Waking, she tried to discern where she was. Everything about her hurt, and she was sure that her arm was broken when just moving her fingers hurt her enough that she was sick to her stomach. Lifting her head up cost her, but she could see now that something was wrong with where she was.
Plane. For some reason she thought she was on a plane, but it looked…odd. Sitting up more so that her back was leaning against something firm, she tried to think around the pain in her head, and all she got for her trouble was more pain. Glancing up again when she felt she could, she realized what had happened…or at least some of what had happened.
She had no idea how or why, but just looking at the several arms hanging from seats in front of her made her think that there had been an accident. Enough to have flipped the plane on its top so that the seats attached to the floor were now hanging from above her. A woman was hanging with her arms down near Andrea. Still buckled in the seat, the person looked as if she’d been in some sort of bizarre ride and had been frozen in place. Then Andrea noticed that the woman wasn’t the only one hanging that way.
“Can you hear me?” Looking to her left, she saw a man standing there. He didn’t look familiar to her at all, but he was asking her again if she could hear him. When she started to nod, her belly protested the movement and she had to swallow several times before she thought she could speak without puking.
“Yes. I can hear you. What’s happened? Why are all these people on the ceiling like this?” He turned to someone behind him and spoke before looking back at her. “I think there are some really hurt people in here. Can you call the police? They might need help.”
“I can’t come in to get you because of the way the plane is sitting. Do you understand me?” She told him she did but was not sure what he meant. “The plane is balanced on a bridge right now, and we’re working to get it stable before we can come to get you. The cranes have been called in, and they’re working to keep it steady so that some of us can enter through the openings to get as many of you out as we can. Can you see if anyone else is alive?”
“Alive?” He nodded and she looked around. “There are so many hands hanging down from the seats, but I don’t know if they’re dead or not. I can’t…I can’t see anyone’s faces. I can see…there is a lot of blood here. Do you know why we’re on a bridge and not in the airport?”
“What’s your name?” She opened her mouth to answer him but realized she had no idea. And when she tried to think, the pain in her head made her sick again and she had to hold on. “Don’t worry about it, miss. We’ll get you fixed up. Just don’t move if you don’t have to, and see if you can see anyone moving for me.”
Laying back on the wall or whatever was behind her, she closed her eyes. The pain was making itself known to her now, and she felt her belly lurch up. She could hear things now, noises that she’d not heard before. A grinding noise. The sound of a large engine coming closer. There were people talking, low and far away, but she knew they were not within the wreckage that she was in. Opening one eye, she tested the pain and then closed it again, but noticed that things were more in focus than they’d been before.
“There’s a man’s head not far from me. I’m not sure who it belongs to, but he’s looking at me.” The man at the opening behind her told her not to look. “I can’t not see it now. Can you please come in here and get me? You’re so close now that it will only take you a second to get me. I want out of here.”
“We’re working on it. Tell me what you were doing before the crash.” She had no idea, but the quick image of a man, a very good looking man, popped into her mind. “Were you seated, or were you tossed to the back of the plane?”
“I had to pee.” She closed her eyes again, thinking as hard as her head would allow. “There was a man too. I’m not sure…he was next to me. He was nice. I think something happened to us. I’m not sure what, but…my head hurts really bad to think that hard, okay?”
“Yes. Don’t make yourself sicker. Just let it come to you. Was he your husband?” She looked down at her hands and didn’t see a ring, and felt sure that she wasn’t married. There was no earthly reason for her to have a ring on, but she had a feeling that if she was married to the handsome man, he’d want her to have a ring. She told the man that she didn’t think she was married, nor did she think that the man was related to her.
