They rattled off their names, and Alex’s mind snagged on the woman’s unusual one. Brynn. Different. Her warm brown eyes were now curious, and her mouth spread in a tenuous smile as she bent down to rub the dog. Blonde hair peeked from under her hood. Clear features and a long elegant neck reminded him of a ballet dancer. Could she keep up? Collins had argued long and hard against Alex’s presence on the hasty team. Claimed it was a physical and mental effort most people couldn’t do.
Jim turned out to be the shortest guy. His experienced gaze probed and traveled over Alex from his brand-spanking-new hiking boots to the hood of his Columbia Sportswear Titanium jacket. Alex had ripped off the coat’s tag just before stepping out of his SUV.
His new boss spoke, “What you got on under your rain pants?”
Alex’s mouth tightened at the direct question. He had to answer to this guy?
“Clothes.”
With one step, Jim was in his face, rain dripping off his nose. “We’re going out into a bone-chilling, goddamned wet environment. If you get pissed and tired because you’re cold and damp because you wore the wrong fucking clothes, I ain’t gonna slow my team to babysit you.” Jim’s blue eyes sparked dangerously.
Point taken.
“Under Armour, then fatigues. Two pairs of socks. No cotton. My boots are waterproof, and my damned gloves cost more than this platinum jacket.” Alex held up a navy gloved hand, still amazed at the ridiculous price. “Either I’m perfectly dressed for shitty mountain weather or the clerk at the outdoor store saw me coming from a mile away and pocketed a commission big enough to buy a plasma TV.” He spoke directly to Jim, gaze locked on his leader, forcing himself to accord the man respect. He’d made a mistake. This wasn’t someone he wanted as an enemy.
“Good.” Jim backed up two steps and snorted, still assessing him, still obviously ticked at having a stranger in their midst.
“Titanium,” Brynn stated.
Alex turned to her. “Huh?”
“Your jacket’s line is called Titanium, not platinum.” Her lips curved up on one side and her eyes smiled.
“For as much as it cost it should be made of platinum. I spent more money on clothing this morning than most people make in a month.” Those lively dark eyes sparkled at his reply. She wasn’t beautiful. Her mouth was wide and her chin a little too stubborn. She was more interesting looking, but probably caught her share of double takes from men. Men like him.
One of the guys coughed, clumsily covering a laugh. Ryan, maybe? Alex scanned the men coolly, aware he’d been caught a second time looking longer than was polite. He studied his “team.”
Ryan was biting his cheek, a weak attempt to stop his grin. Sun-bleached hair lazily covered his forehead, reminding Alex of a surfer. Ryan looked like he belonged in a different kind of wet environment. Jim had a manner of natural leadership and sharp, focused eyes that swore to keep tabs on Alex. The third man had stayed silent, his face expressionless. His black hair and tanned skin hinted at a Native American background. Thomas was the biggest of the bunch, and Alex’s neck muscles contracted as Thomas’s deep eyes considered him.
One to watch.
Brynn was still silently laughing at him. After the dog’s wagging tail, Brynn’s brown eyes were the only cheerful objects in the gloom. Almost sunny, Alex decided. If brown eyes could be called sunny. His chest warmed at the sight.
“Here.” Collins appeared and roughly shoved a heavy pack into Alex’s startled hands. “That’s my own seventy-two-hour pack.” He eyed Alex’s height. “Extra clothes in there should fit all right. You got a cell phone?”
“Yes.”
“GPS?”
“Uh…in my phone.” He had no idea how the thing worked.
There were snorts from the team. Collins mashed his lips together. “You’re not looking up directions to a party downtown. That’s gonna be useless out there. I meant a GPS unit with an altimeter and US Geological Survey maps.”
Alex lifted his chin. “Don’t have one.” He felt like he’d been caught with his pants down.
“Won’t matter, I guess. Everyone else has one.” The sheriff stood motionless for five seconds, his stare digging into Alex’s personal thoughts. “Your boss wouldn’t tell me much about that plane. I know it’s a Piper Cheyenne.”
