Page 19 of Protecting the Flame

Will.Her gaze shifted. Will had slumped forward. He was very still. A fine dusting of snow sugared his dark hair. Drifts had gathered on his thighs and in his lap, and more snow was gusting in. White clots were humped on a short span of deck a few feet beyond Will’s seat as if shoveled into the plane. Another swish of wind set the torn curtain over Will’s window to fluttering again, fwap-fwap-fwap.

Wind. Snow? Yes, had to be. She blinked against icy bits nipping at her eyes, her cheeks. Her breath fogged. But why? Her stupefied gaze slid from Will to the front of the plane—

Except there was no front of the plane. Instead of Grampa and Scott and the cockpit, there was only more snow and a great white expanse broken, in the near distance, by ranks of tall pines and firs.

Oh dear God. She straightened, a too-rapid movement that reawakened the ache in her chest and belly. Where was the cockpit? A short distance away? Or was it farther, beyond them somewhere? That had happened to those boys, the ones who’d crashed in the Andes years back; the fuselage had slammed down on one part of the mountain, and the tail had broken off and slid farther downhill.

They probably hadn’t slammed nose-first into the mountain. If they had, she wouldn’t now be alive to even be thinking this through. She recalled seeing colors coalesce below and around them. That suggested a plateau or the top of a mountain. Maybe they’d clipped trees? Had she heard anything? She couldn’t remember. Christ, it wasn’t important.

“Will?” she blurted. Her voice kicked up a notch as a swell of mingled panic and hysteria threatened to overwhelm her. “Will? Will? Will, are you awake, are you—”

“Are you okay?” Mattie asked.

No. She pressed icy fingers to her lips and pulled in a shuddering, shaky breath, hitching against that white-hot dagger of pain sliding in between her ribs. Uh, oh. She forced herself to blow out slowly. Her breath steamed. You’ve pulled something, maybe broken something. Take it easy. Someone will come looking. Someone will miss you. She thought of her cell, tucked in the right leg of her cargo pants. Maybe she could call for help? No, she should leave the phone alone. It was charged. She had a spare battery bank, too. Save it for a rainy day. It was a line from one of her mom’s favorite films, Primal Fear. Her mother had adored Richard Gere, especially when he oozed sleaze: Guess what? It’s raining.

Mattie, again. “You’re bleeding.”

Shit, she was? She raised a trembling hand to her left cheek. Her fingers spidered over skin slick with cooling snow melt and something warmer, stickier congealing along the angle of her jaw. She stared at the crimson streaks smeared on her fingertips.

“You’ve got a cut over your eye,” Mattie said. “It’s not too bad, but your face is all bruised up, too.”

“It is?” Gritting her teeth, she gingerly explored a ragged gash above her right eye. The cut wasn’t straight but more of a starburst pattern, like a bullet hitting shatterproof glass. So much for the brace position. She must’ve passed out and then flopped around. That would explain the soreness in her neck and the blood on Rachel’s seatback. “What about you?” Shuddering against another chill, she inched her aching head to the right. God, she was cold. They had to get warm. Start a fire, get something hot into them. “How bad are you hurt?”

“Not too bad.” Mattie’s face was puffy and purpled with bruises. Her eyes had swollen to slits. A black watch cap Emma hadn’t seen before was pulled down over the girl’s head, and she’d also flipped up her parka’s fur-trimmed hood. “Really cold, but not as bad before. Mom always says if you’re cold, put on a hat, and I had one in my pocket. But my face hurts, and so does my chest and stomach and especially my left hip. I think that’s from the seat belt and shoulder harness, except I can’t get out. The buckle’s jammed.”

“Hang on, I’ll help you get out.” She’d never been in a car accident, but she remembered photos from driver’s ed: those purple swathes of bruises left by seat belts and shoulder harnesses. Maybe the same thing accounted for her aches, although that stabbing pain in her chest felt like it might be bad. Cracked ribs, maybe. “Does it hurt to breathe?”

“No. I think we’re all bruised up because of the deceleration. Emma, I’m better but still really cold. My face is getting all numb. We need to get warm.”

“I know. We will.” But how? Build a fire? She couldn’t do that inside. What should she do first? Thrusting her chilled hands under her armpits, she shivered as more snow billowed in on a balloon of wind. What had they taught in basic about survival? Warmth, first. Right, that was it. They needed to get warm; they needed shelter, which they sort of had; and they would eventually need water that wasn’t snow. But she also had to check on Rachel and Will.

Then we hunker down, wait for people to find us.

She’d done stories on rescue operations. People always talked about that “golden day,” that span of about twenty-four hours, give or take, when search-and-rescue teams had the greatest chance of finding survivors. The moment they’d crashed, that clock started ticking. Had Hunter managed to send out a mayday? She didn’t think so. In a way, she didn’t blame him. Until the last second, he’d probably thought his father would get them out of this, and sending a distress call would’ve been the pilot’s decision. The fact neither Hunter nor Burke had radioed sucked, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. People would be looking for them and soon.

Their biggest problem, really, was the snow. The first rule of rescue was not to need it yourself. No one would risk sending a chopper or plane up in conditions like this.

How much light was left? She glanced at her watch. A little after one p.m. They’d left Minot at ten, central time. Factor in the time they’d been in the air, that put the crash about an hour ago. Okay, that wasn’t great either. The plane wasn’t late yet. Which means no one knows yet.

“Mattie,” she asked, “we passed over Glacier, right? The park?”

“Yes. But I don’t know if we’re still in Montana. We might be north or even south. I don’t remember how many turns Mr. Burke made. It’s only one o’clock, but it gets dark early in winter and there are the clouds. So I don’t think we have a lot of daylight left, Emma.”

“Okay, hang on, I’ll…” She stopped, suddenly, as more snow billowed in on a balloon of wind and carried something else with it. “Do you smell that?”

“Yes. I have since I woke up. Is it fuel? It smells kind of funny, like…almost sweet.”

The girl was right. The smell conjured up images of hot asphalt and the tick of a cooling muffler but also bars and honky-tonks and spilled beer. Could that be residual fuel that had spewed out of the wing tanks? Burke had managed to restart the engine, and that required fuel, but the wing tanks couldn’t possibly have been full. Wait a second. Turning carefully, she peered down the aisle toward the cargo hold.

“What are you doing?”

“Burke filled those bladders with extra gas.”

“Oh.” Mattie tried to crane her head around but couldn’t because of her shoulder harness. “Are they leaking?” When Emma shook her head, Mattie went on, “Could the smell be from the wings? They’re gone now, so that means when they broke off, the tanks tore. Maybe the wings were what got caught up first. I remember lots of tall trees.”

She did, too, and Mattie was probably right. Which meant they couldn’t chance trying to start a fire until she hauled out those bladders and checked the rest of the plane, especially that belly tank with its odd, clunking, glassysound. Otherwise, they might go up like a Roman candle. Like sending up a flare. Which was also a line Scotty had used in an old first-season episode. Scotty had thought it worth the gamble, but Spock pointed out how illogical it was because there was no one out there to see the distress signal.

“Emma?”

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