Up Close and Dangerous (6 page)

The copilot’s window was hinged. If she could push it open—Action followed hard on the heels of the thought, but the frame was buckled just enough that the window hinge didn’t work, and she couldn’t get herself braced to apply any leverage to it. In frustration she lifted her fist and used the side of it to pound the window, which accomplished nothing except making her hand hurt.

“Damn it, damn it,
damn it
!” She blew out a frustrated breath. If she couldn’t open the window, she likely wouldn’t be able to open the door. “On the other hand,” she said out loud to herself, “why am I wasting time with the window when I need the
door
open?” If she could open the door, she wouldn’t need to open the window.

She felt as if she were missing several obvious points, that her brain was working at only half speed, but she was doing the best she could under the circumstances. Her entire body felt as if she’d been severely beaten, her head ached, and her arm was bleeding. She would think of things when she thought of them, and anyone who didn’t like it could take a hike.

Take a hike. Very funny. Ha ha. And there was no one here to like or not like her decisions—other than Justice, and he was in no condition to comment—so her little pity party was wasted.

Legs. Legs were much stronger than arms, and she was stronger than most women thanks to all those hours of working out. She could lift four hundred pounds with these legs. She wasn’t a weakling, and she shouldn’t think like one. If the door was stuck, maybe she could push it open with her legs.

Justice’s tall body was in the way, but she thought she could get some leverage. Before she went to all that trouble, though, she leaned around and tugged on the handle to see if the latch would release. She felt resistance, like metal scraping on metal, but she’d expected that and tugged harder. Finally the latch gave, but the door didn’t open. Again, not surprising.

She had to find some way to hold the handle in the release position, or she’d never be able to kick the door open. There was nothing to tie it to, assuming she had anything to tie it
with,
which she didn’t. She’d have to jam something under it, and at the moment she was woefully short of jamming material, too.

Maybe there was something under one of the seats. People stuck things under seats all the time. Stretching, she patted around under each seat. Nothing.

Maybe a sock would do. Peeling off one of her thin trouser socks, she twisted it into a rope and looped it around the handle, twisting again to hold it secure. Squirming around, she folded herself into the copilot’s seat in as tight a tuck as she could manage and braced both feet against the door. The position was incredibly awkward, but using the sock to hold the handle gave her a precious few inches. Straining her shoulder and arm, she pulled up on the sock, once again feeling the protesting metal as it gave. With her other hand she gripped the forward edge of the seat so she wouldn’t simply shove herself backward, accomplishing nothing. “Please,” she whispered, and slowly began pushing. Her thigh muscles tightened; the smaller muscles around her knees turned rock hard as she exerted pressure on them. Her fingers, digging into the edge of the seat, began to protest, and then to slip. Furiously she hung on, and with a final effort did everything she could to straighten her legs.

The door creaked open, her hand slipped off the seat, and she fell backward from the momentum. Quickly she scrambled up, her heart pounding with elation. Yes! Untwisting her sock from the handle, she pulled it back on, then braced her feet against the door and pushed some more, gaining an opening about a foot wide. She could get through that, she thought in triumph, leaning forward to see if there was anything in the way, like a tree or a boulder. She didn’t see any obstructions, so she maneuvered until she was lying on her stomach, then slithered past Justice and, turning on her side, worked her way out the door. Metal scraped her back, her hips, but she made it through and onto the snow-covered ground.

The freezing cold bit through her thin socks. She needed to put on shoes and dry socks, almost immediately, to stave off the danger of frostbite. Her feet would have to wait, though, until she’d seen to Justice.

Examining the opening, she considered Justice’s size. He wouldn’t fit; his chest was probably too deep. She’d have to open the door wider. Taking hold of the edge, she tugged until she’d gained another few inches from the crumpled, protesting metal. That would have to do, she thought, her breathing faster than she liked. At this altitude, she had to be careful and not overexert herself, or she would be asking for a killer case of altitude sickness. She was already sweating a little, and that was dangerous in the cold. She was wearing only a pair of thin, fluid trousers and a silk tank, plus her underwear and the socks, none of which was doing much to keep her warm. She had plenty of clothing in her suitcases, but getting them out would be an effort, and she had to get Justice out first.

