LITMIR.BIZ

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loose and he was pitched backward into the smoke-filled rear of the craft.

      There was a final, bone-jarring impact, a bombardment of burning shards and jagged metal, and the plane slammed into the ground.

      Flickers of color appeared in front of Maddie’s eyes as she blinked back to consciousness. Black smoke and white snow. Her brain fought to make sense of it. Neatly strapped into her seat, yet feeling the sting of icy flakes on her arms? The terrible noise was gone, replaced by an eerie silence broken only by the rush of wind and a crackling she could not identify. The smoke cleared enough for her to assess the situation.

      She was in her seat, yes, but the seat was loose, tumbled to the side of a section of aircraft that had broken away from the main body of the plane. From her semiupright position, she looked out onto the snow, dotted with dark pockets of still-smoking debris. Frigid air seared her lungs as she fumbled for the seat-belt release. She had somehow survived the crash.

      Had Paul? She could still feel his hands clutching her, trying to keep her from whirling away.

      There was no sign of him in the smoke-filled gloom.

      She did not know whether to feel grateful or afraid.

      She gritted her teeth as the buckle came loose. Half stupefied with fear, she forced herself to look at her body. There was no obvious bleeding, no pain to indicate she’d suffered a traumatic blow. Slowly, she wiggled both feet and gingerly moved her legs. Aside from myriad cuts and abrasions, her body appeared to be working fine. Pressing a hand to her temple, she felt the warm trickle of blood and a dull ache in her wrist. Jaw clenched, she struggled to her feet, head ducked low under the twisted fragment of the plane. She shuffled to the opening, still taking inventory of her injuries. As she approached the lip of the shredded cabin, her stomach tightened.

      What would she find tangled in the twisted metal?

      Dr. Wrigley?

      Tai Jaden?

      She swallowed hard. Paul?

      And what had become of the Berlin Heart?

      Her instincts screamed at her not to cross that smoking threshold.

      Stay in shelter. Stay away from the gruesome sights that might be waiting.

      Still, she found herself drawn to the opening.

      The cold air hit her like a fist, her eyes tearing, vision blurred.

      She blinked them away. The piece of the wreckage she stood in was cratered on a snowy hill, wedged against a stand of pines that must have stopped the chunk of wreckage from sliding any farther. Plumes of steam rose from the snow where grotesquely twisted shards of metal protruded like the skeleton of some long-dead thing. She couldn’t see any more pieces of intact plane from her position. The impact must have thrown her some distance.

      Wishing she had managed to hold on to her purse, she fumbled in her pocket and retrieved the cell phone.

      Please work. Please work.

      No signal available, the screen read. She would not be summoning help, or calling Paul. Maybe it was a blessing, anyway. What would it be like to hear Paul’s phone ring endlessly, imagining all the reasons why he was not able to answer? What would it be like to know she would never hear his voice again? Those ridiculous ideas that made her groan. The Donald Duck impressions he did for his young patients.

      Her breath froze.

      Perhaps the rest of the plane had disintegrated and she was the only one, the only survivor.

      The thought paralyzed her until she balled the fear up in her mind and transformed it into rage, penetrating and intense as the cold all around her.

      No. It wouldn’t be death for all these innocent people.

      “That’s not the way it’s going to end.” She hadn’t realized she’d shouted aloud until the words echoed back to her. It was time to go find the others and help them.

      She put out a hand to brace herself for the climb down, but yanked her fingers away when the metal burned her skin. Grabbing a couple of blackened cushions, she held one in front of her and sat on the other, skidding down the side of the plane.

      Even with the fabric insulation, she could feel the heat seep into her pants. When her feet crunched into knee-deep snow, she floundered for a moment before she climbed up on a wide section of metal lying on the ground, grateful it wasn’t smoking hot. The realization hit her. It was a section of wing, broken loose.

      Scooting out as far as the metal surface would allow, she peered through the smoke. Just south of her was a deep furrow of snow, gouged wide, until it disappeared over the rise ahead. She walked to the end of the wingtip and stepped off gingerly, sinking again into the whiteness. Ignoring the chill, she made her way laboriously toward the edge of the slope where she would be able to get a view of what lay below.

      Stomach knotted, muscles complaining with every step, she moved on, wishing she had more than a wool blazer for warmth. The edge neared, and in spite of her earlier bravado, fear nibbled at the corners of her mind. What would she find? How could he have survived?

      She realized she was thinking not of Wrigley or Jaden, but of Paul. Only of Paul.

      The anger she nursed was alive as ever, bitter as gall, yet fear rose up right alongside it.

      She wanted to shout, to tear through the oppressive stillness and hear the comfort of a reply. Far worse would be an answering silence. Shuddering, skin prickled with goose bumps, she forced her feet to the top of the rise.

      Looking down with eyes streaming from the acrid smoke that filled the air, she saw the rest of the plane, upside down, half-buried in snow. There was no sign of movement from inside.

      She continued on. Downslope, the snow was harder, fused into sheets of icy crust.

      Her mind wandered back to her nieces, Ginny and Beth, on their annual trip to Bear Valley. The shrill cries of Ginny as she raced along on a toboggan with her sister close behind, Maddie’s sister, Katie, watching, eyes dancing, Maddie waiting at the bottom, where Katie’s husband, Roger, should have been if he hadn’t had an affair that ended their marriage. Katie had once told Maddie she wondered if his affair wasn’t a reaction to his Huntington’s disease diagnosis.

      Maddie refused to listen. Katie had to deal not only with Roger’s life-altering diagnosis, but the terror of wondering if the girls had inherited the disease. And she’d never considered having an affair. Roger had been weak and selfish. When he left, Maddie tried to fill in for him as much as she could. They’d made their own odd little family, bound together by love and loss, and always overseeing everything was Bruce Lambert, father, grandfather and steadfast rock.

      The moisture on her face hardened into icy trails, and she scraped them away as she tried to inject some logical thinking into her half-frozen mind.

      She had no idea how much time had passed since the accident, or if their sudden disappearance off the radar had been noticed by airport officials. Was there a rescue crew on the way? Had her father and sister been alerted?

      She hoped her family hadn’t been told. The worry could prove too much for her father’s damaged heart.

      Gritting her teeth, she pressed on. The Berlin Heart would be in this section, and if she could save it, the rescuers would be able to get it to her dad. Her own heart tumbled in her chest as she drew closer to the wreck. Her feet were so cold in her leather slip-ons, she felt as if she were walking on two frozen stumps.

      How long before frostbite would begin to kill her extremities, she wondered? Fifty feet away, and she could see the details now. Windows blown out, sharp twists of metal, blackened bits of plastic littered like flakes of pepper on salt-white snow.

      A plume of flame erupted from behind one of the windows. Maddie screamed, the sound echoing through the snowy hollow. She waited to see if the flames would escalate into a roaring inferno, but they died away again.

      She had to get in there and find Paul and Dr. Wrigley

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