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“It means we’re gonna land.”
“What. Like now?”
“Pretty much.”
I scan our surroundings. Everywhere I look are jagged mountains and trees. “Where?”
He chews his bottom lip in thought as he studies the river below us. “I think I remember there being a lake up ahead. Around that bend.”
“You think?” Everything looks the same around here. People have gotten lost following the wrong river; they’ve crashed into mountains, misidentifying peaks and making the wrong turn.
He pulls a map from a side pocket, instructing me to open it up as he angles the plane to fly lower. “Can you find Rainy Pass on there?”
“I … uh …” I fumble with the paper. “I don’t know.” In our office, with the map stretched out, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading these things. Cramped in a tiny plane as we descend toward the trees? Not so much.
“Here. Lemme see.” He keeps a keen eye on our flight path as he traces a river down through the mountains. “Yeah, there. I think that’s up ahead.”
It’s the second time he’s said, “I think.”
“Can’t we turn around and fly back to the cabin?”
His gaze flickers to the gauge again. “No. You’re buckled in, right?” He does a quick glance over.
My adrenaline surges as a mental flash of twisted metal and rivulets of blood running down Jonah’s forehead hits me. A scary day that I never wanted to repeat, and yet here we are. This time, in the mountains, where there are far bigger things to hit than a crop of field stones. “Jonah, are we going to crash?” I hear the panic in my voice.
“No, Calla. We’ve gotta land.” He begins calling out our location over the radio as we descend.
* * *
“We’re not dead.” I release a long, shaky sigh as we float on the placid water in utter silence.
Jonah lets out a weak chuckle as he rubs his brow. “You don’t have a lot of confidence in my flying ability, do you?”
“I do. But I also thought we were going to hit those trees back there.” Jonah brought us down so close to the tree line, I couldn’t keep the screams of panic from escaping. Even now, cold sweat coats the back of my neck, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance I still might vomit.
“I wasn’t sure how big the lake was, and I wasn’t gonna risk having to do a second pass to get enough runway.”
Especially not when he had already cut the engine before the floats touched down. I heard enough of his radio chatter to understand the gist of what was going on. Things like “in the red,” “burning up,” and “stall out.”
It was far more serious than Jonah was letting on.
He nods to my chest. “You can let go.”
I look down and see that my hands are curled so tight around my seat belt that my knuckles are white. I release my grip and peer out the window. “Where are we?” Besides in the middle of nowhere.
“Here.” Jonah points out the lake on the map, surrounded by mountains and far from any town or landmark. We couldn’t walk, even if we wanted to.
“Is that guy going to come?”
As if on cue, our headsets crackle with the man’s voice, asking if we’re okay.
Jonah responds, giving him our coordinates, and then yanks off his headset. “He should be here soon. I need you to listen and relay any messages from him.”
“Where are you going?” We’re in the middle of a lake!
“I need to see how bad this is.” He reaches behind my seat for his tool bag. His mouth is mere inches from mine. Normally he’d have stolen a kiss by now. He always does when he’s reaching for anything behind my seat.
But he hasn’t this time.
