Flying Home (9 page)

He glanced around, then crossed to the plane and to the door he’d broken to get the flares and fire makings. “In here,” he said, and when she got to him, he took the branches, shoving them inside the now empty space and forcing the door closed.

He faced her and Merry could see he was grim. “The snow won’t get to it there,” he said as he leaned back against the compartment’s door.

She frowned at him. “More snow? There’s another storm coming?”

“Let’s hope not,” he said, moving toward the end of the wing. “Every two hours of light, we have to renew the fire.”

“Okay,” she said.

“And if it gets windy, we have to put the fire out. It’s too dangerous, even with all this snow around.”

She nodded.

He took a deep breath and released it. His gaze held hers for a long moment. “Let’s get inside and warm up a bit?”

“What about the flares?”

He pulled one from his pocket, and stared at it as if trying to figure out what to do. “This medicine...” He shook his head as his words trailed off and he headed about five feet away from the end of the wing.

A plain wooden stick the same length as the flare had been taped to its side. He pulled it off, pushed it in the bottom of the flare, then looked back toward her. “We’ll put out four of them, push them in the snow as far as we can, space them about three or four feet apart, then if there’s any sign of a search party, we’ve got the fire and can light the flares in seconds.”

She yanked the flares out of her pocket, attached the sticks at the bottoms, then bent to push one into the snow near her feet. It went about four inches, then hit something as hard as a rock. “That’s as far as it goes,” she said, putting her head back to look up at Gage. “Is that far enough?”

“It’ll have to be,” he said and she repeated her action about three feet from the first. Gage went three feet farther, held out his flare to her, and she put it in place another three feet closer to the trees. “I hope they’ll be able to see them,” she said as she took the second flare from Gage, who had inserted the stake in the end.

“They will, believe me, these things are bright and high for about thirty seconds. Only light two at a time and wait for them to fizzle before lighting two more. We need to keep some with us at all times.”

Merry took out four more flares from the box, closed it and returned to Gage to give him two. “Your stock,” she said, then put hers in her jacket pockets. “And my stock.” She hesitated. “Won’t they get wet from the snow, and not light?”

“No, they’ll light. They’re made for bad weather and their ignition time is almost instantaneous. No extended burning.”

“Good to know,” she said, then asked, “Now how do I light the thing without a match?”

Gage explained it to her using one of his flares. He glanced over at the smoke from the small fire. “That will be useless if it snows again.”

Merry felt some of the fear she’d been trying to suppress rise again. As if he sensed the damage his words had done to her spirits, he said more positively, “If anyone’s close by and it’s burning, they’ll see it.” He slowly started back to the wing.

She fell in step next to him, and without warning, he put his arm around her, pulling her to his side. At first she thought he’d been about to fall, but instead he just held her against him. “You did a good job...and we’re going to be okay.” His hold on her tightened for a second or so, then he let her go and they kept walking toward the plane.

She didn’t know why he’d hugged her like that, but she knew it had been perfect timing. She had needed it badly, some affirmation that they were doing the right thing and that there was hope this would end well. Whatever had prompted the tender embrace, she was grateful for it.

Gage turned to her. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “Let’s get out of this cold.”

She couldn’t take his hand, not when he was in such pain, but she wished she could. And she wished she could hold on to it until they were safely back home. Instead, she scrambled up onto the wing, felt his hand at the small of her back pushing to help her. Pivoting, she crouched and would have held out a hand to him, but he moved quickly, got himself up on the wing and made for the door.

But not before she got a glimpse of beads of sweat on his forehead, despite the fact the temperature had dropped even lower since they’d first come out.

She moved too quickly, almost losing her footing on the icy snow, but she managed to get a grip on the hatch handle before Gage could bend to do it himself. She hauled up the door, and moved back to let him go in first, hoping he’d go right to the back where he could lay down.

But he stayed where he was. “Get in,” he said through clenched teeth.

Arguing would just make things worse so Merry ducked into the cabin. He was right behind her and immediately secured the door. He struggled to sit down. Without looking at her, he murmured, “I can’t think straight.”

That’s when she knew how badly he’d been hurt. Not just bruises, but yes, even a possible broken rib or two. “Try to get into the back so you can rest,” she said.

He stared at his feet. “My boots.”

He didn’t have to say anything more. She toe and heeled out of her own boots, then leaned over and undid his, loosened the laces as much as she could before slipping them off of his feet.

