by Rachel Grant
She was giving up the sleeping bag, but either way, she had to trust him. They wouldn’t survive the night without each other, so she gave a sharp nod. She slipped the pack onto her back and cinched the shoulder straps while he buckled the waist strap and the chest support. She felt like a toddler but was still glad he took the initiative.
Her body was shutting down.
He cinched his day pack to the frame pack that already had her pack attached, then hoisted it onto his back. She guessed he was carrying fifty to sixty pounds, and her load was down to about twenty-five.
He led the way across the muskeg. She nearly lost it when they had to traverse a loose talus slope, but she kept her feet until almost the end, when a rock rolled beneath her and she went down hard, her knee jamming on the cold stone. She wasn’t sure if her ankle twisted or her knee was more than bruised; all she knew was her entire leg hurt, and she didn’t want to put weight on it right then.
She would, though. She had to, no matter how painful. She could maybe do it without the pack. “I think the plane is just over the next hill, tucked against the cliff face,” she said between gasps of pain. “Take my pack. Find it. I’ll follow in a bit.”
He held her gaze, his eyes showing concern. All signs of anger were gone from his face and body language. After a long moment, he gave a sharp nod. “I’ll come back for you.”
“No need. I can do it.” Even if she had to crawl. She’d get there.
He took the packs and disappeared over the rise. She watched him go and took several deep breaths to prepare herself for what she had to do. Food and shelter awaited her. Dean Slater was the mechanical bunny at a dog track. She would chase after him and win this round. She had to if she wanted to survive the night.
FIFTEEN
The Japanese wreck was as described, tucked up against a cliff face. It was covered in vines and grasses, nearly hidden by the vegetation, as it had burrowed into the dirt when it crashed seventy-five years or so ago. To Dean, it looked like an American Douglas DC-3, but it was Japanese, so it must be a licensed version of the aircraft, sold to Japan before the war.
It was ironic that the old wreck of a plane could look like salvation, but that was exactly what it was. It would give them shelter, and, if they were very lucky, they’d find a way to have a sustained fire for heat.
He entered through the crack in the tail and crawled through the narrow opening, noticing that a whole lot of rodents and other critters had taken refuge here in the last seven and a half decades. The interior smelled of rotted animal carcasses and droppings, but it was blessedly dry and large enough for them to camp inside. He set the packs down in the center of the fuselage and scanned the interior. He’d clear a spot for a fire, but he needed to get Fiona. Housekeeping could wait. She couldn’t.
He crawled through the opening again and set out, his focus narrowed on one purpose: get Fiona warm and see to her leg. If she’d busted an ankle, they were doomed. This was the kind of terrain where a broken leg meant death. He never should have let her walk across that talus slope in her condition.
He was half the distance to the place where he’d left her when he came across her body, collapsed in the muskeg.
His heart seized as he took in her motionless form, facedown in mud. Had she collapsed while crawling and drowned in the mud?
He dropped to his knees and yanked her over.
Her body was lifeless, her face coated in wet brown soil.
NO. No. No. No. no. no.
Images of Violet’s last moments came to mind. It had been the most devastating hour of his life, but at least with Violet, they’d been prepared. They’d both known it was coming. They’d said what they’d needed to say.
He swiped the mud from Fiona’s face, then checked her pulse. Slow but steady.
“Breathe, Fi.”
He wiped the mud from her nose, then tilted her head back to open her airway and pressed his mouth to hers, creating a seal with his lips. He pinched her nose closed and breathed out, sending air into her. Her chest rose, showing her airway wasn’t clogged. He raised his head, and her breath expelled, chest lowering. He breathed into her mouth again, watching her chest rise and hoping to hell he wasn’t too late. He’d breathe for her as long as she needed, but he damn well hoped her body would take over fast so he could get her inside the shelter.
They were so close.
All at once, she gasped and coughed, and he felt as if his heart might explode at seeing life infuse her body. He’d faced a lot of scary moments, but nothing compared to this.
Even with Violet, they’d known what she faced. They’d had a plan.
But this . . . everything was unknown. Everything was terrifying.
Once he was certain she was breathing on her own, he scooped her into his arms and made the trek to the crashed airplane. Fiona hadn’t told him if the Japanese pilot and crew had died in the crash. The plane was intact enough that they might have survived. But it didn’t matter. The wreckage that might have killed during the war would now be life and refuge to Fiona and him.
He pulled her through the narrow opening and lay her down on the floor in the center of the fuselage. Once she was protected from the wind and rain, he had a choice to make. He decided that stripping her of her wet clothes and stuffing her in the sleeping bag was the best place to start. They needed to get her core temperature up first and foremost. Then he could build a fire and check on her leg. They had emergency cold packs to ice the knee or ankle, if either one was more than bruised.
She muttered as he began to unsnap her thick yellow raincoat. “Dean, why did you think Dylan and I were dating?”
Her eyes remained closed, and it was clear she was only half-conscious. Her body was shutting down to deal with hypothermia. Otherwise he’d have taken the time to answer her question with care. Instead, he just said, “Shhh. I’ll explain later. You’re hypothermic. I’m going to undress you. I promise, I’m not taking advantage. I’m trying to help you get warm.”
