Wild Men of Alaska 01 - Impact

pulse. His eyes were wide open, but he would never see out of them again.
    “Skip?” she whispered. “Jim ... ?”
    “Yeah. I think he had a heart attack or aneurism. One minute he was there, and then he wasn’t.” Skip rubbed his eyes. “Damn it. The man had a son. Sixteen I think.”
    “Mother?”
    “Ran off years ago. Drugs.” He glanced at her and then away. “Come on. We need to get some things done before that weather front hits.” Skip winced as he moved to release his seatbelt. He braced himself much the way she had, but there was more of him hanging on the strap. “I can’t get out of this thing. Do you see a knife anywhere?”
    Wren glanced around the twisted frame of the plane. She didn’t see a knife, but she saw smoke.
    ***
    “The plane’s on fire!” She scrambled back. Where the hell had Jim said the fire extinguisher was? “Will the plane explode?” She didn’t want to die that way. Though it would be better than freezing to death.
    “Wren! Calm down. Tell me where you see fire.” There was an urgency in his voice that focused her panic.
    “I-I don’t. There’s smoke in the tail of the plane.”
    Skip let out a heavy breath. “There isn’t anything to burn back there. The engine’s up front, gas is in the wings. It’s probably dust or fog from the crash.”
    She took a closer look. It could be dust, but it sure looked a lot like smoke.
    “Help me get down.” Skip’s words captured her attention. “Find a knife.”
    “Don’t you carry a knife? You’re a cop. Aren’t you supposed to be prepared for anything, like the Canadian Mounties?”
    “Huh?”
    “The motto for the Canadian Mounties.”
    “No. That’s, ‘They always get their man.’”
    “Well, what the hell is the motto for Alaska Wildlife Troopers?”
    “Just cut me down. There’s a Leatherman clipped to the right side of my belt.
    “Then get it.”
    “I think my arm’s broken. You’ll have to reach it. The faster the better.”
    “Great. I’m gonna have to save your sorry ass.”
    “It’s not like I haven’t saved yours.”
    Smoke or dust started to seep into the cabin from the tail of the plane. They needed to get out of here. She didn’t trust that the plane wasn’t ready to go up in flames at any moment. She’d seen plane wrecks before. She watched th e Discovery Channel.
    Wren reached around his seat, groping around his hip.
    “Too far to the left,” Skip said, adding in a softer, sexier voice, “Though I am enjoying your hand there.”
    Shit.
    Good thing he couldn’t see her as the heat flaming her face was enough to help her forget about the cold. She blindly found his belt and traced it until she located the Leatherman clipped in its leather case. She released the snap and worked the blade free. She crawled to the left in between the two seats, trying to forget about the dead pilot staring sightlessly forward into nothing. Her fingers shaking, she fought to open the damn blade. The seatbelt was pulled tight with Skip’s two hundred pounds hanging on it. She slid the knife under the belt where it clicked into place, giving her some space where it wasn’t digging into Skip’s body.
    “Wait!”
    Too late, Skip came crashing down in a crumpled mess.
    “Shit. I told you to wait.”
    “Sorry, the knife was sharp. I didn’t think it would slice through the belt like that.” She regarded him lying upside down on his back, his legs flopped forward. He had nowhere to go in the cramped space.
    He angled around on his shoulders, keeping his hurt arm next to his side and used his feet to kick open the door. Wind, bearing teeth, rushed in. It a ided in pushing the smoke back.
    She grabbed the fire extinguisher Jim had haphazardly mentioned right before they’d taken off, but miraculously, the smoke was no longer there. Skip might be right about that, but she was holding onto the extinguisher until they knew for sure.
    “Come on, we need to take a look outside and see what kind of condition we’re in,” Skip said, his voice strained with pain.
    Condition? They were screwed.
    Skip struggled to climb out of the plane, and she crawled out after him. He cradled his arm, and her head pounded, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. They stood outside the plane and regarded the wreckage.
    Cushioned somewhat by the mossy tundra, she lay upside down on her wings looking like a squashed bug.
    “Guess, I’m not much of a pilot,” Skip said.
    “I don’t know. They say any landing you