happening, is it?”
To her credit, Wendy didn’t offer any false cheer.
“What’s she on?”
“Immunosuppressants. Some other drugs. She’s been through radiation, obviously. But as I said, the disease is aggressive.”
“So you’re pinning your hopes on a clinical trial of something new?”
“Yes. I was.” That was sounded final. But right now everything felt final.
“They’ve got some great stuff now, I hear, but I’m not up on the disease.” She leaned forward and laid her hand over Rory’s.
Rory wanted to jerk back, but she couldn’t because that touch somehow didn’t offend her. Maybe because she needed not to feel entirely alone. “That’s what they tell me.”
Wendy nodded. “The important thing is to keep her going right now. Food. Warmth. Keep her resistance up. I’ll help every way I can. But I promise you, I’m part of the Conard County emergency-response team. As soon as this weather lets up, they’re going to pull out all the stops to find us.” “Because you’re here?”
“Because all of us are here. And we’re damn good at what we do.”
“How do you know we aren’t someplace else?”
“Because Chase was going to drop us at the Conard County Airport on the way to Minnesota. You knew that, right?”
Rory nodded. “A brief fueling stop.”
“Well, my husband was looking out the window as we came in. He said this is Thunder Mountain, maybe sixty miles out of town.”
It was a slender lifeline indeed, but for once in her life, Rory was willing to grab it. What else did she have?
Turning her head, closing the conversation, she gazed out a window that snow rapidly covered, and fought down the rage, panic and tears.
The exit door behind the cockpit also served as steps. The fact that it opened out and down should have made it easier to move. But the plane’s shape had been torqued by the crash, and things weren’t meeting the way they used to. And the steps themselves, carpeted for that extra bit of luxury, hampered the effort to shove.
“Maybe we should try the rear exit,” Yuma said, wiping sweat from his brow.
“I’d rather not open the door back there if I can avoid it. Any cold air we let in—and there’ll be quite a bit of it—is going to hit our sick passenger first. I’d rather let it in as far from her as possible.”
“Good point. Well, I doubt the snow is the problem.”
“Not hardly,” Chase agreed. “Not yet. Not with this.”
But the snow was a problem all right, one that promised to grow even bigger in the next few hours. “We’ve got to get out,” he said again. “Find out what our condition is, whether we’ve got anything else to worry about. And we’re going to need to build a fire to heat food.”
“In this?” Yuma cocked a brow. “That’s always fun.”
“I have plenty of alcohol onboard.”
Yuma chuckled. “Imagine starting a fire with Chivas. Or Jack.”
“I just hope it works. Alcohol burns cold.”
“A handful of pine needles” was all Yuma said.
“Sure. I see tons of them out there.” But Chase knew that even though the snow buried them, finding them wouldn’t be the most difficult task they’d face. But first this damn door. Preferably in a way that wouldn’t leave it permanently open to the cold.
“You know,” he said as he and Yuma again put their shoulders to the door, “I should have painted this damn plane chartreuse or international orange.”
“By tomorrow I don’t think it’ll matter if it were covered in blinking neon lights.”
Chase paused, wiping his own brow. “Yeah. It probably won’t.”
“Transponder?” Billy Joe asked as they pushed again.
“Damned if I know right now. My instruments were acting like twinkle lights. But first things first. The transponder isn’t exactly going to get much attention at the moment.”
“That’s a fact.”
“At the very least we’ve got to check our situation, make sure we don’t slide farther, and then get some hot soup and coffee going. Then I’ll worry about everything else.” “Agreed.”
On the count of three, both men shoved again, and this time the door opened. Not far, just a couple of inches at the top, but enough for Chase to see the problem. One of the heavy-duty locking bolts hadn’t slid fully back and it ripped at the door, tearing a small hole but not enough to cause any heartache.
“I need a sledgehammer,” Chase muttered. And he needed it right now, because he wasn’t going to go outside and leave that door open, freezing everyone in the plane.
He pulled up a service panel in the floor and went hunting. There it was, a heavy-duty hammer. He hadn’t ever needed it, but you never knew. He carried a lot of items just for that reason. If he’d learned one thing in the military, it was to be prepared for just about any situation. What you dismissed as unnecessary could wind up costing you a whole lot … like your life.
Yuma leaned back while Chase started hammering on the locking bolt.
“Do you have to make so much noise?” the Campbell woman said sharply. “My sister …”
“Is going to freeze to death if I can’t close this door, okay?”
He didn’t have to look at her because he could hear the snap of her jaws closing just before he banged again with the hammer.
To his vast relief, it only took a half-dozen blows. He tossed the hammer back in the hatch, closed it and then faced the door with Yuma again. Already the plane was cooling down, but the fresher air was welcome.
They counted to three again and shoved. This time the door flew all the way down to the packed snow beneath. Another scarcely acknowledged fear slipped away from Chase’s mind. They weren’t trapped inside. They had a functioning door.
The two men scrambled out quickly over the horizontal steps, which were useless at this angle, then shoved the door up behind them, leaving it open the tiniest crack.
Outside the world looked like a snow globe gone mad. Wind whipped them viciously, howling its fury, and the flakes were becoming icy needles. Chase ignored the discomfort, all his attention focused on finding out how the plane was situated. He didn’t want to learn the hard way that they were on the lip of another slide and some little thing could set it off.
He headed straight for the plane’s nose. In this heavy snow, it was hard to see very far. He could make out only the faintest of gray shadows of trees around the clearing, but as he approached the front, he saw with