He exhaled and said, “Okay, here goes.” On his hands and knees he half crawled to the back, then shifted very slowly over to where he’d slept before. Merry had to make herself not reach out to help him get to where he wanted to be, and fortunately he made it without any problem.

Gage looked over at her, then positioned his stocking feet up on the lowered seat back in front of him. “Leave the boots ready to put on quickly,” he said. “Just in case we hear something.”

Merry agreed and settled into her seat. She kept reminding herself to stay calm. He needed her.

Gage checked his watch. “An hour and a half for the fire, then I’ll tend to it.”

She stared across the front seats to the windshield and could see the wavering motion of the smoke from the fire. It was still going. “We can see from here,” she pointed out. “No reason to go out in that cold before we have to.”

“You’re right,” he said and she could hear a heaviness in his tone.

“Do you want more pills?” she asked.

He closed his eyes for several minutes, long enough that Merry thought he hadn’t heard her or was choosing to ignore her. His jaw was clenched, then she heard a hiss before he spoke. “No, I don’t
want
any more pills, but I do need something to ease the pain...”.

She heard the tremendous reluctance in his voice and knew what it cost him to admit that to her. Quickly, she got the pills, and a bottle of water. He took the medication and then settled back again. “I hate not being able to think clearly.”

She knew that anything she said to that would come across as patronizing, so she kept quiet. She shifted so she could watch Gage and could gradually see his breathing ease and the stress on his face lessen. From out of the blue, a smile suddenly tugged at his lips.

“What’s so amusing?” she asked.

He shrugged, his eyes narrowed on her. “I was thinking about my assistant, Tark.”

“And that’s funny, how?” she asked. “Although Tark is an unusual name.”

“His full name is Tarkington Davis, but that’s another story. However, his nickname is Boom-Boom.”

“He fell a lot or likes big guns?” she asked, totally at sea about what he was amused by.

“Neither. It’s Boom-Boom because he likes the demolition part of this business.”

“Okay, I get the Boom-Boom part. But I don’t get why that’s funny at this point in time?”

“What’s funny is seeing you wearing his hat.”

She yanked off the hat that she’d all but forgotten about wearing and looked down at it in her hand.
BOOM-BOOM
was sewn on the front of the hat.

“It could have been worse, I guess,” she conceded. “I mean, what if his nickname had been Doofus or something like that?”

He chuckled and then caught himself immediately. “It only hurts when I laugh,” he gasped, and despite what pain he felt, the smile still shadowed his lips. And she was enjoying that immensely.

She was about to tell Gage, but was shocked when he suddenly sat up, his gasp of pain a raw sound in the confines of the cabin. For a second she thought he was having a seizure, then he was actually pushing past her, on his knees, getting to the front seat and the door. “They’re here!” he said as he pushed the door up and out, then stepped out onto the wing.

Merry fumbled getting upright, going after him as quickly as she could. She looked out the door, saw Gage at the wing’s end, in his stocking feet and his hands fumbled in the pockets of his orange jacket. Merry understood he hadn’t gone mad, no, he’d heard what she heard right then, a pulsating whirl of a helicopter high above them beyond the clouds.

“The flares are on the ground,” she hollered, realizing he was going to try to light the flare he’d had in his pocket. “The ground!” she repeated, ignoring the stunning cold through her own socks as she ran to him, grabbed his arm and managed to knock the flare out of his hand. Top over bottom, it tumbled down and off the wing into the snow below.

She didn’t think, just acted, lowering herself down to the ground, then darted toward the flares stuck in the snow. She sank to her knees by the closest one, trying to remember what Gage had told her about the cap and friction. But he was there, right behind her, going to the next flare. He worked quickly, then stood and had her by the arm, dragging her back out of the line of fire.

The flare hissed, followed by sparks and a strange noise. A burst of flame shot into the air, tailed by more red glow, soaring into the clouds and disappearing from sight. “We’re here, we’re here!” Gage shouted up to the heavens.

Merry thought she saw a change in the color of the clouds from leaden gray to an eerie glow, but it was gone quickly, the silence only broken by a fading whistling sound and then a growing wind. No sounds of helicopters, no engine sounds, nothing at all now. “Did they see it?” she asked, getting to her feet. Ignoring the damp coldness at her knees, and the frigidness of her socks, she grabbed Gage’s arm. “They had to see the flare, didn’t they?”