Justice groaned again. Remembering how slowly she’d regained her senses, how difficult even the smallest response had been, she began talking to him as she crouched in the open door and reached in, seizing him under the arms. “Justice, try to wake up. I’m going to pull you out of the plane now. I don’t know if you have any broken bones or anything, so you’ll have to let me know if I’m hurting you, okay?”

No response.

Bailey tightened her leg muscles and pushed backward. From her crouched position she couldn’t gain much leverage, but she was pulling him downhill, so gravity helped. When his head and shoulders were through the opening she shifted position until she was more fully under him; he was deadweight, completely limp and unable to help himself, so she’d have to protect his head. She paused a minute to catch her breath, then pulled her knees up, dug her heels into the ground, and pushed herself backward once more, dragging him with her. His weight slid forward and he flopped out of the plane, landing on top of her and pinning her to the icy earth.

Oh, God. She could see his face now, see the horrific cut that began about three inches back in his scalp, angled all the way across his forehead, and ended just above his right eyebrow. She didn’t know much about first aid, but she did know a bad cut on the scalp could result in severe blood loss. The proof of it obscured his features, saturated his shirt and pants.

He weighed a ton. Panting, she wiggled from beneath him and wrestled him onto his back. Her energy was fading fast, and she sat for a moment, her head down as she tried once more to catch her breath. Her feet were in agony, they were so cold, and now her clothes were caked with snow and rapidly becoming wet. The crash itself hadn’t killed her, but the altitude and hypothermia might well do the job pretty soon.

Justice began breathing more heavily, his throat working. Bailey said, “Justice?”

He swallowed, and thickly mumbled, “What th’ fuck?”

She gave a quick, breathless, laugh. Their situation wasn’t any less dire, but at least he was regaining consciousness. “The plane crashed. We’re both alive, but you have a bad cut on your head and I need to stop the bleeding.” Slowly she got to her knees and reached into the cockpit, fumbling for her one shoe and her jacket. She was freezing, but even though the jacket was thin it was better than nothing. She started to put it on, then stopped, and drew her arm out. Instead she turned one sleeve so she could attack the seam, and began tugging at it. She needed something she could use as a pad to place over the cut and apply pressure, and this was all she had.

He coughed, and said something else. She paused. She hadn’t understood everything he’d said, but part of it had sounded like “first-aid kit.”

She leaned over him. “What? I didn’t understand. Is there a first-aid kit?”

He swallowed again. He hadn’t yet opened his eyes, but he was winning the war against unconsciousness. “Glove box,” he mumbled.

Thank God! A first-aid kit would be a lifesaver—if she could open the glove box—she thought. She crouched down and wriggled her way back inside the open door. The glove box was in front of the copilot’s seat. Slipping her fingers under the latch, she tugged on it, but the glove box wasn’t as cooperative as the door latch had been. She banged it with her cold fist, and tugged some more. Nothing.

She needed something sturdy, with a sharp edge, to pry the box open. She looked around for what felt like the thirtieth time. There should be something in the wreckage she could use, like…like that crowbar held to the lower front edge of the copilot’s seat by a pair of brackets. She stared at it in disbelief. Was she already hallucinating? She blinked, but the crowbar was still there. She touched it, and felt the cold, rough metal. The bar was a short one, just about a foot long, but it was real, and it was just what she needed.

Removing the crowbar from the brackets, she jammed the sharp end in at the middle, where the lock mechanism was, and pushed up. The lid buckled a little, then sprang open.

She grabbed the olive-drab box with the red cross on it, and once more worked her way out. Going down on her knees beside him in the snow, she fumbled with the latches on the box. Why did everything have to have a damn latch? Why couldn’t things just
open
?

His eyes opened, just a slit, and he managed to lift his hand toward his head. Bailey grabbed his wrist. “No, don’t touch it. You’re bleeding a lot, so I have to put pressure on it.”

“Suture,” he rasped, closing his eyes against the blood that seeped into them.

