Cold seeped through Izzy’s clothes and ran icy fingers down her collar. Damn, her head hurt. What happened?
She blinked slowly, getting her bearings, and realized she was in the helo’s cockpit, strapped into her seat, and—
“Oh God, Freddie!”
Turning her head, she fought back the pain that knifed through her skull, and there he was, still strapped in. Blood oozed from a cut across his cheek. He was looking at her, and his eyes were clear, his lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear a thing over her pounding pulse.
She tried to get up. Stuck.
Strong fingers, like needle-nose pliers, pinched the back of her arm, and she yelped.
Freddie’s grip shifted to her shoulder. “Iz, answer me.”
“Goddammit, you sonofabitch. That hurt.”
An explosion of rusty laughter burst from him. “Jesus, Iz. You okay?”
“Yeah. I think.” She had no idea if that was true. It felt like she’d been hit with a bag of hammers.
Alan Branson’s blond head poked into the cockpit from the passenger cabin.
“You guys okay?” Freddie asked him.
“I’ve had worse being tossed from my horse,” he said. “Jenny has a broken forearm and some scrapes, but otherwise she’s fine.”
“Fine?” Jenny shrieked, sticking her head into the cockpit, too. She held her right arm tight to her chest. “Are you crazy? I have a daughter. She’s only six. What is she going to do without me?”
Alan sighed. “I told you, Brooklynn will be all right until we get out of here. Your sitter is not going to just leave her. And your ex will help.”
When Jenny had boarded the aircraft this morning, her long, dyed-blond hair had been curled and sprayed. She’d had on impeccable makeup and a feminine pantsuit that looked like it had been made for her. Now, mascara tracks lined her face. Her clothes were wrinkled and a sleeve torn. Her hair could have been styled in a wind tunnel. Yet none of the disarray diminished the frostiness of the look she sent Alan’s way. Izzy was surprised the man didn’t turn to ice on the spot.
Alan ignored Jenny and looked around. “Christ, what a mess.”
He was right. Freddie’s beautiful helicopter was a complete disaster. Multicolored wires hung loose under the control panel and cracks spiderwebbed the instrument screens. The stench of burnt plastic and hot wires filled the cabin. A large tree limb lay across the nose of the helicopter, crushing it and caving in the fuselage.
Right onto Freddie’s legs.
“Shit!” Izzy fumbled with her safety harness release, and dizziness rolled over her like a boulder, almost flattening her completely.
“Don’t.” Her brother cut her off with a raised hand. “I’m all right, just stuck. One of my legs is broken, but not bleeding. I’ll be fine. Gonna be a little awkward on the dance floor, but Rissa will get her wedding dance.”
Izzy opened her mouth to argue, but he shot her a quelling look. She gritted her teeth. “Fine. Radio?”
“Tried. It’s toast.” He pointed toward the console. “No cell service either, but the ELT is active.”
The impact of the crash had definitely been strong enough to set off the emergency locator transmitter. Search and Rescue would be coming.
Jenny started crying.
“Don’t worry,” Freddie called back to her, “our emergency beacon is on. They’ll find us.” He gave Izzy a look she interpreted as I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
“They’d better make it snappy,” Branson said. “I have important meetings tomorrow.”
Freddie looked like he was praying for patience. “Hey, Alan, think you could look in the rear cabinets for the first aid kit and flares? Maybe find something to pry me out with?”
When the developer ducked back into the passenger cabin, Freddie touched Izzy’s chin, lifting it so she met his gaze. “Now give it to me straight, Iz. And don’t tell me you’re okay, ’cause I just watched you turn several shades of green unbuckling your seat belt.”
She gave him a dirty look. He gave her a look right back.
“Head hurts like hell. Okay?”
“Yeah, not surprised.” He nodded toward her side of the aircraft. The upper part of the door, made from shatter-resistant glass, was smeared with blood and cracked right in line with her head.
She touched the cold glass, then the side of her head, and winced. An egg-sized bump jutted above the right temple. Blood matted her hair and clung to her neck. She wiped at it with her sleeve.
Freddie grinned. “Good thing you’re hardheaded.”
Her snort of laughter lanced through her skull, leaving little black spots flitting across her vision. Izzy’s stomach did a long, slow roll, and for a few moments she had to concentrate on not throwing up.
“Christ. She’s gonna pass out again,” Alan said.
She swallowed and slid the straps of the safety harness from her shoulders. “No. No, I’m good.”
“There’s a lot of blood on her pants,” Alan—the big tattletale—said.
