I don’t know what woke me, the pounding in my head or the cold. At first, I just shivered and tried to pull the blankets around me, but there weren’t any blankets.

There was something else holding me down, digging into my chest. I fingered the material.

Straps!

That really brought me out of the semi-fugue state I’d been in.

Jolting upright – or trying to – I looked around. The instinctive, jerking movement sent pain crashing through my head, and I groaned, reaching up to rub at my skull.

“You okay over there?”

The sound of the voice, only vaguely familiar, had me stirring in the seat as a memory tried to come back. A name floated to the surface of my thoughts, and I grabbed at it. “Hank?”

“Yes, ma’am. You okay?”

It all came flooding back, and I groaned as I looked around. “We crashed, didn’t we?”

“Yes, ma’am. We did. Are you okay?”

He was going to keep asking that until I answered. I gave him the most honest answer I could at the moment. “I’m not entirely sure. My head hurts. I’m still taking stock.”

“You just keep on doing that. I’ve already sent word about the crash, but that storm we were trying to outrun seems to have it in for us because it’s gotten bigger and meaner. I don’t think they’ll be sending out anybody until it passes.”

I shivered, the words not really making sense as I wiggled all my body parts and gingerly felt for injuries. I didn’t think there was much of anything, which was a miracle considering we’d just been in a freaking plane crash. Then, abruptly, Hank’s words made perfect sense. “What do you mean they won’t be sending anybody out?”

“They can’t, not with the storm that’s moved in. Now don’t go fretting, okay? I radioed the crash in, and they know we’re out here. We just have to wait this storm out.” There was a note of strain in his voice I hadn’t heard earlier, and I realized I hadn’t asked how he was.

“Hank, were you hurt when we…um…” How did one phrase it? When we crashed the plane? When we fell? “Are you hurt?”

Please don’t let him be hurt, I thought desperately. I’d bribed him with double the money to bring me up here–

No. We weren’t up in the sky anymore.

We’d crashed. Crashed, and I needed to calm the fuck down and think.

“Well, I’m not too bad all things considered, but I do believe I got a broken leg.” He delivered the words with the same implacable calm he’d used throughout that hellish flight.

“I…what?” He hadn’t just said what I thought he said, had he? Scrambling at the safety belt that had protected me through the flight – and crash – I finally managed to free myself. The light was fading, clouds rushing overhead like mad. Just as I took notice of them, I saw something fat and white floating down.

Snow.

It couldn’t be snowing. It was September.

In the Rocky Mountains, I reminded myself. It could very well be snowing.

“Okay…I’m just going to…” Swinging my legs out of the seat, I eased myself off of it, intending only to take a look at Hank and see if maybe I could do something to help.

But I made the mistake of looking back toward the plane.

Or what was left of it.

“Aw, hell,” I whispered.

“Don’t go thinking about it, Miss…Stella, right? Look at me right now,” Hank said, voice still gentle but firm.

It helped. I swung my head around and met his gaze.

“I think if you gimme a hand, I can get myself loose and we can make camp in what’s left of my bird here.” As he spoke, he wrapped his hands around his right leg, and that was when the odd angle of his lower leg became apparent.

“I do believe you’re right,” I told him, echoing his aww shucks manner of speaking. “I think that leg is broken.”

He grinned at me, a pained sort of smile, but a smile nonetheless. “We’ll stabilize it before I try to move. Think you’re up to helping me with that?”

I swallowed, then nodded. “I’m game if you are.”

* * *

By the time we’d managed to rough out what Hank had decided was just as fine a camp as any he’d ever seen, the rest of the daylight was gone. I’d spent the past half hour searching for my phone, but since there might have been another twenty minutes left of sunlight, I gave up until tomorrow.

“How far do you think we are from the nearest town?” I asked as I watched him add to the fire he’d built.

We were in the hull of the plane, or what remained of it, and he’d used the emergency supplies he always kept on hand to build said fire and make some beef stew for us to eat. “It’s dehydrated stuff, but not bad, really,” he’d told me.

