Page 20 of Craving Chaos

“We need to get out of here, fast.”

“How?” he barks back at me quietly as if the sound might disturb gravity. “If we move, the whole thing might fall.”

“What do you propose we do instead? Sit here and die?”

“Maybe. We might be better off,” he grumbles. “Jesus Christ you are pure chaos, you know that? Never in my goddamn life have I been around someone who attracts trouble like you.”

“You wait one fucking minute,” I spit back at him, my eyes narrowing to furious slits. “I could say the same thing about you. None of this shit ever happened to me until you stomped into my life. Conner was supposed to be the one dealing with those damn guns but noooo. You threw a hissy fit and demanded me. Tell me how that’s my fault.”

“Take us with you—that’s how. If it wasn’t for you, they’d probably have left us in that warehouse, and at least we’d be a hell of a lot warmer.”

“No, we wouldn’t. You know why? Because we’d be dead. Those guys were gonna kill us.” I’m so spitting mad I could lean over that branch and strangle the man. How dare he blame this all on me?

“You don’t know what they were gonna do because you never even gave them a chance. You practically begged them to take us.”

“And what was your great plan, oh Perfect One? Because I can’t recall you contributing a goddamn thing to the situation.”

Renzo’s jaw muscles clench so tight, I half expect to hear a tooth crack. “Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.” He swipes his arm to the side to accentuate his point. The entire plane groans before dropping another few inches.

“Shit. We need to get out of here,” he mumbles.

“Sure you don’t want to do nothing?” I mutter back while slinking my way past the branch and carefully moving toward the exit. With the plane almost upside down, I have to scale the walls to keep from falling toward the tail end, which would be nasty for so many reasons, including the heap of mangled bodies piled at the bottom. I try to ignore them. No matter how tough you are, dismembered corpses are still unsettling.

The door is to my left and above me. I’m not sure getting it open is possible, even if I could get to it. Down to my right, I see an opening in the middle of the cabin. The plane bent at some point, cracking open the body on one side.

“We can slip out there. I think that will be better than trying to get the door open.” I shift my body to start in that direction, then remember something. “Wait!”

Renzo freezes midway through exiting the cockpit.

“There was a first-aid kit somewhere up there. I saw it when I was moving the pilot. Look around. We might need it.”

He stares at me for a second as if weighing his options, then retreats backward. “Got it.”

He stashes the canvas bag down his jacket and continues to follow me. Cargo ties along the walls give me the purchase I need to lower myself gently to the gaping hole on one side. I look back to see how Renzo is managing, concerned that he has nearly one hundred pounds on me and might struggle with the maneuver, but he surprises me with his agility.

I poke my head outside. “There’s enough branches within reach that I can scale my way over to the tree across from us. Follow me.”

I step outside, a gust of frigid air penetrating my jeans as if I wasn’t wearing anything. If I thought it was cold in the plane, that was nothing. We both have jackets, mine more insulated than Renzo’s, but nothing suited to this weather. I have no idea how we’re going to keep from getting hypothermic.

“One disaster at a time, Shae,” I whisper to myself.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I mutter. The last thing I want to do is give him more things to blame on me.

Once I’ve made my way to the trunk of the tree, Renzo squeezes himself through the jagged metal opening and onto the branch. It bends with his weight, and we both still. Slowly, my hulking companion eases himself toward me with his hands firmly gripping the branch above him for balance. After I know he’s made it out, I take a slow, cleansing breath, then squat down to lower myself to the next set of branches.

We’re approximately twenty feet in the air. With a bank of snow beneath us, dropping might not be terrible, but I’d rather not risk a broken leg. I’m standing one level down from Renzo when a distant whooshing fills my ears like a raging river. I peer up at him, unease filling me.

“What the hell is that?”

“I think it’s … the wind.”

A wall of arctic air sweeps through the trees as if in confirmation. Branches sway all around us, along with a dusting of snow swept up into the sky.

We both cling to the trunk of the tree. The gust isn’t strong enough to knock us down, but it’s plenty strong to shake lose the dangling plane. A cacophony of cracks and moans announces its sudden descent toward the ground. Like a ball on a Plinko board bouncing off prongs on its way to the bottom, the plane plummets in a jerking motion as it hits branches on its way down. The cockpit touches first with the back of the plane bending in half at the seam, crumpling over itself in a mangled heap of metal.

I watch awestruck as the puff of snow around it settles, then peer up wide-eyed at Renzo. “You think it’ll explode?”

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