groan again, but she was still tangled in the shoulder strap. She struggled free of it, and managed to get to her knees.

No wonder her right arm had felt as if something was cutting into it: something was. A triangular shard of metal protruded from her triceps. Feeling irrationally insulted by the injury, she jerked the shard out and threw it away, then scrambled forward until she could reach Justice. The angle at which the plane was resting made balance difficult even if she hadn’t been woozy and dealing with her own aches and injuries, but she braced her right foot against the side of the plane and hauled herself up so she could reach the scant space between the two pilots’ seats.

Oh, God, there was so much blood. Was he dead? He’d fought so hard to bring the plane down at a survivable angle, she couldn’t bear it if he’d saved her life and died in the attempt. Her hand shaking, she reached out and touched his neck, but her body was too outraged by the abuse it had taken to stop trembling and she couldn’t tell if he had a pulse or not. “You can’t be dead,” she whispered desperately, holding her hand under his nose to see if she could feel his breath. She thought she did, and stared hard at his chest. Finally she saw the up-and-down movement, and the relief that swamped her was so acute she almost burst into tears.

He was still alive, but unconscious, and injured. What should she do? Should she move him? What if he had spinal injuries? But what if she did nothing, and he bled to death?

She leaned her aching head against the side of his seat, just for a moment. Think, Bailey! she commanded herself. She had to do something. She had to deal with what she knew was wrong with him, not what might be wrong, and she knew for a fact he was losing a lot of blood. So, first things first: stop the bleeding.

She looked up, searching for something to hold on to while she clambered forward into the cockpit, but nothing, literally, was there. The left wing and most of the fuselage on that side were just gone, ripped away as if a giant can opener had opened up the aircraft. There was nothing to grasp except the razor-sharp edges of mangled metal. Part of a broken tree limb stuck through the gaping hole.

There was nothing else to use, so she gripped the top edge of Justice’s seat and pulled herself up, slithering between what was left of the roof and the top of the copilot’s seat. The best position she could get in was a crouch, with her feet braced against the right door. “Justice,” she said, because she’d read somewhere that unconscious people sometimes could still hear and respond a little to their names. Whether or not that was true, she didn’t know, but what could it hurt?

“Justice!” she said again, more insistently, as she grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him upright. It was like pulling on a log. His head lolled to the side, blood dripping from his nose and chin.

Pulling on him wasn’t going to work. His seat belt was holding him in place, but she was working against gravity. She needed to release the belt and get him out of the seat, try to get him out of the plane.

Like she had, he would fall out of the seat as soon as the belt was released, but it was a small plane; the distance was a couple of feet, at best. Still, the fuselage had been crushed inward on the copilot’s side, and a tree branch had punctured all the way through the metal skin like a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart. The sharp end of the tree branch was angled toward the back, rather than pointing upward, but she didn’t want to take the chance he might be impaled, so she looked around for something to put over the branch.

The first thing she thought of was her tote bag, but she didn’t see it. It had been lying on the left side of the bench seat, so it may have gone flying when that side of the plane was torn open. All that was available was her bedraggled, bloodstained silk jacket. Twisting around, grunting with the effort, she managed to grasp one sleeve and drag it to her. The garment was thin, almost weightless. Silk was strong, but what she needed in this situation was bulk to cover the sharp end of a tree branch, not tensile strength.

Inspiration struck. Swiftly she bent forward and removed her remaining shoe, a very expensive designer loafer, and jammed it over the jagged point of wood. Then she folded her jacket and placed it over the tree branch, as a bit of extra padding.

“Okay, Justice, let’s get you out of this seat,” she said gently. “Then I’ll see about getting you out of the plane, but first things first. When I undo your seat belt you’re going to fall a little ways, just a foot or so. Ready?” He’d probably fall on her, given the severely limited space, and then she’d be pinned with no wiggle-room for escape. She was in a really bad position. Sighing, she crawled over the top of the seat into the back again.

A low moan sounded deep in his throat.

