through her head as the plane fell from the sky were two things—a deep mourning for her son and the embarrassment of knowing she’d put on her most ragged panties that morning.
The noise when they hit the trees was deafening. Metal screeched, glass shattered, and it took a moment for Elizabeth to realize she was adding to the cacophony by screaming at the top of her lungs.
She clung to her seat as the fuselage was smashed from side to side. Her stomach heaved, as if she was riding a roller coaster and had just gone down the biggest drop. Vaguely she was aware of Talbot adding a string of colorful oaths to the thunderous noise.
Without warning, the fuselage veered sharply, then flipped on its side. Something hit Elizabeth on the side of her head, and blackness descended. Her last conscious thought was that death was surprisingly anticlimactic.
“Elizabeth?”
A male voice penetrated the black fog and disrupted her peaceful sense of nothingness. The voice came again, irritating her with its sense of urgency.
“Elizabeth!” This time she recognized the voice. Talbot. How on earth had Talbot McCarthy managed to gain entry to heaven?
Her next thought was even more disturbing. What if she hadn’t made it to heaven? What if her afterlife consisted of sharing space in hell with Talbot?
A protest formed on her lips and her eyes snapped open. A new vision of hell greeted her. The darkness was pierced by a strange flickering illumination. Tangled metal…acrid smoke…a tree branch jutting through what had once been the front window.
The plane. A sharp stab of pain pierced the right side of her head as she oriented herself to where she was and what had just happened.
They’d crashed. She jerked her head to the side to look at Talbot. In the flashing light, she saw his gaze on her.
“Thank God,” he said. “For a minute there, I thought you were dead. Are you all right?”
She winced and reached up to touch the side of her head, where a goose egg had risen and was incredibly tender to the pressure of her fingertips. “I think so, although for a minute, I thought I was dead, too. What about you?”
“I’m okay. But something is burning. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible.” He unbuckled himself. “We’ll have to go out your door. Mine won’t open.”
Elizabeth unfastened her seat belt and stood, unsteady on her feet as her head reeled with a sick pain. She managed to push her door open, then turned back to Talbot, who still sat in his seat.
“Are you coming?” she asked, worried now that she saw flames flaring in what was left of the plane behind them.
“My left leg seems to be trapped,” he said between clenched teeth as he used his hands to tug on his leg.
Elizabeth watched him working to free himself. As the flames grew hotter, illuminating the cabin, she saw dots of perspiration above his upper lip. He cursed and yanked, half falling from his seat as the leg finally came free.
“Go!” he shouted, and pushed her toward the door.
She hesitated and stared out the opening at what was left of the plane. The wings had been torn away, leaving only the small fuselage, which was now wedged between two towering trees and suspended about eight feet from the ground.
“We’re caught in the trees,” she said.
“How far to the ground?” he asked, urgency apparent in his voice.
“I don’t know for sure. About eight or nine feet—” Before the words had completely left her mouth, he shoved her from behind. She screamed and flailed her arms for an instant, as if by some miracle she might take flight.
She hit the ground and her knees buckled, throwing her facedown into the ground. Before she could lift her head, she heard Talbot hit the earth nearby. His landing was punctuated by a loud groan.
A moment later, he was towering over her. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to her feet. “We’ve got to get away from the plane,” he said. “I don’t know if it will explode or not, but we can’t take the chance.”
He took a step, then crumpled against her.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m all right—it’s just my leg. It got wrenched or something.” He tried to take another step, then cursed soundly as he nearly fell. “We’ve got to get some distance. You’re going to have to help me.”
She positioned herself beneath his arm, allowing him to lean heavily on her shoulder. Step by step, they inched away from the plane, deeper into the dense forest that surrounded them.
Trees were everywhere, as were mangled parts of the plane, and as they walked away from the smoldering crash site, Elizabeth marveled at the fact that they had escaped with their lives. A few inches to the left or the right, they would have hit a tree trunk head-on, and neither of them would have survived.
“Okay, we should be far enough away now,” he said when they’d moved about a hundred feet from the wreck. He eased himself to the ground, and Elizabeth sat down next to him.
Both of them stared at the burning aircraft. Flames licked hesitantly as if unwilling to fully commit to consuming the plane.
“How long before it explodes?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know for sure that it will. There wasn’t any fuel left, so it might not. Pray it does.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
He turned to eye her, his taut features visible in the orange glow of the flames. “An explosion might be the only thing that gets somebody’s attention and brings help faster. Otherwise, who knows how long it’ll take for somebody to find us.”
They sat watching the flames flickering here and there without actually bursting into a full inferno. With each minute that passed, the adrenaline and the shock that had momentarily gripped Elizabeth began to ebb.
Andrew. Her son’s name was her first rational thought. She shivered as she realized just how close he’d come to being motherless.
She was aware of body pain where she hadn’t known she had body, and her head ached with a nauseating intensity.
The night was silent, other than the crackle of the dwindling flames. And as the flames grew dimmer, the blackness of the night grew more profound. The sky wasn’t visible through the tops of the trees, so no moonlight broke the descending darkness.
For the first time since the crash, she felt a flutter of fear in her stomach. “Where are we?” she asked.
“My best guess is somewhere between Kansas City and Branson.”
“Well, that certainly narrows it down,” she said. With the fear came a healthy dose of anger. “I thought you said you were an excellent pilot.”
“I am. You aren’t dead, are you?” He didn’t look at her, but instead, kept his gaze focused on the last of the fire. “I’m sorry I can’t
