LITMIR.BIZ

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easy to swallow anymore, not since the radiation treatments. But they got those down, too.

      “Great,” Rory said, with a smile she didn’t feel. Talk about a small handful of pills being an ordeal. “There’s another cup of tea for you. I’ll go get it.”

      “I already have.”

      Rory turned to see Wendy standing in the doorway with another mug in hand. “Hi, Cait, I’m Wendy.”

      Cait gave a little nod. “So there are other passengers on the plane?”

      “Me and my husband,” Wendy said, moving forward to exchange mugs with Rory. “When you get a little more rested, you’ll have to join us in the cabin. I’ll bet we’ve all got interesting stories to trade.”

      Rory expected Cait to decline, but instead was astonished to see her sister smile, however weakly. “Sounds like fun.”

      “It will be. All of us have had some crazy experiences. I’ll bet Rory has had more than her share. And you can keep her honest for us.” Wendy winked and slipped out again.

      “I like her,” Cait whispered.

      “Me, too. More tea?”

      The second cup went down easier than the first. Unfortunately, almost as soon as it was gone, Cait’s eyes fluttered closed and she slipped away again. A few words and a couple of cups of tea had been enough to wear her out.

      That was not good, not good at all. Rory had the awful feeling that she could almost see the darkness gathering around her sister, waiting to claim her.

      No. God, no. She jumped up, forcing the vision away. She couldn’t afford to let such thoughts even cross her mind.

      You ‘re not getting her, she thought between anger and despair. You’re not taking my sister away! The silence seemed to mock her.

       Chapter 3

      Dinner worked out quite well, given the arduous conditions outside. At least they weren’t going to starve, Rory thought. Cait even managed to swallow a cup of soup and another cup of heavily sweetened tea. This time she asked to join them in the cabin.

      Rory’s heart swelled almost to breaking. As soon as she bent to lift her sister, Chase appeared and did it for her.

      “Nice you can join us, little lady,” he said as he carried her, wrapped in her blankets, to one of the chairs near the table. “You get too tired, just let me know, okay? And if you want, the seats recline all the way so you can lie down out here.”

      “Thanks,” Cait managed.

      Rory could only look at Chase with gratitude. He had stepped in at the right moment and said exactly the right thing. Not too much, not too little.

      And Cait looked content for the first time since Rory had come home to learn how sick she was. These plane seats were wider than normal and deeply padded, so Cait seemed to have no difficulty curling up in a way that made her feel comfortable. She didn’t say much, and occasionally she seemed to doze, but she also paid more attention than usual to the conversation around her. She even accepted another cup of tea, and this time held it herself.

      There was hope, Rory thought. There was definitely hope. She glanced toward Chase and saw the same expression in his eyes that she was feeling. He, too, seemed to see something promising in Cait’s effort.

      But the wind and the cold soon reminded them that this was no social occasion. The plane groaned loudly again as a particularly strong gust buffeted it, but nothing moved. They’d be buried by morning, Rory thought. Completely and totally buried in snow. Then what? Panic fluttered through her in a single quick wave.

      “Let’s get down more blankets,” Chase said. “Then I think we should bundle in for the night. I’ll take first watch.”

      “Watch?” Rory asked.

      He nodded. “We’re going to burn at least one candle all night—more if necessary. Someone has to keep an eye on it. We also need to watch the cabin temperature so we don’t turn into popsicles overnight.”

      Cait had dozed off again. “She’ll be warmer here, won’t she?”

      “Probably,” he answered. “As long as she’s comfortable, I’d leave her.”

      “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Wendy said. “Yuma and I are just going to curl up together on these seats right behind her. Why don’t you take the chance to stretch out in the back for a bit?”

      “I don’t feel sleepy,” Rory admitted. Not in the least. Her mind wouldn’t stop racing; she had too many worries.

      “Fine,” Chase said. “You can come up front and keep first watch with me. Make sure I don’t fall asleep.”

      She almost offered to stand watch in his stead, but caught herself just in time. He was the captain of this plane, after all, and she suspected that meant pretty much the same thing in the air as at sea. And while she didn’t defer to men simply because they were men, she did defer to rank unless given good reason not to. There was just no point in stepping on some toes.

      “Thanks, I think I will.”

      Maybe it would ease the terror at the back of her mind, the terror that they wouldn’t be found in time to save Cait. She’d seemed better for a while, but Rory knew how illusory that could be.

      They settled in the two cockpit chairs with the accordion door closed behind them. There was no light at all, except one small red one.

      “What’s that?” she asked.

      “Control for the emergency lights. I can operate them manually when I need to. Thank goodness.”

      Thank goodness indeed. She suspected that if all those cabin lights had been left burning, the ones that guided the way to the emergency exits, they’d have gone dark for good by now. “Everything else is down?”

      “For now. No point wasting any resources yet.”

      “I suppose not.” Then, “So you really think a fuel line broke or something?”

      “Or something,” he agreed. In the dark, he kept his voice quiet. “We have wing tanks, but there’s a central compartment where the fuel meets and mixes so that the tanks can be balanced. Make sense?” “Yes.”

      “We could get in trouble if one tank or the other got used up too fast. We’d not only be struggling to balance ourselves, but we might lose an engine. So everything meets in the middle and fuel is passed back and forth. Considering that we lost fuel from both tanks simultaneously and rapidly, I figure something went wrong in the central holding tank. And at the rate we were losing fuel, I suspect it was being pumped out of the plane.”

      “There’s a mechanism for that, right, to empty the fuel?”

      “Yes. We can dump fuel for an emergency landing.”

      “So that might have gotten screwed up?”

      “Maybe. Something sure as hell did, and we won’t know until the NTSB takes a look. I know I got no cockpit warning of any kind until the fuel started to get too low. I’d already noticed the gauges were falling too fast, but no indication as to why.”

      “And there should have been?”

      “The way these babies are designed, this plane shouldn’t hiccup without giving me some kind of alert. What’s more, once I noticed the fuel dropping, we were over the mountains, airports behind us were closed and I still thought for a while I’d have enough. I never cut it that close, despite the weight of excess fuel.”

      “So maybe two things went wrong.”

      “So it would seem. But it did happen awfully fast. I’m just glad I was able to get us down in one piece. For a while there, I didn’t think I was going to.”

      “I’m

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