Brace For Impact

“Have you done any shooting at a range?”

Maddy nibbled on her lower lip again. “No, I’ve always been kind of anti-gun.”

Will’s laugh didn’t hold much humor. Man, he was lucky she hadn’t accidentally pulled that trigger.

“Good thing I do know how to use one,” he said. “I didn’t see any extra magazines in your bag. Did you grab some?”

“No. I didn’t think of it. I hated the idea of going through his pockets. It was all I could do to make myself unsnap his holster and take the gun. He had a duffel bag, too, smaller than mine, but I never found it,” Maddy concluded.

“All right.” Will rose to his feet, not surprised by the stab of pain in his left thigh and hip. It was sharper than usual, probably because he’d climbed a mountain this morning followed by the difficult traverse and downhill scramble to get here. He wasn’t done for the day, though, not even close. “We need to move,” he said. “I’d like to scavenge anything I can from the plane, and I want you tucked out of sight while I’m doing that.”

And verifying the truth of her story, given how wild it was. He didn’t really doubt her, but he wasn’t good at trusting strangers.

“I thought...here...”

He shook his head. “Nope. I spotted you from a quarter mile away. We need to descend to better tree cover.” Her attempt to hide her dismay wasn’t very effective. “I’ll help. I can carry you if I have to.”

Her chin rose. “No. I got here, I can go farther.”

BEING THIS HELPLESS was a humiliating experience. To begin with, she couldn’t even put her own boots on this time, far less tighten the laces and tie them. Either the pain had caught up with her, or the cushioning shock had begun to wear off.

Oh, heavens—would she be able to lower or pull up her pants when she needed to pee?

Prissy, she scolded herself. Well, she came by it naturally. She loved her parents, but they had been older than her friends’ parents, and acted like a much different generation, too. The idea of seeing nature in the rough wouldn’t appeal to them, that was for sure.

She tried not to sound stiff when she thanked Will.

When he boosted her to her feet, she thought for a minute she was going to pass out. She tipped forward to lean against him, her forehead pressed to a broad, solid chest.

“Give it time,” he murmured, his hand—an enormous hand—clasping her upper arm while his other arm came around her back. Maddy knew he wouldn’t let her fall.

Finally, her head quit spinning and she forced herself to straighten, separating from him. “I’m all right.”

They both knew that she wasn’t, but she’d made it this far and she could keep on doing what she needed to.

“All right.” His frowning gaze belied what he’d said. “Tell you what. I’m going to help you down then come back for my pack.”

“I can carry mine—”

“Not a chance.” He closed a zipper on her duffel and swung it over his shoulder. “Now, which way is the crash site?”

Turning her head, Maddy saw rocks and fir trees—or maybe spruce or hemlock, she didn’t know—all set on a precipitous downslope. How on earth had she made it up here? “I...don’t know,” she said after a minute. “I climbed because I thought anyone who came to the crash site would assume I headed down.”

“Good thought,” Will agreed.

“I...don’t know if I came straight up, or...” She couldn’t look at him. His air of competence made her feel more inept. She couldn’t even remember where she’d come from. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” His hand closed gently over hers. “You fell out of the sky. You hit your head and have broken bones. You should be in a hospital getting an MRI. I’m amazed that you were able to get together the supplies you needed and haul yourself up this mountain.”

“Is it a mountain?” She started to turn to look upward, but that made her dizzy again.

“Right here, just a ridge, but that way—” he pointed “—is Elephant Butte and beyond it, Luna Peak, and that way, McMillan Spire and... It doesn’t matter. Mountains everywhere.”

“I saw from the plane.” Just before that terrifying bang.

“Okay, we need to move.”

Maddy wasn’t sure she would have made it any farther without his help. At moments he braced his big booted feet and lifted her down a steep pitch. Occasionally, Will led her on a short traverse, always the same direction, she noticed, but mostly they picked their way straight down.

The trees became larger, at times cutting off her view of the sky. Not that she looked. As she had climbing, she focused on her feet, on the next step she had to make—and on Will’s hand reaching to steady her. Once they slid fifteen feet or so down a stretch of loose rocks, Will controlling her descent as well as he could. Then they went back to using spindly lower branches to clamber down.

When he stopped, she swayed in place.

“This will do,” he said.

Maddy stared dully, taking a minute to see what he had. The trees weren’t quite as stunted as they’d been above, but were still small. What he was urging her toward was a pile of boulders that must have rumbled down the precipitous slope any time from ten years ago to hundreds. The largest rested against another big one, framing an opening that wasn’t quite a cave, but was close enough.

Without a word, she crawled inside, awkward as that was to do without the use of one arm and hand. By now, she hurt so much she had no idea if this was doing more damage. Mostly, she was glad to stop—to crouch like an animal in its burrow until coming out seemed safer.

Will squatted in front of her, arranging her limbs to his liking and nudging her duffel bag into place to serve as a giant pillow.

“I want you to stay low,” he told her. “The rocks will keep you from being seen from above—the air or the ridge above—but if somebody happens to come along in the twenty yards or so below you, they might catch a glimpse. When I get back with my pack, I’ll see what I can find to hide the opening.”

Maddy nodded. “You’ll be able to find me again, won’t you?”

His smile changed his face from rough-hewn and fiercely male to warm and even sexy. “I will. I memorized some landmarks.”

“Okay.”

He reached out unexpectedly to stroke her cheek, really just the brush of his knuckles, before he stood. Two steps, and he was out of sight. She could hear him for a minute or two, no more—and she bit her lip until she tasted blood to keep herself from calling out for him, begging him not to leave her.

She hardly knew him—but somehow she had complete faith that he wouldn’t abandon her.

WILL MOVED AS fast as he could. He didn’t like leaving Maddy alone at all, but they’d need what he had in his pack. Fortunately, the ascent went smoothly, although his hip and thigh protested like the devil. Still, he swung the familiar weight of the pack onto his back, checked to be sure that they hadn’t left so much as a scrap of the packaging that had wrapped the gauze pads, and retraced his steps. Given how he was tiring, he was glad to recover his ice ax to use for support.

This time during the descent he paused several times to scan the forest with his binoculars. Raw wood caught his eye, where it appeared the tops of trees had been sheared off. Yes.

From there, he calculated the route he’d take from Maddy’s hiding place. He wished she was farther from the crash site, but still believed her hiding spot to be nearly ideal.

When he reached the rocks, he got hit by a jolt of alarm. What he could see of her face was slack, colorless but for the bruises that seemed muted in color since he left her. Was her head injury worse than he’d thought, and she’d lapsed into unconsciousness?

But then she let out a heavy sigh and crinkled her nose. She shifted a little as if seeking a more comfortable position.

Asleep. She was only asleep, and no wonder after multiple traumas.

She awakened immediately when he touched her, her instinct to shrink from him.

“You all right?”