Alex steadied his breathing, his fists tightening, and didn’t volunteer any extra information. “Are we ready now?” He needed to get to that plane ASAP. Away from this man who looked at him with the eyes of a psychic, digging deep into the darkest corners of his brain and finding him lacking.
Collins coolly nodded. “Jim will bring you up to speed.” Curiosity touched his features. “Damn, you look familiar. Name doesn’t ring a bell though.”
“I’ve got one of those faces.” He turned from the older man and lifted a brow at Jim. “I’m ready.”
Thomas and Ryan were already headed up a dirt—make that mud—trail. Jim grudgingly waved Alex on and then brought up the rear with Brynn pacing ahead of him.
“Kiana, go,” Brynn spoke. Her dog shot past Alex and out of sight between the trees.
Alex blew out a breath, wishing he cared as little about the rain as the dog did. To him, trekking in the great outdoors was as much fun as getting a prostate exam. And trekking in the rainy great outdoors was something he avoided like bad meat. But here he was, biting off more than he suspected he could chew. He stepped heavily in his new boots, splashing water onto his rain pants. He watched the drips roll down the waterproof surface. He could stomach a little rain for a while. Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad.
He glanced over his shoulder at the woman trudging ten feet behind him and tossed a question back to her. “Did Collins say seventy-two-hour pack? What’s that mean?”
“It means your pack is supplied to last for three days.”
“Three days?” He stumbled over nothing and her laugh echoed off the skyscraping firs.
“This isn’t TV. Did you think we’d find the plane before the first commercial break?”
He wished he’d packed that pill bottle.
Darrin Besand’s head hurt as if a grenade had exploded nearby. He shifted in his seat, trying to reposition his left shoulder so it didn’t ache like it’d been stabbed with a dull blade. He slowly turned his head to the right and tried to open his eyes, but they felt sticky. Like melted ice cream was gluing his lashes shut. Using his right hand, he brushed at his face. Because he was still cuffed, his left arm had to move with the right and he groaned at the pain. The goop on his eyes was warm and thick—definitely not ice cream. But why was he so cold?
Snow.
He forced his eyes open and stared at the ceiling above the seat in front of him. It’d been ripped wide open, giving him a view of a dark gray sky, its light barely illuminating the interior of the plane. A half-inch dusting of snow over the seat backs and on the floor told him he’d missed a snowfall. He sat up straight in the wrecked plane, ignoring the scream of pain from his shoulder as memories of the crash rushed through him.
The ride had been rough. Wind and rain and ice had pelted the little plane, making the pilots double-check that everyone was belted up as they headed for the nearest airport. Forget the landing site in Granton. They were going to find whatever was closest. The original filed flight plan had been to land in Hillsdale just west of Portland. The undisclosed real plan was to land at the tiny airstrip in Granton, thirty miles south of Portland. That plan had been scuttled for whatever airstrip or airport was closest, as the weather whipped in with a blow strong enough to make the two pilots sweat.
During the wild turbulence, the US marshal across the aisle from Darrin had held his armrests with a death grip. Sweat had formed on his temples as his lips had moved in a silent prayer.
Darrin had been fascinated with the strength of the storm and the effort of the small airplane and pilots. It’d turned into a life-and-death contest, and he’d found himself siding with the weather. The thought of death didn’t bother him. Anything was better than returning to prison. He’d struggled to survive in prison. The dreary walls and rules and suffocating atmosphere had been slowly killing him. A fast death in a storm was preferable to a lifetime of slow rot behind bars.
He’d been a country boy growing up. He hadn’t realized until he went to prison that he needed access to nature to thrive. All those years he’d lived in big cities trying to forget his rustic roots had been a joke. He was a man who could castrate a bull, spend the day throwing hundred-pound hay bales into a truck, or camp for a week in the dry flatlands of eastern Oregon with only a knife and a sleeping bag. When the plane had taken off he’d felt a surge of pure energy. Being able to see nature from the skies had powered fuel into his soul. Fuel he’d been starved of in prison. And the air had smelled a million times better.
