“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
Brynn squeezed her eyes shut and dug her knuckles into her eyelids, but it didn’t hide the image burned on her retinas. Alex vanishing under that snow.
It was quiet on the hill, but her ears were still ringing from the roar of the avalanche. She slowly lowered her hands, hoping to see Alex climbing up the hill. The unseen helicopter had flown away, and a tank brigade of snow had ripped down the mountain, leaving a jumbled wake of white fluff. Ryan pulled on her arm.
“Let’s go.”
She hated the determination in his voice. In her gut she knew all was lost. No one could live through that. Ryan yanked harder.
“Brynn. Get moving. We’ve got to hurry.” Her feet started to follow, concrete weights tied to her ankles. He’s dead. Alex is dead.
No. No. No! Silent words hammered her brain. I don’t believe it.
She couldn’t give up without trying. She couldn’t give up on Alex.
She wrenched her arm out of Ryan’s grasp and started to run down the side of the slope. Kiana raced ahead, while far below Thomas and Jim dashed from the trees. Thomas was pointing in one direction, but Jim was shaking his head.
“Where is he? Did you see where he went?” she screamed at the two men.
Jim pointed to a spot twenty yards away from a spot Thomas was indicating.
Brynn stumbled and fell. Ryan stopped to help her up and roughly pushed her ahead. “Go, go!”
Minutes. They only had minutes to find Alex before he suffocated.
Death’s clock clanged in her brain.
It took too long for them to get down the slope. It felt like hours before they met up with the men. Thomas and Jim were frantically scooping snow, yelling Alex’s name.
“Is this the spot? Did you see him go under?” Brynn fell to her knees and pawed at the snow like a dog. Ryan did the same. Kiana sniffed at the snow by Brynn’s hands, ran in a circle around the group, and barked.
Thomas and Jim exchanged a glance, Jim nodded.
“I think he’s over there.” Thomas gestured to his left.
Were they digging in the wrong spot? Brynn froze at the possibility. She turned wide eyes to Jim. He angrily shook his head. “I don’t know. I swear he should be about here.” He stood and gestured. “Thomas, take Ryan. Go dig over there.”
Brynn’s breath shot out. By splitting up they’d lose speed at this dig site. “Jim—”
“I know. I know! What else can I do? Thomas is as positive about what he saw as I am.”
Tears stung. “Dig faster,” she begged and doubled her speed.
Darrin was on his feet, mouth open, binoculars pressed hard enough to leave rings around his eyes as he watched the diggers.
Holy shit.
He’d never seen an avalanche except on TV, and he didn’t want to ever see one again. The power of that thing! It’d been like a hungry monster, devouring everything in its path. How had silent snow made so much noise?
It had smacked directly into Alex Kinton. Darrin had watched him pump his arms like a swimmer. Was Kinton dead?
Darrin ran his binoculars over the snow. Kinton had to be dead. It was like getting sucked under in the ocean, only you wouldn’t float to the top.
Wow.
His shoulders twitched, waiting for Kinton to appear. Besides Alex, the snow had scooped up and eaten the cockpit of the plane like it was a tasty snack. How could they expect to find a person under the snow when they couldn’t even see a piece of the plane?
Darrin zoomed in on the woman and watched tears flow down her face. He could see her lips moving as she shouted at the other men, but he couldn’t hear the words. His eyes widened.
Now there were three men in red. Where did the third guy come from? He’d been so focused on the damage down the slope Darrin hadn’t watched the woman come back down. She must have brought the third man.
The nutty dog was running in circles. Going from one set of diggers to the next. It finally decided to dig next to the woman and sent the snow flying from between its legs. Handy animal.
Darrin straightened as the new guy stopped digging, leaned to one side, vomited, and then immediately started digging again.
Adrenaline. Darrin understood that effect on the stomach. They must be utterly freaked.
The new guy dug slower than the others, but all their faces reflected the same determination to find Kinton. The woman didn’t even stop to wipe at her cheeks.
Paul Whittenhall couldn’t believe it.
The two-man team he’d sent to tail Kinton was trudging out of the woods and back into his base camp. A chorus of questions and excitement rose out of the media corral. The team had been gone only half the day.
“What the fuck?” Paul muttered and jogged to meet them. That asshole Sheriff Collins moved faster. He beat Paul to the team and started peppering them with questions. Good men. They were ignoring the sheriff. Gary Stewart locked eyes with his boss. He looked defeated.
What kind of cowards would be back so fast?
“What happened?” Paul reached the men and cut his question in over the sheriff’s.
Stewart glanced at the sheriff then back to his boss, his brown eyes tired.
“Footbridge over the river is under water. We tried, but there’s no way to get across the water that way. Boyles says there’s a train trestle or something farther south that crosses the river.”
Collins nodded. “There is a train trestle a few miles from here. But it’s gonna add a lot of time to getting in there.”
Paul turned on the sheriff. “How’d your team get across? I thought they went in the same way.” Had Collins been lying to him?
Collins shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t underwater when they went over. As far as I know it’s the only way to get across up that way.”
Boyles nodded. “It looked like a tree floated down the river and wedged itself under the bridge, plugging the free space, making the water flow over the bridge. Maybe that happened after your guys went through.”
“My guys…” An odd look passed over Collins’s face.
Instantly suspicious, Paul jumped on it. “What? What about your guys?”
Collins mouth went up on one side as amusement darkened his eyes. “It’s nothing. One’s a woman; they’re not all guys. That’s all.” The amusement vanished. “She’s not fond of crossing water.”
