Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
A chill, colder than the blizzard’s breath, creeps down my spine and hardens my stomach. I know, even before she continues, this news is going to hurt me.
She pushes inside, closes the door, and turns.
“It’s a Turbo Beaver.” Chin raised, she sets her wary gaze on mine. “Three passengers. They’re being transported to a hospital here in Anchorage right now. No one will confirm if they survived or who they are.”
Her words clot the air, dense with a gravity that demands my response.
But I can’t move. Can’t speak.
Carved in shock and disbelief, I’m a motionless statue as my mind grapples with the possibility that Denver was on that plane.
And the other two passengers…
They could be mine.
My wife and child.
I struggle to breathe, each inhalation a war against the suffocating horror.
“All adults?” My voice breaks, sounding foreign to my ears. “Is there an infant among them?”
“I don’t know.” Her expression softens. “I have asked those questions and more. The instant I have answers, I’ll—”
“Get them now!” I stab a finger at her, pulse sprinting. “Make calls. Demand information. Learn everything you can.” My volume explodes with intensity. “I need their identities yesterday!”
She’s cultivated a network of contacts and resources over the years as a private investigator. Police officers, hospital staff, aviation authorities, people who respect her tenacity and trust her discretion. Hell, maybe she seduces the sensitive information out of them. I don’t fucking care.
I just need answers.
If Denver was on that plane, if fate steered his path here, I hope—deep in my black, guilt-ridden soul—that he survived.
Not for salvation, not for redemption, but for retribution.
The thought of confronting him, of being the arbiter of his demise, ignites a blood-thirsty hunger within me. I want to look into his cold, depraved eyes and kill him myself. Slowly. Painfully. Permanently.
But beneath the rage and vengeance lurks a terrible dread. If Frankie was on that plane with him, my worst fears would be realized.
If she’s been in his possession for nine months, the damage will be greater than any injury sustained from a plane crash in a blizzard.
If she survived at all.
“I’m on it.” Sirena nods, her expression grave. “I mean, I’ve already made calls. But I’ll call again. We can head to the hospital as soon as we know something.”
Fuck that. I’m already gathering my coat, keys in hand before she finishes the last word.
“What are you doing?” She tracks me with wide eyes. “Monty, you can’t. Have you seen the roads out there? And the hospital has strict policies about sharing patient information.”
“If they have my wife and child, they’ll tell me any goddamn thing I want.”
The blizzard outside, the treacherous roads, the uncertainty of what I’m walking into—none of it matters. My mind is laser-focused on the hospital, on the survivors of that crash, and on the slim chance I’ll see my wife for the first time in nine months.
As I stride to the door, the stark ring of a phone cuts through the heavy air of the suite. Sirena answers with a calm that no longer fits in my world.
I watch her, every fiber of my being strung tight, trying to read the unfolding conversation from the subtle shifts in her professional demeanor. When she asks if an infant was among the passengers, my heart lurches.
As she listens, her composure begins to fracture, her face paling with each word she hears.
“Are you sure?” she asks, her voice a thread of sound in the harrowing silence. Then a nod. “Thank you.”
She disconnects the call and turns to face me.
“One of the victims is a woman.” Hesitantly, she steps closer. “A small redheaded woman.”
The room tilts, shifting beneath my feet as I hang on one word. “Victims…”
“Passenger.” She rushes forward, gripping my arm. “Not victim. I don’t know—”
“Did your contact say victim?”
“I…I think so, but that doesn’t mean anything. Don’t jump to conclusions. I don’t have any information on the woman’s condition. We don’t even know if it’s her. She just arrived at the hospital with the other two passengers.”
My heart seizes, caught between the jaws of hope and dread. “Who are the other passengers?”
“Adults. Both male. That’s all I know.”
It can’t be her. The universe wouldn’t be so cruel.
But I know it is.
A small redheaded women in a Turbo Beaver outside of Fairbanks.
My wife was in that crash.
The urgency that propels me into the hallway is no longer a need for answers. It’s a race against time, against the unfathomable prospect of a world dimmed by her absence.
As I stride toward the elevator, haunting images seize my mind. Frankie, lying crumpled and lifeless in the wreckage of a plane. Her bright red hair splayed against the cold, twisted metal. Her face serene yet void of the life and ferocity that defined her.
No, she can’t be gone. The very notion is the anathema to every shred of hope that surges through my veins, to the love that’s been the cornerstone of my existence since the moment she walked into my life.