Book 1 <Crash>

You'd think that the greatest love stories would start with something tender, but they don't.

They start with blood.

Like Romeo and Juliet's.

Marc Anthony and Cleopatra's.

Lancelot and Guinevere's.

And mine.

I smelled it first. The tinny, sharp tangy odor of fresh blood. And I felt it. Warm, sticky. It forced my eyes open, dragged me back from oblivion, where I had landed on impact. The first thing I saw was not the pilot or the floor or my leg wedged under the seat, but him.

A stranger, in black nylon, hair and beard dusted in snow, knit hat on his head, a strip of fabric in his hands, smeared red with my blood as he wrapped it around my arm. Confusion gave way to pain; raging, angry, snorting, bull—charging—through—crowds pain that made me cry out. His head turned at the sound and what I saw there had me instinctively pulling back, away from him. His eyes were the palest blue I had ever seen, like a filter had been put on the sky, draining the color. They weren't warm or compassionate or sympathetic. They were intense. Efficient. Passionate. The kind of eyes that make you instantly uncomfortable, like their owner could reach inside your body and swipe your soul.

Or maybe that was just the pain.

The trauma.

The fear.

All causing me to think strange, random thoughts.

I was a hundred percent certain I wasn't unconscious. The pain was too overbearing, too rich. Invasive. It throbbed and prodded, owning my leg, my arm, my chest. I tried to move, to shift away from him, but he held my aching arm still and my leg was stuck, trapped under something. My head throbbed, but I swallowed the bile that rose and spoke, my breath coming out in a visible mist in front of me.

"Why is it so quiet?" I asked. "Where are the others?" The pilot and the other passenger on the plane with me. Had they been injured or was I the only one? Either way, the air around me felt too still.

The silence was brittle, overwhelming. All I could hear was the wind outside and the rustling of the fabric as he wound it around my arm, over and over. Why was it taking so long to wrap? It was a thousand rotations, a million miles of fabric. Something was dripping, a monotonous plink on metal. There was nothing but pain and blood and the absence of explanations.

It took only a heartbeat for him to answer but that second felt endless, a tremulous wave of uncertainty, and in that brief span, the guttural knowledge that this was bad rushed over me.

"They're dead."

His tone was flat. His words matter—of—fact. I blinked, stunned. Then I panicked.

I didn't know the pilot or the passenger. I had just met them in Fairbanks when I climbed on the plane. But that was only an hour ago, or at least an hour of flight time. I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious. And now they were dead? No longer breathing, never wake up, fully one hundred percent not alive? It freaked me the fuck out and I heard my cry, a weird, low keening cry that morphed into gulping sobs.

"You're fine," he said, his voice low and smooth. "Just a sprained ankle and a laceration. Most likely a concussion. Maybe a bruised rib."

Did he think I was crying for me? No. I was crying for them. For the two men— Jack and Al, who had introduced themselves cheerfully and shook my hand. Jack was a trapper returning home after the summer tour months and Al was a twenty—year bush pilot. That's what I knew. All I knew. And now they were dead.

When I started to shove at the man with the bullish eyes with my free hand for a reason even I didn't understand, hysteria crawling up my throat and threatening to cut off my air supply, he stared at me, calmly. "Stop it."

"No!" I didn't even know what I was protesting. Not him. Just… everything.

"I can't carry you out of here if you don't stop."

In my frantic flailing my hand hit his face. His head snapped back and he went still, eyes narrowing. I stopped instantly. Out of fear, though I wasn't sure why. Then behind the stranger as he shifted, I caught sight of the pilot slumped over the dash. I saw his eyes, open. Blank. The dripping was the wound from his head. Drip, drip, drip as it landed on the floor. A beautiful rich puddle of blood was oozing toward my leg. I started to yank my trapped foot. No, no, no. That river of death couldn't touch me. It couldn't. I looked at the stranger, unable to speak, desperate for help, tugging so hard it felt like my hip dislocated from the socket. I swore I heard a pop.

The stranger's bloody hand came over my face, pinching my nose, covering my mouth. I fought, hard, turning my head. Right. Left.

Then nothing.

When I woke up again, it was because of the bouncing. It was like dropping into potholes in a truck without shocks, at a speed of fifty miles an hour. Bam. Bam. Bam. With each slam of my body, my leg screamed in pain, my teeth rattled. Prying my eyes open I saw nothing but black and white. There was black right next to my face and beyond that, the blinding sparkling white of snow. I was being carried and the dizziness proved I was upside down. I was on the stranger's back, strapped to him like a caribou carcass. Fear of falling instantly rushed over me and I tried to grab his leg to steady myself, but I realized my hands were tied to his leg already. There was no way for me to wrap my palms around his calf. My feet were strapped down too when I tried to wiggle them.

The jarring I felt was every step he took through the heavy snow. I'd been told on the plane it was the first snowfall of the season and likely to melt, but right now it was causing the stranger to lift his knees higher than normal, bouncing me heavily. He was saving my life. I was aware of that on some level. Yet at the same time, the idea of being carried on his back, like a kill he'd landed after hours of patient stalking, unnerved me. My stomach protested the movement, the pain, the panic. I started to heave, coughing and choking as I splashed vomit across the snow in a wide arch. It went up my nose and burned and a second round came up, the heat of the bile hitting the cool air in a steamy, stinky mess.