Brace For Impact

Sitting up proved to be an agonizing effort. The left side of her body must have taken the brunt of the damage. Either her arm was broken, or dislocated. Or it could be her collarbone, she supposed. And ribs, and hip. But when she ordered her feet to waggle, they did, and when she experimentally bent her knees, doing so didn’t make her want to pass out.

Maddy continued to evaluate her condition. She had to wipe blood away from her eyes, which suggested a gash or blow up there somewhere. Her head hurt fiercely, making it hard to think. And yes, she had definitely slashed open her palm, although she was already so bloody, she could hardly tell where this stream was coming from. None of the blood fountained, though, just trickled and left smears, so she wasn’t bleeding to death.

Or dying at all. She didn’t think.

With her right hand she clutched the thin bole of a wispy, small evergreen of some kind and used it to pull herself to her feet. Then she turned slowly in search of the rest of the plane. Not the tail—she didn’t care about the tail. The nose. The front seats, the two men. Logically, they had to be...somewhere in front of her.

Tat-a-tat, tat-a-tat, tat-a-tat.

Woodpecker, she understood. It kept tapping as she struggled forward, the sound weirdly comforting. Something else was alive, going about its business.

She glimpsed red and white between the trees, and tried to run even on the steep sideways slope. She fell to her knees and slithered downhill until she came up against a tree solid enough to hold her. As she pushed herself up again, an involuntary whimper escaped her. Her eyes stung—whether from blood or tears, Maddy didn’t know.

This time she moved more carefully, watching where she put her feet, grabbing branches where she could for support. The rocky side hill didn’t support huge trees. Maybe...maybe these had softened the landing.

And torn the plane to shreds, too.

She saw the other wing first. It had slashed raw places in tree trunks and ripped away branches. More metal lay ahead, another thirty or forty feet.

There she found Bill Potter, still in his seat as she’d been, but the way his head lay on his shoulder—Her teeth chattered as she made herself take a closer look. And then she backed away and bent over puking, snot and tears and blood mixing until she had to use the hem of her shirt to wipe her face again.

She called for Scott, listened. Did it again, and this time she heard a cry. I’m not alone. Whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she half crawled in that direction.

When she saw him, crumpled and twisted, her teeth started to chatter again. That couldn’t be right. People didn’t bend that way.

She had to scramble the last bit, the ground cold and sloping even more steeply here.

His eyes were open when she reached him, but beneath his tan his face was a color she’d never seen. His lips were almost blue.

“Scott,” she whispered, not letting herself look at his lower body.

“Maddy.” Her name came out so quietly, she bent close to hear him. Took his hand in hers, but his chilly fingers didn’t tighten in response. Something else she didn’t want to think about.

“I’ll go for help,” she said, unable to help crying.

“No.” Suddenly, his fingers convulsed like claws, biting into her hand. His eyes held hers with fierce determination. “Not an accident.”

That was something she hadn’t yet let herself think. Even though she knew, she knew, Maddy heard herself saying, “What?”

“Bomb.”

Chapter Two

As Maddy clutched his hand, Scott tried to work his mouth. “Can’t trust marshals. Only people who knew.”

“That you’d gone to get me and how we were getting back?”

“Yes.”

“But...”

“Can’t stay with plane.”

“I won’t leave you!”

“Have to.” His voice had weakened. Blood bubbled between his lips.

“No—”

“They’ll need to be sure you’re dead. Someone will be coming.” He stared at her with what she sensed took everything he had left. “Take coats, first-aid kit. Food. Run, Maddy.”

Her hot tears splattered onto his face. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Friend. Marshal. Ruzinski. Robert. Remember.”

She had to lip-read now. “Robert Ruzinski,” she repeated.

He made a sound that might have been confirmation. His lips moved again. “Trust him.”

“Okay. But I can’t leave you.”

Staring into his eyes, she saw the very second he left her. The tight clench of his fingers loosened. When she lifted her hand away, his arm flopped to his side.

He was dead.

She let herself cry for a few minutes before she made herself think through the cotton candy that seemed to fill her head.

