"You need to rest too. You carried the bag. You broke the branches."
"I'll handle the airflow," he states. The tone leaves zero room for debate. "Close your eyes."
I’m too exhausted to fight him. The adrenaline finally cracks. The wave crashes over me, pulling me down into a dreamless state. I don't want to trust him. I don't want to rely on the solid beat of his heart against my shoulder blades. But his scent is a sedative, and I fall under.
I pull my cell phone from my pocket—the screen is shattered into a spiderweb of dead pixels, a useless brick after the impact. I shove it back and close my eyes. His scent is a sedative, and I fall under.
The bitter wind wakes me.
My eyes snap open. The space blanket is still secure, but the air inside our cocoon is freezing.
I shift slightly. Santi's arm is an iron band across my stomach. He hasn’t moved an inch. He’s awake. I can feel it in the tension of his muscles and the hypervigilant stillness of his breathing.
"What time is it?" I whisper.
"Four in the morning." His voice is low. Stripped clean.
"You didn't sleep."
"No."
I turn my head slightly. My nose brushes the collar of his shirt. "You can't function on zero sleep, City Boy. Not out here."
"I function perfectly."
I huff a quiet, frustrated breath. "Stubborn."
He tightens his grip on my waist, pulling me flush against him again. "Go back to sleep. The sun will be up in three hours."
I close my eyes, but sleep doesn't come back. The throbbing in my head has settled into a dull, manageable ache, but the freezing air bites at my toes. I listen to the wind whistling through the spruce branches above us.
I think about the crushed helicopter. My father’s tools were in the cargo hold. The last physical pieces of him I had left. Crying over tools while freezing to death is a waste of energy.
Three hours pass in agonizing, shivering slowness. The blackness outside the space blanket finally turns to a bruised gray.
"Time to move," I announce, throwing the coats off us.
The freezing air rushes in, stealing all the warmth we managed to build. I shove the space blanket aside and crawl out from under the rock overhang.
The world is white.
The snow fell heavily through the night, burying every trace of our path. The trees sag under the weight of the fresh powder. The sky above the jagged mountain peaks is overcast.
Santi steps out behind me. He shrugs into his torn suit jacket. His torn suit looks absurd against the violent landscape, yet he stands straight, scanning the horizon. He does not look chilled. He looks furious.
"The storm isn't over," I say, pointing toward the churning black clouds rolling over the northern ridge. "That's a secondary front. It's moving fast. If we get caught out in the open when that hits, we won't survive."
He tracks my finger, assessing the sky. "How long?"
"Two hours. Maybe three." I grab the survival bag, but he reaches out and takes it from my hands before I can lift the strap. I glare at him. "I can carry it."
"I am carrying it." He slings it over his shoulder. "Where do we go?"
I pull the small compass from my pocket. I check our heading, trying to visualize the topographical maps I memorize before every flight.
"There’s an old ranger station about ten miles northeast of the crash site. Blackwood Ranger Station." I say, chewing on my bottom lip as I calculate the distance versus our speed in deep snow. "It's a functional cabin. Wood stove. Bunks. Four walls. If we can reach it before that storm front hits, we have a chance to ride this out."
Ten miles in thigh-deep snow, uphill, with a head injury and a brewing blizzard. It might as well be a hundred miles.
