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I hadn’t known we were going to end up in a plane crash and stranded away from civilization. I’d thought both Cade and Darius would be out doing their own thing, entertaining themselves with other women, and not paying Laney muchattention. Now there are no other women for miles around, and we have no idea when we’re going to be rescued. This is already a boiling pot of tension, and it’s only going to get worse as the days go by.
The truth is, I don’t know if I can fully trust my son.
“Let’s go inside and see what we’ve got to work with,” I say, redirecting our attention.
Cade leads the way. He calls out to Darius as he goes. “Fourteen paces, two o’clock, then two steps onto the porch.”
Cade has his faults, but he’s nothing if not devoted to his younger brother.
He tries the door. “Not locked.”
It creaks open, and there’s a flurry of dust and dried leaves in its wake. I fully expect that we’ll be sharing the cabin with multiple insects, rats, and mice, but then we’d be sharing the forest with far bigger creatures.
Cade disappears inside, closely followed by Darius. Laney throws a glance over her shoulder, and I give her a nod of encouragement. I hope I haven’t just delivered the lamb into the lions’ den.
The cabin smells musty, but it seems dry and solid enough.
Everything is covered in a fine layer of dust and dirt. I glance over to Laney to try to judge what she’s thinking, but she’s just standing there, her expression unreadable. I scan her injuries—her poor bruised face and the blood that’s now crusted in her hairline. I haven’t seen my own face, and I’m not sure I want to, either. I feel like crap, and I bet I look it, too.
“This will do us, right?” I dump my bag onto the table. “It’s shelter.”
Cade looks around. “Are you kidding? It’s a fucking shithole.”
I ignore him and explore the rest of the cabin.
A couple of rooms lead off the main living area. I open one to discover a bathroom. This place clearly isn’t hooked up to atown sewer—the toilet is compost—but the presence of a bathtub and a sink indicates that this place must be served by water from somewhere. Could there be a well? Or did the previous inhabitants just bring water up from a creek somewhere nearby? Either option is good. Water was my biggest concern, and if there’s somewhere nearby, it solves that issue. There’s no mirror, but I’m taking that as a good thing.
I try the faucet, but it doesn’t even make a noise, never mind produce any water. It’s almost as though someone had plans to connect it to a well but didn’t bother. I’m disappointed, but I hope we’ll find another water source nearby. There clearly was one, once, and I doubt it’ll have completely dried up.
I go back into the living area of the cabin and tell the others what I’ve found. “We have enough bottled water to last us until tomorrow, but then we’re going to need to find a water source. Even if we do find one, there’s no guarantee the water is going to be clean enough to drink. It’ll need to be boiled first, so we’ll need to get the wood stove going.”
“Hang on,” Cade says.
He digs into his pocket and then he places something into my hand. A lighter. I’m not sure he was supposed to have that on the plane, at least not in the cabin, but now’s not the time to start laying down rules.
“Good. We can start a fire, at least, and then we can keep it burning. A fire means smoke from the chimney. If a rescue crew is somewhere nearby, they’re going to spot it. If we hear an engine, then we can throw some greenery onto the fire and the smoke will turn black. Plus, it’ll keep the cabin nice and warm and will give us the chance to boil our water whenever we need to.”
We explore the rest of the cabin and search the place for supplies. There isn’t a lot, but some of it will be useful. The other room is a small bedroom containing two single beds. There arefour of us, but I guess we’ll sort out the sleeping arrangements later.
The cabin has an elevated position, which is why I was able to spot it from a distance, and it allows a view across the trees, in the direction of the crashed plane. I want to see how far away from the crash site we are. I’m betting that I’ll be able to see the smoke still rising from the plane.
I step outside, and it suddenly hits me just how dark it is. I can barely see beyond the clearing where the cabin is situated, never mind anything else.
Movement comes from behind me, and Laney joins me on the porch.
“Why has no one come looking for us yet?” she asks, clearly worried.
“They’ll be looking,” I assure her. “They just haven’t found us.”
I think to what Cade had said about how often the plane would have sent out pings to signal our location and the distance we might have traveled since that final ping. The pilot had said the equipment wasn’t working, so how can we even be sure we’d remained on course? The search team might have an area the size of Florida to cover, and we were just one small plane.
“Willthey find us?” she asks.
I risk a smile, though the movement hurts my face. “Of course they will. Let’s go back inside. It’s getting dark now.” I place my hand on the base of Laney’s spine to guide her back inside the cabin. “Things will seem better in the morning.”
She turns those big eyes up to me, and my stomach flips. “Shouldn’t someone keep watch for the search planes overnight?”
I shake my head. “They won’t be searching while it’s dark. It would be too easy to miss something.”
