Brace For Impact
Janice Kay Johnson
Can she trust a stranger? The sole survivor of a deliberate plane crash, Maddy Kane has gone from protected witness to roaming target. Lost in the wilderness, Maddy is forced to trust the stranger who came to her aid. No mere hiker, Will Gannon is former Delta Force. But with survival a long shot, can the two become allies, and maybe more—before it's too late?
Can she trust a stranger?
The sole survivor of a deliberate plane crash, Maddy Kane has gone from protected witness to roaming target. Badly injured and lost in the wilderness, Maddy is forced to trust the stranger who came to her aid. No mere hiker, Will Gannon is former Delta Force. The battle-scarred medic knows he is Maddy’s only hope in a desperate situation. With survival a long shot, can the two become allies, and maybe more—before it’s too late?
An author of more than ninety books for children and adults with more than seventy-five for Mills & Boon, JANICE KAY JOHNSON writes about love and family, and pens books of gripping romantic suspense. A USA TODAY bestselling author and an eight-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, she won a RITA® Award in 2008. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small town north of Seattle, Washington.
Also by Janice Kay Johnson (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)
Hide the Child
Trusting the Sheriff
Within Range
From This Day On
One Frosty Night
More Than Neighbors
Because of a Girl
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Brace for Impact
Janice Kay Johnson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-0-008-90483-8
BRACE FOR IMPACT
© 2019 Janice Kay Johnson
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Note to Readers (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)
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In memory of my dad, a noted Northwest mountain
climber with many first ascents who shared his love of
the mountains and wilderness with his children.
Contents
Cover (#ub6b814ae-b9f0-5a0e-b06c-acbb7e620759)
Back Cover Text (#ua1c3a799-2975-5889-9a2b-3612829e4db3)
About the Author (#u49061824-6f69-5828-be36-a98de4799056)
Booklist (#u6d9c53c0-14be-5bb7-a0f3-a2d94aa86fda)
Title Page (#u884a1231-2e5e-5703-96be-dd7c58d56ed7)
Copyright (#u88d7fcb4-5126-5d5c-9b87-a8543cc56d87)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#ua20de401-b818-5e16-8b29-1d4b4e52d8d8)
Chapter One (#u59427caf-ba9b-56dd-819b-61e15d46830e)
Chapter Two (#uc9d2ea27-6dab-53fd-8da5-4d2698d434ba)
Chapter Three (#u4b31194f-1574-58f5-b594-e2c9fc6fb941)
Chapter Four (#ub15a276a-9d08-55ca-a912-1c1af7774a51)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)
“This?” Maddy Kane balked like a horse that had gotten a good look at the rattlesnake coiled in the middle of the trail. Her feet said, uh-uh. No way. The rest of her was in complete agreement. “We’re flying to the other side of the state in this?”
She’d vaguely noticed the airfield when she drove by and realized it was puny. Somehow she hadn’t translated that into puny airplane.
Having lived in the small and remote town of Republic in eastern Washington the past year, she hadn’t expected to board a Boeing 767 here, with only the one short runway and a few hangars by Lake Curlew. But considering she’d never flown in anything smaller than a 737—she thought that was the Boeing company’s smallest plane—this Cessna didn’t look much bigger than the really terrifying ultralight she’d seen once buzzing over a tulip field, the pilot sitting in what looked like a lawn chair beneath the wings.
Okay, this plane did have a cabin. Still.
The man next to her laughed, the skin beside his eyes crinkling. A United States marshal, Scott Rankin had been her handler throughout her ordeal. Really, her anchor. As horrific as witnessing the murder had been, thinking the killer would see her huddled only a few feet away, she’d never imagined the fallout after calling 911 and telling the detective everything she’d seen and heard. It had now been twelve months since she’d talked to her parents or sister or friends or the man she’d been dating. Supposedly, her law firm was saving her job, but she had to wonder. A year shouldn’t seem so long, but she’d increasingly felt a kinship with Rip Van Winkle. In all these months she’d clung to the knowledge that Rankin was there, a telephone call away.
Graying but still broad-shouldered and strong in his fifties, he had shown her pictures of his wife, adult children and a new granddaughter. He’d been really kind to her. In turn, she’d cooperated with his arrangements. Until now.
How could he think this was the safest way to get her to Seattle, where she was scheduled to testify in a major trial that would begin ten days from now? Safe being a relative concept. So okay, flying commercial wasn’t an option from this part of the state, but until he knocked on her door this morning, she’d assumed they would drive.
That was the moment he’d said cheerfully, “Nope, we’re catching a flight.”
Maddy had envisioned at least the kind of twin-engine passenger plane that carried twenty or thirty people. For one thing...there was a mountain range separating eastern and western Washington. A tall one.
She was already toting her bag when Rankin started across the pavement toward the little plane. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder, “this’ll be fun.”
Oh, Lord. For a minute she stood there breathing too fast, until she realized she didn’t have an option.
Reluctantly, she trailed him.
Another man had been circling the Cessna, doing what she assumed was a flight check, which ought to reassure her. That meant he was safety conscious, right?
“I don’t really like heights,” she mumbled to Marshal Rankin’s back.
The tall, lanky man doing the flight check straightened and, beaming at them, extended his hand. “Couldn’t get better weather for the flight!” he assured Maddy and Rankin.
Sure. By the first day of July in this part of the state, every day was sunny and hot. Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a lightning storm over the Cascades. A white-hot bolt from on high, and that little tin can would be zapped.