There was only his heavy breathing. “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice.

She held tightly to him while her eyes stayed fixed on the clouds over them, willing the helicopter to come back. But it didn’t. “They’re gone.” Her whole body seemed to feel the disappointment.

Gage was still, and Merry thought he was still listening, waiting, maybe knowing something she didn’t know about this kind of rescue. But when she looked up at him, she recognized that he wasn’t moving because he was in a world of pain. His actions had cost him dearly. The pain had to be terrible, but that wasn’t why his face was twisted in a heavy frown. He was staring at the fire, or what had been the fire five minutes ago.

The flames had since gone out, half buried by a huge dump of snow that had to have fallen, or been blown by the wind, off of one of the nearby towering trees. A bare wisp of smoke off to one side, was all that showed it had ever been there. The flare, the fire, nothing had worked right, and she felt all her hope start to slip away.

CHAPTER NINE

G
AGE
STRAINED
TO
hear
the pulsating rhythm of the helicopter coming back. But it didn’t. No sound beyond more snow falling off nearby trees. Soon he was berating himself for not thinking about snow falling from the trees onto the fire, he made himself focus on Merry, who was clinging to his arm.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, he realized, to meet her eyes and see the despair there. The pain burning through him, was nothing compared to what he felt when he saw the expression on her face. “They...they didn’t see us, did they?” she asked. “The fire, it didn’t work.”

“No, it didn’t,” he admitted, the fiery ache in his side, growing with each passing moment.

He never should have run like a crazy man. He should have remembered the flares they’d pushed into the snow beyond the wing...should have taken the time to put on his boots. He should have gotten off the wing slowly, instead of almost jumping for it. He should have...

He pushed all of those notions away, knowing his big challenge right then was just getting back in the plane, where there was at least some heat.

“This is useless, have to get back inside,” he said through clenched teeth.

She hesitated, her eyes flicking over his face.

The pain was frustrating him, and his inability to do anything when the helicopter had been so close, made him sick. “I’ll start the fire again after we warm up and the pills start to work. Then we’ll wait. They’ll be back,” he said, lifting his eyes to the clouds. “They hit an area in a grid pattern, and that means they go over each section at least three times.”

He sucked freezing air through his teeth, being careful not to expand his ribs too much with the effort. “This was just the first pass. There’s two more for us to get it right.”

She reached up to brush at his forehead by the wound. “You’re sweating,” she said gently. “You must feel awful.”

Not any worse than the monumental failure he already felt like. “Let’s get inside,” he rasped and let her lead the way.

She raised herself up and onto the wing tip. “How can you get back up here?” she asked. “I could get the fire box.”

“Forget it,” he said tightly, and blocked everything except his goal of getting on the wing. He did it with one try, got up by Merry, and knew he couldn’t speak right then, so he simply made himself move around her and get to the still open door.

He nodded for Merry to hop inside, then followed her, but knew he couldn’t pull the door shut. Merry knew it too, and waited for him to get to his knees and crawl along the prone seat nearest to him, and then make his way to the backseats.

The door shut with a thud, as Merry stayed up front. “I’ll get some socks for us. And can we leave the heater on for a bit longer?” Although it probably wasn’t even near fifty degrees in the cabin, it felt almost balmy to him.

He agreed and was foolish to attempt to pull off his socks. Wrong decision, he admitted, when halfway through the motion, the cabin started to spin, and nausea rose in his throat.

Merry was there, helping him remove his socks and put on a fresh pair she’d gotten out of his duffel. “Your jacket?”

He hated the mere idea of getting it off, but he knew that in the end, it would be better for both of them to get rid of their outerwear and let the thermal blankets do their job. He shifted and let her ease him out of it.

“Just rest,” she said as he sank back into the cold leather. “Please, rest.”

The pain was almost unbearable now, and he prayed the pills would kick in, despite his incredibly insane actions earlier. He’d heard the noise, recognized it and had gone into some sort of frenzy. He wanted to blame the pain, or anything else except his own idiocy. But he knew the truth, and it had been due to his own stupidity that he felt like this now.

Merry arranged the blankets over him, moving higher, she managed to cover his shoulder, then her hand touched his cheek. “No fever, thank goodness,” she whispered.

