Which should she do, put the blanket under him for protection from the snow, or over him to help hold in what body heat he had? Could he warm up at all, lying in the snow? Damn it, she couldn’t think! She’d have to go on instinct. “I’m spreading the blanket beside you,” she said, suiting action to words. “Now I’m going to help you shift onto it, so you won’t be in the snow. You’ll have to help me. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” he said with effort.
“Okay, here we go.” Kneeling on the blanket, she slid her right arm under his neck, seized the front of his belt with her left hand, and lifted. He helped as much as he could, using his feet and his right arm; the biggest help was that he wasn’t deadweight any longer. Straining every muscle, she shifted him so that most of his torso, at least, was lying on the blanket, and decided that was good enough. Quickly she folded the rest of the blanket over him, tucking it in where she could.
Suddenly dizzy and nauseated, she sank to the ground beside him. Altitude sickness, she thought. She was almost at the end of her rope. If she pushed herself much harder, she’d find herself lying in the snow, unable to get up, and she’d die before the next morning—probably even before sunset today.
Still, she had to get to their suitcases, put on dry clothing, and lots of it—now. She had to function, or both of them would die.
She schooled herself to take slow, deep breaths to feed her oxygen-hungry body. Slow—that was the key. She should move slowly, when she could, and not let panic lure her into rushing around until she collapsed. That meant she had to plan every move, think through what she was going to do so no effort was wasted.
The luggage was loaded into the plane through the baggage compartment door, and secured by a cargo net that kept the bags from flying around the cockpit during rough weather, though she thought her suitcases would probably be too thick to fit in the space between the roof and the high seat backs. The problem was, though most of the roof was now gone and the suitcases would fit through the gaping hole, they would have to be lifted almost straight up, and they were very heavy, and she was so weak and cold and exhausted she didn’t think she could manage the task. She’d have to open them while they were still in the baggage compartment, and get out what she needed.
She’d have to unclip the cargo net. She was sure she could reach the clips, but she wasn’t sure she could manage if the clip was a particularly strong one. If that was the case, then she would need some other way of getting through the net.
“We have to get warm. I need to get more clothes out of my suitcase,” she told him. “If for any reason I can’t get the cargo net unclipped, do you have a knife I can use to cut it?”
His eyes opened a little, then closed again. “Left pocket.”
Getting to her knees, she untucked the blanket she’d just tucked around him and slipped her right hand into his pocket. The warmth was startling, and so delicious she almost moaned, but her fingers were so cold they were numb and she couldn’t tell if she was touching the knife or not. She grasped at whatever was there.
“Careful,” he murmured. “Good Time Charlie’s down there, and he’s attached.”
Bailey snorted. “Then keep him out of the way, or he might get unattached.” Men. Here they were on the verge of dying from hypothermia and, in his case, blood loss, but he was still protective of his penis. “Good Time Charlie, my ass,” she muttered, pulling her hand out of his pocket to see if she’d snagged the knife.
A tiny smile curved his mouth for a moment, then faded.
She paused, her gaze on his bloody face. That was the first hint of humor she’d ever seen him display, and it struck at her heart because, despite everything she could do, they might not make it out of this situation alive. He hadn’t given up, he’d gotten them down alive, and she couldn’t bear the thought that he might still die because she made the wrong decision or didn’t do enough. She owed him her life, and she would do everything she could to safeguard his—even sew him up if she had to, damn it.
The pocketknife and a dollar or so in change lay in her palm. Picking up the knife, she slid the change back into his pocket, then put the blanket in place again. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, giving him a comforting touch on the chest.
The plane loomed in front of her, a crippled bird with the right wing crumpled and the left one completely gone. They were downslope of it, which wasn’t the safest place if the wreckage began sliding, she realized. She didn’t think it would, with the crumpled wing digging into the mountainside the way it was, plus the tree branch impaling the fuselage was another anchoring point, but she’d rather err on the side of safety and move out of its path, after she’d changed clothes and gotten warmer, and felt more capable of making the effort.
She didn’t have any pockets, so she held the knife in her teeth as she climbed back into the cockpit, then clambered to the back. Kneeling on the bench seat, she stretched over the luggage compartment, reaching for the cargo net clips at the rear of the cabin. To her relief, the net easily released. Pushing it to the side, she tugged one of her suitcases around and unzipped it; the suitcases were identical, so she didn’t know what was in which case, but she didn’t really care. She wanted to be dry, she wanted to be warm, and the clothes she put on didn’t matter.
Justice’s bag was there, too, but it was the typical pilot’s overnight bag, just big enough for a shaving kit and change of clothes. She dragged the bag up and over the seat, because there was no sense leaving it in the plane even though he likely wouldn’t need anything in there just yet. For now, she had plenty of clothes with which she could cover him; it wasn’t as if he needed to actually wear them, since he couldn’t even stand up. He would need clothes, yes, but she thought she’d save the clothes that actually fit him until later.