She jumped, so startled by the sound she almost screamed. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered to herself as she scrambled into an upright position. In a slightly louder than normal voice she called his name again. “Justice! Wake up if you can. I can’t get you out of the plane by myself; you need to help me if you can. I’m undoing the seat belt now, okay?” As she talked she reached up and around, searching for the release, sliding her fingers along the woven fabric of the belt until she found the metal. A quick flip of the catch, and he dropped out of the shoulder restraint like a rock, onto his right side with his head and shoulders resting on the floor, his long legs still draped over the console and tangled with the controls.

“Damn it!” she groaned. This position wasn’t any better; his back was to her, and she still couldn’t see much of his bloody face. Nor was there room for her to wedge herself in front of him to see where all the blood was coming from.

Bailey took a few more deep breaths, wondering how she was going to manage this. The air she sucked in was cold, and sharp with the scent of evergreens. The effect was almost like a slap in the face. Once again she took stock of their situation. She couldn’t drag him up—he was far too heavy, and the slope of the plane was too severe. On the other hand, if she could get the copilot’s door open, then she could pull him out through it. Examining the protruding

tree branch, she saw that it had actually entered the cabin in front of the door’s hinge, so the branch wasn’t an impediment. But the way the plane was tilted, the door might be blocked. She peered at the tinted windows on the right side, which were so badly scratched she could barely see through them, much less tell if anything was blocking the door.

The copilot’s window was hinged. If she could push it open— Action followed hard on the heels of the thought, but the frame was buckled just enough that the window hinge didn’t work, and she couldn’t get herself braced to apply any leverage to it. In frustration she lifted her fist and used the side of it to pound the window, which accomplished nothing except making her hand hurt.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” She blew out a frustrated breath. If she couldn’t open the window, she likely wouldn’t be able to open the door. “On the other hand,” she said out loud to herself, “why am I wasting time with the window when I need the door open?” If she could open the door, she wouldn’t need to open the window.

She felt as if she were missing several obvious points, that her brain was working at only half speed, but she was doing the best she could under the circumstances. Her entire body felt as if she’d been severely beaten, her head ached, and her arm was bleeding. She would think of things when she thought of them, and anyone who didn’t like it could take a hike.

Take a hike. Very funny. Ha ha. And there was no one here to like or not like her decisions—other than Justice, and he was in no condition to comment—so her little pity party was wasted.

Legs. Legs were much stronger than arms, and she was stronger than most women thanks to all those hours of working out. She could lift four hundred pounds with these legs. She wasn’t a weakling, and she shouldn’t think like one. If the door was stuck, maybe she could push it open with her legs.

Justice’s tall body was in the way, but she thought she could get some leverage. Before she went to all that trouble, though, she leaned around and tugged on the handle to see if the latch would release. She felt resistance, like metal scraping on metal, but she’d expected that and tugged harder. Finally the latch gave, but the door didn’t open. Again, not surprising.

She had to find some way to hold the handle in the release position, or she’d never be able to kick the door open. There was nothing to tie it to, assuming she had anything to tie it with, which she didn’t. She’d have to jam something under it, and at the moment she was woefully short of jamming material, too.

Maybe there was something under one of the seats. People stuck things under seats all the time. Stretching, she patted around under each seat. Nothing.

Maybe a sock would do. Peeling off one of her thin trouser socks, she twisted it into a rope and looped it around the handle, twisting again to hold it secure. Squirming around, she folded herself into the copilot’s seat in as tight a tuck as she could manage and braced both feet against the door. The position was incredibly awkward, but using the sock to hold the handle gave her a precious few inches. Straining her shoulder and arm, she pulled up on the sock, once again feeling the protesting metal as it gave. With her other hand she gripped the forward edge of the seat so she wouldn’t simply shove herself backward, accomplishing nothing. “Please,” she whispered, and slowly began pushing. Her thigh muscles tightened; the smaller muscles around her knees turned rock hard as she exerted pressure on them. Her fingers, digging into the edge of the seat, began to protest, and then to slip. Furiously she hung on, and with a final effort did everything she could to straighten her legs.