Normally, she’d try to figure out whether there was some kind of beacon and how it worked. Or...would the radio still work? But as it was...

Run.

She didn’t dare be found. Not yet. She had to hide. Stay alive until she could really think, evaluate her options. Right now she needed to scavenge what she could from the plane, or she wouldn’t survive. She’d seen enough snow before the plane came down to know it must still get cold this high up in the mountains. And there might be some food. Something to hold water in. Yes, a first-aid kit.

Would she have phone reception? Maddy didn’t remember seeing her purse. It could be anywhere. She’d look, but the phone, even if it was what Scott had called a “burner,” would have GPS, wouldn’t it? That might not be good.

Warmth, food, water, bandages—those were her needs. And also... She turned her head to the twisted part of Scott Rankin’s body. If he carried a gun, she needed to take that.

The idea of groping his body felt like a hideous invasion. He’d want her to, though—she felt sure.

Shivering, Maddy knelt over him.

HE HAD TO be insane.

Will had had plenty of time to think about what he was doing, and how little chance there was that he’d be able to help anyone. People rarely survived that kind of crash. If anyone had miraculously lived, they might get a faster response from an activated beacon than from him. He’d known from the beginning that he’d take hours to reach the crash site.

But what if the plane didn’t have a beacon? If the pilot hadn’t filed a flight plan?

Straight lines in this country were rarely possible. No trail existed for him to follow. Instead, he’d reluctantly realized he had to drop from his current elevation of 7,380 feet on the summit and head southwest along the side of the ridge leading toward McMillan Spire. He had to stay above the tree line so he’d see the crash site. Then he just had to hope it would be possible to climb down to it.

This was not a recommended descent route from Elephant Butte. In fact, from what he’d read, he’d be facing brutal conditions. Chances were good he wouldn’t have cell phone coverage once he dropped toward the Torrent Creek and Stettatle Creek drainages. Even as he jogged along a lengthy band of snow, using his ice ax to aid his balance, he debated whether he should call to report what he’d seen. Swearing under his breath, he made himself stop, lower his pack and dig for his cell phone, which of course wasn’t easily accessed. He hadn’t expected to want it.

And then when he did find it...he had no bars. Will dropped the damn useless thing back into a pocket that he zipped, then shouldered the pack again and set off.

The speed he tried to maintain was a lot faster than was safe.

Even as he thought that, his feet caught crumbling rock and skidded. He slammed the serrated end of the ax into a crack between boulders and felt the wrench on his shoulders as the ax held and one of his booted feet slid over a drop-off.

Swearing, sweating, he made slow, careful movements to get his feet back under him on a too-narrow ledge. The unwieldy pack didn’t help; even though he’d eaten some of the food he’d carried in, it probably still weighed seventy pounds or more. Nothing he wasn’t familiar with from deployments, but this was a different landscape. The weight shifted his balance, like a pregnant woman’s belly shifted hers. He made his cautious and much slower way to another strip of snow, one of many that formed ribbons between stretches of tumbled rock.

Had to come up here alone, didn’t ya?

Maybe this wasn’t the right plan. He was strong. He thought he could make it back to Diablo by early nightfall, even though he’d taken two days to get up here. He could call 911 or find a ranger station, get a rescue helicopter in the air.

One that wouldn’t be able to land in this mountainous landscape, Will reminded himself.

Still, if he ever reached the crash site, odds were he’d find a dead pilot. Given that this was Sunday, he might also find some climbers or hikers who’d been closer and had already reached the site.

He just didn’t believe that. This was early in the season in the high mountains. A warm spring had opened the backcountry earlier than usual. A lot of people would have waited for the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. And even though people down at Ross Lake and hiking the Big Beaver Trail had probably seen the plane go overhead, if they paid any attention to it at all once it crossed the ridge, they’d have lost sight before it began to plummet. Climbers up McMillan Spire might have seen it, but they might just as well have not, too. No matter what, he was closer. Will had a bad feeling that, by sheer chance, he might be the only person who’d seen the crash.