“I’ll be fine...in a few minutes,” he said as he looked up at her hovering over him. “Then I’ll redo the fire. Clear the snow and...get it going.”

“Listen, boss,” she said, leaning down to get closer. “You stay put. That pain is nothing to mess with, especially if you have a broken rib. I can do the fire.”

He closed his eyes, hating that concern so evident in her expression. “No, I’ll just...rest for a bit, then I’ll...” He felt so weak, but persisted. “I’ll do it.”

“Uh-huh, you do that.” She tugged the blankets higher over him. “But for now, just rest, please.”

“I will...for a...few minutes,” he murmured, feeling the pain pills starting to act.

“A few minutes,” he heard Merry whisper, then a brush of heat caressed his forehead, the feather touch of her fingers. It felt almost like a caress, but it was gone so fast he couldn’t quite comprehend it. And didn’t try. He needed to wait until the aching receded to an intensity that was manageable, then he’d do what he had to do.

* * *

M
ERRY
WATCHED
G
AGE
as he dozed, and waited patiently until she saw the deep stress lines stamped on his features begin to gradually soften. There was something wrong, the ribs for sure, maybe the concussion that he’d passed off, or something else. She felt afraid and useless, with nothing she could do except keep him still and as warm as possible.

On impulse, she bent over him and cautiously touched his forehead, feeling the dampness there, wishing she could kiss the wound and make it all better—the way she did with her kids when they were sick. His skin felt cool and damp. That was better than feeling hot skin from a fever. She moved and stayed on her knees, backing onto the front seat and to the edge, so she could sit and put her boots back on.

With one last look at Gage, who seemed to be sleeping now, she opened the door, got out and lowered it back into place. She turned, hugging her jacket around herself more tightly, and carefully walked on the icy surface, going to the end of the wing. She got down to the ground, and took a deep breath of frigid air. She could do this. She
had
to do this.

Trudging to the now dead fire, she stopped and looked up, craning her neck so she could survey the snow laden limbs of the massive pines. She saw only two likely spots where snow could fall and possibly douse the fire again. She’d take care of it. She reached for some nearby snow, made a snowball, then spotted one clump of icy snow clinging to a branch high above. She drew back, then threw the snowball with all her strength.

Amazingly, she hit the clump on the first try, and sent it spraying down, part of it hitting exactly where the fire would be set. Searching for the other clump she’d spotted, again, made another snowball, took aim and threw at the tree. It not only didn’t hit the clump, it hit a branch above it and sprayed snow down on her. She shook her head, got another snowball made, then tried again. This time she hit her mark.

Ten minutes later, Merry was watching the kindling catch, flames flare, licking at the branches she’d retrieved from the cargo space and crisscrossed on top of them. Carefully, when the flames seemed to be going okay, she got a handful of the black grains out of one of the boxes, tossed them at the fire, and immediately, black smoke billowed up, spiraling toward the clouds.

Two more passes. That’s what Gage had told her. That gave them two more chances to be seen. She waited near the fire, watching it, willing it to make it through the clouds to where it could be seen from above. She took the time to close up the fire box again, checked the flares near the wing, replace the used one, then scrambled back up onto the wing.

She headed for the door and pulled it up, feeling the warmer air instantly. Gage still looked asleep, but she could tell he’d moved around. The blankets were untucked and had slipped to the middle of his chest. Both hands were on his stomach, fingers laced. Pulling the door down and shut, she took off her boots, grabbed a couple of energy bars from the first-aid tin and climbed into the back.

Putting the bars on the seat, she stripped off her jacket, tossing it near the bars, then leaned over Gage to tuck the blankets back in for him. As she pushed the edge under his shoulder, she was startled when he spoke. “Nice pitching.”

She drew back, and found herself looking down into midnight dark eyes that were touched by humor. She could tell the pain was being held at bay by the clarity of his expression. “How did you see me throwing the snowballs?”

“Out the window.”

“I thought you were asleep when I went out.”

“I almost was, but when you snuck out, I was curious to see you try to do the fire,” he said, a smile shadowing the corners of his mouth now. “Man, you did a good job.”

“Thanks, boss,” she murmured.

“Boss? I kind of like you calling me that,” he said.

“Good, as long as you don’t call me Boom-Boom,” she countered.

“I’d never do that. I just realized Boom-Boom sounds too much like an exotic dancer.”