The door creaked open, her hand slipped off the seat, and she fell backward from the momentum. Quickly she scrambled up, her heart pounding with elation. Yes! Untwisting her sock from the handle, she pulled it back on, then braced her feet against the door and pushed some more, gaining an opening about a foot wide. She could get through that, she thought in triumph, leaning forward to see if there was anything in the way, like a tree or a boulder. She didn’t see any obstructions, so she maneuvered until she was lying on her stomach, then slithered past Justice and, turning on her side, worked her way out the door. Metal scraped her back, her hips, but she made it through and onto the snow-covered ground.

The freezing cold bit through her thin socks. She needed to put on shoes and dry socks, almost immediately, to stave off the danger of frostbite. Her feet would have to wait, though, until she’d seen to Justice.

Examining the opening, she considered Justice’s size. He wouldn’t fit; his chest was probably too deep. She’d have to open the door wider. Taking hold of the edge, she tugged until she’d gained another few inches from the crumpled, protesting metal. That would have to do, she thought, her breathing faster than she liked. At this altitude, she had to be careful and not overexert herself, or she would be asking for a killer case of altitude sickness. She was already sweating a little, and that was dangerous in the cold. She was wearing only a pair of thin, fluid trousers and a silk tank, plus her underwear and the socks, none of which was doing much to keep her warm. She had plenty of clothing in her suitcases, but getting them out would be an effort, and she had to get Justice out first.

Justice groaned again. Remembering how slowly she’d regained her senses, how difficult even the smallest response had been, she began talking to him as she crouched in the open door and reached in, seizing him under the arms. “Justice, try to wake up. I’m going to pull you out of the plane now. I don’t know if you have any broken bones or anything, so you’ll have to let me know if I’m hurting you, okay?”

No response.

Bailey tightened her leg muscles and pushed backward. From her crouched position she couldn’t gain much leverage, but she was pulling him downhill, so gravity helped. When his head and shoulders were through the opening she shifted position until she was more fully under him; he was deadweight, completely limp and unable to help himself, so she’d have to protect his head. She paused a minute to catch her breath, then pulled her knees up, dug her heels into the ground, and pushed herself backward once more, dragging him with her. His weight slid forward and he flopped out of the plane, landing on top of her and pinning her to the icy earth.

Oh, God. She could see his face now, see the horrific cut that began about three inches back in his scalp, angled all the way across his forehead, and ended just above his right eyebrow. She didn’t know much about first aid, but she did know a bad cut on the scalp could result in severe blood loss. The proof of it obscured his features, saturated his shirt and pants.

He weighed a ton. Panting, she wiggled from beneath him and wrestled him onto his back. Her energy was fading fast, and she sat for a moment, her head down as she tried once more to catch her breath. Her feet were in agony, they were so cold, and now her clothes were caked with snow and rapidly becoming wet. The crash itself hadn’t killed her, but the altitude and hypothermia might well do the job pretty soon.

Justice began breathing more heavily, his throat working. Bailey said, “Justice?”

He swallowed, and thickly mumbled, “What th’ fuck?”

She gave a quick, breathless, laugh. Their situation wasn’t any less dire, but at least he was regaining consciousness. “The plane crashed. We’re both alive, but you have a bad cut on your head and I need to stop the bleeding.” Slowly she got to her knees and reached into the cockpit, fumbling for her one shoe and her jacket. She was freezing, but even though the jacket was thin it was better than nothing. She started to put it on, then stopped, and drew her arm out. Instead she turned one sleeve so she could attack the seam, and began tugging at it. She needed something she could use as a pad to place over the cut and apply pressure, and this was all she had.

He coughed, and said something else. She paused. She hadn’t understood everything he’d said, but part of it had sounded like “first-aid kit.”

She leaned over him. “What? I didn’t understand. Is there a first-aid kit?”

He swallowed again. He hadn’t yet opened his eyes, but he was winning the war against unconsciousness. “Glove box,” he mumbled.

Thank God! A first-aid kit would be a lifesaver—if she could open the glove box—she thought. She crouched down and wriggled her way back inside the open door. The glove box was in front of the copilot’s seat. Slipping her fingers under the latch, she tugged on it, but the glove box wasn’t as cooperative as the door latch had been. She banged it with her cold fist, and tugged some more. Nothing.