He could do more to help survivors than almost anyone, too, although he regretted the limited medical supplies he carried. Still, as an army medic—former army medic—he’d seen and treated more traumatic injuries than most physicians. Death was all too familiar to him, but if there was any chance...

He groaned and kept moving.

IT TOOK MADDY half an hour and a panicky realization of passing time to realize the rear portion of the plane wasn’t where she thought it should be. It should have broken off first and thus been behind where she’d regained consciousness hanging upside down. Every step hurt. Even the brush of hemlock or fir needles hurt. If she hadn’t been terrified—Run, Maddy—she would have given up. But she couldn’t, in case Marshal Rankin was right.

Holding on to a tree limb to keep from falling down the slope, she made herself remember when the plane first hit the treetops. As their trajectory slowed, she’d felt hope. And then a wing must have caught, because the entire plane swung around and then flipped. What came after, she knew only from seeing two large pieces of what had been a shiny, well-maintained and loved small plane.

So...other pieces could have been flung in almost any direction, couldn’t they? She’d been lucky to find the nose of the plane so quickly. What she’d considered logic wasn’t logic at all. The tail could have ended up somewhere ahead of the nose, or off to one side or the other. It wasn’t as if chunks of airplane would have been shed in a straight line.

She paid attention to broken branches and scarred trunks. Raw scrapes in the gray rock. Her brain kept latching on to small, mostly meaningless details. What was that harsh call she kept hearing? Had the bang really been loud enough to have been a bomb going off? Could they have, oh, hit a big bird that fouled the propeller or the engine? No, Scott would have seen that; he’d been sitting in front, right beside the pilot. Of course he would. Then she started to worry about what kind of animals would be drawn by the smell of blood. Hadn’t grizzlies been reintroduced into the North Cascades? What if the two men’s bodies got eaten?

If her stomach hadn’t already emptied itself, she’d have been down on her knees heaving again.

Even if she had the strength, could she bury Scott and Bill? Find enough rocks to pile on them?

Run, Maddy.

No. She had to leave the two men, as Scott had demanded she do.

Increasingly dazed, she came by pure chance on a duffel bag hanging above her. It took her a while to find a broken limb long enough to poke at it until it fell. She unzipped it and her heart squeezed in relief when she saw her own clothing. She wanted to hug the duffel just because it was familiar. Hers.

Instead, she made herself toss out everything that wasn’t immediately useful. Shorts? Sandals? Gone. One pair of extra jeans she kept, because the ones she wore were so torn and bloody. Thin cotton pajama pants could be long underwear. She kept a toothbrush and toothpaste, but ditched shampoo. A shower was not in her immediate future. Socks—she’d need those. And thank goodness she’d brought her hiking boots. She’d almost left them behind, because she hadn’t been a hiker until she had to fill long, empty weekends this past year. Now she took the time to sit down, change socks and laboriously lace up the boots with one hand. She wouldn’t need her shoes.

She never did find Marshal Rankin’s bag, but did finally locate most of the tail section of the plane. Packed in a compartment that hadn’t broken open were two blankets, a pair of parkas, hats and gloves, a plastic jug full of water and a tool kit. Best of all was the cache of energy bars. They might have been in here forever, might be stale, but she wouldn’t care.

Anxiety continuing to mount with her consciousness of time passing, she stuffed what she thought would be most useful into the duffel bag, finally discarding more clothes in favor of a puffy, too-large parka and the gallon of water. The shovel that unfolded...she couldn’t think what she’d use it for, short of digging graves.

At last, she used one of the shirts to make a crude sling for her left arm, then slung the duffel as comfortably as she could—which wasn’t comfortable at all—over her right shoulder.

Straightening, she looked around. She couldn’t actually see enough through the trees to orient herself at all. Downhill would surely be easiest. She’d be bound to find a stream eventually. All that snow she’d seen from above must be melting, and the water had to go somewhere.

The flaw was that anyone in pursuit would assume she’d choose the easiest route. Which meant...she couldn’t.

She’d go up.