She smiled at that. “I’ve had a lot of strange jobs, but not that.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“You’re feeling better?” she asked, fighting the urge to brush errant hair back from his forehead.

“I’m not feeling any pain,” he said, that smile still there.

“Good,” was all she said. “Good.”

He closed his eyes, but went on speaking. “I’m sorry for going crazy. I can only plead stupidity or a reaction to the pain. I don’t know, but if I’d been thinking straight, I would have spotted that snow could fall from the trees and I would have knocked the clumps down like you did before making the fire. I really messed things up royally.”

“You can’t take all the blame. I’m the one who knocked the flare out of your hand,” she countered. “I’m sorry, too. Besides, you said they’ll be back at least two more time.”

“Yes, they will,” he agreed. “Two more chances.”

Merry suddenly felt hungry and reached to pick up the energy bars. She offered Gage one. “It’s not steak, but it’s looking pretty good right about now.”

That brought back a touch of a smile to his face, and she liked that—a lot. Freeing his hands from the cocoon she’d bundled around him, he tore the wrapper on his bar while she opened hers. Merry took a bite, and thought it could have been more savory, but that didn’t stop her from eating every bit of it. When she finished, Gage looked at her with a lifted eyebrow.

“Wow, you actually like that?” he asked. She laughed. “I was thinking it was close to being cardboard, but it’s food, or at least, it’s what passes for food around here.”

“Yeah, chewy cardboard,” he said before popping the last piece of his bar into his mouth.”

“Water?” she asked.

“Please.”

She pulled two bottles out of the box pushed under their seat and gave him his. After they had both uncapped their bottles and taken drinks, Merry sighed. “This waiting is horrible.”

“No, turning off the heater is what is really horrible,” he said.

“Oh, we have to, don’t we?”

“Yes, we should have turned it off sooner than this.”

“I’ll do it,” she offered and scrambled up to the front to shut it down. She looked back at Gage. “Anything else we need to do before I get under the blankets?”

* * *

“N
O
,” G
AGE
REPLIED
.
“Just wait and listen.” Then Merry came back to him. He watched her arrange the blankets again, pressing against him without him having to coax her to do it. She settled down with a soft sigh.

She’d held up well, despite the crying jag last night. That had been expected. But in every other way, she’d been a rock, doctoring him, doing whatever she had to without hesitation. She’d rebuilt the fire for them. He’d been the one to blow it. “They won’t miss us a second time.” He turned a bit onto his good side to see her more easily. “I promise you that.”

Merry nodded, pulled off her cap, tossed it to one side, and brushed her loose hair away from her face. “Yes, the second time,” she whispered. “We’ll be ready.”

If he’d been in this mess by himself, he knew that he’d be methodically figuring out what to do and he’d do it, despite the pain. But with Merry in the mix, he had a real need to tread more carefully, so he wouldn’t see that look of despair on her face again. “I’m actually glad you paid that hundred dollars for the bulletin board so you could get me to let you on the plane.”

A beautiful smile lit her face, making his breathing hitch for a moment and it had nothing to do with pain. “I’m so glad you went for my convoluted reasoning. I was desperate. Now this. The whole thing is awful, but if I was doing this alone...” She stopped and actually chuckled softly. “Whoa, back up. I wouldn’t be doing this alone, because I’d never fly by myself, but if this world had gone crazy and I did pilot my own plane, I’d be lost alone.”

He enjoyed the way her green eyes could sparkle. Shifting carefully to get his arm up to rest his head on his right hand, he looked down at her. The urge to kiss her came from nowhere and startled him. Not an urge, no, a need, but he confined his response to a caress on her cheek. “I would fly alone. I do fly alone, as much as I can, but right now...” He exhaled. “The world gets crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said softly as he drew his hand back. “Yes.”

Her tongue touched her full lips and whatever control he’d had, was gone. Without hesitation, he bent over her and kissed her. He expected softness and heat, which were there immediately. What he didn’t expect was a shocking sense of connection that came with the embrace.

A sense of finding something that had been hidden from him all his life, but that really was crazy. As crazy as him kissing her and letting his mind race with possibilities. When the idea of needing anyone, period, materialized, he always found a grasp on sanity. Reluctantly, he made himself draw back.

Her face was flushed, her lips parted, and her breathing matched his rapid cadence. “Crazy,” he said roughly, then moved back farther. “I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened.”