“The plane bumped twice before I hit my head. I remember thinking that I had to hurry to sit down and buckle in.” Glancing up again, she was sort of glad not to have made it. She was sure that those people, the ones with their arms hanging below their bodies, hadn’t made it. “Can you please come in and get me? I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Trust me, miss. No one wants to come in and get you more than I do right now. But if I move in this plane, even a little, there are men under it that will be crushed should it fall.” He yelled to someone to hurry up, and she could hear the other person tell him that he was working as quickly as he could. “Miss, can you tell me which seat you were in? Maybe something that you remember so I can mark your name off the list?”
“List? What sort of…I don’t want to be on your list. What sort of list am I on?” There was a spark of a memory about a list. Several of them, as a matter of fact, but it was gone before she could hold onto it. He told her what the list was. “Oh. No. I don’t know how to help you find out who I am. I’m sorry. I really wish I knew too.”
“Can you see the seat numbers from where you are? They might be—”
The plane shifted and she screamed. Her head exploded in pain again, but she knew that if she closed her eyes and let it take her under, the man wouldn’t come and get her. Fighting hard to stay awake, she counted. She was nearly to four hundred when the man spoke again.
“Are you all right, miss? Did you get hurt again?”
She opened her eyes and looked at where she was. This time instead of being on the ceiling of the plane, she was on one of the windows, and she could see the water rushing under them. If they fell, she knew that she’d drown before she could get her body out of the position she was in and to the top. The water was also going to be very cold, she realized as she noticed the ice chunks moving by her.
“I’m…I’m going to die, aren’t I?” He was speaking to her quietly, reassuring her, she was sure, but she knew…and she also knew something else. The people were all dead but her. “I can see them now. Most of the people, I can see them now. I can give you the seat numbers that I can see if you still want them.”
As she started telling him the numbers, the ones with people still buckled into them, she told him what she could see of their injuries as well. Number 41-E had been hit in the head. The woman next to him had the tray that should have been upright jammed into her belly. Another person’s neck was broken; two more around her were the same. The man without the head was in seat 34-B; his arms were now listing to his right instead of over his head due to the shifting of the plane. When she had told him as many as she could see, she closed her eyes again, wondering if when she got her memory back these new memories would go away and never return. She didn’t think it worked that way, but she could hope.
“I’m afraid of dying in the water. I don’t know how to swim. It never came up before.” He told her he was working on something to get her out. “I hate to fly. Did you know that? I’m not sure why I do, but I’m not going to fly again if I live through this. My boss will have to figure out another way for me to get around the country.”
Her boss. She could see his face now. He was an older gentleman that had a gray beard, as well as snowy white sideburns. And he said things that made her laugh all the time. Things like he was going to get a brewsky, as well as a wiener on bread.
“Flying is safer than driving, you know. I mean, it’s hard to imagine that now, but it’s true.” She looked around where she was and had to disagree with that statement. “More people are killed in cars daily than in planes yearly. You should—”
“No more.” He shut up, for which she was grateful. The image of the man came to mind again, and she let him comfort her while the pain seemed to build and build. Her arm was throbbing, and her head felt as if she was going to have to remove it so that she could breathe. When she felt something wet touch her lip, she wiped her fingers over it to see blood on her hand, and was sure this wasn’t a good sign. Her nose was bleeding, and blood had dripped to her neck from her ears earlier.
“I’m hurt.” He said he knew that, he could see her. “I’m going to die in here, and I don’t even know what you’re going to put on my tombstone.”
“I promise you that we’re doing everything we can to get you out of here. They’re working hard to steady this up so that you aren’t hurt more when we come in to get you.” She nodded, knowing that they were trying. She could see them as they moved beneath her. “Miss. Can you tell me anything about your life? Something that I can use?”
“I’m alone.” Again she had no idea why she knew that to be true, but it was. “I don’t even have a cat. I don’t think…I don’t know where I live, but I don’t think I have a cat or dog. I want one someday—a dog, not a cat—but I don’t think I’ll get one.”
She wasn’t feeling sorry for herself, but she was nothing if not a realist. She was going to die in this tomb…if not by water, then from her wounds. Touching her fingers to her face to see if that helped her, she winced when she felt the large cut on her head, and wondered if that was why she couldn’t remember.
