Yes, but she doesn't know that yet!"—complimenting each other on a flight. Perfectly nice weirdness. Was that—" Colton leaned forward, eyes widening as his gaze flickered through the clouds ahead. Deep grey snow clouds rushing around, blooming and shrinking with the wind, but he swore he'd seen— "Was thatlightning?"
Jo went still a moment, scowling at the clouds ahead, then swore quietly when lightning flashed again. "Yeah, looks like it. Warm front colliding with the storm. Doesn't happen thatoften, but it's called thundersnow. Good news is we're too small to attract lightning, generally, but the ride's gonna get a little bumpy here. I know you're wearing your seatbelt, but tighten it up, okay? Probably take us eight or ten minutes to get through, unless it gets really bad, in which case I'll try to re-route around it."
She sounded quite serious, and Colton murmured, "Yes, ma'am," as he checked his seatbelt. He noticed her casting him a sharp look, and held up a hand placatingly. "Not sarcastic. You're the pilot and I'm taking your orders."
Jo exhaled and nodded once, anger fading from her expression, though the tension remained as she turned her attention back to the flight. She flipped a radio switch, speaking on another channel, which meant Colton could barely hear her. Then she flipped another switch, trying again, and after a moment cursed again, loud enough to hear even before she came back to the in-flight channel. "Mountains are blocking the signal. I can go up to try to get clear of them, or I can just try to go around. I'm inclined to go around."
"You're the pilot," Colton said again. "I trust you."
Jo nodded a second time, and for the next several minutes the only sounds were the wind and propeller and Colton's occasional yelp when they hit a pocket of air and dropped or rose dramatically. To his relief, the corner of Jo's mouth twitched upward with each of those yelps, so at least he wasn't distracting her, or making things worse, but even his chimera was making littlemeep!sounds in his head as they rose and fell.
This would be fun if it wasn't a storm,Colton told his beast gently.We've played in air currents lots of times.
But I was doing the flying then!
Colton couldn't argue with that, although he could and did say,Jo knows what she's doing.
I know,his chimera wailed, and then, as they hit another air pocket, went,MEEEEP!
Jo's radio crackled and she switched to another channel, listened briefly, responded, and then came back to their headset connection. "Good news, they've got our location now. Bad news, for a minute I thought maybe I could route south, but Helena's getting thundersnow, too, and I canseemore lightning up ahead."
So could Colton: it was actually incredible, bright flashes turning the clouds purple and electric blue from within, and the snow around them swirling in unexpected illuminated bursts. "So…?"
"So we're on track for Great Falls. I just wish there was a way around the thundersnow." She banked the plane away from the lightning ahead. They immediately hit another air pocket and bounced, causing her to swear, but not with alarm, just irritation. Colton's chimerameeped again, and he had a hard time not echoing it. Itwasless worrying to be the person in charge of the flight, when bumps like these were felt.
"We're not far from the edge of the mountain range," Jo muttered. "Once we get past the updraft and out over the flats it should smooth out. Sorry about this."
"Definitely not your fault," Colton said. "Kind of mine, in fact."
She tossed him a brief smile. "Not unless you're some kind of weather god."
Colton could feel his chimera trying to decide whether being able to fly made it some kind of weather god, and said,No,much to its disappointment. Aloud, but not worried, he said, "Believe me, if Iwasa weather god, I would put this fancy light show way out of striking distance?—"
And that was as far as he got before lightning struck the plane.
CHAPTER FOUR
Somewhere in the chaos of making sure they didn't die, Jo kept thinking,Ijust saidthis never happens,as if that would make lightning un-strike the Cessna and keep the propeller turning.
There were a lot of other thoughts going on, too, all of them much more urgent: trying to restart the prop, trying to keep the plane level, which was nearly impossible with no power and the winds they'd run into, trying to think of what she knew about the terrain they were almost certainly going down in, trying to see through the blowing snow and clouds, wondering how far they'd be blown off course in the time it took to crash land, hoping for a glimpse of a mountainside meadow she could bellyflop the plane into. But interspersed with that was just outrage: thisalmost never happened.Not to small planes. Lots of thingsdidhappen to small planes, sure, yes, but notlightning strikes.
Apparently the gods of small planes and lightning strikes hadn't gotten the memo today.
They broke through the clouds, and the fact that it was still daylight down there almost surprised Jo. She'd known it was, obviously, but the thunderous grey snow clouds had kind ofbecome her entire focus, and she'd forgotten that they'd left at eleven-thirty in the morning.
Daylight andnot snowingwould have been a lot more helpful, but even daylight and snow was enough to tell her that there was not a convenient meadow anywhere. Just trees and mountainside. Jo whispered, "Dammit," and then cursed again as yet another attempt to restart the prop simply failed. She tried to keep her voice calm for the next part, though: "I think we're going down, Colton. I'm sorry."
She dared a glance at him and found, to her surprise, that he didn't look frightened. That was something:shewas scared as hell.
"Can you land without killing us?" he asked rather thoughtfully, all things considered.
"I'll put it down in the trees but it's going to be hoping for the best."
"Then I have a solution," he said, still thoughtfully. Calmly, even. "You're going to have to trust me completely, though. How much time do we have?"
"Three minutes. Maybe four."
"That's plenty of time," Colton said. "Grab whatever gear you think we'll need on the ground. We're going out the door."
