Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
“We’re alive,” she cries softly. “Oh my God, we’re still alive.”
I release my hold on her slightly and our eyes lock for a second. I exhale heavily, then suck in a deep breath, still reeling. Then I lower my brows, sniffing.
“Do you smell that?”
Her eyes widen. “Smoke.”
CHAPTER THREE
Trinity
“My bag!”
I can’t make sense of anything. The nose-down position of the plane means we have to climb up to get out of the plane, and the smoke is making it hard to see. My medication is in my bag, but it’s not within reach.
“Fuck your bag, get over here!” Lincoln barks.
He’s reaching through the smoke for me, and I take his hand. He pulls me over my seat and we climb over the next row. I’m dizzy, either from the crash or my own anxiety. I try to steady myself by putting a hand on the plane’s wall and taking a deep breath. The smoke I’m inhaling makes me cough and feel even worse.
“We’re getting the fuck off this plane,” Lincoln says fiercely.
I crouch on the back of a seat as he turns the handle to the nearest door and tries to open it. He’s working against gravity, and it doesn’t budge. He takes a step back and throws his weight behind it, ramming his shoulder into it. The door moves a few inches before slamming closed again.
“There’s something blocking it,” he mutters.
It’s getting harder to breathe. Silent tears stream down my cheeks and drip off. I’m just a few seconds away from getting hysterical. Did we just survive a plane crash only to die of smoke inhalation?
“Emergency exit in the back.” Lincoln gets there quickly in the small plane, my heart in my throat as he turns the handle and pushes.
The door opens. I let out a sob as he reaches down for me. There’s nothing for me to hold on to, so he has to pull me up on his own. He practically shoves me out the door, which is fine by me. Anything to get out of the plane.
I suck in a big gulp of fresh, freezing air as I climb out, holding on to the door opening. Now I can see that we crashed in a forest, the plane landing in a massive pine tree. There’s nothing but open air around me.
“Get to the ground!” Lincoln orders. “This thing could blow at any second!”
No time to worry about the potential pitfalls—I jump. My arms instinctively fly up to protect my face from the scrape of branches on the way down. It’s only a few seconds before I hit the hard ground on one foot, then land on my hip. Everything hurts.
It takes me a few seconds to be able to inhale fully, but I’m alive. I roll onto my back, horrified by the flames I see through the opening where the plane’s windshield used to be.
Something that looks like a dark blur flies out of the airplane’s exit door, followed by something red.
I get to my knees, planning to stand up, but as soon as I try to bear weight on my left ankle, pain shoots through it and I drop back to my knees. That’s the one I landed on.
My bare hands can’t handle being on the scattering of snow on the ground for long, so I kneel upright, pain shooting through my hip. I see movement in the tree the plane is lodged in—it’s Lincoln, dropping from one branch to another.
He lands on the ground with both feet, then stands upright. The moment his gaze lands on me I hate that I’ll have to admit I jumped.
“You need help getting up?” He comes over to me, a hand extended.
“I hurt my left ankle.” There. I didn’t lie.
“Here, I’ve got you.”
He puts an arm around me, supporting me so I can hop. I cry out with every movement, my entire body sore.
“I’m gonna get you to a safe distance and then I need to run back for the survival and first aid kits.”
“That’s what you threw out of...ow...the plane.”
“Yeah, and there was a moving pad too. Figured we could use it.”
Use it. Because we’re stranded in Alaska and it’s bitterly cold.
“What about Chris?” I lock eyes with him and his shoulders drop.
“If he wasn’t already dead before we crashed, he is now.”
I know he’s right, but it’s still horrifying. Chris was just alive, and now he’s gone. Lincoln and I were lucky to live through the crash, but we’re in the middle of nowhere.
“Someone will know where we crashed.” I say the words out loud, though they’re meant to reassure me more than anything. “Chris put in a flight plan and they’ll know where we went off course.”
An image of our smiling pilot in his Hawaiian shirt makes my heart sink. I’m still too stunned to really feel any of this yet.