WILD MEN OF ALASKA

chapter FOUR

“Tonight? Tomorrow?” Wren said. “Lori’s wedding is the day after tomorrow. We can’t miss the wedding.” That’s the reason Wren had gotten on the blasted plane to begin with. “What about your parents? And the wedding guests? They are going to be so worried.” She’d caused her friends and family too much worry over her short lifetime. Besides, she couldn’t spend the night with Skip out here in the wilds with a dead body, no bathroom, no bed, no coffee!

“Wren! Keep it together.”

She took a deep breath, held it until her lungs hurt and released it in a big huff. “Got it. Is there a plan?”

“Shelter. Chances are this front will bring our first snowfall. At any rate, it’s going to rain and get really cold.”

Colder than it already was? She’d forgotten how hostile this part of Alaska could be when it blew.

“I don’t want to sound insensitive, but what about Jim?” Were they going to spend the night next to a dead body?

Skip’s jaw tightened. “We need to move him.”

What about predators? She couldn’t bring herself to voice the thought, giving it power. But it was a serious probability. Who knew what lurked out there? She swung around, trying to see as far as she could with the drooping clouds. The tundra was pock-marked with alder bushes and scrubs. Anything could be hiding out there. Bears weren’t to bed for the winter yet.

She shivered and regarded Skip. His arm was swelling, his hand almost twice the normal size. “We need to brace your arm first.” She glanced around, took out Skip’s knife that she’d pocketed after cutting him down and sliced the seatbelt free from the plane. Now what to splint it with? Planes weren’t made of wood. She climbed back into the tail where the luggage was stowed.

A webbed netting held the bags in place upside down. She cut one side and worked her bag free. Tossing it to the middle of the plane, it slid to a stop on the ceiling/floor between the seats. She unzipped it and pulled out her curling iron.

“You got to be kidding?” Skip scoffed.

“It’s rigid. Got a better idea?”

In her bag, she also pulled out a water bottle and Tylenol. “Might want to start with this.”

“Got anything stronger?” he mumbled before tossing the pills back and shutting up.

“Want to bite down on something?”

“Just do it.” He ground his teeth together.

“Fine.” She climbed over her bag and carefully took his arm. It was a clean break, as near as she could tell between the elbow and wrist. She knew from experience that if they could immobilize it, the pain would lessen. “Brace yourself, this is going to hurt.”

“Talking about it isn’t helping.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath and tightened her grip on his hand, moving the arm back into place the best she could. Skip did really well until she was almost done, and then he hollered, followed by cursing that was more colorful than anything she’d heard in jail.

She did her best to ignore it and do the job. She was good at that. Tunnel vision, her mother used to call it. Whatever. She focused, and when his arm looked as straight as she could get it, she made quick work of bracing it with the curling iron. But the seatbelt was proving troublesome. The fabric was slick and didn’t want to stay tight. “This isn’t working.”

“Duct tape,” Skip gritted out. He pointed to the back. “There’s a toolkit. Any bush pilot worth his weight has duct tape.”

“Hold this, and don’t move it.” She didn’t want to go through that again. She doubted he did either.

“Don’t worry.”

She regarded his pale Aleut skin, the sweat beading on his upper lip. Could you get sick with a broken arm? Infection? What if the bone had cut open blood vessels? An artery?

What if he died on her, too?

“Hey, I’m not going to die,” Skip growled.

Had she voiced that out loud?

“We’re both going to make it out of here alive. All we have to do is survive the night. We’ve lived through the worst.”

She didn’t agree. Surviving the night alone with Skip just might do her in.

“Stop thinking like that.”

He couldn’t still read her like a book, could he?

Damn it. She’d worked so hard on not letting her emotions play over her face like a movie. She needed space away from him, but the only space she was going to find was out there in the wide open wilderness.

And that would definitely kill her.