“You don’t want to undress me?” Her voice carried a small pout, which made him smile.
Oh, Fiona, you have no idea. But you’re not mine and never can be.
It crossed his mind that she was out of it enough that her words about Dylan could only be true. They hadn’t been involved.
But that didn’t make sense. Why would Dylan lie?
He’d assumed from the start that Fiona was the liar, because Dylan never, ever lied.
But Dean was peeling the clothing from the semiconscious body of a beautiful woman who wasn’t, and had never been, Dylan’s girlfriend. And he wouldn’t have considered it in a sexual way, except she’d asked that pouty question.
Fiona was attracted to him, as he was to her.
He shook his head. He needed to focus on what was important. “Tell me if any part of you is injured badly enough for me to look at.”
She ran her hand from chest to thighs. “I might hurt here.”
She’d clearly lost her mind in the cold. “You don’t do field flings, Fiona. Ever.”
She let out a soft laugh. “I know. But also, we might die tonight.”
“You will not die tonight. I won’t let you.”
She reached up and stroked his cheek, her fingers brushing among the short whiskers of his beard. “Thank you.” She shook her head lightly and sat up. “I can undress. I think. If you hand me the sleeping bag?”
Relief filtered through him. She wasn’t delirious, and she wasn’t half-dead. She’d just needed several minutes to get her faculties together. Once again, he was reminded he liked this woman.
He pulled out the sleeping bag and turned his back. “I’ll clear a spot to build a fire. We can use one of the busted windows as a chimney.”
“I’m supposed to complain that this is an historic site, but I think I don’t care at this point.”
“Sweetheart, if we were taking shelter in one of those intact houses in the village site, I’d still be making a fire.”
“Yeah.
No. I don’t think I could ever do that.”
“Good thing we’re not there, then.”
“You don’t know what those houses mean, though.”
“I do, actually. And I honor the history and culture they represent. I would do everything I could to protect the house, but I’d still make use of the hearth. If it was the only shelter available, we’d have to use it to survive.”
He remembered Violet’s last days and the things he would have sacrificed if it would have given her more time. He’d have given his own life for hers, but brain cancer didn’t allow for those kinds of deals.
Burning pieces of a World War II wreck didn’t even trigger a blip on his guilt barometer. He hadn’t caused this situation, but he’d damn well make sure both he and Fiona survived it.
“I can’t . . . I can’t get this zipper. My fingers aren’t cooperating. Can you help?”
He turned to see she was still clothed but struggling with the zipper of the sleeping bag. Of course she needed the bag ready before she stripped. He took it from her and quickly threaded the two opposing zipper pulls, then seated the pin in the slot to close one side of the bag. It was a wide base-camp-style bag, not the narrow mummy-style preferred by backpackers. Not only was it a deluxe, extra-wide bag, it also had zippers on both sides that opened from both ends and a separate zipper to attach the foot box. According to the tag, it was rated for three and a half seasons, which meant it could be used in temperatures as low as ten degrees Fahrenheit.
With careful zipper management, they might both be able to fit in the bag and still trap enough heat to make it work. It would be a damn cozy sleeping arrangement, but it would keep them alive, which was all that mattered.
While he zipped the sides and attached the foot box, she peeled off her layers of wet clothes, finally reaching the base layer of wool. It was his fault even her undergarments were wet. He’d let her lay there in the pouring rain as the water filled her hood.
The mud on her face was beginning to dry, flaking off her skin and showering the floor of the fuselage. “Was I . . . facedown in the mud?” she asked, staring at the dirt that had rained on the floor.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. You were unconscious and not breathing when I found you.” Everything that had happened to her was his fault. He shouldn’t have let water fill her hood. Shouldn’t have pinned her to the ground as he had.
“Thank you for saving me.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone. It’s my fault.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m the one who left the side-by-side. I shouldn’t have run.”
“Why did you?”
She tried to work the buttons on her wool long underwear. “I’d keep this on, because it’s still warm, but it’s so damp, it’ll get the sleeping bag wet.”
“I’ve got a T-shirt you can wear.” It was cotton, but at least she had something dry to wear in the bag as she warmed up.
He undid the buttons at her throat, opening the neck wider to make it easier to pull over her head; then he turned his back, giving her a semblance of privacy while she finished stripping and pulled on the dry long-sleeve T-shirt he’d plucked from his bag.
With his back to her, he repeated his question. “Why did you run? And why did you take Dylan’s clipboard?”
He heard rustling as she slipped into the bag he’d prepared. She let out a soft purr of relief as she settled into the warmth. Finally, she said, “Because I was afraid of you. I had no clue who you were. All I knew was there was no way in hell you were an ornithologist with any kind of ESA Section 7 experience.”
“Section 7? That’s what I screwed up?”
“Among other things, yeah. It’s pretty basic lingo.”
“And Dylan’s clipboard?”
“I wondered why it was so important to you that it was what you looked for first in my tent. It didn’t make sense.”
“I was past pretense at that point. Too desperate to collect everything we could to try to find him.”
“Find him. You think he’s . . . here?”
