CHAPTER 18
Had she really thought spending more time in the middle of the action was something she wanted? She cursed the gods who obviously had a sense of humour about such things.
Fucked up, stupid, scary world. She’d never had a gun pulled on her before. She didn’t like it one bit.
At the opposite end of the small plane, Tim lifted his hands carefully in the air. “Don’t hurt her,” Tim ordered. “She’s your only ticket out of here.”
“Agreed. I thought you were the pilot, but since you’re not . . .” Ken tossed her radio headset to the ground, then nodded toward the front of the plane. “John, take care of him.”
Erin drew in a quick gasp as John pulled out a gun and casually pointed it at Tim.
“Oh my God, no. Don’t, or I won’t fly you anywhere.” Erin struggled to get free. “I mean it, hurt him and I’ll damn well leave you to freeze.”
“Gutsy.” Ken jerked her again like he had when he’d come up to her and surprised her, snapping off her headset before she could get out a call for help to Tim. “Fine. Don’t shoot Tim. But we need to get out of here before anyone else shows up. Get rid of the baggage, John.”
John tilted the gun slightly lower, adjusting the angle before he pulled the trigger. The body resting in the chair beside Tim jerked, and Erin screamed involuntarily, her hands flying up to cover her face.
Tim shouted as well, reaching down to cover the blood welling up. “Dammit, that wasn’t—”
He slammed his mouth shut and pulled his hands back as John once again turned the deadly barrel toward him. “Keep your mouth shut, and we’ll let you live. Since she’s so keen on it.”
“Red, get our things. Tim, Erin. Lead the way. And you know better than to do anything stupid.” Ken stepped aside, allowing Erin access to the exit.
She glanced across the distance separating her and Tim and wondered how their world had turned so rapidly from the twenty-four hours before. Her gaze drifted to the body at his side, the signs of death growing as the man no longer stirred, and something went numb inside her.
Whatever she and Tim had stumbled onto, these men were willing to kill to avoid getting caught. Being kidnapped was a far better option at this point.
“We’ll go along peacefully,” Tim promised. “There’s no need to hurt anyone else. Let me see the pilot again—”
John pushed him toward the door. “He’s deadweight. Move now, or you’ll join him.”
Tim turned reluctantly, a sound of pain escaping him. But he hurried down to her and ushered her out the door. “Nothing fancy—no attempts at being a hero,” he cautioned as they hooked on their snowshoes.
“You, too.” She snuck in a quick squeeze to his arm, glancing over her shoulder as the other men crawled out of the plane, following after them too close for even quiet conversation. She had to risk one word, though. “Matt?”
“Working on it.”
The three men didn’t have much with them. Not other than their obvious desire to not be near the plane when any authorities arrived. Erin plotted ways to get a message out, but the entire time they traveled to the chopper she had one or another of the guys at her side.
She was worried sick their crash victims were going to shoot either Tim or Matt, and there seemed to be nothing she could do. Tim seemed to have gotten in some muttered conversation time with his friend, but the crisis situation only increased by the minute.
It took puzzle-solving skill to get all five of them up the short distance to the same level as the chopper, none of them wanting to be the last, not wanting Tim and Erin left alone without someone at their side to ensure good behavior.
“I need to get the chopper warmed up,” she warned. “I can’t hop in and turn it on like a car.”
“You’ll wait until I’m there to watch you,” Ken warned. “You’ll have time once we’ve got your friends in position.”
That didn’t sound good at all. Erin met Tim’s eyes again, and the bastard actually winked, probably attempting to give her what assurance he could.
Only there were no guarantees he could make right now. There was only dealing with one moment to the next. Belaying up the hill, crossing the distance to the chopper, and stripping off unneeded gear.
Tim stopped before opening the door. “In case you were thinking of shooting our friend, don’t. He told me to mention he’s worth a mint. You can easily make some money if you treat him well.”
“Thanks for the information.” Ken laughed. “Good friends like you are hard to find. Now tell him to sit down and hold his hands in the air where we can see them.”
“Matt?” Tim spoke into the headset. “Company coming aboard. Sit down and don’t try anything. Hold your hands up, and trust me.”