She needed something sturdy, with a sharp edge, to pry the box open. She looked around for what felt like the thirtieth time. There should be something in the wreckage she could use, like … like that crowbar held to the lower front edge of the co-pilot’s seat by a pair of brackets. She stared at it in disbelief. Was she already hallucinating? She blinked, but the crowbar was still there. She touched it, and felt the cold, rough metal. The bar was a short one, just about a foot long, but it was real, and it was just what she needed.

Removing the crowbar from the brackets, she jammed the sharp end in at the middle, where the lock mechanism was, and pushed up. The lid buckled a little, then sprang open.

She grabbed the olive-drab box with the red cross on it, and once more worked her way out. Going down on her knees beside him in the snow, she fumbled with the latches on the box. Why did everything have to have a damn latch? Why couldn’t things just open?

His eyes opened, just a slit, and he managed to lift his hand toward his head. Bailey grabbed his wrist. “No, don’t touch it. You’re bleeding a lot, so I have to put pressure on it.”

“Suture,” he rasped, closing his eyes against the blood that seeped into them.

“What?”

He took a few breaths; talking was still difficult. “In the box. Sutures.”

She stared at him, aghast. She could put pressure on the wound. She could clean the cut, she could fashion butterfly bandages from tape to hold the edges of the cut together. She could put salve on it. But he wanted her to sew him up?

“Oh, shit!” she blurted.

[nadiaslibrary-blog]

6

Arguing with a semiconscious man made no sense, but Bailey couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I don’t have any medical training, unless you count watching ER. No one in his right mind would want me sewing on him, but, hey, you aren’t in your right mind, are you? You have a head injury. On the theory that it isn’t smart to let someone with possible brain damage make the decisions, I’m going to ignore that suggestion. Besides, I don’t sew.”

“Learn,” he muttered. “Make yourself useful.”

She ground her teeth together. Useful? What did he think she’d been doing while he lolled about unconscious? Did he think he’d made it out of the plane under his own steam? She was wet and freezing because she’d been lying in the snow, pulling him out of the plane. Her hands were turning blue, and she was shaking so hard it would serve him right if she did try to sew him up.

The cold made her think: the jacket. She’d forgotten about the jacket, which was even more evidence that shock, or cold, or both, had slowed down her mental processes. She pulled it on, grateful for even that thin protection from the cold, but she was so wet she wasn’t certain anything could get her warm unless she first got dry.

Silently she tore open a pack of sterile pads and placed two of them over the cut on Justice’s head, using her hands to hold them in place and apply pressure. A rough sound of pain rattled in his throat, then he bit it off and lay perfectly still.

She should probably talk to him, she thought, help keep him conscious and focused. “I don’t know what to do first,” she confessed. A fit of convulsive shaking seized her and she stopped talking, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn’t have said a word anyway. When the shaking passed, she concentrated fiercely on holding the sterile pads in place. “I have to stop this bleeding. But we’re in the snow”—another episode of shaking interrupted her—“and I’m so cold and wet I can barely move. You’ll go into shock—”

He took a few breaths, as if gearing himself up for the ordeal of speaking. “Kit,” he finally managed. “Blanket … in bottom of kit.”

The only kit at hand was the first-aid kit. Leaving the pads in place on his head, she began taking things out of the kit and setting them in the open lid. Under everything, neatly folded in a sealed pouch, was one of those thin silver space blankets. Opening the pouch, she shook the blanket open. How much good it would do she didn’t know, having never used one before, but she wasn’t about to question anything she could use as a barrier between them and the cold. She was tempted to wrap it around herself and curl into the tightest ball possible until she felt a little less miserably cold, but he’d lost a lot of blood and needed it more than she did.

Which should she do, put the blanket under him for protection from the snow, or over him to help hold in what body heat he had? Could he warm up at all, lying in the snow? Damn it, she couldn’t think! She’d have to go on instinct. “I’m spreading the blanket beside you,” she said, suiting action to words. “Now I’m going to help you shift onto it, so you won’t be in the snow. You’ll have to help me. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” he said with effort.

