A Match Made in Alaska Read online

  “Well, flying planes is my superpower,” he said. He twisted his mouth. Doubt crept in. “Or at least, it was until today.”

  He scratched his jaw as his mind wandered to the events leading up to the plane’s malfunctioning. What had happened? He wasn’t entirely sure, which shook him. Everything had happened so quickly. All his attention had been focused on landing the plane safely and ensuring that he and Annie walked away from the plane in one piece. He didn’t like all the unanswered questions that were bouncing around in his mind. Had the crash somehow been his fault?

  “That’s a wonderful superpower to have,” Annie said. “I’m very grateful that you were my pilot today. What you did...safely landing the plane...it’s rather incredible.”

  Incredible? He wasn’t sure he agreed with Annie, although he appreciated the sentiment. As an experienced pilot, it was his job to avert disaster and to skillfully maneuver all aspects of aviation.

  In his opinion, a crash landing should never have been necessary in the first place. It bothered him deeply that something had gone so catastrophically wrong on his watch.

  “Thanks for saying so. I wish that I could have kept us up there in the wild blue yonder. If all had gone well, we’d be getting ready to make our final descent into Love right about now.” He shook his head ruefully. As soon as they made it back to Love, he would begin putting the pieces together in an effort to find out what had gone so terribly wrong with Lucy. He wouldn’t rest until he had those answers!

  Annie began to shiver right before his eyes. She folded her arms across her chest and rubbed her arms over her cloak in an effort to get warm. He wished he had a blanket to throw over her shoulders. He’d been so preoccupied with their location and the events leading up to the crash that he had allowed his mind to wander from the pressing matters at hand.

  “We need to find shelter and hunker down for the night before it gets dark.” And he needed to build a fire before they froze to death out here. The fire from the plane had petered out, no doubt due to the snow and ice on the ground as well as the low fuel supply. There had been only enough fuel in Lucy to get them back to Love, which might have been a blessing. If conditions had been different, the blaze from the plane could have spread to the forest and led to a wildfire.

  Hmm. He hadn’t built a fire since he was a kid on a school wilderness field trip. And even then, Boone had actually been the one to get it going. He let out a sigh. Boone had been stepping in to rescue him ever since.

  “If you’re cold, you should pull something from your luggage and add another layer,” he suggested. “It may take a bit to get a fire going.”

  Annie nodded and dug around in her bag until she produced a knitted blanket. She wrapped it around her shoulders and let out a contented sigh.

  “Where exactly are we?” she asked, looking around her surroundings with big eyes.

  “Midway between Anchorage and Love. We’re in the Chugach National Forest. I spotted it as we flew overhead. Although this area is sparsely populated and heavily forested, I seem to recall a campground in these parts.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his trusty compass. It was his habit to carry it around with him. It was the only earthly keepsake his grandfather had been attached to during his lifetime. When he had passed away, Killian O’Rourke had made sure to hand it off to his favorite grandson. Declan had kept it in his shirt pocket close to his heart ever since.

  And under different circumstances, he might have been able to use the compass to lead them toward rescue. But there was no way they could navigate their way out of the forest. And the likelihood of stumbling across the campground was remote. Surviving in the wilderness meant making smart choices. He owed it to both of them to make wise moves from this point forward.

  Now that the shock of the plane crash was beginning to wear off, he had a better viewpoint on their situation. It was a blessing they had been traveling over land at the time of the plane trouble rather than Kachemak Bay, where he would have been forced to crash-land on the water. They would have been in the middle of nowhere out on the water with no means of rescue or saving themselves. Hypothermia would have set in shortly. In all likelihood, they would have perished.

  Declan began scouting out their immediate area. Knowing it wasn’t wise to stray too far from the crash site, he began surveying for the driest area that was protected from the elements. By tonight it would be much colder, with a fierce wind to accompany the temperature drop. There was a copse of pine trees about one hundred feet from the wreckage. Declan walked over to check it out. When he reached the pine trees, he bent down and noticed that there was a relatively dry area between the trees where Annie might be able to make a pallet for sleep. He would stay up tonight to watch out for any signs of rescue or predators. Although it was unlikely that planes would be searching at night, he didn’t want to miss any window for rescue.

  There was no need to scare Annie by telling her about bears or wolves that roamed the Alaskan wilderness. The last thing he needed was for her to panic. As it was, he was slightly amazed she’d been holding it together. He hadn’t pegged her for the calm, cool and collected type.

  He walked back over to Annie. She was sitting on a rock and rummaging through her bags with a determined expression plastered on her face. She let out a cry of glee as she pulled out a pair of thick red mittens. “Score! I found them. These will be a game changer. My fingers are frozen.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Those will definitely help, especially as the temperature drops in a few hours.”

  She looked up at him with her brows knitted together. “Where are yours?”

  Declan shrugged. “I didn’t bring any. This was supposed to be only a short flight from Love to Anchorage and then back home.” He grinned at her. “I’m not in the habit of bringing mittens on my flights.”