Ken ripped the headset from Tim and dropped it into the snow. “You won’t be needing that anymore.”
The door opened slowly, and Erin held her breath, bracing herself for the report of a gun. Fearful of it coming, afraid there was no way to avoid it.
Instead she watched as Red climbed aboard and closed in on Matt.
Tim’s friend was obediently seated, hands toward the ceiling. His eyes were wide with fear, but he said nothing as his hands were shoved to his sides and Red pulled a roll of duct tape from his pocket.
A hard shove hit between her shoulder blades. “Get this chopper moving,” Ken ordered.
She crawled in and hurried toward the front, only to be jerked to a stop, Ken pulling her nearly off her feet.
“Your friends don’t have to stay in good condition,” he warned. “If you try anything, and I mean anything I think looks wrong, they’re going to get hurt. Don’t call anyone, don’t answer anything—”
His message was clear. “I got it. Do you know anything about flying, though? I have to do lot of things that might look suspicious, but they’re—”
“Explain, or don’t do them.” Ken motioned her forward. “Get going.”
She was in her seat, glancing back to make sure they were doing as they’d promised and keeping the guys safe. “Lock everything down,” she called, snapping to a halt as Ken raised a hand above her.
“Don’t talk to them. Tell me what needs to be done, and I’ll decide if I pass it on.”
“It’s just normal takeoff procedure,” she explained. “Tying things down, making sure they’re secure so if we hit turbulence there’s nothing flying around inside the cockpit with us.”
“Get this thing going.” Ken twisted to the back. “John, watch Tim—tell him to do the normal things to get ready to fly.”
There was always a buzz of excitement that accompanied the slow speeding of the props. Now for the first time there was also dread. As she went through start-up, Erin’s fears grew. She couldn’t see a way out of this without someone getting hurt, and if she was the one who made a wrong decision that led to Tim or Matt being injured or killed, she didn’t know how she’d survive.
It was one time she really didn’t want to be in control.
The one time she had absolutely no choice.
She glanced into the back. Tim must have finished putting things in place. John had taken a second roll of duct tape and was lashing Tim to another chair as far from Matt as possible. With their wrists pinned to the chairs, there wasn’t much that either of them could do to deal with the three men moving freely around the cabin. Erin struggled for the next idea.
“Ken, I need to put on my headset. I need to listen to my instrument panel . . . some of the signals I use to fly are auditory. And I need to know where you want to go, so I can calculate if I have enough fuel.”
He pulled out a paper. “That’s what we gave the other pilot. It’s a private airstrip, so you don’t need to contact anyone to land. And no, you can’t wear your headset.”
Dammit. Options were fading fast. The rotors were at nearly full speed now, and the volume loud enough to deafen everyone. She checked the coordinates she’d been given and punched the data into her navigator. Then she ignored the fact that she had three unwanted guests and took off without any further warning.
If they got bumped around, so be it.
And then the damn gun came back to mind, and she stifled her instinct to send them into a wild tailspin. She might be okay with the resulting loss of balance, and Tim would be okay, especially since he was locked down. Matt would probably get sick, but that would be fine if it meant they were safe.
But that gun changed things. She headed south, leaving behind the remains of the plane and a man who was dead or dying. Their proven willingness to use violence was far too strong an incentive to follow her captors’ orders.
* * *
Tim had given up trying to guess what came next. Locked in position, he could do nothing but hope his next breath wasn’t his last. As far as he could tell from his position in the center of the hold, Erin did nothing but take them in a straight line to the private field.
There’d been a second when he wondered if she was going to try something, but a glance over her shoulder had her stopping as soon as she spotted the gun John held pointed in his direction.
He wasn’t even sure what he would tell her to try.
The glimpses he had out the window showed they were passing out of the Rockies and into the lowlands, closing in on the U.S.-Canada border, the thin thread of a river widening into a long stretch of lake that Erin followed for a good fifteen minutes.
Sure enough, the no-touching zone appeared ahead, the swatch of trees cut in a nearly straight line the entire length of the forty-ninth parallel. They were almost out of Canada. There were no major roads visible. No communities.
