Gray, Ginna (5 page)

Too nervous to carry on a conversation, all Lauren could manage
was a soft, "Mmm." Taking the hint, Agent Owens fell silent.

After a nerve-racking wait, Sam returned and climbed back into the
car. "Everything is go. Drive over to that green-and-white plane and park
beside it with the passenger side next to the steps. Get as close as you can.
Then you grab the bags while I get Miss Brownley inside."

"You got it."

As the car bumped over the uneven ground the sound of engine noise
grew steadily louder, until it was almost deafening. Lauren realized that the
plane they were about to board was waiting for them with the engines running.

The instant the car stopped Sam bailed out and jerked open the
rear door.

"C'mon, move it."

Lauren felt exposed when he snatched the blanket off of her, but
before she could protest he grasped her arm, hauled her out of the car and
bundled her up the steps and into the plane.

The pilot sitting at the controls looked to be in his fifties. He
turned around and flashed her a reassuring grin and a wave.

"That's Bob Halloran!" Sam yelled over the roar of the
engines. "He's retired FBI and an old friend of mine, so you're in good
hands! Take a seat and buckle up. We're already cleared for takeoff. Soon as we
load our gear we're outta here."

He moved back to the open door, and caught the duffle bags that
Agent Owens tossed to him. Then the younger man hurried up the steps, pulled
them up and slammed the door closed behind him.

"Let's get this crate off the ground!" Sam yelled as he
and Dave Owens made their way to the front of the plane.

Minutes later, Lauren stared out the window and watched the
airstrip drop away. The plane banked and began a sharp climb, heading over the
mountains to the west. Behind them, Denver's sprawl grew steadily smaller,
fading into nothing more than a smudge on the pristine snow, then disappearing
altogether.

Only then did Lauren's heartbeat slow to normal. She leaned her
forehead against the cold window glass and closed her eyes. They had made it.
She had gotten away.

Sighing, she settled back in her seat and willed her tense muscles
to relax.

The plane was a six-seater—a noisy, bumpy little craft, so small
that neither Agents Rawlins nor Owens could stand up straight inside it.
Normally Lauren was frightened of planes, especially small ones, but at the
moment all she could feel was relief.

She stared at the back of Sam Rawlins's head and marveled at the
man's calm.

He sat up front beside the pilot. The two men were carrying on a
conversation of sorts, though they had to shout to make themselves heard over
the engine noise—something about a hunting trip they had taken together the
previous year, but Lauren wasn't paying much attention. At least he was talking
with his friend. That was more than he had done with her. After whisking her
out of the police station, he hadn't said a word to her the entire drive.

Not that she minded. Sam Rawlins made her uneasy. Just the thought
of spending the next few weeks with him sent a shiver down her spine. What on
earth would they talk about? Or perhaps they wouldn't talk at all. Maybe he
would simply go about his business and give her the silent treatment, as he'd
been doing all morning. She didn't know which would be worse.

The way her luck was running, she supposed she shouldn't be
surprised that she'd gotten stuck with this taciturn man. If she had to hide
out for months with a bodyguard, God alone knew where, why couldn't it have
been someone pleasant...someone like that nice Agent Berringer?

At least Bob Owens would be with them. She glanced at the man
sitting behind the pilot, hanging on every word of the conversation between the
two older men. He was young, clearly a rookie, and he seemed eager to please
Agent Rawlins. Still...he had been polite and pleasant to her.

Lauren leaned her head against the back of the seat and sighed.
She felt as though she were trapped in a nightmare and couldn't wake up. Only
two years ago she had been a rising concert star with a bright future ahead of
her. She'd had a huge talent, a handsome fiancé whom she had thought loved her,
who also managed her career, and plenty of money. Life had been wonderful. Then
almost overnight her money, her future, and her fiancé were gone.

These days, during the week she worked for a pitiable wage as a
college music instructor and played piano in a lounge on weekends. Or she
had—until last night. Now she was on the run from murdering gangsters with a
hard man who looked at her as though she were something he'd found under a
rock.

