“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 considered 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.
As nightfall came, Annie found herself questioning whether rescue would actually come tomorrow. Her euphoria about starting the fire had waned pretty quickly as the temperature dropped and the sky darkened. What would happen to them if rescue never came? How long could they hold on with a dwindling food supply and no promise of water? At least they could melt snow and drink it, Annie realized. They wouldn’t get dehydrated. But there weren’t even berries or nuts or anything remotely edible in their midst. And although she wasn’t opposed to losing a few pounds, she certainly didn’t want to do it via the Alaskan wilderness diet.
She was pretty sure there were wild animals lurking in these woods. Earlier she had heard a high-pitched cry emanating from somewhere in the forest. It had nearly scared the life out of her. Declan had acted nonchalant, as if he hadn’t heard a thing. But she knew what she’d heard. Most likely it had been a wolf. Bears tended to hibernate during winter, but there were always sightings during November, especially if the winter weather was mild. So there could be bears waiting to pounce on them. Or wild moose.
She didn’t voice her concerns to Declan.