“You’ll be able to get a good look at the Cascades,” the pilot enthused as if he hadn’t noticed her severe case of doubt. “Bird’s-eye view.”
Maddy squared her shoulders. This was happening, whether she liked it or not. And really, what did she have to fear, compared to the ten minutes when she’d had only a half-open bathroom door between her and a hit man who’d just murdered her new client? This was nothing; people flew in small planes all the time. A lot of people enjoyed it.
The pilot looked familiar, as most locals did. She didn’t remember ever hearing his name, though.
When they shook, he introduced himself. “Bill Potter. You must be Cassie Davis. I know I’ve seen you around. And Mr. Rankin, I assume?”
“That’s right,” the man at her side agreed. “As I told you, Cassie is my niece. You’ll have to excuse her anxiety. I saved the news that we were flying to be a surprise. A drive over one of the passes just isn’t the same.”
Until she stepped into that courtroom, she would remain Cassie Davis, divorced bookkeeper, instead of Madeline Kane, never-married attorney-at-law. Supposedly, she and “Uncle” Scott were heading for a family reunion in Everett, a city only half an hour north of Seattle. She hadn’t asked where she’d be staying. All she knew was that Rankin intended to keep her away from the courthouse until she absolutely had to show. She’d made it through the year in hiding; now she had to remain alive the last few days until she could testify.
The pilot lowered the big door on the hangar and locked it, loaded the two duffel bags in the rear of the plane, then asked her to sit in the back, Rankin in front beside him. “Got to balance our weight,” he explained. Either he was really good at faking it, or he suffered from chronic good humor.
Or, heck, he loved to fly this plane and was brimming with excitement.
And she was being a crank.
So she smiled at him before she crawled over the front seat and buckled herself in, per instructions.
“This is a Cessna Skyhawk,” Bill told her. “One of the safest planes you could fly in.” He had been teaching lessons for something like the past thirty years in this and an earlier model of the Skyhawk, he added, while also offering charter flights.
She held on tight to the seat belt with one hand and the seat itself with the other as he taxied down the runway and the plane lifted into the air. He banked over Republic so she could get a good look at it, he told her over his shoulder.
Despite her queasiness, Maddy did gaze through the window at the town. People had been good to her here. It wasn’t their fault she’d felt incredibly isolated. Living under an assumed name, she could never be honest with anyone about who she was or what life she’d actually lived. That meant being friendly without ever really making a friend. Still...as time passed, she’d felt safe.
Stepping into that courtroom, on the other hand, would be the equivalent of confronting a wounded grizzly.
“You okay back there?” Rankin swiveled in his seat beside the pilot and still had to raise his voice to be heard over the engine noise.
She summoned another smile. “I’m good.” And...maybe it was even true, because as the plane leveled off, her anxiety lowered. If she didn’t look out the window, she could pretend she was on a bus, say. That worked.
As a result she spent the first half hour brooding about the upcoming trial—and then the gap of time between the two trials. Rankin hadn’t said anything about those weeks, except that she wouldn’t be returning to Republic. Of course, she also couldn’t resume her real life until both the hit man and the Superior Court judge who’d hired him had been convicted.
First thing to face was being “prepared” by the prosecutors. As if she hadn’t prepped her share of witnesses for trial. Of course, her perspective as a defense attorney wasn’t quite the same.
The buzz of the engine at last lulled her into letting go of the troubles that still lay ahead. The pilot yelled over his shoulder to tell her they were flying over the Okanogan National Forest, and would shortly cross the Pasayten Wilderness. She vaguely knew that it took in a swath of the drier eastern side of the Cascade Mountain range. Now she did look out the small window, seeing that sagebrush and juniper hills had been replaced with what she thought were lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest.
She gaped when she set eyes on the first pointy, white-topped mountains ahead.
Bill called out the names as they neared: Mount Carru, Blackcap Peak, Robinson Mountain. Maddy pressed her nose to the small window to see better. She was astonished by the amount of snow, given that this was July. Her awe grew as the snowcapped peaks became increasingly jagged, gleaming white in the sunlight. She could just make out deep cuts clothed in dark green between mountains. A long body of water had to be Ross Lake behind its dam. They flew low enough she could see the oddly opaque turquoise color of the water.
She flattened a hand on the cold window and stared in fascination. Ahead lay a range of mountains that made her think of a shark’s teeth. And yes, in the distance was Mount Baker, a conical volcano like Mount Rainier, and Glacier, another volcano. How could she have grown up as close as Seattle and never visited these wonders? Even Washington’s most famous volcano, Mount Rainier, seemed mostly unreal, floating in sight of Seattle. She’d never once taken a sunny summer day to drive up to Paradise and see the avalanche lilies in bloom.
She glanced at the marshal to see that he was watching her and smiling.
“This really is something, isn’t it?”
“Yes!” It occurred to her belatedly that he might genuinely have been trying to give her a treat.
Oh, and the skinny lake below was called Diablo, according to the pilot, formed by a dam on the Skagit River. It, too, was that startling turquoise color. Over his shoulder, the pilot told her the coloration was the result of the powder from boulders that glaciers ground down. Ultimately, the glacial “flour” washed down the many creeks into the lakes.
