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“Can you read me? Air traffic control,” he cried out again before tapping the headset. “Of all the times to lose communication,” he shouted.
Annie bit her lip. She wasn’t a woman prone to panic, and she knew nothing about the mec
hanical aspects of aviation, but something felt terribly wrong. The plane was now bucking up and down as if it couldn’t be controlled. Declan O’Rourke’s voice had sounded strained and filled with alarm. He was frantically working the controls.
“Are we almost there?” she asked. “What seems to be the problem?” she cried out as the plane suddenly dropped.
“Almost isn’t going to cut it. We’re still a good distance from our destination and too far away from the airport to turn back. I need to land Lucy right now,” he said in a tense, raised voice.
He was letting her know in his cut-and-dried manner that they were in the midst of a serious, potentially life-threatening situation. Clearly Lucy was the name of his plane, one that was suffering some sort of dire malfunction.
Oh no! They weren’t anywhere near an airport or the town of Love. They were in the middle of nowhere. To confirm that fact, Annie peered out the window. All she saw were trees. Lots and lots of Alaskan trees. Sitka spruce trees. Birch trees. Pine trees. All dusted with pretty white snow. She had researched them all. And now the plane was hurtling toward them at lightning-fast speed. Terror gripped her by the throat. Instead of living out her dreams, she was caught up in a nightmare scenario. Impending doom. All she could think of at the moment was that she didn’t want to die in obscurity in the Alaskan wilderness. She had always imagined that she would die peacefully at home at the ripe old age of one hundred.
“Assume the crash position. Prepare for an emergency landing,” O’Rourke called out.
Annie’s heart dropped to her belly as she bent forward over her knees and placed her hands on the back of her head. A crash landing? Is this how her grand adventure was going to end? All she had wanted to do in making this voyage was to chase after her dreams. Instead she was going to plummet to her death in a rinky-dink toy plane. Maybe she should never have left Whimsy in the first place. At least there she might have had an opportunity to die of old age in her bed.
Dear Lord, please don’t let this be the end. Even though things have been a little rough lately, I love being alive. And I have so much more living to do. I want to fall in love. I want to become a mother. I want to make a difference in this world. And I want to change people’s lives with the gift of books. Mercy, Lord. Above all else, mercy.
She shut her eyes tightly as the plane continued to drop out of the sky. Her stomach lurched as she felt the seaplane nose-dive toward the snow-covered ground at an alarming speed. If these were her last moments on earth and God was calling her home, she would handle it with grace and courage. She would accept His will.
The plane hit the ground with a thunderous bang, then veered to the right before skidding for an agonizing amount of time. It finally came to a grinding halt. They had crash-landed! As the plane seemed to crumple all around her, Annie let out a blood-curdling scream that she felt certain could be heard all the way back in Maine.
* * *
Declan O’Rourke had been flying planes since he was fourteen years old. He knew them inside and out. It was pretty much the only legacy his old man had ever handed down to him. His father had also been a pilot until he had thrown it all away and become a felon. His grandfather had given him a vast knowledge of the inner workings of planes and how to be a first-class pilot. He had given Declan something in his life to be proud of achieving. He’d flown in snowstorms, rainstorms and through ice and hail, thunder, lightning and dense fog. On one occasion he had guided his plane without the use of instruments when they had failed him. Not once had he ever been faced with an emergency crash landing. There had been instances when things had gotten dicey, but nothing like this moment in which he had landed the plane with white knuckles gripping the controls.
He held out his hands in front of him. They were shaking uncontrollably.
Once he’d collected himself, he took a moment to utter a prayer of thanks to the big guy upstairs. God had shown him mercy in a terrifying situation. In those moments of stark fear, God had been at his side, guiding him to safety. He quickly got up from his seat and left the cockpit. On his way out, he grabbed the emergency kit he had stashed nearby. He didn’t have a moment to spare. Even though he was still in shock, he needed to assume control of the situation. As the pilot of this aircraft, he was responsible for Miss Murray. He needed to ensure that she made it safely out of the plane. And judging by the way she’d just screamed, she was alive and kicking.
When he reached the back of the plane, he noticed his passenger was sitting in her seat with her eyes pressed closed. Part of the infrastructure of the plane had collapsed around her. He leaned down so that his face was near hers. “Miss Murray. Are you all right?”
“Are we alive?” Annie’s eyelids didn’t even flutter. She was sitting in her seat, ramrod straight, her hands clutching the armrest. She wasn’t moving a muscle. But he did a quick perusal of her and thought she hadn’t sustained any injuries.
Despite the grave circumstances, her question made him want to laugh. “I can assure you that we are very much alive, Miss Murray.”
“Thank You, Lord,” she whispered. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life living up to Your faith in me.”
A protective instinct rose up inside him. He squashed the urge to put his arm around her and tell her everything was going to be all right. For starters, he had never been in a plane crash, and he had no idea whether they were going to make it through this ordeal. The one thing he did know for certain was that they needed to exit the plane quickly. He could smell smoke, although he couldn’t see any flames yet.
“Miss Murray, we need to get off the plane in case there’s an explosion from the fuel.”
Her eyes flew open upon hearing his words. They were a pretty brown with caramel flecks. Without her oversize glasses weighing her down, she was actually pretty cute. She had a button nose and shoulder-length glossy hair. A few freckles were scattered across the bridge of her nose.
Her glasses? They were no longer on her face. Had they flown off in the crash? He looked around for a moment, feeling a stab of dismay when he spotted them on the floor next to her seat, smashed to smithereens. Declan picked them up and brushed them off against his jacket. He poked out the remaining bits of glass, leaving just the frame intact. It was better than nothing, he supposed, although he surmised the glasses were a total loss.
“I hate to tell you, but your glasses are shattered.” Declan reluctantly held out the broken eyeglasses.
She reached for them, her expression shuttered. She shrugged. “It’s okay. They’re fake.”
Fake? Why would she be wearing fake glasses? He felt himself gaping at her. She was an odd woman, he realized. Eccentric. The fuzzy leopard pants had spoken volumes. The granny-style cloak harkened back to another era. The fake glasses were just another piece of the puzzle.
Declan sniffed the air around him.
“I’d love to hear all about it, but we really need to move. Quickly! I smell smoke.” He tugged insistently at her wrist and pulled her to a standing position.
“My purse!” she cried out, reaching down and yanking it up from the floor.
