“Silly woman. You must realize there are more ways up the mountain than that one road.”
Biting down on her lip, she turned her head and looked toward the small window. The sky was dark with rain, and the glass was so streaked, she couldn’t make out anything beyond the pane.
Everything inside her felt just as empty and gray.
But Crew would come. He was there for her, and nothing would keep him away.
Only that terrified her more, because if he came, he’d be stepping into a trap meant for him.
And if she didn’t survive long enough to warn him, neither of them might make it out alive.
Chapter Sixteen
The rotors bit into the storm like they were chewing on broken glass.
Crew kept his hands locked on the controls anyway.
Every instinct in him screamed that he shouldn’t be here. That he didn’t belong behind a set of sticks again. That the sky didn’t want him. That the sky took what it wanted and left men standing in the wreckage, watching flames eat through everything they’d trusted.
But Fern was out there, somewhere ahead, swallowed by the mountain and rain and whatever sick game Reed had decided to play. And he couldn’t afford to listen to the doubts.
Crew’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached. His shoulders were rigid, as if tension alone could keep the helicopter together. The instrument panel glowed and blinked, steady little lights that should have been comforting, but all he saw was fire. A jet’s cockpit. Alarms screaming. The impossible quiet after. His ejection handle yanked. The violent punch of the seat. The open air ripping him apart.
And Conner—
No parachute.
No second silhouette drifting down beside him. Just empty sky where his copilot should’ve been.
His throat closed as the memory tried to fill him up, to take over.
Not now.
He forced his focus outward to the wind and the constant fight to keep the bird stable as the gusts shoved at them like the hand of a furious giant. Rain slapped the windshield in sheets, the wipers struggling to keep up. The world beyond the glass turning into a smear of gray.
Beside him, Upchurch—Church—sat braced, harness straps taut across his chest, eyes moving between the sky and Crew’s hands.
“You’re good,” Church said, voice low and steady in Crew’s headset. “You’ll find her.”
Crew didn’t answer. He couldn’t. If he opened his mouth, something broken might fall out.
This was a short flight—that was the cruelest part. It wasn’t long enough to settle into it. It wasn’t long enough for him to find a rhythm.
It was just long enough for his brain to do what it always did when he got close to the thing that had shattered him. It began listing all the ways this could go wrong.
A sudden drop in visibility.
A gust that snapped them sideways into the trees.
A mechanical failure.
Another man dead, only this time it wouldn’t be a system failure, it would be because Crew couldn’t keep it together.
His heart hammered against his ribs, too fast, too loud. His palms were sweating on the controls, making them slick. He swallowed hard, staring at the narrowing gap in the clouds where the mountain rose ahead like a dark spine.
Fern.
That name was the tether for his mind. His heart and soul.