They went right over the top of a mountain that was impressive enough, if not jagged like the ones ahead. Those made up the Picket Range, he told her, mountains that had names like Terror, Fury and Challenger, and for a good reason, from the looks of them. The deep valleys between had precipitous drops from the heights, trees clinging to the rocky walls. It was a wilderness that looked as forbidding as the Himalayas or the dense Amazon jungle.
Trying to drink in the beauty not so far below them, Maddy heard the murmur of the two men’s voices but didn’t try to make out what they were saying. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes off those particularly daunting peaks ahead.
A sudden hard bang made the whole airplane shudder. Fear electrified her nerve endings. It felt like a huge rock had struck them, but that couldn’t be what had happened.
Clenching her seat belt and the edge of the seat, Maddy looked at the pilot, hoping to be reassured. In her oblique view, he radiated tension. But it wasn’t he who riveted her horrified gaze. No, she fixated on the propeller as its blurring speed slowed, slowed...until it quit spinning altogether.
Before that moment of sudden silence, Maddy had never actually heard the thunder of her heartbeat before.
WILL GANNON HAD reached the summit a good ten minutes before, and still he turned in a slow circle to take in the most incredible panorama he’d ever seen. The Picket Range felt close enough to touch and menacing at the same time. One ice-and glacier-crusted spire after another. Mount Baker beyond, and was that a glimpse of Mount Shuksan? Mount Challenger to the north, Eldorado and Mount Logan to the southeast. Rocky ridges, plunging chasms, a sky so blue it hurt his eyes. And quiet. Most of all, he drank in the quiet and the solitude.
He’d chosen Elephant Butte to climb not because it was the best known of North Cascade peaks, or a mountaineering challenge, but rather because most climbers bypassed it. Even on a weekend like this, he could be alone. Later in the summer he might try to find someone who’d like to join him tackling a couple of the more impressive mountains, the ones he’d be foolish to climb alone, but right now what he needed was to pull himself together. After being severely wounded in an ambush in Afghanistan, he’d been shipped back to the States. Being a stubborn bastard, he’d been able to rehab physically. The crap he felt, that was something else. But this...this was what he’d needed. Peace and quiet. The vast beauty of nature.
He shook himself and returned to his pack, where he dug out the makings for the simplest of lunches: peanuts, beef jerky and a candy bar, all washed down with treated water. As pure as the sparkling streams looked and tasted, the water wasn’t safe to drink without being purified.
He let his mind empty as the sun warmed his up-turned face. Nights when he had trouble sleeping he could remember this. Replace ugly memories of gushing blood, missing arms or legs, sharp pieces of metal thrust like knives into bellies and chests and even faces or throats.
And crap, there he went again. He discovered that he’d closed his eyes, but he opened them again, looked at the spectacular scenery, heard the shrill whistle of what he thought might be a pika, a small mammal that lived among the rocks. It was answered by another, and Will blew out a breath. He was okay. This climb had been a good idea. He’d get out in the wilderness often until snow closed it to him, unless he wanted to learn to snowshoe.
Hey, maybe.
The time had come for him to decide whether to go back the way he’d come, the standard route along Stetattle ridge, or try a different and probably more difficult route. Will leaned toward the different route out of the backcountry. He wasn’t in any hurry. He’d brought plenty of food if he ended up taking an extra day or even two, and if he hadn’t, he could fill himself with the sweet blueberries ripe on low-growing shrubs at a certain altitude.
Reluctantly, he heaved his pack onto his back and adjusted the weight. Ice ax in hand, he started to pick his way across a patch of snow that began the slow descent. Far below amid a subalpine area of stunted trees and a bright patch of blooming heather, movement caught his eye and he paused. Was he about to have company? Damn, he hoped not. He wanted this day, this mountain, to himself.
Then he identified the patch of cinnamon-brown as a black bear, probably dining on blueberries, too. Not alone. He shifted his binoculars to see her cub. Smiling, he watched for a few minutes, glad his path wouldn’t lead him too near to them. Getting between mama and her cub wouldn’t be smart.
He’d let the binoculars fall and started forward again when he heard a faint sound that had him turning his head. A growl...no, a hum? It took him a minute to spot the small plane that must have come over Ross Lake and now passed north of Sourdough Lake. In fact, it was heading pretty well directly toward him, which disturbed him on a subliminal level—made him want to sprint to take cover.
He saw the moment the bear swung her head, too, in search of the source of that alien noise. A sudden sharp bang, although muted by distance, shot adrenaline through his body. What in hell...? Will lifted his binoculars again, this time to the plane, adjusting until he could all but see the pilot’s face. Had the guy dropped some kind of load? Not the best country for retrieval, if so.
Frowning, he cocked his head and listened hard. No more irritating buzz. Oh, crap. The engine had shut down; the propeller no longer turned. The nose dropped. That plane was heading down. He watched in horror as it descended precipitously toward the steep, forested slopes beneath him.
“Start the damn engine. There’s still time. Start it!” he shouted.
Following along with his binoculars, he saw the moment the plane hit the first treetops. Cartwheeled. Tore apart.
It might not be safe or smart, but the next thing he knew, he was running.
TAT-A-TAT, TAT-A-TAT, TAT-A-TAT.
Maddy tried to understand the staccato series of rapping sounds followed by silence, then a repeat. Strangely reluctant to open her eyes, she listened hard.
A harsh call. A trilling.
Something brushed her face. She jerked, and pain racked her body.
Have to see, have to see. Somehow she knew she really didn’t want to know what had happened, but...even aside from the pain, so diffused she wasn’t sure what the source of it was, her head felt weird. So she slitted her eyes.