If this was a nightmare, she prayed she would wake up soon.

Now that her situation wasn't quite so urgent, stress and
exhaustion were taking their toll. Her scraped palms and knee still stung. Her
eyes felt gritty and she was stiff and sore and achy all over.

In addition, her body felt heavy with fatigue, as though each cell
were weighted with lead. Hardly surprising, she thought, yawning. Except for
that restless doze she'd had at the police station, she hadn't slept in over
twenty-four hours.

"What? What is it?" Lauren sat up with a start, her
heart pounding. Disoriented and groggy, she didn't know where she was or how
she'd gotten there. Her gaze darted around the interior of the small plane as
panic gushed up inside her.

Then she spotted Sam Rawlins, and it all came rushing back.
Uttering a low moan, she put her hand over her thundering heart and slumped
back against the seat.

Her relief didn't last long. The next instant Lauren realized what
it was that had jerked her out of a sound sleep. The drone of one of the
plane's engines had been replaced with an erratic sputtering and coughing.

Gripping the seat arms, Lauren sat forward and yelled at the three
men, "What's making that noise? What's wrong?"

Agent Owens glanced back at her, but the terror in his young face
did nothing to ease her mind.

Sam twisted around in his seat and shouted, "We've developed
engine trouble! Sit tight and keep your seat belt on!"

Engine trouble? Lauren's chest suddenly felt as though it were
being squeezed in a vise.

She pressed her face to the side window and looked out, and her
stomach dropped to the vicinity of her knees. They were much lower than she had
expected. The treetops and rocks seemed only a few hundred yards beneath the
plane.

The scenery was spectacular. They were flying over a majestic
mountain range, but there wasn't a sign of civilization anywhere, only what
appeared to be hundreds of miles of jagged peaks and high, fog-shrouded
valleys, buried deep in snow.

"C'mon. C'mon, baby, don't quit on me now, sweetheart!"
the pilot exhorted his aircraft.

Instantly Lauren's attention switched back to the front. The men's
shouts had taken on an urgent quality. Bob Halloran was furiously flipping
switches and checking dials on the cockpit control panel and shouting orders at
Agent Rawlins, who was working like a demon to carry them out. Neither man's
efforts had any effect. The sputtering and coughing grew worse, and the plane
bucked like a rodeo bronc.

Lauren held on tight to the seat arms and fought back a scream.

"We're losing it! Dammit! We're losing it!"

"Losing it? Losing what? What do you mean? What are we
losing?" Lauren shouted, but a glance out the window supplied the answer.
She stared in horror as the right propeller slowed and stopped. "Oh my
God, no! No!"

"How about the other one. Can we hold it?" Sam shouted.

"Not for long!"

Only then did Lauren realize that the erratic noise had not
stopped. The plane's other engine was making the same sickening coughs and
sputters. She leaned over to look out of the window on the other side of the
cabin just in time to see the second propeller come to a stop.

The sudden cessation of noise was stunning. The only sound was the
eerie whistle of wind flowing over the fuselage.

"That's it! We're going down, people!"

"Oh my God!" Dave shrieked.

Sam twisted around and shouted at Lauren, "Pull your seat
belt tight. And put your head down! Do it! Now!"

She didn't hear him. Paralyzed with fear, Lauren stared out the
window at the snowy mountain side rushing up to meet them.

Then Sam was beside her. "Put your head down, dammit! And
brace yourself!" Shoving her parka into her lap, he grasped the back of
her neck and pushed her face into the down-filled coat.

"I see a clearing ahead!" the pilot shouted. "I'm
gonna try for it! Come on, baby. Come on. You can make it. Just a little
farther. Glide! Glide!"

Lauren wanted to scream, but her throat was so tight she couldn't
make a sound. There was just the whistle of the wind and the pilot's desperate
chatter.

