The Sky That Fell Apart Full Novel

By the time she dragged him back to the cabin on her old wooden deer sled, darkness had settled completely over Willow Ridge. The temp had dropped below freezing, turning the damp mud into rigid ruts.

Evelyn cleaned the sticky blood from his face with warm water, wrapped his cracked ribs tightly with ace bandages, stitched the nasty cut near his temple with a sterile needle, and laid him on the rag rug beside the woodstove. He had deep bruising across his chest, a badly wrenched shoulder, and the dazed look of a severe concussion, but nothing felt immediately fatal.

Near midnight he woke long enough to swallow three aspirin and drink a glass of water.

"You’re safe for tonight," Evelyn said, wiping his brow with a damp cloth.

"For tonight," he murmured weakly, and slipped under again.

The next morning brought heavy sleet against the glass and no sound but the screaming wind. The man was still alive, his fever having broken around dawn. Nobody came searching.

His name, when he finally managed to articulate it through swollen lips, was Daniel Pierce.

On the second day, while he slept fitfully by the fire, Evelyn went back to the wreck site. The plane had burned itself out fast in the humid weather, leaving a blackened shell half hidden by ash and wet leaves. No sirens echoed through the valley. No search aircraft hovered overhead. No voices called out in the dense trees.

Later that night, Daniel told her why. He had chartered the flight under a fake alias through a private broker in Seattle. The pilot had diverted far north around a storm front, then completely lost navigation after a sudden fuel-system failure. If no one knew where they had gone down, the search radius would cover three states. In those vast woods, a small wreck could disappear in plain sight for months.

"And the pilot?" Evelyn asked, holding a mug of broth.

"He ejected over the valley," Daniel said, his voice hollow. "Or at least, he tried to. I saw his canopy blow miles back. I don't know if he made it."

Near the passenger seat in the charred tail section, Evelyn had found a scorched leather satchel. Inside, tucked under charred maps, sat a heavy metal flash drive and a waterproof engineering notebook. When she placed them on the coffee table that evening, Daniel went dead still.

"You went back there?"

"You crashed carrying these," Evelyn said plainly. "That seemed important enough to risk the mud."