HER ONLY CONSOLATION was that she lost sight of any evidence of the plane crash within minutes. Immediately, she began to second-guess herself. Maybe she would have been better off heading toward a lower elevation where the forest grew thicker, the trees taller. How would anyone find her there? She could huddle beneath some undergrowth until...

I die?

Her mind veered away from the bleak thought. She was panting as if she was at the end of an hour-long spin class, and she doubted she’d been on her way ten minutes. Although it might have been longer, or only five minutes. Time blurred. Each foot up ward that she managed to haul herself required an enormous effort. She grasped rocks or spindly tree trunks and heaved herself up. A few times she turned to look back, but all she saw were trees and land that plunged sharply up and down. Weren’t there supposed to be meadows in the mountains? Lakes?

The duffel bag grew heavier and heavier. Once she permitted herself to stop and take a few sips from the plastic jug and, despite a complete lack of appetite, eat half of an energy bar, hoping it would provide fuel to overcome her increasing lassitude. Her legs wobbled when she pushed herself to her feet again, but she scrambled upward over a rocky outcrop. Even with boot soles that had a deep tread, her feet kept slipping. If she wasn’t on rock, roots tripped her. A few times she found herself crossing bands of snow. She felt too exposed in the open, but too tired to make herself go around.

Nothing in her head felt like an actual thought. She would stare at her feet until one of them moved. At her hand until it found a grip. Her world became the next step, and the pain that tore at her body.

Stop. Have to stop.

Another step.

She hardly noticed when her legs crumpled, when she crawled to the closest thing she could call shelter: a fir twisted by some natural calamity so that it grew nearly sidelong to the ground. Maddy squirmed until she felt almost hidden, and then she curled up, shaking.

WILL CONTINUED TO scramble along among the clusters of the highest, cold-stunted firs. He continuously scanned the trees downslope for any sign of recent scarring. He didn’t have to pull out his GPS or compass; he could see over to a facing ridge, beyond which he knew was the deep drop-off into the Torrent Creek gorge. Ahead, water flung itself in a long series of waterfalls. Somewhere in his pack he had a map that would probably tell him what that stream was called.

He did pause now and again to check his watch, dismayed to see that several hours had already passed, and to use his binoculars to scan in a semicircle.

It was through the binoculars that he saw something off. An animal, maybe, but he didn’t think so. The branches of a particularly oddly shaped alpine fir shook. There seemed to be a black lump, and a splotch of red. Part of the plane?

He altered his path with a specific goal now. The descent was damned steep, in places close to a class-three pitch. If he fell...no, he wouldn’t even consider the possibility.

The closer he came, the less convinced he was that he’d seen a piece of metal. Somebody might have stowed a pack there with the intention of coming back for it—although this wasn’t anyplace logical for a climber to pass through.

He was close when his feet skidded and he slid ten feet on his ass, swearing the entire way even as he employed his ice ax to slow the plunge enough to keep him from colliding with the boulder that lay ahead.

The tree shook. He regained his footing close enough to it to see that a woman huddled beneath the skimpy branches...and that she held a big black handgun in trembling hands. Aimed at him.

Will didn’t move, barely breathed as he eyed the black hole down the barrel. “Would you mind pointing that away from me?” he asked.

It wasn’t just her hands or the tree branches that shook. It was her whole body. He saw blood, a lot of it, and that she held the gun strangely, the butt almost against her sternum and resting on her other hand—which extended from flowery fabric wrapped around it. Brown hair formed a shrub around her face, poking out in places, matted with blood in others. Her face was a pasty white where it wasn’t bloody. He wasn’t close enough to see her eyes.

“You’re hurt.” He did his best to sound calm, even gentle. “Will you let me help?”

“I’ll shoot you.”

The words weren’t really clear. He frowned, realizing her teeth were chattering like castanets. He knew shock when he saw it. Will felt something like exhilaration, because she almost had to be from the downed plane. A survivor, by damn. Although why hadn’t she stayed with the wreckage?

