Free Scott Free by John Gilstrap Page A

please.” She donned a headset with a boom mike and stepped behind the camera, disappearing in the glare of the lights.
    After a brief pause where nothing seemed to move, Sherry’s earpiece popped to life, and she was listening to the Today show. A satiny smooth voice was in the process of introducing the segment when Molly’s voice boomed, “Okay, Doc, stand by. We’re ready to go in five, four, three…”
     
    S COTT FELT LIKE HE’D BEEN BEATEN . Every muscle, every joint screamed a dissonant chorus, with his ankle playing the role of lead singer in the newest boy band, Scott O’Toole and the Agonies.
    But at least he’d lived through the night. What were the chances of that? How about a thousand to one? Nobody would have touched that bet. Stack a night of sure hypothermia on top of surviving a plane crash, and you might as well hand over your dollar to the lottery.
    According to his wristwatch, it was nearly eight in the morning. He’d slept for a solid six hours—about what he got at home during school. During the night, though, his shelter seemed to have shrunk. It was like being in a grave.
    That was the thought that drove him back outside.
    The rescuers would come today. He knew it as surely as he knew his name. He’d never held much hope that people would come looking for him last night, not with the storm raging the way it had been. Now that it was daylight, though, even though the snow continued to fall, he figured that the search teams would find the margin of safety they’d need to do their jobs. He expected them to come by air, but he’d say yes to a dog sled if that was all they had to offer. He was ready to be warm again.
    Outside the shelter now, Scott surveyed his surroundings, wincing against injuries he swore to God he didn’t have last night. His neck and his back hurt, his fingers throbbed, and his ankle hurt all the way up to his knee. That didn’t even count the six thousand bruises that had to be covering every inch of flesh beneath his clothes.
    “I feel like I yelled ‘redneck’ in a biker bar,” he mused aloud. The image made him smile, and even the smile hurt.
    Everything looked so much smaller in the daytime. Distances that had seemed impossibly far last night now showed themselves for what they really were. The whole crash site, including the wrecked Cessna and the pitiful shelter Scott had built didn’t cover a circle more than a hundred feet in diameter. Last night, he’d have sworn that it was twice that large. Maybe more. That’s what happened when every step through the deep snow yielded such little distance.
    Even the twisted remains of the airplane itself seemed smaller. The unrelenting snowfall had blunted every edge and rounded every corner. If he hadn’t known that wreckage lay under all that powder, he’d have thought maybe it was a strange rock outcropping. Okay, a very strange outcropping with flashes of blue and red paint.
    Still, if he’d just been wandering by this spot, not expecting to find anything, he wasn’t at all sure he’d have seen it.
    The thought froze his insides.
    Standing there in the hip-deep snow, he arched his back and looked straight up. Through the swirling snow, the lead-colored sky appeared only as tiny patches of gray, peeking through an unrelenting canopy of frosted green, the arms of countless towering firs stretching forever toward the sky.
    Oh, my God, we’re invisible .
    He could hardly see the wreckage from the ground, for crying out loud—from close enough to spit on it. How the hell could anyone see them from the air? What were these trees, a hundred years old? Five hundred? God only knew how many secrets they’d concealed from the air.
    Stop it, he commanded himself. You’re panicking.
    Damn straight, I’m panicking. Facts were facts, and no lies he told himself were going to thin out these trees.
    Maybe they’re all torn up from the crash .
    That was always a possibility, wasn’t it? When something as big as an