Paul saw Gary Stewart straighten, his face covered with surprise. He read Stewart’s thoughts. A woman went out in that shit?
Paul smirked at the look on his man’s face. Maybe Stewart would stop being such a whiner about the weather. Being shown up by a woman. Ha!
“OK, where’s this train trestle?”
Goddamn, he was cold. Had someone left the tent flap open?
Alex tried to peer through the dark, but his eyes weren’t working right. He was too tired. For once Ryan and Thomas weren’t snoring in unison. He sighed and tried to relax, shift deeper into his sleeping bag.
Icy-hot pain shot through his knee, forcing his eyes wide open. Shit, what had he done to his leg? The pain was nearly as tortuous as when he’d first caught a bullet with it. He tried to move it into a better position.
He couldn’t move his leg.
Snow. Avalanche.
Alex’s breath shot out.
He was underground. Under the snow. He thrashed in instant panic.
Breathing hard, he managed to unstick an arm from the packed snow and reach for the cold ceiling above his face. His frantic thrashing was halted by shock as he found the snowpacked roof. It was so close.
It was ten inches from his nose to the ice. And even less between his chest and the ice. He remembered clawing, waving his arms as he was tossed inside the avalanche. A faint thought from a very tiny part of his brain had screamed, “Swim!”
Those arm movements had probably kept the snow from settling on his face and immediately smothering him.
At least he faced upright. Gravity was telling him that much.
He breathed slowly and purposefully didn’t think about how little oxygen there must be in his snowy coffin.
Alex tugged his other arm free and used both hands to dig at the ceiling of snow above his face. Ice crystals trickled into his eyes, so he moved his hands lower, digging above his chest, moving slowly, not wanting to overexert and use too much oxygen.
Was he close to the surface?
What about the others?
Brynn was safe. She and Ryan had been out of the avalanche’s path. But what about Jim and Thomas? Alex dug faster. The men might be in the exact position as him. They would need help.
An image of Brynn trying to find all three of them physically hurt his brain. She and Jim were so close. He grit his teeth as he pawed at his ceiling.
Why did Jim and Brynn’s closeness irritate him?
Alex barely knew the woman.
And if he didn’t get out of here he wasn’t going to know her any better.
His hands dug faster.
A dog barked faintly. Kiana.
“Hey!” he hollered, hurting his own ears. “I’m down here!”
Nothing. He swallowed hard and yelled again.
Still nothing.
Maybe he’d imagined the dog. Was he oxygen deprived already? Tiny sharp lights danced in his eyes and he sucked in a deep breath to send more oxygen to his brain. But it didn’t help. His lungs burned and he inhaled again, forgetting his previous caution to pace his breathing. He must have been unconscious for quite a while because he was nearly out of air. He felt lightheaded and dizzy. Not good signs.
He settled his hands at his sides and closed his eyes.
There wasn’t any point in fighting anymore.
He exhaled and relaxed. It’d be easy. He’d simply fall asleep.
Then he heard her voice, and his eyes flew open. Brynn’s brown eyes were looking down at him, laughing at him. “Are you trying to make this hard for us?”
He smiled back as relief filled his throat and kept him from speaking. Brynn looked great. From the minute he’d met her, he’d felt she was special. The animation and energy in her face set her apart from other women. One of those people whose spirit illuminates them from the inside, giving them a special glow. One of those people your eye always comes back to, but you don’t know why. You just can’t look away.
He couldn’t look away now.
She seemed to have eyes only for him. Dark brown, expressive, dancing eyes. He’d never met anyone with such communicative eyes. Damn. If he wasn’t careful…
“You need to tell us where you are, Alex. We can’t find you if you don’t tell us.”
She smiled patiently at him and waited, her gaze losing a small degree of its joy.
He tried to speak. And couldn’t.
Her face fell and her eyes pleaded with him. “Come on, Alex. Where are you?”
He wanted to please her, he wanted that brightness back in her gaze, but he still couldn’t speak and he didn’t know where he was. His eyes closed in frustration as his brain silently screamed.
He was so fucked.
Brynn couldn’t feel her hands anymore. The cold of the snow was making them numb. I won’t stop. I won’t stop. She dug, ignoring the splinters of pain from her upper arms. A picture of Alex, lifeless and gray, flooded her brain and she shoved it away.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
“Good girl, Kiana. Where is he? Dig him out!”
Kiana paused to shove her nose into the deep hole she’d dug and started digging again. Kiana was like a little snowblower, shooting snow in an arc behind her. The dog’s determination calmed Brynn. Surely Kiana wouldn’t be digging if nothing were down there.
Jim sat back on his heels and huffed. His face was red, and he wouldn’t meet Brynn’s eyes. “Just catching my breath.”
She nodded and kept digging. A second later she jumped to her feet, scanning the area. “I’m so stupid. Where are the packs? Why in the hell aren’t we using the shovels?” A small collapsible shovel was standard equipment in their packs.
Jim grimaced. “Already thought about it. Don’t know where they are. The avalanche spun the body of the plane in place, but it sucked up the packs that were beside it.”
Brynn stood still. “No packs?” Their lives were in their packs. They weren’t going to survive out here if they didn’t have them. She looked at the hole at her feet. Was she digging Alex out to die in the elements? She glanced over at the big piece of the plane where she’d dropped her pack before hiking up to Ryan. Sure enough. The avalanche had caught the edge of the plane and rotated it ninety degrees.