"Here it comes! We're gonna hit! Oh, shit! We're gonna clip
the trees! Hang on! Hang on!"

Something scraped the underside of the fuselage, and at once a
series of jolts shook the plane. The repeated crack of splintering wood sounded
like gunfire. Then the world exploded all around them.

The horrible screech of metal rending seemed to go on forever,
like a banshee's wail. Lauren was thrown cruelly against her seat belt and
slung from side to side, bouncing off the bulkhead, then Agent Rawlins, as
struts snapped, and rocks scraped and tore at the plane's underbelly. The plane
bounced and lurched and all around came the terrible sounds of grinding and
crashing and shattering glass.

They slammed to an abrupt stop.

Then there was only silence.

"Lauren? Lauren, are you hurt?"

She remained bent over with her face buried in the parka,
clutching her ankles tight and praying.

Remotely she became aware of fingers pressing into the side of her
neck. "Dammit, woman, answer me! Are you all right?"

"I...I don't know." She was afraid to move and find out.
She couldn't believe they had survived, any of them.

"Sit up and let's see," Sam ordered.

Moving slowly, she obeyed and carefully rotated her head and
tested her arms and legs. Though bruised and battered, everything worked.
Something warm trickled down her temple and when she touched it her fingers
came away covered with blood. She stared at it, shocked.

"You've got a cut on your forehead, but it doesn't look
serious. Nothing seems to be broken. Put on that parka and let's get out of
here. This plane isn't safe."

When Lauren continued to stare at her bloodied fingers, Sam
grasped her shoulders and gave her a shake. "Snap out of it, dammit! Get a
grip! We don't have time for female hysterics."

Lauren blinked at him and nodded, struggling for control.
"I...yes. Yes, of course." While she fumbled into her coat Sam
unbuckled his seat belt and stood up.

"Bob? How're you doing up there?"

He got no answer.

"Bob? Dave?"

Lauren paused in the act of hooking her purse shoulder strap over
her head and looked toward the cockpit. Bob Halloran sat motionless, his head
tipped back at a sharp angle, arms hanging limp on either side of the pilot's
seat. Agent Owens lay across the seat behind Bob, his head and shoulders
hanging out into the aisle. His eyes were open and vacant and he was bleeding
from the nose, ears and eyes.

They had landed on an incline with the nose of the plane buried to
the windshield in a snowdrift. Using the backs of the other seats, Sam pulled
himself up to his friends. He touched the pilot's shoulder, and the man head
lolled to one side.

Sam felt for a pulse. After a moment his jaw tightened. Turning,
he bent over Dave.

"Dammit to hell."

Sam started back down the aisle. On his second step, the plane
wobbled.

Lauren cried out and clutched the seat back in front of her.

"C'mon! Out! Now!"

"But what about Bob and Dave?"

"They're dead."

Lauren caught her breath. Her gaze darted forward to the two men,
and she felt a rush of sadness and pity, and to her shame, gratitude that it
wasn't her who had been killed.

"Will you get a move on! This baby's going over the edge any
second."

She tried, but her legs were so wobbly she couldn't stand. With an
oath, Sam hooked his arm around her waist and hauled her out of the seat.

The movement made the plane shift again and slide a foot or so.
Lauren screamed, but Sam held her tight against his side and kept going. The
exit door was stuck, and he had to release her to shoulder it open. The plane
shuddered and shifted in response. Lauren shrieked and clutched the back of the
last seat, certain they were going to topple down the mountainside at any
second.

The door gave way, and Sam grabbed her again. The belly of the
fuselage was buried up to the bottom of the door, but when they jumped out they
sank in snow to their knees.

Lauren would have fallen if Sam hadn't held her. He half carried,
half dragged her a few feet away from the wreck. When they were clear he
dropped her as though she were a sack of potatoes, and Lauren collapsed onto
her stomach, her face buried in the snow.

"Stay here," he snapped.