  She ducked her head and dug back into her bag. A look of triumph flitted across her face as she held up a pair of black mittens with a pink heart on each. “Ta-da! I found another pair. You’re welcome to borrow them.”

  Declan frowned. He wasn’t exactly the type of guy who sported mittens with hearts on them. They were super girly. But his hands were getting cold. Annie was holding out the mittens to him with an expectant look on her face. Suddenly he didn’t want her to feel bad about his refusing her sweet little mittens. There was something about Annie Murray—eccentricities and all—that reeked of pure goodness.

  He reached out and took the mittens from her. “Thanks,” he said as he slid them on, letting out a contented sigh as his hands began to warm up from the cold. “You might have just saved my fingers from frostbite.”

  “Just returning the favor,” she said with a huge grin. “After all, you saved both of us with your skilled crash landing. Something tells me not every pilot could have pulled that off.” She held out her hands toward the forest. “With all these trees, you had to be dead-on with that landing.”

  “It’s a first for me, Annie. I’ve never had to make an emergency landing like this, but I’m thankful for years of flying experience. I learned to fly a plane when most kids are dreaming of getting their first kiss.” Declan felt a rush of joy rising up inside him at the memory of his first flying lesson with his grandfather. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the thrill of soaring up above the clouds into the clear blue skies of Alaska. He had felt invincible up in the air, as if none of the heartache and pain of his early years could touch him. And the praise his grandfather had heaped on him had truly made him feel a sense of accomplishment, one he’d never experienced before in his life. For the first time, he’d felt as if he was good at something.

  And he was a good pilot. A great one, according to most of his clients. How he wished his grandfather could have seen it all come to fruition. He’d passed away before Declan had gotten his pilot’s license. Now O’Rourke Charters had gotten o
ff the ground. The old man would have been so proud and tickled that Declan had made a business out of flying planes, the thing his grandfather had always loved most of all. It hadn’t been fair to lose his grandfather to the ravages of diabetes before he’d had the opportunity to give the old man a glimpse of his aviation enterprise. But the one thing life had taught him was that fair hardly ever entered into the equation.

  He shook his head in an effort to drag himself out of the past. Those memories could do nothing but hurt him. At the moment, he needed to focus on survival and making it through this ordeal. Night was quickly approaching, and being able to get a fire going would be a huge advantage for them.

  He pointed at the area he had just checked out. “That spot over there is probably the best shelter we’re going to find. It’ll give us a little protection from the elements, and if we can get a fire going, we’ll be able to stay warm through the night.”

  Annie rubbed her hands together. “A fire sounds good. It will save us from hypothermia. I’m sure you’re aware of it, but hypothermia sets in when your body core temperature is below ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Signs of hypothermia can be drowsiness, confusion, shivering and a slowed-down heart rate.”

  He nodded his head. As a native Alaskan, he had known about hypothermia before he’d learned to tie his shoes. “Good to know, Annie. I for one do not intend to find that out firsthand,” Declan said. “I’m going to make haste and look for some tinder to get the fire going.”

  Declan began to root around in the brush. He picked up pine needles, shredded bark and a few twigs. When he returned to the makeshift shelter with an armful of tinder, he deposited it in a heap on the ground. He noticed that Annie had moved her belongings over to the site. She had made a little pile of things in front of her seat on a log. With a cheeky grin on her face, Annie held up a granola bar.

  “Voilà! It’s not a five-course meal, but it should tide us over until tomorrow.” She pointed at the pile of snacks set out in front of her.

  Declan’s stomach grumbled with appreciation at the sight of chocolate, trail mix, beef jerky, peanut butter and crackers. And a bottle of water. For someone who hadn’t eaten since this morning, it was a veritable feast. God was good!

  “It’s a divine meal as far as I’m concerned,” Declan said as he accepted the granola bar she held out to him. “It was brilliant of you to bring all these snacks on the flight.”

  A smile lit up her face. “Not brilliant. Just practical. I sometimes get low blood sugar, so I always make sure I have a bunch of snacks on hand to give me a boost in case I need it. And some of these I stuffed in my luggage. I wasn’t sure if peanut butter was big in Alaska. Call me a snack hoarder,” she said with a laugh.

  “Snack hoard all you want. It’s a lifesaver,” Declan said, taking a huge bite of a granola bar. He closed his eyes as the morsel slid down his throat. A granola bar had never tasted so good in his life! As hungry as he was, it almost tasted like steak and potatoes.

  Annie Murray was shaping up to be quite a woman. She was smart and resourceful and plucky. Right about now he’d expected her to be a sobbing, frightened mess. He really needed to stop making rash and unfair judgments about people. Just because she was wearing fuzzy leopard pants didn’t mean she was an airhead. On the contrary, Love’s newest transplant was shaping up to be a keeper. Her stash of rations was going to save them from hunger pangs. Thanks to Annie, one of their major problems was solved. Now it was up to him to tackle another issue. Fire.

