Chapter 107 The Crash
Sierra awoke to the acrid sting of smoke. Her skull throbbed, and her vision swam as she tried to sit up, the seatbelt cutting into her ribs like a vice. The jet was on its side, half-tumbled into a ravine, wings gaping open like the ribs of a monstrous beast. Snow swirled through the broken fuselage, glittering in the pale light of a slanting sun, and the air smelled of fuel and fire.
Julian was slumped across two seats, his leg pinned beneath a shattered panel. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and viscous, seeping through his suit. He groaned, a sound low and pained, his eyes fluttering open. For a moment, he looked not at her but past her, as if the mountains themselves might offer salvation.
She crawled toward him, every movement a jagged protest from her body. “Julian,” she said, voice hoarse. He didn’t answer, but his fingers twitched.
The plane groaned, a low, sick sound. A spark leapt from the engines. Smoke thickened. She had seconds.
Julian’s breath came shallow, his jaw tight with pain. “Leave me,” he rasped, his voice as brittle as the cracked window beside him. “I’m not worth it.”
You’re right, Sierra thought. The man who had taken from her what he hadn’t been asked to take, who had dressed it in silk and called it passion, who had made her feel smaller than the broken airplane parts around them, he was not worth it.
But as she backed away, her stomach twisted. The man who had once called her strong was not this broken, bleeding thing beneath the wreckage. The man who had groomed her in boardrooms and bedchambers, who had taught her to speak in acronyms and dress in designer tags, was still gone. This man, gasping for air and clutching his leg, was only Julian. Vulnerable. Human.
She crouched beside him, hands shaking. “Hold still,” she said, and tore at his sleeve with her nails.
The wound was deep, a jagged gash that pulsed with every beat of his heart. She ripped her scarf and pressed it against the injury, the fabric darkening instantly. Julian hissed but didn’t fight her. His fingers closed over hers, weak and fever-warm. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.
“You’re right, I don’t,” she said, and pulled.
He screamed.
The panel shifted, and she wrapped an arm around his waist, dragging him free. The snow bit at her skin, raw and hungry. She collapsed beside him, breath ragged, and stared at the plane as flames licked its belly. Amber light danced across the ravine.
Julian coughed, smoke-stained lips parting. “We’re going to die out here,” he said, as if the admission would make it true.
“No,” she said, leaving him behind and moving back toward the burning hulk. If they were to survive, they would need the emergency kit. It would be somewhere among the scattered debris. She hoped the light of the fire would hold out long enough for her to find it.
She found the emergency pack, half-melted where it had been tossed from the cargo hold, its waterproof lining warped by heat. Inside, a flare, a knife of reasonable sharpness, a mylar emergency blanket, and a map, frayed and waterlogged.
She studied it for several minutes, finding Aspen, but having no idea how far from the small mountain town they’d traveled before the crash. “A bold ‘you are here’ would be helpful right about now,” she murmured.
Sierra knelt beside Julian, his breath clouding in the air between them. She used a silk scarf she’d bought in London to bind his leg more tightly, then covered him with the mylar blanket. He said nothing, but she saw the way his fists clenched.
“We need shelter and a fire,” she said, more to herself than to him. She scanned the ravine, the slope of rocks and trees. A cluster of pines stood above them, their limbs weighted with snow. Scanning further, she found a sheer rockface with a small patch of clear ground where the wind hadn’t blown snow in against it. “There.”
Julian touched her wrist. “You don’t owe me this,” he said.
“I don’t,” she repeated. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”
They huddled against the frozen granite wall. After breaking dry branches from nearby trees, Sierra used the flare’s phosphorus strip to ignite the kindling. She continued to feed what dry wood she could find into it to keep the blaze going.
Julian watched her, his gaze unsteady. “You always were stubborn,” he said.
She glanced at him, the way his face was lit by the fire’s glow, how it aged him. “You should know.”
He smiled faintly, then gasped as the wound in his leg throbbed. “Tell me it’s not too late,” he said suddenly. “Tell me there’s still time.”
She had no idea. The map was a tangle of rivers and ridges. Without knowing where they were, she had no idea how close they were to the towns marked in bold print.
“Time isn’t the problem,” she said. “Keeping from freezing to death until somebody finds us is.”
Sierra kept the fire burning throughout the night. Several times, she glanced at Julian’s face. His skin was ashen, fingers stiff with the cold.
Julian stirred. “Sierra.” His voice was rough. “You should go.”
She turned sharply. “What?”
He looked at her, really looked at her this time, not as a conquest, not as a trophy, but as a ghost in a Prada coat. “You should leave me. Try to make it out on your own,” he said. “You can make it as long as you don’t have me to hold you back.”
“For your information, mister,” she retorted. “I have no intention of leaving this warm fire to wander out in the dark.”
Julian’s hand found hers. “Save yourself,” he whispered.
Despite what he’d done, she wasn’t done saving him.
When dawn finally broke, the sky was steel-gray, the wind sharp, biting through her coat. She had gathered all of the dry wood she could find nearby, and the fire was still hungry for more. She had to keep it going if they had any chance of staying alive. In the dark, it would be a light; in the daytime, its smoke might alert rescuers. Its warmth was their only chance to survive.
She took the map, attempting to determine which valleys and slopes she could see in the dawning light. After some moments, she gave up, rose to her feet, and started through the snow.
Julian called out to her. “You can’t leave me.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m going to get more wood.”
He didn’t try to stop her.
She left him with the fire and the weight of his silence.
As she trudged forward, the snow rising well past her knees, she thought of the ranch and the cryptic message she’d received just before the jet fell from the sky.
She found a dead tree with numerous dry branches within reach. She gathered all that her arms could carry and headed back to where she’d left Julian.
As long as her heart was still beating and she could still walk, it would not die.
Not yet.