Sputtering and wiping snow from her face, she straggled to her
knees. Looking over her shoulder, she saw him heading back toward the plane.
"Where are you going?"

Bogged in the deep snow, movement was awkward. By the time she
managed to scramble to her feet Sam was climbing back aboard the plane.
"Wait! What are you doing?"

"I have to get some things."

"Are you crazy? You'll be killed! Get out of there! Come
back!"

He paid no attention to her. The plane, or what was left of it,
rocked under his weight. Lauren made a strangled sound and put her gloved hand
over her mouth. She stared in horror at the empty doorway when he disappeared
inside the wreck.

She couldn't believe it. The idiot was going to be killed.

The wind whistled around her, and something wet and cold touched
her face. She looked up and realized it had started to snow.

Terrified, she hugged her arms around her middle and looked at the
fearsome beauty that surrounded her. Snow-covered mountains stretched away in
every direction. Rugged. Stark. Unforgiving.

The jagged peaks stabbed the pewter sky, the taller ones piercing
the low-hanging clouds. Everything was gray and cold and silent. Eerie fog rose
from the valleys like ghosts.

To one side, a swath of broken treetops marked the path of their
crash landing, the raw, splintered trunks an ugly scar on the pristine
landscape.

Trembling, Lauren pressed her lips together and hugged herself
tighter. If Sam went over the edge in the plane she would be alone in this
frozen wilderness. She wouldn't last the night.

Sam reappeared in the door of the plane and tossed out two duffle
bags. "Grab these and pull them out of the way!" he shouted.

Wading through the deep snow, Lauren hurried forward to do as he
instructed. Sam disappeared again. Just as she grabbed the straps on the bags a
screeching rent the air and the plane started a backward slide.

She dropped the bags and screamed. Horrified, she watched the
twisted fuselage bump down the incline, hit a rocky outcropping and hang there
for a few seconds, rocking, then tumble over the edge.

At the last instant a bag and another object flew out of the door
and Sam leaped out after them.

The mountains echoed with the harsh sounds of the plane bumping
and crashing down the slope. Then there was a horrendous explosion, and a
fireball and plume of dark smoke mushroomed upward.

Crying hysterically, Lauren plowed her way through the snow to get
to Sam. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

He picked himself up and dusted the snow off his parka.
"Yeah. I'm okay."

He looked over the ledge and so did Lauren. About two hundred feet
below, the crumpled fuselage was enveloped in flames. "That was close,
though."

Lauren didn't understand how he could be so calm. She stared down
at the fiery wreck, and suddenly it was all too much. All the terror and
helplessness and worry she had experienced in the last twelve hours came
rushing up to the surface.

With an anguished cry, she whirled around and began to pummel
Sam's chest.

"Hey! Cut that out! What the hell's the matter with
you?"

"This is all your fault. You were supposed to protect me!
Instead I was nearly killed! Again! Now we're going to die out here in this
frozen wilderness. I should never have trusted you. You're a mean, cold,
thoroughly unpleasant man. And you scared me half to death!"

Sam finally managed to grasp her flailing hands and haul her up
tight against his chest. The fog of their breaths mingled as he put his face
close to hers and growled. "Listen to me.
Listen!
We are
not
going
to die. So
shut up!"

"How can you say that? We're in the middle of nowhere with no
provisions and no way to get out."

"We have provisions. We have Bob's survival pack and our
gear. That's what I went back in for. And we
are
going to get out."

"How? Just how are we going to do that?"

"We're going to walk out."

"Have you lost your mind? You don't even know where we
are."

"I know in a general sense. That's all we need."

He released her, and she stumbled back and landed on her rear. He
picked up the backpack and put it on, then retrieved a rifle from a snowbank
and slung the strap over his shoulder. "C'mon. Let's get the other bags.
We need to get going."

"Where? There's no place
to
go?"

"We have to find shelter." He jerked his head toward the
northwest. "There's a blizzard coming."