Little chance they would be spotted and reported to curious border authorities.
Ten minutes past the border, a small clearing in the trees appeared. They were high in the mountains again, this time the less rugged and more rounded Columbia ranges that were common along the BC-Washington or Idaho line. Erin let them down, the pressure and noise in her ears dying away, but a low ringing remaining.
Erin was escorted to the door, where she jerked off Ken’s grasp on her. “I’m not going anywhere without the guys.”
“They’re coming with us. Insurance for your continued good behavior.”
“You have no reason to hurt any of us—” Erin started.
“Shut up. We’ll put you somewhere safe.”
The duct tape was cut away, freeing Tim’s wrists from the chair. Before he could even think about making a move, a new set was applied, locking his hands in front of him and leaving him a lot more helpless than he wished. On the opposite side of the plane he caught glimpses of Matt being given the same treatment.
Then Matt disappeared, led away by Red. John held Tim in place at the side of the field as Erin worked alone to refuel. “It would go faster if I helped her,” he offered.
The man at his side shook his head, crossing his arms as he looked around the ranch area. “No rush. We’re not leaving anytime soon.”
And then he closed his mouth and didn’t say anything else.
Frustration, fear—Tim had it all. They’d killed a man already. What reason could they have for keeping any of them alive once they were no longer useful? Matt’s insistence at being offered up as a hostage had been a necessary evil, but even that didn’t provide insurance for either Erin or himself.
Red emerged from the cabin where he’d disappeared, wood smoke curling from the chimney. He was alone, and Tim’s stomach flipped with worry.
“Where’s Matt?”
“He’s safe. If he is who he says he is, we’ll treat him well.”
It was the longest time before Ken escorted Erin across the field. An icy chill was settling into Tim’s limbs from the lack of movement and the tight tape around his wrists.
Erin met his eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Ken pushed Erin toward the small metal shed beside the cabin. “In you go.”
“Tim—”
“Is going with you.”
The short glimpse of light while the door was open showed that there was nothing much in the place but a couple of barrels. Tim shuffled forward awkwardly, uncertainty rising again, but the fact that they were together was good.
Good yet still terrifying. Matt wasn’t with them, and they only had the word of killers that his friend would stay safe.
If he could have turned back the clock and never offered the suggestion of the getaway, he would in a second.
The door closing them into the small shed didn’t help.
After the past hours of high-volume noise, his ears rang with imagined sound. Still, both he and Erin stood silently for a moment, straining to hear footsteps moving away. Listening for some sign they were really alone.
The cabin door slammed—which was no assurance, but was probably the best they could expect. Tim turned toward where Erin stood, thin lines of daylight sneaking in through cracks near the ceiling.
“Oh, God.” Erin shook violently, then reached for him. “Let me take the tape off you.”
“There’s a pocketknife inside my coat. Right inside breast pocket.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Seriously?”
“They weren’t concerned about frisking me, just in getting here.”
She bit the tip of her glove and pulled it off, unzipping his coat and slipping her hand inside to find the blade. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of anything to do that wasn’t going to put you guys in danger.”
“There was nothing you could do. We need to get out of here, though, because once we’re not needed . . .”
He didn’t want to bring back images of the pilot. Deadweight, Ken had said.
At what point did he and Erin become deadweight?
“You did good,” he assured her. “And they had you refuel the chopper—so maybe they still need you to fly them somewhere.”
Erin lowered her voice. “I was considering a spinout. I thought about stalling. I thought about taking us straight to a manned airport—and I didn’t do any of them because I was afraid—”
“For good reason.” He pulled the last of the tape from his wrists and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight. “Oh God, Erin, I did the same mental wrangling, and there was no solution. If you’d done any of those things we might all be dead right now.”
Erin slipped her hands up to his chest and pushed him back slightly. “Do up your coat. How are your hands? It’s cold, and if we’re going to have a chance to get away, we need to be as warm as possible before we go out there again.”
Both of them were deliberately ignoring the impossibility of getting Matt out from right under the kidnappers’ noses.
“Look around in here, see if there’s anything that can help us.” Tim tucked things back into place, slipping his knife into his main right pocket.
