Page 12 of North

She could imagine the scene he made inside, but by the time she got there, Grant was back in the service area.

Tommy and David sank down into the chairs, and she gathered Amy to herself as Sarah ran to the back.

Please, God, save Grant.

She led Amy to the chairs, and her hand went again to her head, cool against the heat.

Amy turned in her arms, put her hand down on her shoulder, and cried.

Yeah, well, me too.

She didn’t know how long they sat there until James appeared from the back. He’d taken off his sweater and opened his shirt, and someone had put a butterfly bandage over his head wound.

“And?”

“He’s alive.”

Amy tore away from Selah and ran past James to the back.

“So maybe someone can get this metal out of my gut?”

Selah glanced at David. He was rising, a nurse coming out for him. He turned to Selah. “Thanks.”

“Come mow my lawn sometime—we’ll call it even.” She winked.

James crouched in front of her. “We should get some ice on that.”

“On what?”

He indicated her head.

Selah drew her hand away, and from his expression, oh my, apparently it wasn’t just a little bump.

“Yeah, you’re going to have a doozy of a bruise there. Your new line should be ‘You should see the other guy.’” He smiled.

She smiled back. Laughed. Oh, it felt good. To be not protected but relied on.

Not just a survivor, but a hero. A champion.

James grabbed a cold pack from the nurse, who’d clearly heard him, and cracked it. “Hold this here.”

She pressed it to her head, wincing.

“Do you need to call anyone?”

She pulled out her shattered phone.

James took it, turned it over in his hands. “Yeah, okay. We can fix this.” He caught her gaze, held it. “Trust me.”

And maybe she blamed it on the crazy day, but yes, she did trust him.

* * *

The drone of the jet engines wrapped around North, his forehead pressed against the cold window of the 737. Below, darkness stretched endlessly, broken only by occasional clusters of lights from the few towns that dotted the Montana landscape. The first-class cabin smelled of stale coffee and the chicken dinner he’d ignored a couple hours ago, served somewhere over North Dakota.

His phone lay dark in his lap. No signal. No word about Selah.

The thought of her alone, hurt, maybe dying while he sat trapped in this metal tube at thirty-five thousand feet⁠—