Free Flying Home by Mary Anne Wilson

out of those clothes.”
    He started to move, then seemed to collapse against the seat. “In a minute,” he said hoarsely.
    “What’s wrong?” Immediately, she felt stupid for even asking that when so much was obviously awry.
    “Nothing.”
    The answer was as bad as her question. “Don’t lie to me,” she said, meaning it. “What’s going on out there?”
    “A storm,” he murmured, his eyes still closed.
    “The plane, what did you find?” she asked impatiently.
    He didn’t answer right away and she couldn’t see his face too clearly with the screens all black and the night sky. The floor lights seemed about as substantial as a flickering candle. “What did you find out there?” she repeated, her nerves getting rawer by the second.
    He turned to her and even in the dimness, when his dark eyes met hers, she felt the power of a connection. However, the next words that came from his lips sent her heart plummeting.
    “Do you want the good news, or the bad news first?”
    * * *
    W HEN M ERRY SAID SOFTLY , “Okay, the good,” Gage hated what he had to tell her, but that didn’t stop him. To work together to survive, she had to know everything.
    “The good news is...there’s no fire, no fuel leaks, we might be able to get some heat in here, and we ended six feet short of one of the biggest fir trees I’ve ever seen.” He couldn’t even describe to her what he’d felt when he’d discovered how close they’d come to colliding with the huge pine.
    As she pressed back against the door behind her, she asked hesitantly, “The bad?”
    He took a deep breath and regretted walking around the plane in the heavy snow. It had taken its toll on him. His ribs were tight and sore and every time he moved, he had pain. “The plane is inoperable, one wing is shredded mess, the belly is ripped up, and we’re pretty much being buried by the snow.”
    He could see her processing the information. “Okay. So, for sure you can’t fix it?”
    “No, it’s done for.”
    She was clasping and unclasping her hands. “What can we do? There has to be something we can do. That you can do. You know planes. This is your plane...you have to know it and what to do with it.”
    He let her go on while he found the seat adjustment lever. Holding his breath, he pulled on it to slowly lower the back of his seat into a reclining position. The pain was worse, and he had almost reached his maximum limit. There was some relief from changing the chair’s angle, however, and he welcomed it. “We will figure this out,” he murmured, closing his eyes again. “Meanwhile, you said there were pain pills in the kit. Could you hand me some, then maybe I can get us a little heat in here.”
    “A headache?” she asked.
    “Partly,” he hedged.
    He heard her rummaging around in the first-aid kit. “It says the dosage is two pills.”
    “One.” He didn’t want to have his thinking compromised.
    He saw a single white pill on her palm, quivering a bit. He slowly reached for the medication. “There’s bottled water under the seat where the first-aid kit came from.”
    She moved quickly, and came back with a bottle of water. He tossed the pill into his mouth, and then washed it down. “Thanks,” he murmured, settling back in the seat again. But as soon as he did, he started to shiver again.
    “Heat, you said something about getting heat in here.”
    “Yes, I think we can do it, but all it means is we can take the edge off the cold. No raging heat.”
    “Whatever,” she said. “Just do whatever you need to do. Or tell me what to do. The sooner you get out of those cold, wet clothes, the better you’ll feel.”
    She was right. His clothes and boots were damp and heavy. The shivering wasn’t going to stop until they were gone. “The heater. It’s there.” He motioned to a spot below the main control panel for it. “It might work. I undid the main electric, but I think I remember the sales man telling me it has an emergency setting that