Page 61 of Running Scared
So much worse,Bailey whispered to himself.He knew what looks much worse looked like.But this wasn’t that, he reminded himself.
Not.Yet.
Surprises in All Sizes
DEAN’S HEADhurt.
His head hurt, and his body hurt, and his phone felt like an ichthyosaur with a broken spine in his back pocket.
He could hear Marcus moaning.
And nothing.
Every soft groan coming from Marcus’s mouth sounded like a bullhorn in a refrigerator, because their surroundings were so quiet.
They’d been all loud and tumbly just moments before.
“Dean?”Marcus all but sobbed.
“Buddy?”Dean asked.
“You alive?”
“No,” Dean decided.“Everything’s dark, and my head was blown up by a hand grenade.”
“That’s weird.Mine too.”
The odds against both of them sitting, headless, and having a conversation were what finally forced Dean to open his eyes.
The darkness was almost as complete with his eyes open as it had been when they’d been closed.Slowly—because even moving his eyeballs hurt—he searched the space in the unfamiliar plane and found Marcus, wedged against the passenger’s side of the plane.He had blood trickling from his temple, and his leg—which had been on a part of the fuselage that had buckled—was a horror show.
“Oh God,” Dean whispered, staring at not one but two ends of bone sticking through the skin.“Marcus, don’t look at—”
“Seen it,” Marcus said, his eyes locked determinedly on Dean’s.“It’s bleeding a lot, Dean.I know we don’t have shit in here, but even a cargo plane’s got to have a first aid kit.”
Dean nodded and ignored his head and its imminent threat of dropping off his shoulders.Marcus needed him.
“I’ll find it,” he choked.“Let me check on Bird.Then I’ll come here and work on you.”
As he stood, the broken pieces of his cell phone clattered in his back pocket, and he tried not to remember they were in the middle of the fucking desert and nobody in the Bureau—hell, nobody butthem—knew where the fuck they were.
There’d been one case of water—one—rattling around the back of the plane when they’d gotten in.Dean remembered thinking what the hell?They’d get to Juarez in a couple of hours.How bad was it to only have a few bottles of water for two hours?
He’d better never tell that to Birdie, who was superstitious like most good pilots and would never let him live it down.
“Bird?”he rasped, taking a creaky step toward the front of the plane and feeling the hull of the thing shift beneath him.In a quick glance—but one that felt like it ripped his eyeballs out of his aching head—he saw that the rear of the fuselage had broken off, and the back end of the plane was mostly sand.
Well, shit, there went their one case of water.
He got to the front of the plane and crouched down next to Birdie, who was moaning against the dashboard, bleeding on the gauges and the steering column.
“Bird,” Dean muttered, shaking the narrow shoulder.“How you doing?”
“Feels like my head exploded and my brains ran out my ears,” Birdie muttered.
Dean grunted, because, well,same,and started to gently prod at the collapsed dashboard to see if Birdie was pinned.
“Relax,” Birdie muttered.“I can move my legs.”There was a grunt that was almost a laugh.“Too small.Whole life, been too small for sports, too small for dances—today, I’m too small to die.”