Only then did Lauren notice that it was snowing harder and the low
clouds rolling in were a dark, angry color.

Without waiting for her, Sam strode away and scooped up the two
duffle bags. He knelt in the snow and began transferring the contents of one
bag into the other.

"What are you doing?" Lauren demanded, struggling to her
feet.

"Consolidating. We can't carry both bags so I'm sorting out
just the clothes and essentials we need and putting them into one bag."

The thought of her clothing and intimate toiletries packed in with
this man's did not thrill Lauren, but she had more urgent things to worry
about.

"There, that should hold us," Sam announced, rising to
his feet. He dusted the snow off his pants and started walking away. "You
carry the duffle," he ordered over his shoulder. "I'll carry the
pack."

Lauren wanted to object to his tone, but a glance at the dark line
of clouds changed her mind. Stopping just long enough to retrieve the duffle,
she slung it over her shoulder—and almost toppled over from the weight.
Determinedly she straightened and adjusted the bag's strap and scrambled after
him.

"I still think you're a horrible man," she muttered.

"Yeah, well, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't
expect me to lose any sleep over it. And keep up."

"I thought if you survived a plane crash you were supposed to
stay by the wreck and wait for rescue," she said to his back. "I'm
sure I read that somewhere."

"The plane is a bonfire at the bottom of a steep slope. You'd
break your neck getting down there. Besides, there won't be any rescue. No one
knows where we were heading."

"No one?" she panted, struggling to keep pace with him.
"Didn't your pilot friend file a flight plan?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of? What does that mean?"

"Let's just say he may have made a mistake, okay?"

"He falsified a flight plan, didn't he?"

"Look at it this way—at least Carlo's thugs don't know where
you are."

"That's small comfort if we end up freezing to death on this
mountainside."

"We're not going to freeze to death."

"Are you kidding? I'm freezing already. My toes feel like ice
cubes."

He stopped so abruptly she almost bumped into him. "Did you
put on the wool socks that were in the sack I gave you?"

"Of course I put them on. I don't usually wear boots without
socks." Actually she'd never worn big clunky hiking boots in her life.

"Both pair?"

"Well...no, but—"

"Dammit! I told you to put on what was in that bag."

"You didn't tell me to put on both pair of socks! How was I
supposed to know to do that? You didn't bother to tell me where you were taking
me, and I certainly had no idea that we were going to crash-land in this frozen
wilderness, now did I?"

"What did you do with the extra pair?"

"I put them in my purse."

"Dig them out and put them on over the others." He
snatched the duffle bag off her shoulder, unzipped it and pawed through the
contents and pulled out another suit of wool long johns. The ones she had on
were of silk and soft against her skin, but these were the thick, scratchy
kind. "Here. While you're at it, put these on over the other pair,"
he said, tossing them to her.

"What?
You mean
here?"
She caught
the long johns reflexively, but held them clutched against her breasts.
"You can't seriously expect me to strip down to my underwear right out
here in the open. In front of you."

"I not only expect it, I'm ordering you to. Besides, I don't
know what you're complaining about. I'm going to do the same thing. The
temperature is dropping fast and I don't know how long it will be before we
find shelter." He shrugged off the backpack and dug through the duffle bag
again and pulled out another pair of long underwear. Shucking out of his parka,
he dropped it on top of the backpack and bent over and started untying the
drawstring that held the canvas tops of his knee-high moccasins snug to his
legs.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? Now get busy. We don't have time to
waste."

He removed one moccasin and propped his socked foot on the duffle.
"Work one leg at a time so you won't get your socks wet," he
cautioned.

Straightening, he took off his vest and dropped it on top of the parka
and went to work on the buttons of his flannel shirt. It soon joined the parka.
When he unfastened his trousers, Lauren quickly looked away, but from the
corner of her eye she saw him remove one leg from the pants, shove it into the
long johns, then back into the pantleg. He pulled his moccasin back on and
pulled up the drawstring and tied it.