Garland grunted and lifted his head. His gaze clashed with Lauren’s. She sucked in a breath. A woman could float away in those cloud-gray depths.
“We’re down.” His lips stretched in a grimace. “Time for evac and damage assessment. You up to helping, Jade Eyes?”
His words were spoken with a teasing lilt, but a sharp pang streaked through Lauren, trampled quickly by anger. She swallowed the knee-jerk response. This man couldn’t know what he had said.
“Don’t call me that, Mr. Garland. My name is Lauren Carter.” She couldn’t help it if her tone was frosty.
“Okay, Lauren.” A smile twitched one side of the pilot’s mouth, but his gaze remained grave. “Call me Kent. Are you all right?”
“I—I think so.” She cleared her throat. “I’m a physician’s assistant. If you have a first-aid kit, I’ll do what I can to treat the injured.”
The pilot’s eyes widened. “That’s the first good news I’ve heard since...well, a while.” The barest hint of private pain flickered across his face, and then his expression went flat. “Let’s get to it.”
He threw off his seat belt and wriggled free of the forward control panel that had crumpled inward significantly, but not enough to trap him. “I seem to be in working order.” He stood tall and lifted one slacks-clad leg and then the other.
Lauren levered herself to her feet. Other than adrenaline-withdrawal tremors flowing through her body and perhaps bruises she would feel more intensely later on, she seemed to be in working order as well. Except maybe for that bump on her head. She touched her fingertips to a throbbing goose egg on the crown of her head. The skin didn’t appear to be broken. Judging from the momentary loss of consciousness, she probably had some level of concussion. Hopefully mild. She needed to be able to function.
“Mom!” she called out. No answer and no tawny-gray head popped up anywhere above the seats.
Lauren pressed forward, but the pilot stepped in front of her just as a bulky executive lunged to his feet and lumbered toward them, head down like a charging rhino.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Hysteria edged the man’s tone. “We’re going to blow up!”
More passengers began struggling to their feet, echoing the terrified thought.
“Hold it!” Kent’s authoritative voice sliced through the panic. “We are down safe, and we are not going to blow up. Stay in your seats. When it comes to evacuation, we’ll do it together. Let’s get our bearings first.”
The panicked rhino plunged to a stop, chest heaving.
“How do you know we’re not going to explode?” cried another passenger, voice high and tight.
“Simple. It takes fuel to fire an explosion. We don’t have any.”
Lauren bit her lower lip. That explained the necessity of a crash landing, but not what blew up and caused the fuel dump and the instrument/radio failure. That was something she wanted an answer for ASAP, but not while people were teetering on the verge of hysteria.
At the rear of the plane, a blistering tirade of profanity burst from one of the three Peerless One brokers. He was standing tall, holding his cell phone toward the ceiling, shaking it and cursing it.
“What seems to be the problem, sir?” Kent asked briskly.
“No cell service, that’s what.” The pit-bull-faced man scowled like a juicy steak had just been ripped from his jaws. “I was meeting with an important client tonight, and now I can’t let him know our incompetent pilot has crashed this tin can you call a plane. I’ll lose the account!”
“Get a grip, Dirk,” said one of the other Peerless One executives. “It’s amazing that we’re alive.”
Still scowling, the man named Dirk plopped back into his seat and silence fell, except for a few sniffles and groans.
Lauren gazed around Kent’s shoulders, searching for her mother. Anxious faces stared back at her above freshly rumpled three-piece suits. The elder statesman of the group was stirring and coming around to consciousness. But the spot where her mother had sat appeared to be empty. Of course, a seatback largely blocked her view.
Lauren’s heart sought to pump out of her chest. “Where’s my mother?”
Kent began moving up the aisle, nudging personal items under seats with his foot. “I’ll look for her. Not much room to go very far. Would you please check on my copilot?”
Lauren’s breath snagged. She’d forgotten about the critically injured woman. What kind of a physician’s assistant was she? Apparently, the kind that was a daughter first.
She stepped into the first set of seats, bent over the slumped woman and felt for a pulse. It was there, ragged and faint, but at least Mags was alive. Gently, Lauren lowered the seat back as far as it would go and padded each side of the woman’s head with one of those little airliner pillows. That should give the injured woman some support for her back and neck. Moving her could be tricky if she had a spinal injury.
“What is Mags’s status?” Kent’s voice called back to her.
“I would say concussion—probably severe—but the bleeding on the external head wound appears to have stopped. I’ll take a closer look in the near future and suture the cut, if necessary, but that’s about the extent of what I can do without expert diagnostic equipment. If she has a subdural hematoma—a brain bleed—she will need surgery, and I can’t... I’m not...”
Lauren inhaled sharply against a surge of frustration. A subdural hematoma was life-threatening. There certainly was no X-ray machine or other diagnostic equipment around here, much less any surgical tools with which to perform a craniotomy, even if she were qualified to perform one, which a PA-C was not. They needed expert help. Fast!
“Just do your best,” Kent responded. “That’s all any of us can do. Your mom’s right here!”
Kent’s call brought Lauren’s head up. Her mother’s pixie face peeped around her seat, pale but composed.
Mom flapped a hand. “Sorry, dear. I guess I passed out.”
Lauren grabbed for the support of a seatback. Now she could testify it was no cliché that knees did go weak when major relief hit. “It’s okay, Mom. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Just my pride...I think. Well, no. I’m pretty sure that seat belt gave the old college try at cutting me in half. My tummy hurts, but I’m sure it will pass.”
Lauren didn’t like the sound of that. Mom could have anything from a ruptured spleen to kidney damage. Or maybe just some bruising and tissue abrasions, but that was best-case scenario. And again, there didn’t seem to be any emergency facilities nearby. Perhaps no life at all. She gazed over her shoulder through the shattered windshield and scanned the barren landscape beyond. If that was a town out there, it appeared to be deserted. Hopefully, appearances were deceiving.
She turned toward Kent, who eyed her from the rear of the plane. “Are we going to get people as comfortable as possible here, or could some help be available in that nearby town?”