  “As soon as I get this fire going, we’ll really be in good shape,” he said. This was his moment to demonstrate his skills and to show Annie that he could take charge of the situation and protect her. He took a few dry sticks and began to rub them together frantically. Over and over again he rubbed the sticks in an effort to make a fire out of friction. As soon as he saw a hint of smoke, he would toss the sticks onto the pile of tinder and pray that a roaring fire would start burning.

  “How’s it going?” Annie asked over his shoulder. She was so close he could feel her breath on his neck. Talk about pressure!

  “Any minute now, this tinder is going to go up,” he said. “And we are going to have the world’s most roaring fire to keep us warm.”

  Precious seconds ticked by. Frustration began to set in as his efforts to get a fire going failed over and over again. It didn’t make any sense at all. Why wasn’t this fire sparking? The sticks were dry. He was exerting a lot of energy making sure that there was plenty of friction between the two sticks as he rubbed them together. Yet nothing was happening.

  “May I try something?” Annie asked. Declan looked up at her. She was standing beside him and digging around in her purse. What was it with ladies and their purses? The bags almost seemed like an appendage. Annie’s purse was like a clown car. She appeared to be able to fit endless items inside.

  Bless her for wanting to help with the fire. “This is pretty complicated,” he said with a shake of his head. “Have you ever tried to light a fire before?”

  He frowned as he watched Annie remove the battery from her cell phone. She then pulled a pocket knife from her bag. “Oh, I’ve never done it before. But I’ve read up on the subject. One of the best perks of being a librarian is all the books at our disposal. I find it amazing that knowledge is always at our fingertips.”

  Declan wanted to groan with frustration. Life wasn’t learned through books. Knowledge was accumulated by living. At least, that’s the way he’d always handled things. Tackling situations head-on was life affirming and empowering. Burying your head in a book was a surefire way of missing out on life. He didn’t want to insult Annie, but he needed to set her straight.

  “That’s impressive, but starting a fire isn’t really something a person can learn from how-to books. Experience is the best way to gain wilderness skills.” There was something incongruous about seeing Annie with a pocket knife. “You really did come prepared. Although you really should be careful with that knife. You can hurt yourself if you’re not careful.”

  “In preparation for this voyage, I read a very interesting book about Alaska. It’s called How to Survive and Thrive in the Alaskan Wilderness. Fascinating stuff,” she explained with an enthusiastic nod of her head. “And the first chapter detailed how to start a fire with your cell phone battery.”

  Declan resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. Thousands of books had been written about the Alaskan wilderness by so-called experts in the field. Not one of them, he would guess, had ever lived in Alaska or knew the first thing about surviving a plane crash. Not a single one would know how to land a malfunctioning seaplane safely. Yet they peddled books about survival to the public.

  Annie crouched down next to him and placed the battery on the rock’s surface. She scraped the knife against the top of the battery. Then she poked the battery with the knife.

  She looked up and met his gaze. “When the lithium is exposed to oxygen, it ignites.”

  Huh? Book or not, it was pretty impressive. He wasn’t sure the everyday, run-of-the-mill librarian knew how to start a fire with a cell phone battery. Annie was a librarian extraordinaire. He swung his gaze toward the battery, which was now smoking. Annie quickly tossed the battery into the tinder pile. Within seconds, smoke began to plume from the tinder. Declan’s jaw dropped as he watched a fire burst to life right before their eyes.

  “Well, shut my mouth,” Declan drawled. “You did it!”

  “I did, didn’t I?” Annie asked. She was smiling so hard, he thought her cheeks might break. “I feel so invigorated.”

  He looked down at his twigs and threw them into the fire. “So much for the old-fashioned way,” he grumbled. It burned a little to know that Annie had been able to do what he had failed at. Ever since he was a kid, he had hated to have egg on his face. It didn’t feel any better as an adult.

  Declan felt completely off-kilter. He consid
ered himself an outdoorsman. He fished, mountain climbed and could live off the land if the need arose. Annie was a sheltered librarian from Maine. Up until today, she’d never stepped foot in Alaska. Yet here she was building fires and serving the role of provider with her stash of snacks. Their roles had been flipped. He was the native Alaskan. It was his job as owner of O’Rourke Charters to care for his client, not the other way around.

  “Don’t feel bad about not being able to start the fire,” Annie said in a chirpy voice. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the battery. And you gathered up all the tinder and made it possible.”

  Annie was being kind. Her sweet nature radiated off her in waves. He shrugged off his wounded pride and allowed gratitude to wash over him. He was fortunate to have a smart, resourceful woman by his side during this crisis. Survival wasn’t a contest. It was a collaborative effort. So far, they had made it through a crash landing, gathered food and water for sustenance and built a fire for warmth. Making sure a rescue plane could spot them from the air was the next important step in their survival plan. It could make the difference between life and death.

  He needed to kick things into high gear. His mind had suddenly shifted toward rescue. He needed to do everything possible to make sure that they were rescued tomorrow. At almost eleven thousand square miles, the Chugach National Forest was too large for them to attempt to find rescue on foot. Their food supply wouldn’t last much longer, and he was worried about the elements and being able to sustain a fire. If the search and rescue missed the plane wreckage from above, he and Annie Murray would be fighting for their very lives.