And let out a shocked cry. She was hanging upside down. And looking at a completely unfamiliar landscape. Ground that was tilted. Rocks, the rough boles of trees and feathery sweeps of green branches.
Wanting to retreat into darkness again, she squeezed her eyes shut, but a stern inner voice refused to let her go back into hiding. Figure out what’s wrong. Like why I’m hanging upside down like a bat settling for a snooze. She’d have giggled if she hadn’t known instinctively how much that would hurt.
All right, all right.
This time when she opened her eyes, she lifted her chin to look upward. It took her way longer than it should have to comprehend. A belt across her lap and shoulder held her in a seat anchored to torn metal. Not a car seat, she thought, puzzled. Was that...? It was... A wing—an airplane wing—was attached, stabbing toward the ground amidst the greenery.
Airplane seat belt, not car. It was all that held her from falling. A flicker of memory and she knew. That’s why I’m alive, she thought in shock, trying to imagine the force that had torn the plane into pieces.
The Cessna. In a flood of renewed fear, she listened for voices, cries, anything to indicate one or both of the men were alive.
“Scott!” she called. “Bill!” Her “Anyone?” trailed off weakly.
She heard something; she just didn’t know what.
Getting down had to come before anything else.
She could open the seat belt, but would drop what had to be eight or ten feet onto her head. Even fuzzy-minded as she was, she knew that wouldn’t be smart.
She tried to pull herself upward, grabbing a piece of the wreckage. Metal groaned, shifted, and Maddy froze. Her head swam, and she looked to see bright red blood running down her arm. She must have sliced her palm open. In the greater scheme of things, it didn’t seem important. Being fuzzy insulated her. She found a more solid handhold—the side of the cabin, minus the window—took a deep breath and unsnapped the belt.
Her bloody hand slipped from the wreckage and she fell sooner than she’d planned, twisting to land hard on her butt and side. She skidded, bumping to a stop against a boulder. Pain engulfed her and she gritted her teeth against the need to scream.
When she was finally able to move, she wasn’t sure she hadn’t lost consciousness again. From the angle of the sun through the trees, it hadn’t been long, though. Unless she’d lost an entire day? No, the blood on her hand and arm still looked fresh.
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 (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)
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 (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)
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.
As if his appearance or age mattered. But better to think about him than her situation.
He wanted to inspect all the places where she hurt. Since she hurt all over, was she supposed to take her clothes off?
“Do you...” She cleared her throat. “Do you have some aspirin or something?”
A smile did astonishing things to a face that had scared her at first sight. “I do. But I want to be sure I know about your injuries before I give you anything.”
“Oh.” If only she wasn’t so fuzzy. And cold. “I’m not sure. My shoulder or arm or something. And—” she flapped her good hand toward her torso “—kind of everywhere. Maybe my knee.”
“All right. Can I look in your bag?”
She stared at him, puzzled. Without waiting for permission, he unzipped her duffel, sorted through the contents and pulled out a blanket he partly wrapped around her, his enormous hands careful. Then he untied the shirt she’d been using as a sling, and studied her T-shirt.
“You attached to this?”
“What?” She glanced down. “No.” Too bad if she had been. It made her shudder to imagine dipping it in a sink filled with cold water. The blood would tint the water red, not just pink.
When she looked up, she saw the knife that had appeared in his hand and shrank back.
“Hey.” He waited until her eyes met his. “I need to cut the shirt off you so we don’t have to lift your arms. I swear I won’t hurt you.”
Her teeth chattered a few times before she could get her jaws clamped together, but she nodded and closed her eyes, clutching one edge of the blanket. If he’d meant to kill her, she’d be dead already.
A minute later he said, “Damn.”
Her eyes flew open. “Damn?”
“The humerus is broken. Upper arm,” he said absently. Fingertips slid along her collarbone, pausing at a sizeable bump she could see when she craned her neck. “Pretty sure the clavicle is, too.” He sank back on his heels, obviously thinking. “Let’s pack your arm with snow for a little bit before I put a splint on.”
He had a splint? Did mountain climbers usually carry things like that, or did he because of his medic training?
He had her lift her right arm, nodded in satisfaction, and explored her rib cage, which even she could see was bruised, and suggested that her ribs might be cracked. “I’ll bind them,” he told her. “That should make you more comfortable.”
A shot of morphine might make her more comfortable. Too bad she doubted he could produce anything like that from his pack.
Instead, he came up with two plastic bags, filled them with snow, wrapped each with what appeared to be one of his T-shirts and had her lie down. Then he placed one snow pack on her upper arm and had her hold it. The other he laid across her rib cage.
“I know you’re freezing,” he said apologetically. “These will help if you can hold out for a few minutes.”
She gave a jerky nod.
He got busy untying her boots, pulling them off and easing her jeans down her legs, too.
She ought to feel self-conscious or unnerved, but she didn’t. It was more as if she was standing behind an observation window, watching.
A big purple bruise showed on her kneecap, but the knee still bent fine and without significant pain. “I fell on my knees a few times,” she offered.
One corner of his mouth turned up. “That’d do it. I think it’s okay.”
That was when she remembered she had a first-aid kit, too. When she told him, he found it in her duffel bag, opened it, grunted and closed it again.
“Nothing really helpful right now.” He laid a hand on her calf. “You’re cold.”
