Brace For Impact. Janice Kay Johnson
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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