“A fire would be nice,” she agreed with just a hint of sarcasm. The only heat source they had was their body heat, which did melt the snow they packed into the mouthwash bottle, just not very fast. “Too bad neither of us packed a box of matches.”
His head came up and his gaze sharpened. He turned and stared at the plane. His entire posture shouted that he’d just remembered something.
“What?” Bailey demanded impatiently, when he didn’t say anything. “What? Don’t tell me you have a box of matches hidden somewhere in that plane, or I swear I’ll take all my clothes away from you.”
He paused, said thoughtfully, “That just might be the most peculiar threat anyone’s ever made to me,” then headed to the plane.
Bailey hurried after him, crunching through the snow. “If you don’t tell me—!”
“There’s nothing to tell you yet. I don’t know if this will work.”
“What will?” she yelled at his back.
“The battery. I might be able to start a fire with the battery, if it hasn’t discharged too much, and if the weather isn’t too cold. For all I know, the battery might be dead. Or damaged.” He began pulling away the limbs that blocked him from the wreckage.
Bailey grabbed a limb and started tugging, too. The propellers hadn’t been turning when they crashed so the trees had suffered less damage than they would have otherwise, but that meant fewer of the limbs were broken, which in turn meant they weren’t easy to move out of the way. Where was a hatchet when she needed one? “You can start a fire with a battery?” she asked, panting, as the limb sprang back into place. She gritted her teeth and attacked again.
“Sure. It produces electricity, and electricity equals heat. That’s simplistic, but if there’s enough juice left in the battery”—he twisted a limb until it snapped, then tossed it aside—“I can connect a strand of this wiring to each of the terminals, then to a piece of wiring that I’ve stripped the insulation from. With luck and enough juice, that’ll heat the uninsulated wire enough that it’ll ignite a piece of paper, or some kindling if we can find any wood that’s dry.”
“We have paper,” she said instantly. “I brought a little notebook, plus a few paperbacks and magazines.”
He paused and slid a glance at her. “Why? One book I could understand, but you were going white-water rafting. I’ve been rafting, so I know how tiring it is. You’d have been too beat to do much reading. And what was the notebook for?”
“Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping.”
“You could’ve fooled me.” He grunted as he grasped another limb and pulled. “You’ve conked out both nights.”
“And these are such ordinary circumstances, aren’t they?” she said sweetly. “I’ve been absolutely bored to sleep.”
He chuckled. “Considering how much we both slept yesterday, the wonder is we slept at all last night.”
“The benefits of being sick and concussed, I guess.”
When they’d moved enough debris that he could get to the battery, he huffed a big sigh of relief. “It looks okay. I was really afraid it wouldn’t be, given how much damage there is back here.”
“Can you get it out?”
He gave a brief shake of his head as he surveyed the bent and twisted metal that partially covered the battery. “No way, not without some metal cutters. But if I can get my hand in here without slicing my fingers off—”
“Let me do it,” she said quickly, moving to his side. “My hands are smaller than yours.”
“And not as strong,” he pointed out, leaning his shoulder past a tree and reaching as far as he could with his right hand. As he did she noticed that his fingernails were blue with cold, and she winced. She knew from experience just how miserable and painful bare hands felt in this cold and wind.
“You need to warm your hands before you get frostbite,” she said.
He made one of those male grunting sounds that could have meant anything from “I agree” to “Stop nagging,” and other than that paid absolutely no attention to her. She couldn’t force him to warm his hands, so she crossed her arms and shut up. There was no point in wasting her breath talking to him. The sooner he either failed or succeeded, the sooner he’d stop to take care of himself.
She stood it for about three seconds. “A plain case of testosterone poisoning, if I’ve ever seen one,” she commented.
His head was partially turned away, but she saw his cheek crease as he grinned. “Are you talking to me?”
“No, I’m talking to this tree, with about the same result.”
“I’m okay. If I can get a fire started, I’ll get warm then.”
Some imp of Satan whispered to her and she said, “Well, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Because I thought I might warm your hands the same way I warmed your feet, but since you’re okay—never mind.”
Her words hung in the frozen air. Part of her wondered if she’d lost her mind, but she couldn’t unsay them, so she tried her best to look casual.
He went very still, then slowly backed out, straightened, and turned to face her. “Maybe I spoke too soon. My hands really hurt.”
“Then you’d better hurry with that fire,” she said cheerfully, and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Chop-chop!”
He gave her an “I’m going to get you” look, then reached back into the plane’s innards. The angle at which it was resting made reaching anything awkward, and the trees were in the way. Finally he said, “Okay. Now let’s cut some wire. We need to have everything ready before I try this, because if there is any juice there may not be much, and one try may be all we get.”