“It more than likely is. You need stitches when we get you out. And your arm will need to be set. I can see from here that it might be broken.” She must have spoken aloud, and turned to look at him again when the plane shifted. This time she couldn’t hold on, and let the darkness take her away. She heard him screaming at her to hang on. But there wasn’t anything to hold onto as she was shifted once again.
Trevor moved slowly. He wasn’t sure what had happened to him, but he could see the ambulances as well as all the firetrucks surrounding what was left of the plane he and the others had been on. Standing up brought him to his knees again, and he had to sit that way for ten minutes before he thought he could move again. The pain in his body was the worst he’d ever had, and he wasn’t even going to think about how bad it had been when he’d first landed here. Standing up slower this time, he could see that he’d not been the only one that had been thrown from the wreckage.
The stewardess was lying near him. Her body was broken and her neck had suffered badly for the fall. Trevor reached down to put his fingers to her pulse, and wasn’t surprised to find there wasn’t one. He checked the man next to her, to find that he had died as well. Making his way to the plane, all he could think about was Andrea and whether she was alive or not.
The closer he got to the plane the more worried he became. The thing looked as if it had been broken in half, then the parts that had fallen off were tossed all over the landing strip. A wing was sticking straight up out of the ground, looking like it had been put there as a monument to something. The other wing was on fire, and the trucks were working hard to put it out. Gasoline was everywhere, the smell of it making his wolf antsy. To be honest, he was as well.
He knew that the only reason he’d not been killed was the fact the he was a shifter. His body could take a great deal more than a human, and once he was assured that Andrea was alive and all right, he’d shift and be healed completely. But doing so now would make people wonder how he’d made it out completely uninjured. He didn’t want to risk being blamed for what had happened. Not that he had any idea what had brought them down, but there was no way he was taking the fall for it.
There were several crews working under the plane’s body. Cranes at each end were holding it up, but even as he watched it moved, shifting precariously enough that he was sure it was going to fall into the water beneath it. If she was still on the plane, which he was sure that she was, then she would surely drown. Moving quicker now, he reached out to her.
Are you all right? Where are you hurt? There wasn’t an answer, but he knew from the gentle touch of her mind that she was in a great deal of pain. Andrea, honey, answer me.
“You know me? Is that my name? Where are you?” He paused in talking to her when he heard the panic in her voice. He knew that she was speaking aloud, but for now, he thought she might need to do that. “All the people are dead, I told the other man; where are you so he can get you help?”
Who is with you? She told him it was someone at the door, then she giggled. Is he in the plane or one of the men working on it?
“He’s by the door, not here with me. He can’t get to me. Every time someone tries, the plane moves and I end up with more dead bodies. All that are in here are dead people. One of them lost their head.” Her giggling again frightened him, and he picked up the pace of getting to her. “You called me Andrea. Do you know me? Or do I…are you the handsome man that I can see when I close my eyes?”
You don’t remember me? She said she didn’t know who she was either, and he nearly fell over in his worry. Your name is Andrea Marshall Dean. You’re a marketing engineer that has a long client list. And you’re my wife.
If she didn’t remember him, he wasn’t going to be kept away from her because she wasn’t really his wife. Having her think that, even temporarily, he thought he could get her better care than she might otherwise receive should she not have very good medical.
“You and I are married? I don’t…there’s not a ring on my hand. And I don’t feel married. Are you sure you have…where are you?” He could hear the fear in her voice now, and he worried about that. Fear could make her shut him out again, and he didn’t want that. “Where are you and what’s your name?”
My name is Trevor Dean. I’m coming. We have a special connection, you and me. She told him she couldn’t see him. I’m coming to you. Just be brave for a bit longer.