She had her coat open and was placing the strips of duct tape she’d cut off him onto her clothes. “Just in case we need them later,” she explained. “And I know it’s no use right here, but there’s a gun in the chopper.”
Well, now. “You knew about that, did you?”
Erin closed her jacket while she answered. “Of course I knew. Marcus and I had a bit of a fight over it initially, but in the end he agreed it was a good idea.”
For the first time in a while Tim actually felt like smiling. “I wasn’t talking about you having a gun. I was talking about the one I have hidden in my medical supplies.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope.”
She snuck under his arm briefly, putting their heads close together. “I knew I liked you. You’re devious.”
“So are you. We fit well together.”
Their smiles faded, though, as the reality of their situation grew clearer again. “Look around, right?” she asked.
There wasn’t much there. A couple of smaller old barrels. A bunch of rags. Tim tried the door, but for a run-down old shed, the thing barely budged, even when he slammed his shoulder into it. There was nothing that could get them out. “Great. Well, we can burn the place down around our heads if we want to.”
“Let’s save that one for tomorrow,” Erin suggested.
He tipped the empty canisters over and created a seat of a kind. The rags became a layer of cushioning that he sat on, then he tapped his lap. “Come, conserve body heat.”
She slipped in next to him and curled up tight. They tucked their hands between their bodies and tilted their heads down, a small bundle of humanity keeping as much of their body heat in as possible.
“So. Any plans?” she asked.
“They need you to fly them somewhere else. That’s the only reason I can think of for the refueling.” Tim made sure they were speaking softly enough to not be overheard even if someone stood right outside the shed. “Sounds as if they’re treating Matt a little better—looking for the extra cash.”
“I hope he’s okay.” There was real fear in her voice.
“I hope so, too, but he’s a smart guy, and he does have the money if it comes to that. But mostly we’re trying to buy time for someone to help us.”
“Which is not going to happen very quickly, Tim.” She sighed. “I never got out a distress call—I was too scared to try anything. That means the chopper not showing up is our only warning to anyone. Which means no one will even be out looking until tomorrow.”
“Which is why I think your idea of the nearest airport is a good one. Doesn’t matter if Matt and I are lashed to chairs. Go in low, out of air traffic range but high enough to get on radar. You set down on the edge of a runway, and our kidnappers will have nowhere to go but through the security that will show up.”
“There’s a ton wrong with that, though. Even with security blocking them, they could hole up in the chopper. They could shoot you. They could shoot Matt. What the hell are they running from, anyway?”
“I thought smugglers first, but they said they were out of Anchorage and headed to Seattle. There were no drugs on the plane, and they barely took anything with them when we left.”
“Bullshit on them being out of Anchorage.” Erin’s breath brushed his neck, a steamy stroke that warmed him deeply. “The pilot had to have registered the flight, but there was no way they would have been passing over the mountain they were when they went down. Anchorage to Seattle is an all-coastal route, and we were inland far too much, even changing direction to head toward the new coordinates once they were in the air.”
“Interesting.” Tim pulled his arms free to rub her back slowly. “Possible starting points?”
“Major airports? Offhand, only Whitehorse comes to mind. Yellowknife, maybe—the route would make sense if the pilot was trying to avoid cutting over any main air traffic routes, staying off the radar. Private airstrips could be anything between those two points.” Erin sighed. “I wonder if he had the heart attack because of being hijacked.”
He soothed her the best he could. “Don’t. We can’t change it, and we’re not going to focus on that now. Now we’re all about getting out of here in one piece.”
“Okay. Landing at a major airport—safer for civilians than a shopping mall or main highway.”
“They can’t take off and hide as easily, either,” Tim pointed out. “But if a highway is all you get, take it.”
“They can still shoot you. I don’t think they have much respect for life at this point.”
He agreed, but that wasn’t what she needed to hear. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “I wish this hadn’t happened. I wish to God we were back home and safe. But we will get through this. We’ll keep our eyes and ears open, and the next chance we get, we’re going to do what we can to get out of here.”
She slipped her hand from her glove and cupped his face, her palm warm against his cheek. “We’ll do what we can.”