Teeth clenched, she nodded. The heat of his big hand felt so good. She was really sorry when he removed it so he could explore the contents of her duffel more thoroughly. He pulled out the pajama bottoms and clean jeans, then gently dressed her in the two layers. Appearing unsatisfied with the couple of shirts she’d brought, he dug around in his own pack and pulled out a green flannel shirt. It might be way oversize on her, but the fuzzy flannel felt really good when he tugged it on her good side.
Kneeling beside her, he moved the ice on her arm once, finally deciding it was as good as it would get. The splint just looked like a roll of foam to her, but he adjusted it and closed the Velcro fastenings. He frowned when he sat back.
“I should splint your entire arm, but unless you’re airlifted, we have to walk out of here. Plus, I don’t want the weight of your arm hanging, given the break in the clavicle.”
He used the knife on the flower shirt, making a simpler sling that went over the borrowed flannel shirt. Then he rolled the sleeves up half a dozen times, helped her sit up and gave her ibuprofen with water followed by a handful of almonds.
After he tucked the blanket back around her, Maddy saw his expression change, become flat, even hard.
“All right,” he said. “You need to tell me what’s going on. Why you’re scared. And where the wreckage is.”
Her fear blasted through that observation glass and was no longer nicely kept at a distance.
She grabbed his arm. “You can’t use the radio or the beacon. If you won’t promise, I won’t tell you where it is.”
His eyebrows rose at her challenge. “I found you. I can find it.”
Oh, dear God, she thought suddenly. “Have you already called and told anyone what happened?”
His eyes narrowed. They were gray, she’d already decided, clear and occasionally icy. “No,” he said after a minute. “No coverage.”
Maddy sagged. “A bomb brought the plane down. That’s what...” She broke off, trying to think. How much did she have to tell him? Should she still be Cassie or give him her real name? What if he didn’t believe a word she said? Not that he was the enemy; he’d been too kind, too gentle and too thorough with her. Still, he might talk to the wrong person. If she started lying now, would he know? Would he be willing to help her get out of this wilderness, just him?
He wouldn’t if she lied, that was for sure.
So she took a deep breath, which hurt, of course, and said, “One of the men with me was a US marshal. He was alive when I found him. He said it had to be a bomb, and that meant he’d been betrayed by someone in his office. Not to trust anyone there. He said somebody would show up to be sure I was dead. And that I should run.” Unable to read what this hard-faced stranger was thinking, she finished. “So I did.”
And then she held her breath, waiting for him to insist the head injury had made her delusional.
WILL DIDN’T LIKE a single thing she’d said. If she hadn’t been so obviously scared out of her skull, he’d have discounted a story so unlikely. Sure, he was climbing in the backcountry of the North Cascades when a bomb took down a plane carrying a now-dead United States marshal and a woman fleeing...who? What?
He muttered something under his breath he hoped she didn’t make out and rubbed a hand over his face. He didn’t care if he sounded brusque when he said, “You need to tell me everything.”
Now she was unhappy, showing the whites of her eyes. Either deciding how much to say or dreaming up lies.
As he waited, he watched every shifting emotion on her pinched face. For the first time it struck him that she might be pretty or even beautiful when she wasn’t injured and in shock. So much of her face was banged up, he wasn’t sure, but...she did have delicate bone structure and big, haunting eyes, mostly green-gold. Calling them hazel didn’t do the rich mix of colors justice.
She bit her lip hard enough that he almost protested, but then she started talking.
“My name is Maddy... Madeline Kane. I’m an attorney with Dietrich, McCarr and Brown in Seattle. I was sent to talk to a potential client at her home in Medina. Um, that’s on the other side—”
“I know where it is,” he interrupted. Medina was a wealthy enclave on the opposite shore of Lake Washington from the city. Was Bill Gates’s house there? He couldn’t remember for sure, but it wouldn’t be out of place.
“While I was there, I had to ask to use her restroom. I wouldn’t usually, but—” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. The thing is, I heard the doorbell ring, and the client let someone in. She screamed. I started to come out just as she said, ‘Please, I don’t understand.’” Maddy’s eyes lost focus as she went somewhere he couldn’t go. “She was on the floor, trying to scoot backward. He... I only saw him in profile. He said she was a problem for Brian Torkelson. And then he shot her. Twice. It...was sort of a coughing sound, not very loud.”
Suppressor. Tense, Will waited for the rest.
“And he said, ‘Problem solved.’ He started to turn, but—” She’d begun shivering again. “I stepped back, made it into the bathroom. If he’d walked down the hall—”
Will covered her good hand clutching the blanket to her throat with his hand. “He didn’t.”
“No.” She looked away. “I keep having dreams where I hear his footsteps approaching.”
“Yeah.” If he sounded gruff, he couldn’t help it. “That’s natural. I have nightmares, too.”
Gratitude showed in her eyes when they met his again. “Do you know who Brian Torkelson is?”
The name rang a bell as if he’d seen it in the news recently. But he had been making an effort since he got out of rehab not to follow the news, so he shook his head.
“He’s—well, he was—a Superior Court justice here in Washington. Back when this happened, he’d just been appointed to become a federal circuit court judge, which is a big deal.”
“But he had some dirty laundry.”
“Apparently.”
“And you’re the only witness.”
“Yes. I came very close to being run down in a crosswalk only a few days before Torkelson was arrested. It might have been an accident, but I don’t think so. I ended up going into hiding. I’ve spent the last year in eastern Washington, living under a different name.”