He knew that she was still conscious but not speaking. As he made his way to her and the plane, he could see that some of the bodies that had been tossed from the wreckage were being put into body bags. It would take a long time to identify them, he thought. Without having seats to confirm where they’d been when the plane went down, they would have to rely on families to identify them. That was a job that he had no desire to do.
The plane moved again, this time shifting itself off the crane closest to him and plummeting to the edge of the fast moving water. As if they knew that time was coming to an end, several men and women moved as one to the body of the plane and began crawling inside of it as the other crane was lowered to the ground. He ran now, needing to see that Andrea was all right when he hit a wall again.
“You can’t go in there.” He nearly knocked the man to the ground when he stopped him. When he growled low, the man didn’t even back off from him but held him there. “Don’t make me have to hurt you, sir. You’ll only get in their way, and there is one woman on there that at last count was the only survivor.”
“Me too; I was on that plane as well. I was….” Trevor turned back to the direction he’d come from and saw that an ambulance was there now. He looked at the man, an officer, in front of him. “I was tossed out with the rest of those people. My wife is on that plane. I need to see her.”
“If you go in there, you might hurt someone that could use the help of the people who know what they’re doing. They have to hurry and…the plane is going down, sir, and we need to remove as many of the dead as we can. Your wife…if she’s alive, then wouldn’t you like to know that the people in there can help her?”
“She’s alive.” The man nodded but didn’t look convinced. “She’s alive. I know it. She’s…I need her.”
“I understand, sir. I do. If that were my wife, I just don’t know what I’d do. But there…it’s horrible. I was the first one here and…and I had to…they set me over here when I couldn’t…it’s too much for a man like me.” Trevor held the man when he dropped his head on his chest. He could feel his pain like it was his own. “The pilot is dead…his body was cut in half by the wing when it…the entire front of the plane was severed off, and I saw it. Saw those bodies being tossed out of it like they were a big child’s toy; just tossed them out and they hit the ground. I just stepped outside for a smoke and there it was, coming down. I’m never going to smoke again. Not ever.”
Trevor held him to his chest, knowing that as soon as this man could, he’d stop working. The nightmare of this day would haunt him for years, if not for the rest of his life. Trevor felt sorry for him and wished that he could do something for him, when he heard a shout that made his wolf stir along his skin.
It took him an hour to get close enough to the bodies to see where his wife was. Andrea had not contacted him again, and he could no longer reach her. The officer that he’d held as his heart broke told him to walk up and down the lines of bodies to see if he could find her. Any help he could give them would make the rest go faster. They told him there were no survivors but himself.
There were so many of them, all lying in neat rows, some of them covered so that he didn’t have to look at the wounds or whatever had killed them. When he’d been boarding, Trevor had heard one of the stewardess say that they were nearly full at one hundred and sixty five. With the crew, he’d been told there were one hundred and seventy-one aboard. When he got to the last line of people, he looked around the wreckage. The plane had gone down into the water twenty minutes ago, still having some of the passengers buckled in their seats. His Andrea, it seemed, had not made it out at all. Trevor fell to the ground, his legs no longer able to support him.
Sitting on the cold ground he stared out at the water. He’d been over this body of water so many times in his life that he knew each and every curve of it, even how deep it was. The plane’s body would be pulled up eventually, but he was sure that there would be no one left to be identified by then. The water had taken his love as it had a great many others. Of the over one hundred and seventy people, they had only been able to reach just under one hundred of them.
Boss? He told Sara that he was all right, not really in the mood to talk to her, or anyone for that matter. I just saw it on the news and couldn’t believe it. They say…did you find her? Andrea, did you find her? Did she get out? I heard that there was a survivor; please tell me your mate made it out alive too.
No. She didn’t make it. They didn’t get all the…she was still aboard the plane when it crashed in the.... They didn’t have time to get her out before it fell into the water. She told him how sorry he was. I’m not coming in for a while. I’m not sure…I don’t know what to do now, Sara. I only knew her for a short time, but I feel as if my heart has been ripped out of my body.
