Dark, Devastating & Delicious!: The Marriage Medallion / Between Duty and Desire / Driven to Distraction

She collapsed the right rear seat back, got the baggage net unhooked and dragged out her stuff. Then, hauling it all along in front of her, she scrambled backward, slithering between the seats until she attained the cockpit area again.

“Weapon,” she muttered, breathless, panting. It was wild country out there. Also, she hadn’t fallen out of the sky by accident—and she’d do well to remember it.

Yes, she could shoot. Her uncle Cam had taught her, out in the vineyards of his Napa estate, years and years ago. And she kept in practice at a certain San Fernando Valley shooting range. When you lived and worked in one of the rougher areas of L.A., it never hurt to be able to protect yourself—whether at home or on the job. The job being the East Hollywood pizzeria where Brit waited tables to make ends meet.

The painful truth? Though Brit could handle a weapon and fly a plane, she’d dropped out of UCLA—and somehow she could never quite manage to live on the income from her trust fund. There were always too many things she had to do. Flight lessons. Backpacking trips. Self-defense classes. Shooting range fees. And then, well, sometimes a friend would need a loan and she couldn’t bring herself to tell them no.

Thus, the Pizza Pitstop had become part of her life. Paolo, Roberto and the guys always found it so amusing, when she told them to keep hands off or they’d be looking down the barrel of her trusty SIG 220. “Macha woman,” they called her, chuckling with affection.

Not much to chuckle over now. Brit strapped on her shoulder holster, loaded her weapon and slid it in place beneath her left arm. Then she pulled on her thick down jacket. Barely September, and already it was major nippy in the Vildelund—the Vildelund being the Gullandrian name for the wild north country of her father’s land.

Weapon loaded and ready, wearing her coat—unzipped, so she could reach the gun if she had to—her pack close at hand, she was ready to go.

Yet she didn’t move. Cold as it was in the cabin, it would be colder still outside. She’d almost rather stay in here with her dead guide and the increasing chill and the creepy creaking sounds. At least in here she knew what she was up against.

She felt in a pocket, sighed in relief when she found they were still there: a full bag of peanut M&Ms. She liked to eat them when she was working at her laptop, writing one of the novels that always started out with a bang and somehow never got finished, or when she was feeling tense. Or feeling good…

Well, okay. The occasion didn’t matter. She liked them, period. Some people smoked. Brit ate peanut M&Ms. She ate them one at a time—very slowly, sucking off the firm shell, getting to the soft chocolate beneath, never biting the peanut until all the coating was gone. She found the process of eating peanut M&Ms so pleasurable. And soothing—and comforting.

She could use a little comfort now. She pulled out the bag, tore off the top, took one out—a yellow one. She liked the yellow ones. Oh, hell, she liked all the colors. Even the greens.

She folded the top of the bag and stuck it back in her pocket and popped the single candy in her mouth. Umm.

Truth to tell, she could almost wish herself back in balmy East Hollywood, safe in her adorably seedy Dayof the Locust-style courtyard apartment, tying up her duty shoes, ready to head out the door, late as usual for the lunch shift, looking forward to a few harsh words from her boss and an endless stream of—

“No!” Brit sat up straighter, biting the peanut before all of the chocolate was gone. Don’t go there, she commanded herself silently. You wanted this. A manhas died because you had to do this. You don’t evenget to wish it all away.

And it was time. Time to stop cowering in the crushed cabin of her plane. Time to get a move on, time to be on her way.

Bracing between the upside-down seat and the un-budgeable hatch door, Brit kicked the windscreen’s web of ruined Plexiglas out of the frame. That accomplished, she tossed her pack through the hole. And then came the fun part: dragging herself out after it.

As she crawled free of the wreckage, she marveled—better to marvel than to give in to the twin urges to burst into sobbing, desperate tears and start screaming in terror.

She was alive and that was something.

If only Rutland could be crawling out with her….

Shivering, her arms wrapped around herself, she crouched on her haunches on the unwelcoming rocky ground and stared through the ragged hole from which she’d just emerged.

Should she go back, try to drag the guide out, to give him the dignity of a shallow, rocky burial?

She shivered some more, shaking her head. To bury the guide would take time and considerable effort—both of which she needed to conserve at all costs. And Rutland wasn’t going to care, either way.

