No! This isn’t happening! This can’t be real!

Ren’s living room began spinning with her photographs of Chet, Lee, Eileen, and the kids racing around her. The floor turned to liquid. Dizzy, Ren’s hand flew to her mouth and she collapsed into her sofa chair, eyes blurring.

“Ren? Did you hear what I said?”

She took a moment to swallow air, get control, steady herself, and find her voice.

“I’m on my way. Eileen? Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“You tell Lee I’m coming now!”

-Chapter 46-

Jade Falls, Washington

RCMP Corporal Will Fortin floated to consciousness in the rain-misted gloom, recalling the earth rushing up to hammer the plane.

Now, as he lay in the wreckage strapped in his seat, his right leg was numb, pinned under a piece of fuselage. His face was laced with blood and rain. He shifted his position, blinking repeatedly to see below his hip. His legs didn’t look bad. His brain flashed with images of someone helping.

Where’d they go?

“Everybody OK?” Fortin called, unbuckling his seatbelt.

It took great effort and a lot of maneuvering to extract himself from the debris.

“Everybody OK?” his voice echoed.

No one answered and no one aided him as he struggled to stand. He nearly collapsed so he sat down on a rock, massaging his leg until circulation returned.

Good. It’s not so bad.

He was sore, his left arm felt like something was grinding when he moved it. But he could move.

Brushing blood and dirt from his eyes, he took careful stock of the aftermath. Moment by moment, body by body, as he checked on the others, the toll emerged: Cox, Phife, Johnston, Banner, the pilot and Leclair, the co-pilot.

They were all dead.

Fortin pulsated with shock.

Steadying himself against a tree – where’s my prisoner? – Fortin seized on the metallic glint of cuffs, chains, leg irons, and tracks in damp earth, leading into the forest, until it became clear there was a second survivor.

Yacine had escaped.

Fortin’s mind raced with several urgent thoughts.

Communication.

He tried his phone. As expected no signal.

He hunted the crash site for the other phones and found three. Two were password protected. He couldn’t use them. Another was on but the battery was low and a signal was barely registering.

Fortin tried making a call but the line dropped.

Nothing happened.

He thought.

Radio.

The plane’s cockpit was encased in torn, twisted fuselage with razor-sharp edges. He scouted around for broken branches and used one to pry his way to the radio. It broke. He tried another. It broke. So did the next and the next. No way he could untwist the wreckage and get access through the mangled mess.

Fortin let out a long slow breath.