Shiver

the magazine he said to her, “That’s better. We’re in some business now.”
    Sam was all for turning tail and leaving then, but he spotted another gun in the snow even nearer the wreckage and went to retrieve that one, too, which he checked and then passed to her with the admonition, “Just don’t shoot me,” which she found vaguely insulting and so she frowned at him.
    He wasn’t looking at her. Gun at the ready, surprisingly agile with only his makeshift cane for support, he was already moving toward the torn fuselage. A moment later he had his head and shoulders in the largest gap, looking around inside.
    Keeping a careful eye out all around—the night was beautiful and still, no sign of any of the others—she joined him.
    “You don’t want to come in here,” he pulled back to tell her. From that she deduced that he was going inside, which he did. Taking him at his word, she stayed outside by the gash, keeping nervous watch.
    The thought that Veith might very well be out there somewhere scared her to her back teeth.
    When Marco reappeared, she saw that he had a whole arsenal of pistols and some ammunition, too, which he was busy stowing around his waistband and in his pockets. That made her feel a little better. Against all odds, she found that she was still trusting him to get her out of this alive. And forget the whole if he could thing.
    “Anybody still in there?” she asked as he stepped through the gap. He had his crutch back, she saw as he handed something to her—a blanket, one of the small, thin airplane variety.
    “Pilot and the guy in the copilot’s seat. They’re both dead.” He said it matter-of-factly, no grief there. Well, she wasn’t feeling any, either. “Veith and the other guy are missing. At a guess, I’d say they fell out like we did.”
    That was all she needed to hear. She shivered. “Let’s get out of here.”
    He nodded, and she started walking away, down the slope because that seemed the logical thing to do, keeping a firm grip on the pistol and wrapping the blanket around her shoulders as she moved because the night, while not freezing, was way too cold for just bare arms. Realizing as she got it settled thatthere was only one, and that he was wearing an identical T-shirt that left his arms bare, too, she indicated the blanket and asked, “What about you?”
    “Worried about me, baby doll?” He smiled at her, the first smile she’d had out of him since she’d left his bed what seemed like a lifetime ago, and she realized that one thing hadn’t changed: it still did funny things to her insides. “Don’t be. I don’t feel the cold.”
    “Think somebody will be sending a rescue team? Does anybody even know that the plane went down?”
    “The plane should have a transponder,” he said. “Which means somebody should be coming after us sooner or later. In the meantime, we probably want to see if we can’t walk down to a lower elevation, where we’ll have a better chance of running into people. Climbers, hikers, campers, somebody should be on this mountain. Especially once it’s daylight.”
    Sam was just thinking that something seemed different about him, an air or an attitude that she hadn’t quite picked up on before, when she heard the moan. It was a low, drawn-out sound that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. It seemed to be coming from behind a large outcropping of snow-dusted rock just down the slope on their left. A glance at Marco told her that he heard it, too.
    By consensus they moved toward the sound.
    “Stay behind me,” he whispered as they reached the outcropping, which was taller than he was and twice as long. Sam had no problem with that, hanging back as, gun at the ready, Marco stepped around the rock.
    Sam couldn’t see what he saw, but she could see his reaction to it. She watched his broad back as at first he froze, pointing his pistol purposefully at whatever was on the ground. Then a weak voice said, “Help me,” and Sam recognized it as belonging to Veith even as she followed Marco the rest of the way around the rock.
    Veith lay on his back in the snow, visible from about midchest up, trapped in a good-size chunk of wreckage that was jagged and torn and heavy enough to keep him pinned to the ground. Sharp-looking tendrils of metal wrapped around his upper torso like barbed wire. Around him, the snow was dark. Sam realized that it was from his blood.
    “Watch my back,” Marco said in a low voice to Sam, then moved