“That’s where you’re wrong,” Miss Gardenia said, addressing the gathered board members of her father’s company. “Mr. Robbins didn’t die of a heart attack after all, I’m afraid.”

The plane hits a bump in the air, tilts, straightens out, and then we descend suddenly and abruptly, my heart in my throat, but the turbulence is over in seconds.

I press my lips together, glare at Wilder’s reflection in the mirror but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the controls, which I guess I told him to do a couple of hours ago, so I should probably be glad that he’s actually doing it.

The ladies of the board all put their hands to their bosoms, gasping. The gentlemen looked astonished as Miss Gardenia, amateur sleuth, glanced from face to face.

All but one looked astonished, that is.

The plane dips again, tilting the other way, and I look up from the murder mystery I’m trying to read on my tablet and glare at the mirror.

“Quit it,” I say, but Wilder doesn’t look up at me, just keeps frowning at the controls.

Suddenly the plane shudders, and I have the unpleasant sensation that I’m trapped inside a living being that’s trembling, shivering, like something is really wrong and I have to shut my eyes, take a deep breath.

Airplanes are mechanical, I remind myself. It can’t just decide to fly another direction, it doesn’t have a brain, it just does what Wilder tells it to do.

Small comfort, except I’m fairly certain Wilder doesn’t hate me enough to take himself down with me. Close, but not quite. Not this literally.

The plane dips again and this time I can feel it go nose-first, both wings fluttering side-to-side in the air, and white-hot jabs through my brain like an icepick to my cerebellum.

It’s fine, I tell myself over and over again. This is just turbulence, it happens in every plane, you can just feel it better in this one…

I look out the window, but the scenery hasn’t changed. We’ve been flying through gray fluff for the past hour or so, and while that itself isn’t dangerous it makes it impossible to tell which way is up or what altitude we’re at.

Both my hands are shaking, so I grab the seat underneath me and squeeze as hard as I can, until my knuckles go white-blue and I start to feel a little better.

Wilder still hasn’t looked at me. He’s still frowning, scowling, both hands on the steering apparatus of the plane as he glowers at the instrument panel.

The plane evens out, stops shuddering like a frightened animal. Slowly, my heart goes back to normal, thumping away in my chest, and I loosen my grip on the seat. I don’t know the first thing about flying a plane, but all the dials and knobs and levers and gauges look more or less normal — nothing is bright red and flashing, at least, so that’s got to be a good sign.

Please be a good sign.

Finally, Wilder looks up, into the mirror, meeting my eyes.

“Sorry,” he says.

I’m still too tense and keyed up and terrified to say anything but, “It’s okay.”

“Just a little weather,” he says, as if he has to force the words from his mouth. “Hazards of a small plane. We’re getting around it.”

His eyes dart back to the instrument panel just as my ears pop again, that familiar little lurch in my stomach, and I realize that even though we’ve been descending for a while we’re still descending.

“Are we landing?” I ask, my voice coming out high-pitched and tight because we’re not supposed to be making our fuel stop for another two hours, and then Yellowknife is another four or five. Right now, we shouldn’t be doing anything but flying along straight and steady while I read my murder mystery in the back.

“No,” Wilder mutters, flipping a switch and pausing his hand over it.

Nothing happens. Maybe nothing is supposed to happen, but I’m not sure. Then he taps a gauge a couple of times, each tap harder than the last until finally he bangs the side of his fist against the thing, making me jump against my seatbelt.

Something’s going wrong. I don’t need to know the first thing about flying to know that the pilot isn’t supposed to punch the instrument panel, and the sudden knowledge has my heart in my throat along with my stomach and most of my organs, threatening to spill out everywhere.

“What?” I ask, even though I’m dizzy with panic.

“It’s noth—”

The plane drops out of the clouds all at once, like a curtain’s been lifted in front of us, and the mountains come into sharp relief.

I thought we were twenty thousand feet up. We’re not.

We’re way, way lower and losing altitude fast.

I’m frozen. I don’t do or say anything, just goggle out the plane’s windshield at the craggy mountains below us so much closer than they should be.

This is another asshole joke of Wilder’s, a voice whispers in the very back of my brain.

He’s trying to get you to cry, freak out, do something else embarrassing so he can go back to Solaris and tell all his douchebag bros about it, because you know that people never change, and you were stupid to take this deal in the first place.

That’s not it. I don’t know how I know but I do, because there’s a cold fear in Wilder’s eyes that matches the fear in the pit of my stomach that tells me this isn’t a joke, this is real as hell and bad.

“What’s going on?” I scream-shout, way too loud, over the roar.

“Are you—”

The engine cuts off before Wilder can finish his sentence.

“—Get buckled!” he shouts, as if I ever unbuckled myself on this tiny, psychopath-piloted plane, but I tighten my harness anyway, hands shaking, until it’s so snug I can barely breathe.

“The engine went down, and I don’t know why,” Wilder shouts. “Hold on and fucking pray or something.”

As if he has to tell me. I’m hyperventilating, eyes squeezed shut, hands clamped on my seat and head down. In the sudden quiet I can hear myself sobbing, my ears still popping like mad, my whole body shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s me or the plane doing it.

I’m sorry, I think over and over again, the only thought I can muster as faces flash through my head: my parents, my little brother, my long-dead grandfather, my best friend from graduate school, my mentor who set up this arctic gig for me in the first place.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I don’t know what I’m sorry for but it’s all I can think as we careen toward the snowy ground, the wings creaking and the wind roaring against us louder and louder and then Wilder is shouting and I’m screaming and sobbing that I’m sorry—