LITMIR.BIZ

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was on the radio again, giving new coordinates, over and over again, and something else that she couldn’t make out. She just knew that they were well and truly going down, not up. The plane shuddered ferociously, dropping more quickly than she knew it should. “Go back,” she yelled. “Just turn around and go back!”

      He ignored her hysteria, speaking into the radio again, giving what she thought were coordinates.

      The plane dropped again, jarring everything in Merry, and she wanted to shake Gage and force him to turn around. But before she could do anything, he was speaking to her, not into the radio. “We can’t,” he said. “We’re past that point.”

      “Are we going to die?”

      He gave her one long look and said, “Listen to me. You are not going to die. I promise.”

      As strange as it seemed, she believed him. She really believed him. “Okay,” she found herself saying. “Okay.”

      He reached over and covered her hand that was holding on to the seat for dear life. “Now check your belts, then hold on. If I tell you to get down, put your head on your knees and clasp your hands behind your neck.”

      “We really are going down now, aren’t we?”

      “Yes.” Their eyes met for a moment, neither said a word, yet they seemed to be communicating just the same.

      There was another sharp drop of altitude, deeper into the driving snow that blinded them to everything. Gage barked out, “Look for any level place, anywhere that’s flat!”

      Before she could do more than blink, Gage was speaking into the radio again, “Mayday! Mayday!” he said urgently, followed by coordinates, over and over again

      She scanned as much of the area as she could make out in the storm. Gage continued to shout into the radio, over the piercing roar of the laboring engine. “Merry! Find us a spot!”

      She tried to speak, but her voice was lost to her. The engines faltered, then shut off. Only the rushing wind could be heard. “Glide, glide!” she screamed.

      “Exactly,” he said as the plane glided lower and lower. He hit some switches and reported, “Fuel, shut.”

      Merry stared out the window, her worst nightmare a reality. In this plane, with this man. This was all that was left of her life.

      There was snow and more snow, backed by darkness. Merry strained to find anything of the ground below them, but just when she was ready to tell Gage there was nothing visible, he yelled, “Get down, head on knees, hands clasped behind your neck.”

      She did so without argument, bending at her waist to press her forehead to her legs. Her last glimpse out the window was of blurred shapes through the snow, a towering one directly ahead, as if rising up to meet them.

      “Stay down no matter what happens,” Gage ordered.

      She heard Gage clicking something, as a numbing fear gripped her. She didn’t want to die with this man, someone she barely knew, and the children...she couldn’t even say goodbye to them or her mother and her stepfather. An aching part of her wished she had someone, truly that one person she’d always thought would come along sooner or later, a man who loved her, really loved her.

      She heard the howl of the storm, felt the shuddering, a jerk, a violent upheaval and the plane dropping. With her eyes closed tight, she shuddered, whispering for her and Gage to be all right.

      Her world condensed in one explosive moment when the plane hit something, and there was a cracking, ripping of metal, then the belly scraping violently against the ground before it sat upward, then crashed down again. It jarred every bone in her body. The impact willed her to go in the wrong direction, but the restraints wouldn’t let her go, digging into her, stopping her. The pain was intense.

      She couldn’t scream, no words were there as the plane twisted to her left, spinning, snapping her head so violently that she felt a cracking blow by her ear. Then another snap produced more pain and disorientation. Before she could even try to assuage how she really felt, there was a gut wrenching jerk.

      Then nothing.

      No movement. No sound apart from the raging wind outside. Was this death? No, as pain seemed to be enveloping Merry, in her head and her ribs and arms. She tried to figure it out, the true agony came from the unbearable tightness of the restraints. No, she wasn’t dead. She was hurting. “Thank you,” she breathed, her words so simple but she meant them so profoundly.

      She was grateful to be alive, pain and all, grateful for her mother and stepfather, the kids, and for Gage, who had done everything in his power to protect her. She stayed very still, almost afraid to move, wondering where they had landed.

      She had to brace herself before she opened her eyes, a slit at first, then she blinked at what seemed like shadows, until she realized that the only lights were the security ones in the junction where the floor met the walls. The control panel was blank; there were no red lights, nothing was flashing.

      She slowly, carefully, flexed her neck and shoulders, moved back into the seat and sank into the leather upholstery with a sigh. The pressure from the belts had eased, and she could breathe without too much difficulty.

      “Oh, gosh,” she whispered, trying to absorb the lingering discomfort in her arms and head. Alive. She was alive. They were alive! They’d made it. “Gage, we—”

      She startled as she turned to him. He was twisted away from her, huddled against the window, his hat gone and his headpiece askew.

      “Gage, Gage?” she said, her fingers fumbling with the buckles of her restraints, her voice sounding almost like a sob. “Please, Gage, look at me. We did it. You did it. We got down safe!”

      He didn’t move and the panic that she had fought to keep at bay during the last minutes of horror, welled up in her. “Gage...Gage.” She pleaded for him to respond and reached for his arm. “Please.”

      Her fingers closed over the rough jacket sleeve, and she pushed closer, ignoring the way the partial console bit into her thigh. “Wake up, wake up,” she begged. The horror she felt was almost suffocating her, horror that he was wounded or even worse. She couldn’t even fathom the possibility that he was gone.

      “You can’t die,” she wept. “Please, don’t leave me.” She tugged his dangling headset off and tossed it onto the backseat “Please, don’t leave me!” It was then that she received her second miracle in one day.

      A groan, barely audible over the sounds of the storm, caught her attention, then his right arm twitched. Relief was heady, and grew when she saw his hand move, awkwardly lifting up as if he was going to touch his face, then it fell heavily back on his thigh.

      “Oh, Gage, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she breathed.

      Then he shifted, slowly moving away from the window and toward her, and relief surged through her again. But as he turned his head in her direction, the air almost drove out of her chest. There was blood, so much blood, all over the left side of his face. Blood matted his hair. Blood on the window. Blood dripping on his jaw, soaking his jacket collar, staining the whiteness of his shirt underneath.

      * * *

      FOR ONE INSANE MOMENT, Gage was twelve years old again, sneaking up to the “lake” in the middle of the night, climbing straight up the rocky face still damp from the earlier rain. Without warning, the world fell out under him. His hands were gripping the shale outcropping, and Adam was right with him, both of them screaming into the night.

      Then everything he was thinking was gone and all he could feel was the pain. And the pain was real, very real, and someone was calling out to him, over and over again. He tried to move, to get his eyes to open, but all he could do was let out a low groan. That voice, calling to him, trying to reach through the misery in his head, but his hand wouldn’t cooperate, not any more than his eyes would. His hand fell, and the voice got louder. He tried to think beyond the pain, and then it came to him—the

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