She clung to him like a barnacle to a boat, like he was her anchor, and the knowledge that this beautiful, brave, resourceful woman was depending on him to get her safely through her emotional storm messed with his own emotions. He felt her getting in under his guard, sinking in hooks where he took good care hooks should not be sunk, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He was deep in the maelstrom with her, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting her go.
When she spoke, her voice was so low he had to strain to hear. “I was knocked unconscious for a few minutes, and when I came to the plane was on fire. Just a little bit, just a few flames licking up around where the tail had been. The fuselage was all crumpled up like an accordion and was wedged in this grove of trees. I ran over to the plane. The cockpit was ripped open and I was able to see inside. My father was slumped over the controls. David—” Her voice quavered, but she swallowed and went on. “David was lying there on the nose of the plane, covered with blood. He’d gone through the windshield. I could see at a glance that he was dead. Becca—she was all twisted up in the wreckage. I thought she was dead, too. The only one I could reach was my father. I grabbed his arm and shook him. The fire was spreading, and I was screaming and trying to pull him out, but I couldn’t. He woke up and kind of shook himself and tried getting himself out and he couldn’t do it, either. His legs were trapped. The fire was racing toward us. I could feel its heat on my back but I wouldn’t look around because I was afraid of what I would see. We were both desperately trying to pull his legs free when he looked past me and said, ‘Get back, you have to save yourself,’ and pushed me away. Then the plane blew up. Just went boom and was engulfed in flames. I got thrown backward, and that’s when my shirt caught fire. You were right: it was burning fuel. It rained down all over me.”
Her voice shook. He held her close and thought of the lacy tracery of scars on her arm, wincing as he imagined the pain she must have suffered getting them. The worst thing was, that pain was nothing compared to the psychological pain she still suffered, was suffering now.
He said, “It’s in the past, it’s over. I’ve got you now.”
She whispered, “I keep—seeing them die. Hearing them die. Becca was alive, too. I know, because she started screaming as the plane burned. My father screamed, too. They were alive. They screamed. And I—you know what I did?—I couldn’t stand watching, or listening, so I turned and ran away and left them to die.”
She started to cry, deep, harsh sobs that shook her from head to toe and stripped him raw inside. He held her and rocked her and kissed her and murmured whatever inane words of comfort came to him and felt his gut twist and his heart break for her.
That’s when he knew, for sure, that he had a problem.
Forget getting it on, he was getting involved.
Hell, face the truth: he was involved.
In the end, when she was all cried out in his arms, he loved her back to sleep.
Then, unable to sleep himself for the first time in as long as he could remember, he got up, got dressed, and started making preparations for the coming day.
As a last act before waking her, he headed out to the mouth of the cave to check the weather and see what he could see.
The fog had cleared. It was still snowing, but only moderately. No blizzard involved. There was a stiff wind, and it was still bitterly cold. Cal thanked God they’d had the protection of the cave during the night. The sun was just coming up, adding streaks of pink and orange to the leaden gray of the sky. The birds on the slope directly below him were stirring, emerging from their burrows and hopping around, making a surprising amount of noise. He ignored them, first squinting at the camp and then looking at it through binoculars to make sure.
Yes. He gave a mental fist pump as he spotted the de Havilland Beaver on the runway. There was no snow accumulation yet on the wings, which told him that it hadn’t been on the ground long. This particular one looked a little battered, but the Beaver was a small, hardy Alaskan bush plane and would do the job he needed it to do.
Already turning back into the cave, busy making plans, Cal was startled when the puffins below him took off in a squawking, wing-beating mass, rising into the dawn sky in a noisy black cloud.
His gaze followed them automatically. As it did, it alighted on a sight so ominous that his blood froze. Whipping back around, he jerked the binoculars up to his eyes again to make sure.
Moving along the path he and Gina had taken the day before, with all the deadly silence of a squadron of stealth bombers, was a group of about twenty armed men. They had almost reached the fork in the trail that would take them up to the cave, and they were being led by a pair of what looked like native Aleuts with their tracking dogs.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We’re going to do what?” Gina squeaked. Cal gripped her hand tightly, pulling her after him as, flashlight illuminating the way, they raced up the last, steep section of the pitch-black stone tunnel that at its end would open out into nothingness at the top of Terrible Mountain.