Free Darkness by Karen Robards Page A

this, you can’t let them do this, jeez, I trusted you. Oh, man, oh, man—”
    “Shut the fuck up,” Cal snapped over his shoulder at him, and turned his attention back to the door.
    Feet planted wide apart to try to counteract the plane’s jolting, Cal inserted the tiny screwdriver back inside the broken handle. Bracing a shoulder against the door in an effort to keep himself reasonably steady, he probed the lock.
    “Damn it, Cal, leave it the hell alone,” Ezra boomed at him. Not over the intercom. From the sound of his voice, Cal could tell that he was standing just on the other side of the door.
    “If you think there won’t be blowback for this, you’re a goddamned moron,” Cal roared, manipulating the screwdriver. The blade connected with what he was almost sure was the latch—
    “Get away from the fucking door,” Ezra roared back.
    Cal turned his wrist, jiggled the screwdriver, heard a click, knew he had it.
    Bang!
    Something hit him in the gut with the force of a lightning bolt. Pain blasted through his system, blowtorching his insides, obliterating everything except mushrooming agony. Clapping both hands to its source, which was low on his left side, Cal staggered backward, past Rudy, who was rising to his feet, shrieking as he watched. Flickering lightning cast weird shadows over everything. The plane bounced over the rough air currents like a rock on a pond. Gasping, Cal fell heavily against the wall. As he started sliding down it, as he felt the warm stickiness of his blood bubbling up between his fingers, Ezra yanked the door open and stepped through it. Behind him, Cal could see into the cockpit, see Hendricks at the controls.
    “I told you to stand down.” Ezra’s voice was tight. He held a gun in his hand.
    That was when Cal understood that he’d been shot. Ezra had shot him.
    Their eyes met.
    “You fucking—” Cal broke off to launch himself at Ezra with murderous force. Taken by surprise, Ezra dropped the gun and stumbled back as Cal cannoned into him, knocking him into Hendricks, who was thrown from his chair. Hendricks scrambled around on the steeply tilting floor after the gun, Cal grappled with Ezra, and Ezra got his legs bunched against his chest and mule-kicked Cal, sending him flying backward into the cabin to slam against the wall.
    Ezra was charging him, barreling through the cockpit door with a roar, when the front of the plane blew up. The cockpit, the first small section of cabin, the first two leather seats, Hendricks, Ezra, Rudy—disintegrated before his eyes.
    Boom! Gone.
    A split second later there was nothing around him but air. He would have screamed, but it was as if he’d been sucked into a vacuum. There is no air . He dropped like a brick, plummeting through thunder and lightning and dark, angry clouds.
    Until he slammed into something that felt like concrete and blacked out.
    When he woke up, he was drowning in an icy sea. As he struggled to not die, hope had appeared in front of him in the guise of a woman in an orange boat.
    Now it seemed like hope had deserted him. For sure the woman had.
    He’d be damned if he was going to just lie on this frozen beach and die.
    There was Harley. And his mission.
    He needed just a minute . . .
    In his head, just as he was about to lose consciousness, he once again heard Ezra say of Rudy, “We got people waiting for him on the ground.”
    The harrowing thought he took with him into the dark was: this place, this island, was the only ground around.

Chapter Eight
    G et up.” Crouching beside him, Gina grabbed his upper arm and shook it. His bicep was iron hard . . . his eyes were closed. His face had a grayish pallor that made him look dead. Icy spray broke over them both even as she shook him again. The waves were getting terrifyingly close. “ Get up! ”
    His eyes opened.
    “The tide’s coming in. You’ll drown if you stay here.” Her voice was sharp. “You have to get up and walk. We have to go .”
    The wind