“Okay, here we go.” Kneeling on the blanket, she slid her right arm under his neck, seized the front of his belt with her left hand, and lifted. He helped as much as he could, using his feet and his right arm; the biggest help was that he wasn’t deadweight any longer. Straining every muscle, she shifted him so that most of his torso, at least, was lying on the blanket, and decided that was good enough. Quickly she folded the rest of the blanket over him, tucking it in where she could.

Suddenly dizzy and nauseated, she sank to the ground beside him. Altitude sickness, she thought. She was almost at the end of her rope. If she pushed herself much harder, she’d find herself lying in the snow, unable to get up, and she’d die before the next morning—probably even before sunset today.

Still, she had to get to their suitcases, put on dry clothing, and lots of it—now. She had to function, or both of them would die.

She schooled herself to take slow, deep breaths to feed her oxygen-hungry body. Slow—that was the key. She should move slowly, when she could, and not let panic lure her into rushing around until she collapsed. That meant she had to plan every move, think through what she was going to do so no effort was wasted.

The luggage was loaded into the plane through the baggage compartment door, and secured by a cargo net that kept the bags from flying around the cockpit during rough weather, though she thought her suitcases would probably be too thick to fit in the space between the roof and the high seat backs. The problem was, though most of the roof was now gone and the suitcases would fit through the gaping hole, they would have to be lifted almost straight up, and they were very heavy, and she was so weak and cold and exhausted she didn’t think she could manage the task. She’d have to open them while they were still in the baggage compartment, and get out what she needed.

She’d have to unclip the cargo net. She was sure she could reach the clips, but she wasn’t sure she could manage if the clip was a particularly strong one. If that was the case, then she would need some other way of getting through the net.

“We have to get warm. I need to get more clothes out of my suitcase,” she told him. “If for any reason I can’t get the cargo net unclipped, do you have a knife I can use to cut it?”

His eyes opened a little, then closed again. “Left pocket.”

Getting to her knees, she untucked the blanket she’d just tucked around him and slipped her right hand into his pocket. The warmth was startling, and so delicious she almost moaned, but her fingers were so cold they were numb and she couldn’t tell if she was touching the knife or not. She grasped at whatever was there.

“Careful,” he murmured. “Good Time Charlie’s down there, and he’s attached.”

Bailey snorted. “Then keep him out of the way, or he might get unattached.” Men. Here they were on the verge of dying from hypothermia and, in his case, blood loss, but he was still protective of his penis. “Good Time Charlie, my ass,” she muttered, pulling her hand out of his pocket to see if she’d snagged the knife.

A tiny smile curved his mouth for a moment, then faded.

She paused, her gaze on his bloody face. That was the first hint of humor she’d ever seen him display, and it struck at her heart because, despite everything she could do, they might not make it out of this situation alive. He hadn’t given up, he’d gotten them down alive, and she couldn’t bear the thought that he might still die because she made the wrong decision or didn’t do enough. She owed him her life, and she would do everything she could to safeguard his—even sew him up if she had to, damn it.

The pocketknife and a dollar or so in change lay in her palm. Picking up the knife, she slid the change back into his pocket, then put the blanket in place again. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, giving him a comforting touch on the chest.

The plane loomed in front of her, a crippled bird with the right wing crumpled and the left one completely gone. They were downslope of it, which wasn’t the safest place if the wreckage began sliding, she realized. She didn’t think it would, with the crumpled wing digging into the mountainside the way it was, plus the tree branch impaling the fuselage was another anchoring oint, but she’d rather err on the side of safety and move out of its path, after she’d changed clothes and gotten warmer, and felt more capable of making the effort.

She didn’t have any pockets, so she held the knife in her teeth as she climbed back into the cockpit, then clambered to the back. Kneeling on the bench seat, she stretched over the luggage compartment, reaching for the cargo net clips at the rear of the cabin. To her relief, the net easily released. Pushing it to the side, she tugged one of her suitcases around and unzipped it; the suitcases were identical, so she didn’t know what was in which case, but she didn’t really care. She wanted to be dry, she wanted to be warm, and the clothes she put on didn’t matter.

