Free Breakaway by Nancy Warren Page A

task.
    “Almost there,” Max yelled to her as though he felt her distress. Probably because he shared it.
    She felt herself becoming uncoordinated. Her arms and legs didn’t seem to want to obey her brain.
    She could see the shore of the lake but it didn’t feel as though she was getting any closer. Her body felt heavy, made of lead. She was sinking, just like the plane. She coughed as her mouth filled with water.
    “You can stand!” a voice yelled at her.
    A hand hauled her to her feet. She stumbled, but he was right. She could stand. Max held on to her hand. Half pulled, half dragged her from the water and onto the shore. She flopped onto a sandy patch, gasping, shivering.
    They were alive, which was good. But they were soaking wet and in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.
    Not so good.

8
    C LAIRE WAS HALF passed out on the beach, trying to get her breathing to steady and the shivering to stop.
    Max crawled over and began pulling at her clothing. She tried to slap his hands away. “What are you doing?” She wanted to sound indignant, but she really didn’t have the energy.
    “Need to dry out our clothes while there’s still some sun,” he gasped.
    “Right. Of course.” She tried to unzip her flight jacket but he pushed her unsteady hands away. “Let me.” He said it as though his only wish in life was to unzip her jacket.
    She knew her thoughts were fuzzy, which couldn’t be good, but she had to smile. “You are such a charmer,” she muttered.
    “I didn’t think you’d noticed,” he said, easing the jacket off her shoulders.
    “Oh, I noticed.”
    He laid her jacket on a rocky outcrop. Weighed it down with a stone. She watched him haul his own jacket off and place it beside hers.
    “Now what?” Her teeth were chattering so it was hard to get the words out. “Do you strip us both naked and hold me close to ward off hypothermia?”
    “Much as I’d like to, that’s an old wives’ tale. You keep a cold person warm by feeding them hot drinks and wrapping them in a sleeping bag. If you crawl in naked with them you don’t raise their body temperature, they lower yours.”
    “Oh.” She noticed he was digging into a blue nylon pack and as it sank in, her eyes widened.
    “You went back for the emergency pack?” She’d have shrieked if she had the energy. “That’s why it took you so long to come to the surface.”
    “Figured we probably needed it,” he said reasonably.
    She imagined taking that extra time to grab the pack even as the plane was sinking, and then having to swim to the surface. It was a miracle he’d made it. “You could have drowned.”
    He grinned at her. “But I didn’t. And now we have an emergency pack.” He dug through. “Aha! As I’d hoped.” He pulled out a small silver thermal wrap.
    The entire emergency kit was encased in a thick plastic bag so everything in it was dry. Including the red sleeping bag Max was deftly pulling from its stuff sack. “Well, well. Somebody really went to town. A sleeping bag! And waterproof matches and a pot.” He nodded. “Good. Bottled drinking water and purification tablets.”
    “It doesn’t weigh much and gives a person a better chance of survival.”
    He rolled the sleeping bag out on the soft sand. “Come on,” he said.
    “I can’t get in there with my wet clothes on.”
    “True. Do you need help undressing?”
    “No. Just turn your back.”
    “Claire.”
    “I’m serious.”
    He heaved a long-suffering sigh. Unzipped the bag and then turned his back to her. “Let me know if you need any help,” he said.
    “I won’t.” But it was more difficult than she’d imagined to strip off her wet clothes while her hands were shaking so badly. She knew it wasn’t only the cold making her shake. It was also shock.
    But she wasn’t planning to be a damsel in distress so Max could rescue her. She’d done all right so far.
    She managed to peel the wet clothes off her body. Since she couldn’t put them out to dry without