Dane's Storm(41)

Only maybe it was.

Not strong enough to what? Grow a perfect baby? Go full term?

Was this gripping agony somehow her fault?

Dane came into the room and Audra’s eyes moved slowly to his, red from sadness and lack of sleep. He gave her a small, tired smile, his gaze moving to the body of their son in her arms. She saw the tiny flash of relief in his expression, and a spike of pain ripped through her heart. When his eyes rose to hers, she looked away, out the window to the mountains in the distance, solid, unmoving. She focused on breathing, clutching her baby boy more tightly to her chest. “Thank you for keeping them out,” she murmured. Her voice sounded flat, unemotional.

Dane came to sit on the side of the bed. “Hey, Audra honey, remember how I told you Dalila and Dustin and I used to swim across the pond?”

She looked back at him, giving a small nod.

“Remember the signal?” He raised his hand, putting two fingers in the air. “If you’re drowning, if you need help but can’t form the words to ask for it, I need you to make this sign.” His voice was raspy, filled with emotion, but she couldn’t conjure any of her own.

She simply stared at him, finally giving another small nod she didn’t think she meant.

His eyes lingered on her for a moment, his expression sad and uncertain, before he nodded back. “Whatever you need, honey. I got you, all right?”





CHAPTER NINETEEN


Audra





Now . . .




I got you, all right? Those words. They rang through my head once, twice. He’d said them before . . . then. Only things hadn’t been okay. He hadn’t been able to protect me then and—

It sounded as if the plane just . . . shut off right before we dropped from the sky. I grabbed the armrests of my seat, a scream lodged in my throat. Dane looked panicked as he clicked switches and turned knobs.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Those birds, all those birds. Had they . . . disabled the plane somehow? Had they flown straight into the engine? Everything seemed overly bright and there was a high-pitched alarm ringing in my head. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t seem capable of anything at all. I was completely frozen with horror.

Dane was saying something into the handheld radio, but I couldn’t focus, the buzzing in my head so loud I thought my brain would explode. Dane grasped my shoulder and shook me. “Get in the back and strap yourself in,” he commanded in a loud shout that brought me temporarily out of my frozen state. “Now, Audra!”

On shaking legs that seemed incapable of working yet somehow did, I jumped from the copilot seat and stepped out of the cockpit and practically fell into one of the passenger seats. The plane was descending fast, but not smoothly now. It was jumping and jerking and as I buckled myself in, my gaze locked on Dane whose arms were gripped tightly to the steering wheel, sweat dripping down the side of his face. A sob tore from my throat and hot tears flowed down my cheeks. Dane was here, but I was alone. He was fighting a battle, trying to keep us alive, and I . . . all I could do was silently pray. He was talking into the radio about losing both engines—how was he speaking? How did he sound so calm now?—and I clenched my eyes shut against my terror, chanting in my head, please, please, please, please.

When I opened my eyes, the mountains rose up in front of the windshield, the face of a cliff so close I choked on a scream, putting my hands up in front of my face instinctively. Oh God, we were going to crash straight into the side of a rock. Oh please don’t let it hurt. Let it be quick. Help us, Theo, help us.

The muscles in Dane’s arms were straining so hard it looked like they might rip right out of his shirt and sweat had soaked what I could see of his collar. He used one arm to swipe quickly over his eyes and then gripped the wheel again. Could you even steer a plane with no engine?

High cliffs rose on either side of us and through the windows, snow swirled around the plane so that I could barely make anything out. How could Dane see a thing?

“Brace for impact,” Dane said and his voice was so deathly calm that it made the fear ratchet up even higher. “Brace for impact,” he said again, louder this time and with more authority.

I didn’t know what that meant. What should I do? I wanted to ask, but I had no voice, no breath. And so I gripped the armrests, leaned my head back on the seat, closed my eyes and waited. For the space of three heartbeats, all was deathly silent, and in that quiet before impact, it suddenly occurred to me that I was going to see my baby. I choked back a small sob that, despite my terror, held within it the tiniest burst of joy. I was going to look into his eyes, I was going to know—

The plane suddenly wrenched to the side, jarring my head against the window, metal screamed as a blast of freezing air hit me from the back. We continued down, down, down. Something burned into my chest, my teeth rattled, and all went black.

**********

Something heavy was pressing on me and I struggled weakly to break free, crying out in pain when my small movements caused a searing ache across my chest and belly. My teeth were chattering. I was so cold. Freezing. My head cleared, reality rushed in, and I suddenly remembered. Brace for impact. Oh God. We’d been in a crash. There had been birds and then the engines stopped and we’d . . . oh, we’d fallen straight from the sky.

It was cold.

Oh, it was so cold.