Dean turned around and faced her. She was tucked deep in the bag, lying on the floor of an old, rotting Japanese airplane. Dried dirt flecked her face, her perfectly highlighted hair was in a tangle around her head, and her eyes were wide with curiosity.
She looked vulnerable, with her beautiful face framed by the hood of the puffy bag. Color was returning to her cheeks as she settled into the warmth.
“He has to be here. If he’s not here, then . . .” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t put the alternative into words. He cleared his throat. “I came here to find him. It’s why I lied to get hired by Pollux. It was the only way to get to the island.” He’d tried to bribe his way here, but that had failed. Chiksook was remote and restricted for reasons both cultural and military. The two combined were a nearly impenetrable barrier, no matter how much money he threw at the problem.
One thing he had in abundance was money. Little did it help him here.
Fiona cleared her throat. “And why . . . why do you think Dylan and I were involved?”
“Let me get the fire going. Get us some food. Then we’ll talk.”
She nodded. “Do you mind if I just lie here?”
He couldn’t help but laugh as he shook his head. “Uh, we’d have words if you didn’t just lie there. Do you realize you weren’t breathing twenty minutes ago? Get warm and keep breathing. That’s your only job.”
“For once, that’s a job I can do.”
He took that to mean she was still beating herself up about the archaeological site. After everything that had happened today, Fiona Carver still harbored guilt over the damage to the site.
He rummaged through the plane, looking for something, anything, burnable. He had small emergency fire-starter bricks, and they had those cans of Sterno, but it wasn’t enough for the kind of heat they needed, plus they should save the Sterno for cooking.
Twigs and vines had grown into the cracks of the plane over the years. He gathered the dry, dead branches into a pile, along with rodent bones and the skeletons of a few larger mammals that had died inside the plane over the decades.
The plane had been used for cargo, and he salvaged a metal container to use as their fire pit, and beneath it found a wooden pallet that would probably provide a half hour’s worth of fuel. It was a start, but not nearly enough.
He shoved aside a sheet of rotted canvas that covered a metal shelf bolted to the side of the plane—and wanted to sink to his knees and offer a prayer of thanks. The canvas had hidden wooden boxes. A quick count indicated there were two dozen, each one more than two feet long and about fourteen inches deep and wide, with thick wood handles on the sides.
He pulled one box from the shelf—it was heavy, at least fifty pounds. That meant the wood shell had to be sturdy. And thick.
He set the box on the floor; it hit with a loud thunk, but the aged, dry wood held together. He unhooked the metal latches. Inside were large rounds. Antiaircraft ammunition? Not that it mattered; big bullets didn’t interest him. He was far more excited by the thickness of the wood.
That’s what she said.
He snickered at the internal joke. Too bad it wouldn’t be half as funny if he said it out loud.
He focused on the wonderfully thick wooden sides of the box. If he slowly fed a small fire, this box would last at least two hours. Probably longer. And they had two dozen to burn.
Slow-burning thick wood was the best wood.
He shook his head even as he let out a soft laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Just being juvenile in my head. I found some boxes we can burn. We have enough wood to dry your clothes and cook dinner.”
And once her core temperature was up and long underwear dry, he could join her in the sleeping bag, and they could rest for the night, letting the fire die to conserve the precious wood.
They could stay here for days. All they needed was water, which was ra
ining down on them in waves. He could fill one of her silicone collapsible field buckets from a stream he’d spotted pouring down a groove in the rock face behind the plane.
They would survive the night and several more to follow.
He dug around in the plane looking for tools and found a crowbar. He emptied the ammunition onto another shelf and then used the crowbar to pry apart the wood, repeating the process with a second box and making a small mound of firewood to get them started.
He pulled the metal box close to where she lay in the center of the widest part of the fuselage. He then cleared a spot beneath a broken window with vines growing through it and proceeded to set up a fire, starting with the wax-infused fire-starter brick, a few crumpled pieces of precious paper—blank—from Dylan’s clipboard, followed by a bird’s nest of dried twigs and vines combined with other debris he’d gathered from the plane. Last, he arranged the kindling in a circle, forming a tent over the other items with long sticks from the ammo box.
With one match, he set off the paper and fire brick. He leaned down and blew on the flame and brick, and in moments the bird’s nest caught, glowing red with each long puff of air sent to the heart of the flame, much as he’d breathed life into Fiona earlier and watched her chest rise.
Smoke filled the plane, and he used the crowbar to widen the hole in the window to increase airflow. Soon the smoke was being sucked outside and warmth began to radiate from the metal sides of the makeshift fireplace.
Once the fire could survive on its own without suffocating them, he used paracord from the emergency kit to make a clothesline that extended from one side of the fuselage to the other, then draped Fiona’s clothes over the cord.
“You’re good at this,” Fiona said, her voice a bit drowsy but otherwise strong.
“This isn’t my first Aleutian storm.”
“You weren’t lying about having been here.”
“No. I had an assignment a few years ago to photograph birds. I do have a wildlife biology degree. I might not know the Endangered Species Act chapter and verse, but I know enough about birds and wildlife in general to get by.”