“Please don’t,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean you any harm. I was on the summit of Elephant Butte—” he nodded toward the mountain, not sure gesturing with his hands was a good idea right now “—and I saw a small plane crash. I thought I might be able to help.”

She studied him, shaking and wild-eyed. “I won’t—” chatter “—let you kill me.”

Stunned, Will stared at her. “Why would you think—” And then, damn, he got it. “You think the crash wasn’t an accident,” he said slowly.

“I know it wasn’t.” The barrel of the gun had been sagging, but now she hoisted it again. “I knew somebody would come looking for me.”

“That somebody isn’t me. I’m a medic. I’m here in case somebody was injured.” Will hesitated. “Can I set my pack down?”

After a discernible pause, she said in a gruff voice, “Okay.”

He kept his movements slow. Lowered the pack to the hillside, laid the ice ax beside it and then squatted to make himself less alarming. He was a big guy, tall and broad enough to scare any woman alone in an alley—or on the side of a mountain. The two days of dark scruff on his jaw probably didn’t help, either, or the fact that his face wasn’t pretty at the best of times.

“Will you tell me what happened? Why you’re scared?”

“Who—” mumble “—you?”

“Me? Ah, my name is Will Gannon. I got out of the military ten months ago, after getting hurt pretty bad.” He hesitated. “I was shot, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t love seeing that gun pointing at me.”

She looked down as if forgetting she held it. He hadn’t forgotten for a second, given the way she was trembling. He hoped the trigger wasn’t extra sensitive.

“Oh.” She lowered the gun so it lay on her thigh, pointing off toward the southwest. “Sorry.”

“Thank you.” What could he say that would reassure her? “You’re worrying me. I think you’re in shock, and I can tell you’ve been hurt. I have some first-aid supplies in my pack, and I was a medic in the army.”

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart.” He cleared his throat, recalling the follow-up: and hope to die. Maybe not the best choice of words.

But she nodded. “Okay.”

He took the chance to rise to his feet, pick up his pack and cautiously approach her. This time when he squatted, he was able to tip her face up and to the side so he could see an ugly gash running into her hair.

“Headache?”

“Yes.”

Worse, her hazel eyes were glassy. On the good news front, she was conscious and coherent.

“You mind?” he said, closing his hand around the gun and easing it away from her. A Glock, which meant no safety. Not reassuring given that he’d have to carry it somewhere as he scrambled and fell down into the valley.

That worry could wait.

He kept talking to her as he unzipped the compartment on the outside of the pack that held what medical supplies he carried. First, he pulled out a package of sterile wipes. Once again gripping her chin, he cleaned her face, going through several of the wipes. Antibiotic ointment, gauze pad, tape. Then he asked, “Any other blows to your head?”

“Don’t know.”

He nodded and carefully explored, sliding his fingers beneath her hair and finding a couple of lumps. He’d have been surprised if there weren’t any. Then he dug out a wool knit beanie with a fleece lining, and tugged it onto her head. The afternoon still felt warm to him, but she was shaking partly from cold.

“Were you the pilot?” he asked.

For a minute he thought she hadn’t heard him, or was just shutting down. But then she said, “No.”

“Was he killed?”

“Both dead. I was in the backseat.”

“You’re sure they’re dead?”

A shudder rattled her. Her head bobbed, just a little.

“All right,” he said calmly, “I need to look at your other injuries. Let’s wrap something warm around you so you don’t get chilled.”

While a terrified woman was stripping, he meant. Yep, either that, or he’d be peeling off her clothes.

Chapter Three

Maddy couldn’t look away from this stranger she had to trust. As out of it as she’d been, she wouldn’t have been able to hold him off for two minutes.

A scar that started at one jutting cheekbone and ran over his temple marred Will Gannon’s long, bony face. He had dark hair, shaggy enough to curl around his neck, and he was either growing a beard or just hadn’t shaved for a few days. His eyes were light, though; gray or gray blue. Crow’s-feet beside them made her wonder how old he was or whether he’d squinted into an awful lot of sunlight. He was tall—really tall, she thought—with the long muscles of a basketball player instead of the bulky, weight lifter kind.