“What?”

He took a few breaths; talking was still difficult. “In the box. Sutures.”

She stared at him, aghast. She could put pressure on the wound. She could clean the cut, she could fashion butterfly bandages from tape to hold the edges of the cut together. She could put salve on it. But he wanted her to
sew him up
?

“Oh, shit!” she blurted.

6

A
RGUING WITH A SEMICONSCIOUS MAN MADE NO SENSE,
but Bailey couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I don’t have any medical training, unless you count watching
ER.
No one in his right mind would want me sewing on him, but, hey, you aren’t in your right mind, are you? You have a head injury. On the theory that it isn’t smart to let someone with possible brain damage make the decisions, I’m going to ignore that suggestion. Besides, I don’t sew.”

“Learn,” he muttered. “Make yourself useful.”

She ground her teeth together. Useful? What did he think she’d been doing while he lolled about unconscious? Did he think he’d made it out of the plane under his own steam? She was wet and freezing because she’d been lying in the snow, pulling him out of the plane. Her hands were turning blue, and she was shaking so hard it would serve him right if she
did
try to sew him up.

The cold made her think: the jacket. She’d forgotten about the jacket, which was even more evidence that shock, or cold, or both, had slowed down her mental processes. She pulled it on, grateful for even that thin protection from the cold, but she was so wet she wasn’t certain anything could get her warm unless she first got dry.

Silently she tore open a pack of sterile pads and placed two of them over the cut on Justice’s head, using her hands to hold them in place and apply pressure. A rough sound of pain rattled in his throat, then he bit it off and lay perfectly still.

She should probably talk to him, she thought, help keep him conscious and focused. “I don’t know what to do first,” she confessed. A fit of convulsive shaking seized her and she stopped talking, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn’t have said a word anyway. When the shaking passed, she concentrated fiercely on holding the sterile pads in place. “I have to stop this bleeding. But we’re in the snow”—another episode of shaking interrupted her—“and I’m so cold and wet I can barely move. You’ll go into shock—”

He took a few breaths, as if gearing himself up for the ordeal of speaking. “Kit,” he finally managed. “Blanket…in bottom of kit.”

The only kit at hand was the first-aid kit. Leaving the pads in place on his head, she began taking things out of the kit and setting them in the open lid. Under everything, neatly folded in a sealed pouch, was one of those thin silver space blankets. Opening the pouch, she shook the blanket open. How much good it would do she didn’t know, having never used one before, but she wasn’t about to question anything she could use as a barrier between them and the cold. She was tempted to wrap it around herself and curl into the tightest ball possible until she felt a little less miserably cold, but he’d lost a lot of blood and needed it more than she did.

Which should she do, put the blanket under him for protection from the snow, or over him to help hold in what body heat he had? Could he warm up at all, lying in the snow? Damn it, she couldn’t think! She’d have to go on instinct. “I’m spreading the blanket beside you,” she said, suiting action to words. “Now I’m going to help you shift onto it, so you won’t be in the snow. You’ll have to help me. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” he said with effort.

“Okay, here we go.” Kneeling on the blanket, she slid her right arm under his neck, seized the front of his belt with her left hand, and lifted. He helped as much as he could, using his feet and his right arm; the biggest help was that he wasn’t deadweight any longer. Straining every muscle, she shifted him so that most of his torso, at least, was lying on the blanket, and decided that was good enough. Quickly she folded the rest of the blanket over him, tucking it in where she could.

Suddenly dizzy and nauseated, she sank to the ground beside him.
Altitude sickness,
she thought. She was almost at the end of her rope. If she pushed herself much harder, she’d find herself lying in the snow, unable to get up, and she’d die before the next morning—probably even before sunset today.

Still, she had to get to their suitcases, put on dry clothing, and lots of it—now. She had to function, or both of them would die.

She schooled herself to take slow, deep breaths to feed her oxygen-hungry body. Slow—that was the key. She should move slowly, when she could, and not let panic lure her into rushing around until she collapsed. That meant she had to plan every move, think through what she was going to do so no effort was wasted.