I was just glad to have water and something to eat.

Earlier, I’d damn near frozen my butt off so I could pee.

Hank had made himself a crutch out of a length of wood I’d found while out scavenging for firewood. It was just barely tall enough to suit him, and he’d disappeared for just a few seconds, but he hadn’t frozen his tail off just to tend to his bladder.

His rather miraculous emergency kit had everything in it we could need for a few days here, plus fishing line, a knife, and other odd items that I was sure he could put to use – if he could walk.

“Nearest town…” He shrugged and scratched at the scruff growing on his face. “Hell…I don’t know. Denver or Fort Collins is probably a couple of days walk away. A few smaller towns are closer, I think, but still twenty miles…” He named one and looked around with a squinty-eyed look and pointed. “That’s as the crow flies. If I’m right about where we are, there’s a road about five miles away, but I’m afraid I’m not up to walking five miles.”

I gulped. I didn’t know how anyone could walk that far in this weather, bad leg or not.

He gave me a pained look. “We’ll be okay, though. I know they heard my relay, and I called ahead to the county airport. I’ve got all the doodads on my bird that they need to find me.”

“Just…not tonight.” I managed a weak smile. “You know, I could walk five miles. Which way–”

“Not happening.” He pointed a finger at me, shotgun style. “We stay together, and we stay with the bird. It’s the easiest thing to see from the sky, and that’s how they’ll come looking for us. Besides, we’ll be fine. It’s going to get chilly but nothing we can’t tough out.” He laughed as the wind whipped a few snow flurries in. “It’s a good thing it’s not winter yet!”

* * *

Waking up was pure hell.

I’d been in a car crash when I was seventeen. There were reasons some parents didn’t like their kids riding with friends who only recently gotten their driver’s licenses. That wreck was one of those reasons. Teenagers could be very easily distracted, as I’d learned.

None of us had been hurt, thankfully, but the first few days after the accident, I’d been stiff and sore, like somebody had worked me over with a baseball bat – or at least that was how I imagined I might feel after such an ordeal.

This was even worse.

Now, I felt like somebody had worked me over with a giant-sized bat – a studded one.

Taking a few minutes to stretch and try to ease the various aches, pains, and kinks from my body, I drew in a few breaths and smelled something that bothered me. A lot.

Last night, after we’d eaten, Hank had mentioned we were higher up in the mountains and that it probably wasn’t even snowing down in Denver, but the higher altitude up here changed the equation. I had a feeling the equation was about to be changed again. There was a faint dusting of flurries outside that I could see, but there was more coming, I could smell it. One thing about living in New York City and Michigan was that you got a good idea of what it smelled like when snow was in the near future.

And it was most definitely in the very near future.

Shit.

I remembered what Hank had said about a rescue team not being able to look for us in the storm. Was another storm moving in or was the worst of it over?

I had no idea, but the thought of being trapped up there with nothing but the wreckage of the plane for shelter had terror welling inside me. I had been so stupid, being so determined to get to Denver, I couldn’t even wait for a damn storm to pass.

I inhaled a long breath. It would be okay.

Hank hadn’t seemed too worried.

Okay, he’d seemed concerned, yes, but panicked?

No. He certainly hadn’t seemed panicked.

It’s not good business ethics to panic around the customers, I thought sourly. But then again, the plane was wrecked. Then again, I was alive. Would it matter if I saw him panicking?

I wasn’t sure.

Casting Hank a look, I eased myself upright and gazed around. He had some of those emergency lights in his kit – the kind that glowed green once you snapped them – but he hadn’t wanted to use those, and we’d decided to save the batteries in the flashlight as well. He did, however, have a light that was powered by wind-up, so I took that and felt my way out of the plane. Once I was farther away from Hank, I started to wind up the battery, hoping the noise wouldn’t wake him. He had slept restlessly, his leg hurting him, no doubt.

Once the light was powered up, I used my hand to cover most of the beam and slid back inside, angling the tool so that it swept over the floor. I needed to find my phone. I had a dim hope that it might still be in one piece.

