looked out the window. “It won’t be long now,” he said.
He didn’t look scared, only perplexed, as if he wondered how he came to be aboard a crashing plane. Absently, he patted the pocket of his coat.
“What are you looking for?”
He started, then grinned. “Candy.”
She knew he’d given up smoking at age nineteen and developed a ferocious candy habit, encouraged by long nights eating out of vending machines at the hospital. The gesture brought tears to her eyes for a reason she couldn’t understand. “Paul, are we going to die?”
His expression was one of myriad emotions, probably the same ones he showed to families when there was no hope to give, no comfort left to offer. He pushed his hand through the gap between the chairs and squeezed her hand. “We’ll make it.”
She was grateful for the lie.
Paul watched as the ground loomed closer with every passing moment. The smoke that filled the cabin made it impossible to see Dr. Wrigley or Maddie’s seatmate as they careened on. He couldn’t hear anything over the deafening roar of the dying aircraft.
They were low enough now that the trees slapped and crunched under the belly of the plane. He suspected the pilot was either unconscious or disabled. Paul wished for a crazy moment that he had the arsenal of skills of the ex-marine in the novel. He could take over the controls and find a flat spot to land. The galling reality was, he was powerless to do anything. He had no idea how to fly a plane, and the cockpit doors were reinforced against any kind of breach, and if two experienced pilots couldn’t land it, neither could he.
Another window ripped free and hurtled through the cabin behind them. With a wild swing of his arm, he batted it away from Maddie. She was huddled under the blanket. He was glad. Better for her not to see the mountain rushing up at them.
Ironically, he remembered the last airplane-crash victim he’d treated. It was a nine-month-old baby who survived the horror with only a slight scratch on her cheek. Rescuers named her Sunny, since she greeted them in the midst of the smoke and fire with a tiny-toothed smile.
Her parents hadn’t been so lucky.
He considered trying to free his cell and call someone to alert them of their location, but he didn’t think he could hold the phone steady against the vicious tremors of the plane.
The wing struck a projection of rock and spun around, cartwheeling them into dizzying circles. The whirling dislodged cushions and broken equipment, hurling them around the cabin. Metal gave way and a fissure ripped through the roof, raining a mixture of hot steel and freezing snow down on them.
Maddie screamed.
He shouted to her, but the din covered his words. The only thing he could do was grip her shoulder around the side of the seat and ask God to spare her.
She’d been through enough.
Her father had, too, and Paul knew Berlin Heart or no Berlin Heart, Bruce Lambert wouldn’t survive the death of his daughter.
The plane flipped and rolled. Paul heard the sound of shearing metal and he hoped the seats were not ripping loose from the floor. Another crack appeared in the ceiling. The aircraft was beginning to break apart.
“Paul!” Maddie screamed. “We’re—”
Her words were snatched away in the wind.
The whine of the engines stopped abruptly. His stomach fell as the plane began a steep dive to the ground. He held on to her until the turbulence tore them apart. The grinding of metal sounded from under their feet and Paul watched in horror as Maddie’s seat began to shudder from its moorings.
He tried to unbuckle himself to grab at her chair, to somehow keep her anchored to him through what was to come, but his own seat pulled loose and he was pitched backward into the smoke-filled rear of the craft.
There was a final, bone-jarring impact, a bombardment of burning shards and jagged metal, and the plane slammed into the ground.
Flickers of color appeared in front of Maddie’s eyes as she blinked back to consciousness. Black smoke and white snow. Her brain fought to make sense of it. Neatly strapped into her seat, yet feeling the sting of icy flakes on her arms? The terrible noise was gone, replaced by an eerie silence broken only by the rush of wind and a crackling she could not identify. The smoke cleared enough for her to assess the situation.
She was in her seat, yes, but the seat was loose, tumbled to the side of a section of aircraft that had broken away from the main body of the plane. From her semiupright position, she looked out onto the snow, dotted with dark pockets of still-smoking debris. Frigid air seared her lungs as she fumbled for the seat-belt release. She had somehow survived the crash.
Had Paul? She could still feel his hands clutching her, trying to keep her from whirling away.
There was no sign of him in the smoke-filled gloom.
She did not know whether to feel grateful or afraid.
She gritted her teeth as the buckle came loose. Half stupefied with fear, she forced herself to look at her body. There was no obvious bleeding, no pain to indicate she’d suffered a traumatic blow. Slowly, she wiggled both feet and gingerly moved her legs. Aside from myriad cuts and abrasions, her body appeared to be working fine. Pressing a hand to her temple, she felt the warm trickle of blood and a dull ache in her wrist. Jaw clenched, she struggled to her feet, head ducked low under the twisted fragment of the plane. She shuffled to the opening, still taking inventory of her injuries. As she approached the lip of the shredded cabin, her stomach tightened.
What would she find tangled in the twisted metal?
Dr. Wrigley?
Tai Jaden?
She swallowed hard. Paul?
And what had become of the Berlin Heart?
Her instincts screamed at her not to cross that smoking threshold.
Stay in shelter. Stay away from the gruesome sights that might be waiting.
Still, she found herself drawn to the opening.
The cold air hit her like a fist, her eyes tearing, vision blurred.
She blinked them away. The piece of the wreckage she stood in was cratered on a snowy hill, wedged against a stand of pines that must have stopped the chunk of wreckage from sliding any farther. Plumes of steam rose from the snow where grotesquely twisted shards of metal protruded like the skeleton of some long-dead thing. She couldn’t see any more pieces of intact plane from her position. The impact must have thrown her some distance.
Wishing she had managed to hold on to her purse, she fumbled in her pocket and retrieved the cell phone.
Please work. Please work.
No signal available, the screen read. She would not be summoning help, or calling Paul. Maybe it was a blessing, anyway. What would it be like to hear Paul’s phone ring endlessly, imagining all the reasons why he was not able to answer? What would it be like to know she would never hear his voice again? Those ridiculous ideas that made her groan. The Donald Duck impressions