Bracing her hands on her knees, she pushed herself up to a bent-over position. Whoopsy. Her head spun and her stomach rolled. For a few seconds she sucked in cold air and let it out and stared at the ground between her boots, aware of the distant cry of a hawk somewhere far overhead, of the lapping of the fjord waters against the shoreline behind her, the whisper of the wind, cold and misty, smelling of evergreen, the constant creaking of the wreckage that had once been the plane. Somehow, she’d cut the back of her hand. Blood trailed between her fingers. She turned her hand over and studied her palm. Damp, slightly shiny, almost coagulated.

She flexed her hand. Okay, she thought. I’m okay. With care, she rose to her height, brushed the dirt and debris off her jacket and jeans.

I can do this, she told herself.

Aside from a few superficial cuts and bruises and a throbbing bump on the side of her head, she was uninjured. Her trusty Timex had a compass feature, and she carried a map scribbled with arrows and instructions on how to get where she was going. The map—and the detailed instructions—had been provided by Medwyn, who’d been born in the Vildelund. She had enough food to last a few days. And she knew how to make a fire. Beneath her jacket was a thick wool sweater and beneath that, good-quality thermal underwear. Her heavy-duty boots were broken in, and her socks were the best alpaca wool. She had a weapon and she knew how to use it if it came to that.

She may not have finished college, she might have trouble keeping a job, but life and death she could handle.

She could do this. She’d backpacked in the Sierras, done both the Appalachian and the Continental Divide trails. She would manage to find her way alone to the Village of the Mystics where Eric Greyfell—Medwyn’s son and hopefully the man to tell her the truth about how her brother Valbrand really died—was purported to be living.

She would find Greyfell and she’d have the up-close and personal little talk she’d been itching to have with him. And when she got back to civilization, she’d find out who messed with the plane—and thus murdered poor Rutland. She’d see that the guilty were punished and that her father’s men came for the dead guide, that his remains got the formal burial ceremony he deserved.

Look at it this way, she told herself, as she gauged the rugged upward sweep of craggy land before her. The plane crashing and Rutland dying was about the worst that could have happened. And guess what? It had happened.

The worst was over and she was still breathing.

Right then, something whizzed past her ear so close, it stirred her hair.

So much for the worst being over.

Brit went for her.45 as she dropped to one knee. She had the weapon half drawn when she heard a hiss and a thwack. Something punched her in the left shoulder.

An arrow! Wide-eyed in sickened disbelief, she stared along the shaft, following it to the head, which was buried in layers of fabric. Blood bloomed high on the front of her jacket. She could feel it spreading, warm and wet, under her sweater.

The good news? She felt no pain. Beyond the shock of impact, the wound itself was numb.

Also on the plus side, she wasn’t dead yet.

She scanned the land before her, seeking her attacker—there. Stepping out from behind a big black boulder not fifty feet away. Some guy—way young, seventeen or eighteen, max. Long, tangled gold hair. Rigged out in rawhide leather with a mean-looking crossbow. The crossbow was pointed right at her. But she had her SIG out by then. With some fumbling, as her left hand didn’t seem to be working too well, she levered the safety back—at which time, her left hand went limp. Very weird. But she was dealing with it. Nice thing about the SIG 220. The kick wasn’t all that bad. She could shoot it one-handed. She took aim.

It was a Mexican standoff—until everything started spinning.

Now it was her damn right hand. Something wrong with it, too. It had gone heavy. She couldn’t hold it extended. It fell, nerveless, to her side, the pistol dropping to the rocks.

Well, okay. Now she was dead.

But just before the arrow took flight, as her body gave way and she began a strange, slow, nerveless slide to the ground, she heard a gunshot. Her too-young would-be assassin grunted and jerked back. The arrow meant to pierce her heart went wild.

And Brit was flat on the ground—drugged somehow. From the arrow in her shoulder? Must be. She wasn’t out yet, not exactly, but hovering in some hazy, halfway place between waking and nothingness.

She lay on the rocks, the wind whistling overhead. She could see that hawk she’d heard before. It soared high up there, in the distant, cold blue yonder, dark wings spread against the sky.

Footsteps came crunching toward her across the rocks. A man was bending over her. An angular, arresting face. Deep-set, hypnotic gray-green eyes. She knew him from the pictures that sweet old Medwyn had made a special point of showing her.

He was Medwyn’s only son, Eric Greyfell, the one she’d come to see.

And there. At Greyfell’s side. Another. All in black. His face hidden behind a smooth black leather mask.

The things you see when you’re probably dying…

And her eyes refused to stay open any longer. They drifted slowly shut.

There was silence.