They’d buried the pilots and marshal before Jim and Thomas left.

She’d watched Alex’s face as they lay the dead marshal in the hole. It had been carefully blank. She’d tried to get him to talk about the agent, but he’d shaken his head.

“Not now.”

But would he talk later?

A strange stiffness had settled among the three left behind. She’d found a pack of cards in her backpack. An unnecessary luxury she’d nearly thrown out of her pack many times. She’d never been so thankful to see a useless stack of cards. They’d started with poker, betting with fir needles that Alex had reluctantly agreed to go grab. He’d had Brynn cover him from the cargo door with Ryan’s gun as he dashed to the nearest tree. Their plane was like a cave. Every few hours Alex would step outside and make sure their cargo door wasn’t pinned closed by a growing snowbank while Brynn covered him with a weapon.

“Do you think he’s still here?”

She’d asked the question as they waited for Ryan to make his bet. Alex had told them of the message on the cockpit ceiling, but he hadn’t been sure of when it was written, and neither Brynn nor Ryan could recall if they’d glanced at the ceiling when they were in the plane the previous day.

“It could be old,” she’d stated.

“It could be fresh,” Alex had countered. He hadn’t looked her in the eye.

He’d creamed both of them at poker, and then Ryan had headed to the cargo area to stretch out and take a nap. Alex had leaned his head back in one of the big seats and partially closed his eyes. The silence had been heavy. He’d acted tired, but she noticed he kept one eye on the door at all times. Even while they had played. He’d watched Kiana too. When she’d start at a noise, Alex would leap, causing Ryan and Brynn to leap. Finally, Alex had relaxed somewhat, seeming to rely on the dog to give him an early warning if anyone approached.

Brynn had already figured that out. Kiana wasn’t a watchdog, but she did have a tendency to perk up when someone approached. Brynn assumed she could hear through the wind. She touched Ryan’s gun she’d tucked in her coat pocket. It was slightly assuring. Alex’s hyperawareness was more assuring.

She’d tried to return the gun to Ryan. The ibuprofen had lowered his fever and he seemed halfway normal, but he professed to feeling extremely weak. He shook his head at the offer of the gun. “My reflexes are off, and all I want to do is sleep. It’s better in your hands.”

She’d seriously doubted that, but Alex had backed up Ryan.

Now she and Alex pretended to doze while Ryan snored. She glanced at her watch. Thomas and Jim had been gone for two hours. They’d agreed that when the weather cleared and it seemed fine for flying that one of the bright-blue tarps would be laid out in the snow for searchers to see from the air. Alex had checked the ELT and found it undamaged, so a signal was being put out, but someone had to be in line of sight to pick up the signal. Either in the air above them or up the mountain. Hopefully, the batteries had a strong charge.

As more snow fell, the wind became quieter and the cabin grew warmer. The makeshift wall at the ripped end of the cabin grew thicker as snow piled against it outside. Condensation dripped down the walls. Sort of like snow caving but with luxury seats and metal-framed walls and ceiling.

Brynn wanted to go stretch out in the back by Ryan. But something kept her sitting in the seats with Alex. A peaceful air had descended in the tiny cabin, an intimacy she didn’t want to disturb. They sat facing the wall of snow, listening to Ryan snore. The tiny aisle between the two seats seemed to shrink. It could have been a quiet evening at home. The TV off, the dog drowsing at their feet.

“Why did you freeze going over the river?” Alex asked. “Ryan told me a bit, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

His question fired the air around Brynn. Any sort of comfort vanished and tension rang in her ears. She turned toward him. His face was grave, a touch of reluctance in his eyes, but there was also concern. Suddenly she wanted to tell him. Wanted him to understand the terror that had racked her core as she stood over water.

“When I was eight, my best friend died crossing the small river near my home.”

“You were there.” It wasn’t a question.

She closed her eyes and felt the sun from that hot day touch her face. “I was following her. It was my idea to cross the water. There was a log bridge similar to what we used the other day, but it had nothing to hang on to. I’d crossed it a hundred times. All the kids in the area used it. But usually the water wasn’t anything more than a quiet creek. That day was the first sunny and warm day after several days of rain. There’d been a freak storm in the middle of summer, and we were itching to get out of the house. It’d been three days of pouring rain followed by one hot day of bliss.

“The footbridge was the fastest way back to Sarah’s house. I still remember how high and fast the water was. Even though it’d stopped raining during the night, the river hadn’t crested. It was still rising from the runoff and other little streams that fed into it.”

Brynn’s heart was strangely calm, but her chest felt tight, like it was forbidding her heart to speed up. The story was rolling off her tongue with an ease that surprised her. She kept her eyes shut, not wanting to see the expression on Alex’s face. She hated pity.

“Sarah crossed first. The log was wet and slimy from the rain. There were many trees right at that spot that kept most of the sunlight off the bridge. It always grew moss that sometimes was helpful for traction during crossings, but that day it was terribly slick.