Justice’s bag was there, too, but it was the typical pilot’s overnight bag, just big enough for a shaving kit and change of clothes. She dragged the bag up and over the seat, because there was no sense leaving it in the plane even though he likely wouldn’t need anything in there just yet. For now, she had plenty of clothes with which she could cover him; it wasn’t as if he needed to actually wear them, since he couldn’t even stand up. He would need clothes, yes, but she thought she’d save the clothes that actually fit him until later.

She began pulling clothes out of the suitcase she’d opened. When she came to a flannel shirt, she stopped right there and peeled off the silk jacket and tank. Her bra was damp, too, so it came off. Shuddering from the cold, she put on the flannel shirt and buttoned it up before resuming systematically emptying the bag. As she came to warm items she could use right then, she stopped and put them on. Socks. Sweatpants. Another pair of socks. A thick down vest, with handwarmer pockets; she put Justice’s knife in one of the pockets. She needed something to cover her head, too, but the only thing she’d packed that had a hood was a cotton knit hoodie. Not wanting to wait until she came across it, she used the next long-sleeved shirt she came across, folding it and tying the sleeves under her chin as if it were a bandanna.

Already she felt better, if simply not feeling quite as miserable qualified as “better.”

She found the plastic trash bags she’d packed to use as dirty-clothes bags, and began stuffing clothes into them. After she emptied one suitcase, she pushed it to the side and hauled another one around so she could get to the zipper. In that bag she found the pair of insulated hiking boots she’d packed, and gratefully she stopped to pull them on. Getting her feet warm before she put on the boots would have been nice, but she didn’t have that luxury.

She had enough clothes to cover him, now, so she stopped and left the second suitcase partially unpacked, and the other one unopened. Tossing his overnighter through the open door, she followed it with two trash bags full of clothes, then she followed the bags. As she crawled out, her gaze fell on the vinyl floor cover in front of both the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. Taking Justice’s knife from the vest pocket, she opened it and went to work.

He was lying deathly still, his eyes still closed. The pads covering his forehead were soaked through with blood.

“I’m back,” she said, putting the piece of vinyl down beside him and kneeling on it; getting dry had been important, but staying dry ranked right up there with it. “I brought clothes to cover you with, as soon as I can get the bleeding stopped and get you out of these bloody clothes.”

“Okay,” he murmured.

Thank God, he hadn’t lost consciousness again, but his voice was weaker. Taking two more sterile pads from the first-aid kit’s supply, she placed them over the bloody ones, and pressed down. This time she stayed in position, talking to him the whole time, telling him everything she’d done and why she’d done it. If he disagreed with anything he could speak up, but he remained silent.

She hadn’t thought to time how long she’d been maintaining pressure, but the third time she lifted the edge of the pads to check, the bleeding had slowed dramatically. She pressed down once more, held the pressure for about five minutes, then checked again. No new trickle of blood welled from the ugly gash.

“I think that’s done the trick,” she breathed. “Finally.”

The next step was to wash any dirt and debris from the cut, but for that she needed water. She’d put a bottle of water in her tote bag, wherever it was. It had to be around here somewhere. It had probably gone out of the plane when the left wing snapped off, so if she located the missing wing, the tote bag should be between the wing and the rest of the plane.

“I’m going to look for some water,” she told him.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

No, he wasn’t; she doubted he’d be able to stand on his own.

Standing, she began examining the area immediately around the plane. When she didn’t spot the tote bag, she followed upward, with her gaze, the path the plane had taken, marked with broken and splintered trees and limbs.

Her eyes widened. The mountains loomed around her, silent and shrouded with snow. The only sound was the occasional sighing of the wind in the trees. No leaves rustled, no birds sang.

The mountains were immense, looming high above her on all sides, so tall they would soon block the afternoon sun. Slowly, disbelieving, she turned in a circle. There was nothing but mountains, and more mountains, as far as she could see. They spread out below, massive bases that were veiled by gray clouds. Deep, incredibly rugged folds in the earth created black shadows where sunshine seldom touched. The plane was nothing more than a dot on the steep mountainside, already half-covered by the limbs of the trees into which they had crashed, and those black shadows were spreading toward it.

She felt dwarfed, insignificant to the point of nothingness. She and Justice were nothing, she realized. They were completely, totally insignificant to these mountains. Any rescue could conceivably take days to reach them. They were alone.