Debris was scattered all up the glide slope: chunks of twisted metal, torn wiring, broken limbs. If the wiring was in pieces long enough to be useful, he picked it up, wound it into coils, and stuck it in his pocket. He found a bent wing strut, then the twisted and crumpled door from the pilot’s side. Looking at the damage, he could only think that he’d got off easy with a concussion and a gash on his head. Off to the side he could make out a round shape that had to be one of the tires, covered with snow.
He reached a tree that looked as if it had been struck by lightning, with the bark blown off and limbs broken, except the gash in the wood was new. The damage was about twenty, twenty-five feet up the tree. He looked around and saw small pieces of debris but nothing large enough to have been the wing.
He climbed higher, curiosity driving him, but found nothing. Finally the cold got to him, forced him to turn back. He was feeling a little breathless and shaky, too, which wasn’t unexpected considering how much blood he’d lost. The only good thing about being too hurt to move was that the time spent had let him adjust to the altitude.
He paused a moment to orient himself. He was above and to the left of the crash site, with their little shelter lying just uphill and to the right of the site. Bailey had yet to reemerge, so she was still inside with those premoistened wipes of hers, doing away with b.o. and the sticky residue of fever-sweat. He grinned, wondering if she would come rushing out without all her clothes if he yelled for help. She might, but then she’d kill him, so he refrained. He’d see her naked, but all in good time.
His gaze swept past the shelter, up the mountain, looking for the summit—
—and saw the wing, about forty yards away.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. He’d been looking on the left side of the wreckage for the wing; he must have assumed that because it was the left wing, it would have landed on the left side of the site, because he couldn’t remember actually giving the location any thought beyond locating where it had struck the tree. Instead, when it was torn off, the wing had flipped up and over, coming down on the right side. It was, in fact, almost directly behind the shelter, but farther back than they had ventured.
Cautiously he worked his way over to it. By the time he reached it he was seriously tired, but breathing fairly easy.
Unimaginable forces were at work in a crash. Metal was twisted and bent as if it were made of flimsy cloth, rivets popped, nuts and bolts sheared as cleanly as if they had been cut. The wing had been bent in two by the force with which it struck the tree, the metal tearing open along the stress line. He could see the framework, the yards and yards of electrical wiring hanging from where the wing had attached to the plane, the cables, the ruptured fuel tank.
Something that looked like a deflated balloon, hanging out of the ruptured tank, caught his attention.
He stood there, staring at it, the back of his neck prickling with the sudden awareness of danger. Fury swept over him, a rage so powerful his vision misted over with a red haze.
There hadn’t been a mechanical malfunction. The plane had been sabotaged.
20
CAM WASN’T IN SIGHT WHEN BAILEY CRAWLED OUT OF the shelter. She was as clean as she could get without having a real bath and she felt a little shaky, but immensely better. She still had a headache, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as it’d been for the past two days. With the fever finally broken, the only places she ached were where she was bruised. The dizziness and nausea weren’t completely gone, and she definitely felt weak from the combination of fever and lack of food. Overall, though, she could feel a vast improvement in her physical condition.
“Cam?” she called. There was no answer, and a tingle of worry trickled down her spine. He was too weak to go traipsing off on his own. What if he’d fallen? Alarmed, she followed his footprints to the plane, then saw where he’d gone around it. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. “Cam!” she called again, louder this time. “Cam!”
“I’m up here.”
His voice came from farther up the slope. She turned and caught a glimpse of him through the trees, working his way down.
“What are you doing up there?”
“Looking for the wing.”
What difference did it make where the wing was? It wasn’t as if he could reattach it to the plane and fly them out of here. Maybe it was a pilot thing, wanting to know where all the parts were. What concerned her was that he’d gone so far from the camp, alone, in his weakened condition—and wearing dress shoes. His legs would be soaked to the knees, and his feet would be icy.
Annoyed, she started up the steep slope to meet him—partly to give him assistance if he needed it, but partly so she could get started blasting him for his carelessness. Her annoyance grew with every step, because each one of them was difficult; she had to hold on to trees, practically crawl over rocks, and once she stepped into a hidden hole and one leg sank thigh-deep into snow. She yelped in shock, then said, “Damn it!”
“What happened?” Cam asked sharply. He was working his way around a rocky outcropping and was currently out of sight.
“I stepped in a hole,” she called back, scowling in his direction even though he couldn’t see her expression. She pulled herself out of the hole and brushed the snow from her pants. Some of it had gotten down into her hiking boot; she could feel the iciness spreading on her leg. She pulled the sock off her right hand and began digging under the top of the boot, removing the remaining snow before she got even more wet.
Cam stepped around the rock; he was using the trees as handholds, just as she was. “Did you twist your ankle?”