Before, I’d focused my search near the storage compartment where I’d stored it and my purse. The compartment had been busted during the wreck, scattering everything inside. Now, with the beam of light forcing me to look at only one small place at a time, I might get lucky…

Fives minutes past. Then fifteen. Then thirty.

I was about to give up when… there!

I found my purse underneath a piece of the wreckage. Excited, I pulled up other pieces until… I nearly cried out in joy. My phone.

I examined it closely. I’d started buying the more rugged cases for my phones after a few hard drops had sent me to the store twice to buy a new phones. To my relief, the case had protected it from most of the damage. There was a crack in the screen, but I could still see the screen, and the crack was down near the bottom left-hand corner. I didn’t care about cosmetic damage as long as I could use the thing.

Holding my breath, I pushed the power button. It powered on just fine, but my hopes were dashed when I saw there was no signal.

I bit my lip as I shot Hank another look. He was still snoring softly, his injured leg tucked against the wall of the plane.

We needed to get help.

It was beginning to get light outside, just enough for me to make out my surrounding. I’d just hike a little bit. I’d pick out a landmark and walk toward it, a straight line. That would be safe enough, surely.

I started to walk, keeping one eye on the phone, hoping for at least one bar, another on the skyline. There was a tree in front of me, maybe a few hundred yards away that looked like it had been struck by lightning or something. I decided to walk toward it. It wasn’t that far, and surely I could see the plane from there.

I stopped every few hundred feet to look back and make sure, getting a little more nervous as the plane shrank, growing smaller and smaller, while the tree didn’t seem to get much bigger.

Still, I kept walking. I was going downhill. We’d been on a more level area, and going downhill…that had to be good, right? Hank had mentioned a road, and a small town…it would be down the mountain. At least I thought so.

I glanced back, looking for the plane.

Fuck. I couldn’t see it.

And there were still no bars on the phone.

“Time to go back,” I muttered to myself, discouraged at not finding a signal. I’d last seen the plane no more than a hundred steps back so I’d be okay, but I didn’t dare go any farther. Turning, I started to retrace my steps.

From the corner of my eye, something moved. My heart leapt. Was it a rescue party?

“Hello?” I called out, staring in that direction. “Is—”

The next words froze in my throat as something slunk out from behind a tree trunk, revealing its body.

Its very big body.

A wolf.

My heart was pounding so hard in my throat that I almost couldn’t swallow. Very slowly, I took a step backward, praying with everything inside me that it was just a dog. A nice, lost little dog. But I knew I was fooling myself.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit. I took another step back, trying to remember what the right thing to do was. I was a nut for those “What to do if” scenarios, and if that had been a bear, I knew I should have raised my arms and made a lot of noise. But what did I do with a snarling wolf?

Don’t run, a voice whispered in the back of my head. If you run, it’s going to chase you.

Another movement off to the side had me sliding my eyes to the left.

It was another wolf.

And another…

And another…

“You…wolves don’t eat people, right?” Maybe just me talking would make them go away. My sisters always told me that I could be that annoying.

The big one – the one I’d seen first – took a step toward me, lips peeled back from his teeth as he made a menacing growl.

“You don’t want to eat me,” I said, lifting a hand. It shook. My voice shook. Every part of me was probably shaking, from my voice straight down to my toes. Why the hell had I left the plane? “I eat too much junk food. I’d be bad for your heart.”

I was babbling now. Babbling to a wolf that had just taken another menacing step toward me.

Panic bubbled up in my throat as he took one more. Time seemed to slow down, his body tightening like a coiled spring.

This is it…

I tensed, preparing for the pain of its teeth sinking into my skin, and I threw myself backward as he lunged, knowing it was pointless.

I fell.

And I kept falling, head over heels before my butt hit hard cold earth, and I started to slide down, down, down.

There was a huge crrracck that echoed through the air – possibly my skull because I hit something – hard. And I kept falling.

But sharp teeth didn’t sink into me, and I was glad of that.

That was my last coherent thought before darkness swam up to grab me.