You take your time, boss. Nothing here that I can’t take care of. He knew that. What do you want me to tell people when they ask where you are? I’d gladly tell them to fuck off for you, but then I’m not known for my tact.
Tell them…tell them that I’m recovering and you don’t know where I am. Sara told him that was a good idea, and he felt his heart break more for what he needed her to do. I don’t know if she had any family. If she did, tell them…tell them that we’d been married only a short time and that I want her buried…I want her buried near my home. See about getting the paperwork done up to make it look like we married a few days ago. I want to make sure that things are taken care of for her.
There isn’t anyone left for her. No sisters or brothers, her parents are both gone. Even grandparents are all gone as well. You were all she had. He heard her sobbing and he stood up to move out of the way of the men moving toward the bodies. I’m sorry, Trevor. I surely am. Is there anything I can do for you right now? Anything at all?
It was the first time she’d called him by his first name. He smiled a little, thinking it had taken something as tragic as this to get her to use it. But almost as soon as the joy of it was there, it was gone again. He’d lost his mate. His only love, his other half. As he made his way to the cruisers that were plentiful around the crime scene, he felt his wolf curl around him. Trevor wondered if either of them would ever be the same again, and doubted it very much. Life, he knew, was never going to be the same.
No. I have to do this on my own. I have to…I don’t know, really, but I want to be alone. I’m going to…they’ve put me up in a hotel nearby until things are…until they can figure out what happened. I’m not sure what happened myself, but the plane was going down even as I tried to save her. Sara cried again for him. I can’t talk right now. The medics, they’re coming now. I have to go and see what they want. I’ll talk to you sometime.
He was checked out twice, his body nearly healed now that he was able to get around a little more. Trevor told them three times that he had no knowledge of what had happened other than the plane had bounced a couple of times before he’d been thrown back, and he thought he’d hit his head. No, he’d not heard an explosion of any kind, and he’d not seen anyone with a gun. It had started and was over with before he could have thought they were in trouble.
After several hours he was released but asked not to leave just yet, and was put into a very nice hotel where a police officer was set out front of his room. They assured him it was for his own protection and not that he was in trouble. Families would want him to come and talk to them, beg him for information that he didn’t seem to have. Trevor didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway, so was glad for the extra precaution. As soon as he got in his room, he stripped down and let his wolf take him. In seconds his wolf gave him back, his body healed, but Trevor knew that a part of him had died today as well. Both of them had lost their mate, not just Trevor. After taking a shower, Trevor laid on the bed and let exhaustion take him under.
Where are you? Trevor sat up in the bed. Hello? Mr. Dean? Where are you? I’m afraid. Can you come and get me?
Her voice rang in his head like she was right beside him. The room, dark now that it was night, gave her voice in his head an eerie, almost terrifying sound. Trevor laid back down just as she spoke again.
I’m hurting and I need someone to help me. You said you were my husband, now be husband like and come to get me. He thought about ignoring it for the pain in his heart, but the next time she spoke, he was pulling on his clothing even as he knew it was her. I feel so cold. The water is coming up to my toes now, and I’m afraid. My arm is throbbing and my head feels like a spike is in it. Even my eyes hurt. Please, you have to help me. You said you were my husband…you have to help me.
I’m coming. He heard her cry and told her he was coming again. Where are you, love? They said that you went down with the plane.
No. I don’t know what...what do you mean, went down with…? Is that why it’s gone? He asked her again where she was. It’s dark and cold. There are trees everywhere. And a fence. I can see a fence. Hurry.
I am. I’m coming. He hurried out of the room and nearly plowed over the cop standing there. “She’s alive. I just heard from her and she’s alive.”
“Sir, I don’t think you understand. The plane went down and—” Not wanting to be delayed any more, he hit the man with all his strength and left him on the floor. He was running out of the hotel when Andrea told him again to hurry. Trevor ran like his life depended on it… which, he supposed, it really did.