He called her name repeatedly, but the thick hemlocks, cedars and spruce muffled his words.
He clapped his arms for warmth and put on the old leather jacket. It cut the wind but didn’t do much against bitter cold. He kept calling out Darcy’s name, but he might as well have yelled into an empty well. There was no response.
A light snow began to dust the deathly still forest.
“Hey, Dar—” He broke off when he saw the partially eaten sandwich.
He hadn’t touched it. A wolf or fox or bear would have taken the whole thing. Wolves. Bears. Darcy couldn’t fight off an attack. He looked more closely at the sandwich. The shape of the bite looked human. She must have eaten it.
Then where had she gone?
He tromped through the woods to the wreck site. Not there.
He returned to their camp, easily following his footsteps. She must have left before the snow, because only his tracks were visible. He had to act quickly, or any evidence of her path would be covered under a blanket of white.
Again he called her name, his hands to his lips like a megaphone.
Nothing but the twitter of sparrows.
“Where in creation did you go, Shea?” he grumbled. And why?
The latter didn’t take very long to surmise. Once he determined she wasn’t near their camp, he knew the answer. She’d gone on and on last night about forgetting to strain the oil. That wasn’t what had stalled the engines, but she’d been asleep by the time he figured it out.
A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. Darcy Shea wasn’t the typical woman. She didn’t fuss or pout. She took things into her own hands, the way she’d bulled her way into flying lessons. She went after the goal, no matter the cost. She was just stubborn enough to think she could get help on her own.
Fool woman. When he found her he’d strangle her.
If he found her.
That thought twisted his stomach. As irritating as she could be at times, he couldn’t imagine Darcy dying. She was too stubborn.
But this land could swallow a man whole. A woman? He shuddered. The land didn’t care that she had grand plans and the talent to make them real. It didn’t understand her boundless optimism. This land would leave her blue and cold beneath a drift of snow.
He should never have let her come on such a dangerous flight. He shouldn’t have taught her to fly. If he admitted the truth, he hadn’t done it because Pohlman took her money. He taught her to fly because he wanted to be with her. He knew better than to mix romance with flying. It was selfish and stupid. Never again.
If he found her.
Daylight was slipping away. Jack hunted for one of the portable flashlights they’d stowed in the plane. Their provisions had been scattered over the ground for a hundred yards. He picked through the rubble but couldn’t find the map, the compass, or the flashlights.
He rummaged in her shattered cockpit. Luck—or maybe providence, or even God—was on his side. One of the flashlights had jammed between the side of the seat and the fuselage. With a little tugging and pushing, Jack was able to pry it free. He put it in his jacket pocket.
Then he saw the compass and sextant. For a second he rejoiced, until he realized that meant Darcy had set off without any navigational aids. She could have gone in any direction.
“Stupid, impulsive,” he muttered as he climbed off the plane. Too wonderful to die.
What had she been thinking?
Jack tried to focus. To find Darcy, he’d have to determine her frame of mind. Which direction would she take? If she’d had the compass, she would have headed to the closest habitation, a mining camp located, by his reckoning, some twelve to fifteen miles south.
Since she lacked navigational instruments, finding her would take a little detective work. Jack surveyed the area. The hatchet—Darcy’s hatchet—lay on the ground. Impulsively, he picked it up. Maybe it would be of some use.
Aside from the sandwich, he found scratch marks in the snow on the north side of the clearing. That direction led all the way to the pole. Of course, she might have eaten the snow to quench her thirst. He both hoped she had and hadn’t. She needed water to survive, but not snow. Snow would lower her body temperature, doubly dangerous because she was injured.
The injury would slow her down. She couldn’t have gotten far. Jack circled the clearing, looking for broken branches or scuffed ground, anything to tell him which way she went.
To the southeast he found an odd set of holes, an inch in diameter. At first he thought they were snake holes, but then he noticed they were evenly spaced and headed toward a stand of white pine.
She was using a walking stick or crutch. Of course.