“Witness protection.”
“I haven’t talked to my family or friends in thirteen months. It’s been hard, although at least I knew it wasn’t forever.”
“So Torkelson’s trial is coming up.”
She shook her head. “Not his. The hit man’s.” She made a funny, strangled noise. “I can’t believe I’m even using that word. But I guess that’s what he is. I sat down with an artist, and the police recognized him right away.”
“That can’t be enough to convict him.”
“The police watched surveillance cameras and those ones at stoplights. I’d gotten to the window to see him drive away. I couldn’t see the license plate, but I described the car. It turned out the next-door neighbor had cameras, too. He’s a big businessman who’s really paranoid. Anyway, once they had a warrant, they got his gun.”
“Ah.” Hell. “So you’ll have to testify in two trials?”
Looking almost numb, she nodded. And that was when she got to the kicker. The dead marshal had told her not to trust anyone in his office except a friend who also served as a US marshal.
“I think I can trust the two detectives I worked with, but word might get out. I’d rather hide until I can talk to Scott’s friend.”
This was a lot to take in, but Will was reluctantly convinced. “The handgun the marshal’s?”
She bobbed her head, although doing so made her wince. “I thought I might need it.”
“Have you done any shooting at a range?”
Maddy nibbled on her lower lip again. “No, I’ve always been kind of anti-gun.”
Will’s laugh didn’t hold much humor. Man, he was lucky she hadn’t accidentally pulled that trigger.
“Good thing I do know how to use one,” he said. “I didn’t see any extra magazines in your bag. Did you grab some?”
“No. I didn’t think of it. I hated the idea of going through his pockets. It was all I could do to make myself unsnap his holster and take the gun. He had a duffel bag, too, smaller than mine, but I never found it,” Maddy concluded.
“All right.” Will rose to his feet, not surprised by the stab of pain in his left thigh and hip. It was sharper than usual, probably because he’d climbed a mountain this morning followed by the difficult traverse and downhill scramble to get here. He wasn’t done for the day, though, not even close. “We need to move,” he said. “I’d like to scavenge anything I can from the plane, and I want you tucked out of sight while I’m doing that.”
And verifying the truth of her story, given how wild it was. He didn’t really doubt her, but he wasn’t good at trusting strangers.
“I thought...here...”
He shook his head. “Nope. I spotted you from a quarter mile away. We need to descend to better tree cover.” Her attempt to hide her dismay wasn’t very effective. “I’ll help. I can carry you if I have to.”
Her chin rose. “No. I got here, I can go farther.”
BEING THIS HELPLESS was a humiliating experience. To begin with, she couldn’t even put her own boots on this time, far less tighten the laces and tie them. Either the pain had caught up with her, or the cushioning shock had begun to wear off.
Oh, heavens—would she be able to lower or pull up her pants when she needed to pee?
Prissy, she scolded herself. Well, she came by it naturally. She loved her parents, but they had been older than her friends’ parents, and acted like a much different generation, too. The idea of seeing nature in the rough wouldn’t appeal to them, that was for sure.
She tried not to sound stiff when she thanked Will.
When he boosted her to her feet, she thought for a minute she was going to pass out. She tipped forward to lean against him, her forehead pressed to a broad, solid chest.
“Give it time,” he murmured, his hand—an enormous hand—clasping her upper arm while his other arm came around her back. Maddy knew he wouldn’t let her fall.
Finally, her head quit spinning and she forced herself to straighten, separating from him. “I’m all right.”
They both knew that she wasn’t, but she’d made it this far and she could keep on doing what she needed to.
“All right.” His frowning gaze belied what he’d said. “Tell you what. I’m going to help you down then come back for my pack.”
“I can carry mine—”
“Not a chance.” He closed a zipper on her duffel and swung it over his shoulder. “Now, which way is the crash site?”
Turning her head, Maddy saw rocks and fir trees—or maybe spruce or hemlock, she didn’t know—all set on a precipitous downslope. How on earth had she made it up here? “I...don’t know,” she said after a minute. “I climbed because I thought anyone who came to the crash site would assume I headed down.”
“Good thought,” Will agreed.
“I...don’t know if I came straight up, or...” She couldn’t look at him. His air of competence made her feel more inept. She couldn’t even remember where she’d come from. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” His hand closed gently over hers. “You fell out of the sky. You hit your head and have broken bones. You should be in a hospital getting an MRI. I’m amazed that you were able to get together the supplies you needed and haul yourself up this mountain.”
“Is it a mountain?” She started to turn to look upward, but that made her dizzy again.
“Right here, just a ridge, but that way—” he pointed “—is Elephant Butte and beyond it, Luna Peak, and that way, McMillan Spire and... It doesn’t matter. Mountains everywhere.”
“I saw from the plane.” Just before that terrifying bang.
“Okay, we need to move.”
Maddy wasn’t sure she would have made it any farther without his help. At moments he braced his big booted feet and lifted her down a steep pitch. Occasionally, Will led her on a short traverse, always the same direction, she noticed, but mostly they picked their way straight down.
The trees became larger, at times cutting off her view of the sky. Not that she looked. As she had climbing, she focused on her feet, on the next step she had to make—and on Will’s hand reaching to steady her. Once they slid fifteen feet or so down a stretch of loose rocks, Will controlling her descent as well as he could. Then they went back to using spindly lower branches to clamber down.