He inhaled a deep breath of icy clean air and studied the silent marshal across the aisle. The agent’s skin was gray and his head sat twisted at an odd angle on his shoulders. Darrin couldn’t see any blood, but the man was obviously dead. Apparently, the marshal’s God had ignored his whispered prayers.
Darrin leaned into the aisle to look around the high seat in front of him to see into the cockpit. He caught his breath as ice stabbed his lungs. No cockpit. Just trees and snow.
There wasn’t just a hole in the ceiling of the plane; the entire front end was gone.
Where’s the cockpit? Where are the pilots?
His shoulder throbbed as he clumsily undid his seat buckle with cuffed, frozen hands. Standard operating procedure said he was to be transported in leg irons, waist chains, and cuffs. And with two marshals as escorts. But Darrin Besand wasn’t a standard transport. Cuffs and a single marshal were all he needed. And the cuffs were just a show for the pilots.
He stiffly straightened his body and stood in the aisle, swaying slightly. He stamped his feet to get some feeling back and swore as needles pricked his toes.
That pain’s a good sign, right?
He stared at the dead body. Odd to be looking over a dead body when he wasn’t the cause. He dug in the marshal’s inside jacket pocket for the key to unlock the cuffs. The agent was cold.
How long have we been down?
Darrin blew out a breath of air. The cloud of fog he created hung heavy before dissolving into the cold air. He fumbled with the key, dropping it several times and ineptly scrambling for it on the floor in the crowded cabin. His damned fingers were numb. The pinky fingers useless. Finally the cuffs dropped from his wrists and he relaxed as he rubbed at his wrists and hands. He threw the cuffs on the floor and roughly kicked them away. A rush of heat filled his veins as the cuffs slid across the aisle and out of sight under a seat.
Freedom.
With new strength, he opened the marshal’s suit jacket again and slipped the gun from the agent’s shoulder holster. He tucked it into his waistband and immediately hated the foreign feeling. It felt like the gun would drop down his pants. He wrestled the agent’s jacket off and removed the shoulder harness, buckling and adjusting the straps on himself, and hissing at the pain in his arm until the fit was good. He squared his shoulders, feeling the straps of the holster touch in odd places. He’d never worn one before.
He touched the butt of the gun at his side and practiced quickly drawing it out, annoyed at his clumsiness. He wasn’t real familiar with handguns. The only firearms he’d handled were shotguns as a teen on his dad’s farm. A shotgun didn’t take a lot of talent. To hit an offending crow or coyote he’d simply point it in the right direction and count on the wide spray of shot and loud noise to scare them off. Other than being on the wrong end of a handgun while being arrested, he hadn’t dealt with the smaller weapons. He preferred to use his bare hands on a victim.
Less mess. More personal.
Guns were impersonal. Darrin didn’t get pleasure from instant results. He liked his tight hands wrapped around a neck and staring into the fading eyes. Then easing off and watching light and comprehension ooze back into their sight. Tightening the grip and watching them panic and fade again.
Darrin breathed deep and his eyes drifted closed as a narcotic-like lightness touched his brain. The rush. He lived for the rush.
But an impersonal handgun might come in handy out here.
He took the cell phone from the marshal’s belt and turned it on.
No service.
He mashed his lips together as he stared at the small screen. The phone was fully charged. Maybe he could find a pocket of service outside somewhere. A better clearing or up on a peak or something.
He stepped out of the ruptured plane and his boots sank into the powder. Utter stillness and silence. He glanced back into the plane and eyed the small drifts of snow that had formed on the floor and again wondered how long the plane had sat in the snow. He squinted in the direction of the sun. The sky was completely overcast, but a faint glow pushing through the gray over the high mountain range to the east indicated the sun’s low position. Early morning. The plane went down yesterday evening, maybe ten hours ago. He glanced at the roof of the plane and blinked.
Four inches of fresh snow sat on top of the plane.
Why didn’t the cold kill me?