Yup. Blood, almost black in the diffuse light, stained her pants from mid-thigh to calf. A chunk of aluminum stuck out from the door, pinning her leg to the bent cyclic stick. She pushed at the metal and bent it enough to free her leg. Then she enlarged the tear in the fabric, exposing a long cut that curled down the outside of her knee. It was still bleeding, but it seemed superficial. Big reddish-purple blotches promised spectacular bruising along the outside of the calf and knee, and the inner knee, too, thanks to the cyclic stick.
She gave the joint a tentative flex and ground her chattering teeth in agony. But it moved and nothing seemed broken. “It’ll work. Stop with the fret-face,” she told her brother.
Outside, snow blanketed everything. The helicopter had come to rest angling down a slope. No buildings or power lines, not even a smoke trail marred the vast, steel blue sky. It would’ve been beautiful, except for the tree limbs scattered like Tinker toys, sheared off from torn-up pines and giant cedars.
Izzy sucked in a breath as the size of those massive trunks registered.
They should be dead.
“Should we switch places, Izzy?” Alan asked, brandishing a wrench as long as her forearm. “I’m going to need some room to pry Freddie loose.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna set out the flares and check the damage,” she said.
“Are you sure you’re up to that?”
“I’m okay.”
The cockpit door on her side was warped and wouldn’t open. She had to climb over the center storage console to get into the passenger cabin, which only caused terrible pain. Nothing close to what she’d grown up with, thanks to her grandmother, so like she’d said, she was good to go.
The wind peppered her face with powder and stirred up snow devils that danced around the outside of the crumpled helicopter. As twilight fell, shadows seemed to rise from the crags and hollows of the terrain. Wading through the deep drifts sucked. Snow filled her boots, and she really should’ve duct-taped her torn pants before coming out. God, it was cold. If the rescue team didn’t arrive soon, there was a huge risk of hypothermia.
She set flares around the perimeter of the crash site. What a clusterfuck. Two of the four main rotors had snapped off. One leaned against a huge cedar about twenty feet in front of the helicopter. She had no idea where the other was. But, as expected, the tail had suffered the most. The left stabilizer dangled, snapped from the boom like a twig. Details were hard to make out in the flares’ red light, but as she directed her flashlight over the tail, she spotted black marks on the boom and both stabilizers.
Shit. Sometimes she hated being right.
Muscling open one of the rear doors, she levered her butt onto the floor, and slid in before pushing to her feet. Jenny huffed and moaned, pulling a silver space blanket tighter around her shoulders as Izzy shut the door.
Izzy limped to the front of the helicopter and over the center console, watched Alan work to free her brother. Crammed into her side of the cockpit, he jammed a branch under a portion of the console and grunted with effort. There was a crack! as he bent it back, breaking a large chunk of plastic off the bottom, freeing Freddie.
Her brother hissed, then groaned in relief. Then, “Fuckinghellfuckingsonofabitch.”
Izzy leaned over his shoulder to look at his leg. He pulled up his pant leg and like he’d said, no blood. Bruised and swollen below the knee, but it looked okay. She’d splint it while they waited for rescue.
She raised her brows at him. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
A lopsided smile was tossed her way. “It’s all good. Only hurts when my heart beats.”
“Idiot.”
“Jerk.”
Alan rolled his eyes. “So, what happened?” he asked Izzy.
She looked out the cracked windshield, watching the snow twist and churn in dizzying swirls while she considered what to say. Over the years, she’d dealt with just about every in-flight complication possible, both on simulators and in the air. She’d flown in high winds, lightning, and rain. Experienced all manner of mechanical problems from lack of fuel to unresponsive controls and engine failure. She’d wrestled downdrafts, updrafts, and concussion waves from mortars. Been under fire and even survived a direct RPG hit to the tail of her Blackhawk in Iraq.
All that experience told her the same thing, and it made her blood run cold.
“Tail rotor’s gone,” she said at last. “The whole fin, too.”
“Yeah, well, those trees are a bitch. One of the mains is over there.” Freddie pointed out his left window to the long blade lying against the tree.
She shook her head. “There are scorch marks all the way up to the stabilizers.”
Freddie’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“What does that mean?” Alan asked.
“There was an explosion of some kind,” she said. “That’s what the initial shock was. I lost control right after that.”
“I don’t understand,” Jenny said. Though pale and shaking with cold and pain, she still threw a good glare. “I thought this was a new helicopter. Don’t you people service these things?”
“Of course we do. We don’t send anything up that isn’t air-worthy,” Freddie said, displaying a rare flash of temper.
“A short could cause engine failure in the tail rotor,” Izzy said. “But there’s no fuel back there. Nothing that could explode.” She looked into Freddie’s grim eyes. His single nod confirmed her thoughts. “At least not without help.”
“Help?” Alan straightened so fast his head hit the ceiling. “What do you mean?”
“She means,” Freddie said, his voice low and rough, “that we were sabotaged.”