When he stopped, she swayed in place.
“This will do,” he said.
Maddy stared dully, taking a minute to see what he had. The trees weren’t quite as stunted as they’d been above, but were still small. What he was urging her toward was a pile of boulders that must have rumbled down the precipitous slope any time from ten years ago to hundreds. The largest rested against another big one, framing an opening that wasn’t quite a cave, but was close enough.
Without a word, she crawled inside, awkward as that was to do without the use of one arm and hand. By now, she hurt so much she had no idea if this was doing more damage. Mostly, she was glad to stop—to crouch like an animal in its burrow until coming out seemed safer.
Will squatted in front of her, arranging her limbs to his liking and nudging her duffel bag into place to serve as a giant pillow.
“I want you to stay low,” he told her. “The rocks will keep you from being seen from above—the air or the ridge above—but if somebody happens to come along in the twenty yards or so below you, they might catch a glimpse. When I get back with my pack, I’ll see what I can find to hide the opening.”
Maddy nodded. “You’ll be able to find me again, won’t you?”
His smile changed his face from rough-hewn and fiercely male to warm and even sexy. “I will. I memorized some landmarks.”
“Okay.”
He reached out unexpectedly to stroke her cheek, really just the brush of his knuckles, before he stood. Two steps, and he was out of sight. She could hear him for a minute or two, no more—and she bit her lip until she tasted blood to keep herself from calling out for him, begging him not to leave her.
She hardly knew him—but somehow she had complete faith that he wouldn’t abandon her.
WILL MOVED AS fast as he could. He didn’t like leaving Maddy alone at all, but they’d need what he had in his pack. Fortunately, the ascent went smoothly, although his hip and thigh protested like the devil. Still, he swung the familiar weight of the pack onto his back, checked to be sure that they hadn’t left so much as a scrap of the packaging that had wrapped the gauze pads, and retraced his steps. Given how he was tiring, he was glad to recover his ice ax to use for support.
This time during the descent he paused several times to scan the forest with his binoculars. Raw wood caught his eye, where it appeared the tops of trees had been sheared off. Yes.
From there, he calculated the route he’d take from Maddy’s hiding place. He wished she was farther from the crash site, but still believed her hiding spot to be nearly ideal.
When he reached the rocks, he got hit by a jolt of alarm. What he could see of her face was slack, colorless but for the bruises that seemed muted in color since he left her. Was her head injury worse than he’d thought, and she’d lapsed into unconsciousness?
But then she let out a heavy sigh and crinkled her nose. She shifted a little as if seeking a more comfortable position.
Asleep. She was only asleep, and no wonder after multiple traumas.
She awakened immediately when he touched her, her instinct to shrink from him.
“You all right?”
After a tiny hesitation, she said, “I think so.”
“Good. I’m leaving my pack here and going to the crash site after I cut some fir branches to cover the opening. Unless you need to, uh, use the facilities...”
She blinked several times before she understood. “No. I’m fine.”
“All right. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
Her hand closed on his forearm. “You won’t call for help? Or...or let anyone see you?”
“No. I promise.” He didn’t know what else he could say. It was hard to believe anyone else would show up at the site but another hiker or climber who, like him, had seen the crash and come to help.
Relieved to be unburdened by the pack, Will sliced off a few branches to disguise the opening in the rocks, then left her. He kept to a horizontal path as much as he could. He hoped the crunch of his boots on the rocky pitch wasn’t as loud as it seemed to him. When he paused to listen, all he heard was the distant ripple of one of the streams plunging toward the valley, a soft sough of wind and a few birdcalls.
He’d reached the first trees torn by metal, had seen a white scrap that could be from any part of the plane, when he heard the distinctive sound of an approaching helicopter.
Chapter Four (#u1b699b38-7b8a-5bd1-bc9e-1665274c8707)
The roar of the rotor blades was familiar if discordant music to Will’s ears. On deployments, he’d spent too much time in the air, often hoping to scoop up wounded men and lift away without being shot down.
He ducked beneath the low-growing branches of a hemlock. Chances were good this would be a search and rescue helicopter arriving at the site in response to a phone call from someone else who saw the plane going down, but Maddy’s fear stayed with him. So did the US marshal’s prediction. Even aside from Will’s promise to her, he wouldn’t have made contact no matter who showed up at the site. For now, Maddy had to disappear.
The helicopter remained out of sight, wasn’t moving closer. Will needed to see it.
On this sharp incline, approaching without knocking rocks loose to clatter downward wasn’t easy. He did his best, knowing the helicopter made enough racket to drown out most other sounds.
He progressed to what he estimated to be fifty yards, spotting other fragments of the plane but not the cabin or wings. Between one step and the next, the black helicopter appeared between trees. With no place to land, it was hovering, as he’d expected.
Will found cover again and lifted his binoculars. From this angle, he was unable to read the FAA required numbers near the tail. He couldn’t even be sure they were there. The windshield was tinted, allowing him to see the pilot but not his face. Wearing green-and-tan camouflage, another man crouched in the open door on the side. A rope ran from it toward the ground. The guy turned and seemed to be yelling something to the pilot. Then he lowered himself, swiveled and grasped the rope. Lugging a big-ass pack on his back, he slid down the rope as if he’d done it a thousand times.
Strapped to the pack was a fully automatic machine gun, an AK-47 or the like.
