style="font-size:15px;"> “Help! Help! We’re in here!” she cried, but no one answered, and the scratching stopped.
When she realized it wasn’t people making that noise and they were not being rescued, she broke down in tears, sobbing from pain and disappointment. It took her a few minutes to get her emotions under control and focus on getting free. Now that it was daylight, she could see how to remove the debris under which she’d been trapped.
She sat up slowly, moaning as pain rolled through her midsection, then, one at a time, began moving things aside until she was finally free.
Her leg was throbbing with every heartbeat. She reached down to pull up her pant leg and check it out, then nearly passed out from the pain and stopped. Okay, bending over was a bad idea, but at least when she stood up, her aching leg held her weight.
But her relief was short-lived when she heard a snarl, and then a low, throaty growl from outside the plane and remembered the scratching from before. At that point she panicked again. The thought of falling victim to wild animals was horrifying, but a quick glance about the cabin told her it was still intact.
The good news was that no animals could get to her. The bad news was that Marcy was apparently dead. She began to cry as she set about looking for Dan, and quickly found his body crumpled up in a corner near the door to the pilot’s cabin. Her fingers were trembling as she felt for a pulse at the base of his neck. His skin was as cold as the air around them, and there were no signs of life. They had been more than coworkers with the Red Cross. They were her friends, and they were dead. Then she remembered the pilot, Ken Price. He had to be alive. She couldn’t do this by herself.
The door leading into the cockpit was ajar. She stepped inside, then slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Ken’s eyes were wide-open in a death stare that gave her the chills. All the rest of his facial features had been completely obliterated by the impact.
All of a sudden the walls began to spin around her. She staggered out of the cockpit and slid down the wall into a sitting position, quickly putting her head between her knees to keep from passing out. As the wave of nausea passed, she began to think what to do next, and talking aloud seemed to help her focus.
“I need my coat, and I need to radio for help.”
But that meant going back into the cockpit. She forced herself to go, and sobbed all the way through the ordeal of trying to make Ken’s radio work, but to no avail.
She didn’t know if private jets like this one were equipped with locator beacons, but she was determined not to lose hope. After one brief moment of panic, thinking she might never see Sarah or Cameron again, she had to believe she’d lived through this for a reason. It was time to get practical. She moved back into the cabin, putting on as many pieces of Dan’s clothing as she could wear. When she finally found her coat, she threw it over her arm and began searching through the debris for cell phones.
* * *
Cameron Winger was on his way out of the Federal Building, buttoning up his coat as he went. He ducked his head against the blast of winter wind as the door swung shut behind him. Tiny flakes of snow lit on his hair like bits of white lace on black satin. He was a tall man with features more refined than his attitude. He didn’t like the word no and had no tolerance for ineptitude. He squinted when he was deliberating a decision until his green eyes were barely visible, and there was just the tiniest hint of a dimple in his right cheek. He’d been with the FBI since college and never once regretted the decision.
He was on his way to his car when his cell phone rang. He glanced at caller ID and frowned. Why was Laura’s sister, Sarah, calling him?
“Hello?”
“Cameron! Thank God you answered!”
His gut knotted when he heard the panic in her voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“Laura’s plane never landed. It went off radar late yesterday evening.”
The world stopped. Cameron felt the bitter bite of winter on his face as he turned away and closed his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. Laura was everything to him. Then he took a deep breath and made himself focus.
“She was coming back from that convention in L.A., right?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know where it went down?”
“All I know is they’re setting up search and rescue somewhere around Denver. Can you go? I’m in Canada. Someone needs to be there for her, and I can’t get there fast enough to do any good.”
“Absolutely.”
“Keep me informed?” she begged.
“Of course,” he said, and made a U-turn on the sidewalk, resisting the urge to run as he headed back into the Federal Building.
* * *
It took over an hour, but Laura finally found all four cell phones, then, one by one, her hopes were dashed as she failed to get a signal.
“Can you believe it?” she muttered, talking to Marcy as if she could still hear. “Four phones and not a single signal from any of them.”
Marcy had nothing to say.
At least during the search for the phones she’d found a first-aid kit, some snacks and two bottles of water. She put the food and water in the farthest corner of the plane, away from the bodies, then made her way to the tiny bathroom. There was no getting around bodily functions, but she had to leave the door open for light so she could see.
When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she stifled a horrified gasp. When she sat down on the commode, she groaned from the pain, and when she got up, she groaned again.
The cut in her hairline had bled into her scalp while she was passed out, leaving her white-blond hair with garish streaks of red. Now it was freeze-dried to her skin and nothing short of multiple scrubbings was going to take it out.
Her face was normally heart-shaped but was swollen on one side more than the other, and her lower lip was puffy and bruised. Her eyes, normally blue, reflected the pain she was suffering to the point that they were almost gray. She was dressed like a scarecrow with all the layers of clothing, but considering the danger of her circumstances, her appearance wasn’t worth further consideration.
She stumbled as she came out of the bathroom, grabbed at a seat to keep from falling and then winced from the pain of the added jolt. After a thorough search through the first-aid kit, she found a few butterfly bandages and used them on the cut in her scalp. She chewed and swallowed three extremely bitter aspirin, hoping they were enough to offset the steady throb between her eyes. Used one wet wipe to clean some of the blood from her face and hands, then managed to open one of the bottles of water and took a drink.
It hurt terribly to inhale, and she was guessing her ribs were either broken or severely bruised. She dug farther into the kit and found a couple of ACE bandages. Reluctantly, she removed enough clothing to wrap up her rib cage. It hurt like hell in the process and as soon as she was done, she dressed hastily, shivering from the encroaching cold.
Her next problem was finding a way to get warm. There were three other suitcases that had been tossed about the cabin, and she
