her sister slept. “I hope she can handle it.”
“She’s my top priority,” Chase said flatly. “Cancer?”
Rory nodded. “Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. NHL for short. She hasn’t got a lot of reserves left.”
“I can see that. We’ll keep her warm and fed if I have to light a fire in the aisle, okay?”
“I’m not sure going that far would help anyone.” But for the first time she met his gaze, truly met it, and felt a pleasant, astonishing shock. It wasn’t because those gunmetal eyes for the first time looked gentle, though. No, it was something else, something that heated places she was ashamed to even be aware of at such a time.
A sexual reaction at a time like this? She almost wanted to hang her head until a quiet voice in the back of her mind reminded her that adrenaline, shock and danger did funny things to a person. Life asserted itself in the most primitive way imaginable.
Plus, she was dependent on this guy. It was probably a cavewoman response, nothing more. At the same time, it felt good, shocking though it was, so she just let it be. Something in her life needed to feel good.
But it also put her on guard. She couldn’t afford to lose her mental footing now—most especially now—and not to a primitive impulse to forget all sense and escape into a few moments of hot pleasure.
“What do you do?” Chase’s question shocked her out of her internal dissection.
“What? Why?”
“I’m just wondering if you bring any additional skills to the table here. Yuma and I are trained in survival, and he’s a huge advantage for us in that he lived in these mountains during weather like this, without so much as a cabin. Wendy’s a nurse and can help take care of your sister. So what do you do?”
For the first time in her life, Rory was embarrassed to admit the truth. “I’m a petroleum geologist. I know about finding oil, and I know about drilling for it. The closest I’ve ever come to survival conditions was when I told the men working for me to stop drilling because they were going to hit a pocket of natural gas, and they didn’t listen. And it wasn’t my survival that was at stake.”
Chase nodded, but didn’t look scornful. Instead, all he said was, “You probably know more than you think.”
“Well, I do know the air is getting stale in here and apparently you have to open the door to let in fresh, and that cools us down, too.”
He nodded. “We’re in a fairly airtight tube. That has advantages and disadvantages, obviously. Something I need to work on.”
“And the beacon?”
“Something else I need to work on. But that’s not all, Ms. Campbell.”
“Call me Rory, please.” Formality felt utterly awkward right now.
“I’m Chase then. Anyway, an emergency beacon works great when someone’s looking for it. Assuming, of course, it’s one of the things on this plane that’s still working, and little enough is.”
Rory felt her chest tighten with anger and something approaching despair. She had only one goal right now: get Cait into that trial before it was too late. So, of course, everything possible had gone wrong. Listening to Chase, it was hard to remember they were lucky the plane had come down reasonably intact and that no one was injured. Or maybe not just lucky. Maybe she needed to acknowledge this man’s piloting expertise. But she wasn’t ready to do that. Not with every new bit of information hitting her like a body blow.
Chase continued, his tone quietly emphatic, as if he were determined to make her understand. “Nobody’s looking for us right now because of the storm, and we’ve got an additional complication … we’re down in the mountains. That limits range. I don’t have a satellite downlink, either, maybe because of the storm, but GPS is down, so that means the beacon can’t transmit our location. And with every minute we’re getting buried deeper in snow. I doubt the trail left by our slide along the mountain is going to be visible for long, if it even still is.”
Her heart knocked uncomfortably. “So we’re invisible.”
“Right now, yes, and we’re also inaccessible, so we need to conserve everything we can. After the storm passes, we might get satellite back, but I’m not going to keep trying until after the storm because I need to preserve what batteries I’ve got. I’ll work on checking the beacon. With any luck it’s still working and will work for days.”
“And after the storm?” she asked. “I can’t just sit here waiting indefinitely for rescue. My sister … my sister only has four days of medicine.”
His answer was quiet. “I understand. Believe me. I understand.” Then he dropped another bomb. “I’m going to have to turn off the emergency lighting. That’s running on batteries, too.”
It was already dark in the plane. And now it was going to get even darker. Rory suppressed a shudder and tried to find the steel will that had helped her rise in what was most definitely a man’s world.
Right now, however, it had deserted her. All she could do was look toward the back of the plane and her sick, dying sister, and wonder if she was going to fail Cait.
All because she’d tried to spare Cait a fatiguing, uncomfortable commercial flight. All because she’d wanted to get Cait to the hospital the fastest way possible.
Maybe sometimes fate just wouldn’t let you take charge.
Chase watched the expressions play over Rory’s face as she absorbed the bad news. It took real effort to read her, as if she practiced keeping a straight face, but her guard seemed to be down at the moment. She truly worried about her sister, of that he had no doubt, and her acceptance of his risk assessments suggested that she wasn’t one who argued for the sake of argument. Once she had accepted that someone knew what he was doing, she didn’t waste energy fighting it.
That made her fairly unique in his experience. But no less troublesome, because she really was a rare beauty, though she did nothing to enhance her looks. Not even a smidgeon of makeup highlighted her eyes, lips or cheeks. Nor did she need them. And those bright blue eyes of hers appealed to him at a deeper level than thought. A level he told himself he couldn’t afford to pay attention to right now. Rescuing passengers and indulging in passions couldn’t possibly mix well. Besides, as he ought to know by now, women didn’t seem to like him for very long.
He shook himself free of reverie and looked at Yuma. “You said something about the wind when we were outside.”
“Yeah,” Yuma said. “We need to get ready to build that fire. The wind won’t entirely stop, but it will change direction after sunset. It always does in these mountains, even in a storm. I don’t know why that is, but it’ll get calmer for a while and we need to be ready to take advantage of it. Ideally, we should try to make a firebox with metal, if we can find enough in here.”
“We can,” Chase said firmly. “The galley doors are aluminum. And there are other things, too.”
“Good. Let me get one more cup of that coffee before we go out again. Damn, I’d forgotten how cold this mountain can get.”
Chase saw Wendy lay her hand on Yuma’s forearm, and thought again about how hard this could turn out to be for the man. Not just the plane crash, but all the resurrected memories of his time in these mountains, hiding from the demons of war that wouldn’t leave him alone.
The only solution for any of them right now was to keep busy, to feel that they were accomplishing something. First rule: Leave no room for despair. Paralysis would accomplish nothing, and despair could be a killer.
“Okay,” he said briskly. “Let’s see about making that firebox. A hot meal would do us all some good.” He noted that Rory went first to check on her sister. Understandable. Unfortunately, the fact that she looked more worried when she emerged concerned him.
“Is she too cold?” he asked.