Will had a dizzying moment of seeing double. The other scene had different colors. Vegetation, uniforms, even the painted skin of the helicopter, were shades of tan and brown. At the sight of enemy combatants, adrenaline flooded him and he reached for his own rifle. When his hand found nothing to close on, he blinked. Damn. That hadn’t happened in a while. He rubbed his hand over his face hard enough to pull himself back to the here and now. This wasn’t Afghanistan, but it seemed to have become a war zone anyway.
He couldn’t afford to flip out.
He continued to watch as another man reeled up the rope, waved, and the helicopter rose. It didn’t swing around to head back toward civilization, however; instead, it continued forward, a little higher above the treetops but low enough to allow the men on board to search the landscape.
The thing wouldn’t pass directly over him, but near enough. Glad to be wearing a faded green T-shirt, he pushed into the feathery branches of the nearest tree and compressed himself behind a rotting stump.
When he was sure the helicopter was receding, Will held a quick internal debate. Forward or backward? Had to be forward. He needed to know more about the men who’d been left behind at the wreckage. He had to trust that Maddy would follow his instructions, and that the pile of fir branches he’d placed to hide her would look natural from the air.
Two minutes later a raised voice froze him in place.
“Found the pilot.”
Another male voice answered from a greater distance, the words indistinguishable.
So two, at least.
Taking the Glock from the small of his back, he waited where he was, listening intently. The same two voices called back and forth. He thought they might have found the dead marshal, too, but couldn’t be sure. He wanted to do further reconnaissance, but knew he couldn’t risk it. Maddy wouldn’t make it out of the backcountry without him, especially now that they had to dodge two or more heavily armed soldiers.
Soldiers? No, they weren’t that, he thought grimly. Call them mercenaries. Killers for hire.
The marshal had saved Maddy’s life by sending her on the run. Now it was on Will to bring a seriously injured woman to safety despite the men who would soon be hunting them.
MADDY AWAKENED WITH a start, staring upward at raw rock and a crack of blue sky. Completely disoriented, she didn’t understand where she was. Pain pulled her from her confusion. Staying utterly still, she strained to listen. Was Will back? But what she heard was far more ominous.
A helicopter.
Her panic switch flipped. Will had sent them to pick her up. He hadn’t believed her. He’d betrayed her.
Run.
But he’d promised, and he’d made her promise to stay where she was. He hadn’t said, ‘Whatever you hear,’ but that was what he’d meant.
Here, she was hidden. Stay still. Stay still. What if they’d captured him, or even killed him? She knew exactly what that looked like. Shivering despite herself, feeling like a coward, she nonetheless refused to believe they’d surprised Will. He’d said he was army. A medic, yes, but didn’t they fight, too? Have the same training? She hoped he’d taken the handgun with him. At least he knew how to use it.
The terrifying drone grew louder and louder. Maddy forgot to blink, staring at the thin sliver of blue sky. When darkness slid over it like a shadow, the helicopter was so loud she pressed her good hand to one ear. It thundered in her head, but the streak of blue reappeared and...was the racket diminishing? She thought so.
Did that mean they hadn’t taken any notice of the tumble of boulders that had made a cave?
What had Will done with the gun? Maddy tried to remember. Before, she’d believed she could shoot someone, and she still thought so. His pack was right there. She groped all the outside pockets but didn’t feel anything the right shape. He wouldn’t have just dumped it inside, would he? Even so, she unzipped the top and inserted her hand. The first hard thing she found was a plastic case holding first-aid supplies. Packets of what she guessed were food. Clothes—denim and soft knits, something puffy with a slippery outside. A parka. A book?
She gave up, lay back and waited, staring now at the opening she’d crawled through.
Once again time blurred—or maybe it had ever since the crash. Had that really happened today? Was she forgetting a night? Maddy clung to a picture in her mind of Will Gannon, alarmingly tall as he looked down at her. That too-bony face with a nose that didn’t seem to quite belong, but eyes that were kinder than she deserved, considering she was holding a gun on him.
Hearing that deep, husky voice saying, I was shot, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t love seeing that gun pointing at me.
The relief of letting it sag, of feeling his big hand close over hers as he deftly took the gun.
Her head throbbed even as the pain radiating from her arm and shoulder worsened.
Please come, Will. Please hurry.
HE STOPPED UNDER cover twenty yards or so from the boulders to use his binoculars again. He could no longer hear the helicopter, but after a slow sweep he found it, deep down in the Stetattle Creek valley. Down there only fools would think they’d see anything from the sky; the Stetattle and Torrent Creeks ran through tangles of vegetation as thick as any jungle. When Will was reading about routes into and out of this wilderness, he’d seen several references to “bushwhacking.”
If he could get Maddy down to that low elevation, they’d be hard to find. On the other hand, he didn’t have a machete or any other tool that would be good for clearing their way.
He wondered if he wouldn’t be able to find something like that in the airplane wreckage. Crap, he wished he’d beaten the damn helicopter there, had time to search.
Couldn’t be helped.
He rose and scrambled the distance to the two largest boulders, steadying himself on other large rocks.
“Maddy? It’s me.”
The silence stretched. He was almost to the opening when she said, “Will?”
“Yeah, I’m coming in.”
He parted the pile of fir branches and crawled between them. Same response he’d had earlier. Disliking the cramped space, he wanted to back right out. Tending to claustrophobia, Will had been especially unhappy when his unit was assigned to search caves in Afghanistan for the Taliban. Until today, he’d hoped he would never see a cave again.
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