Page 122 of Dead Girl Running

Kellen threw herself to the floor, grabbed the metal legs of a seat and held on. Air pressure blasted out the window, peeling away a two-foot-wide chunk of the plane’s fuselage from ceiling to floor.

Erin disappeared into the void. The reeking wreck of Gregory’s body vanished out the hole with Erin.

The plane rocked, out of control.

Kellen careened back and forth, helpless, caught in forces beyond her control. Her injured hand slipped and slipped again. She clutched with her good hand, but…

No air.

No gravity.

No strength.

She fought to again grasp the metal leg with her swollen fingertips.

The plane spiraled downward.

She couldn’t breathe. She was losing consciousness.

She was going to die.

46

As dawn faintly lit the eastern sky, the plane touched down…somewhere.

Kellen sat buckled into a seat as close to the cockpit as she could get. With her injured hand, she held a yellow oxygen mask over her face. With her uninjured hand, she clutched the arm of the chair. With every fiber of her being, she prayed.

All too clearly through the puncture in the fuselage, she could hear the squeal of the brakes, the roar of the reverse thrusters. She felt the pressure that slammed her against the seat and the skid and crash as the plane lurched to a halt, crooked in a ditch.

She looked out of the hole in the plane. Seven feet down, she could see asphalt. A two-lane road with a yellow dotted line down the middle. She could jump the distance.

She did.

She stumbled, fell onto her hands and knees. Sheer blinding pain from her hand made her rest her head on the cool pavement, but as the agony retreated, she lifted her head and laughed.

She had to. She was alive.

More than alive. She was free. The fears that had lurked within her had vanished. No, not vanished—been vanquished. By her. All those years, she’d been afraid of Gregory’s ghost. She’d been afraid of Gregory’s family. She’d been afraid that somehow, somewhere they would find her, that a wave of corrosive acid Lykke family craziness would crash over her and she would again be helpless, belittled, broken.

Well, Erin, cruel and crazy Erin, had found her. She had done everything to break Kellen. She had used the name Cecilia against her as if it was an insult. And today Kellen had discovered Cecilia was smarter, braver, funnier than she had ever imagined. It hadn’t really been Kellen who escaped from the horror of Gregory’s murder/suicide, survived the Philadelphia streets, saved a child, learned to love… It hadn’t really been Kellen who joined the Army, learned hand-to-hand combat, to carry a weapon, to fight in battles against an unseen enemy, to save her comrades from death, to be wounded and live.

Cecilia had stood alone and defeated Gregory’s ghost and the terror that tainted her days and nights.

Cecilia had become the person her cousin, Kellen, had wanted her to be. At long last, she was worthy of the sacrifice Kellen had made.

She looked around. The world was flat here, a great plain of prairie dotted with farmhouses surrounded by mountains and covered by a grand, wide sky. A breeze whipped up and brought a crackling sound and the scent of something burning. That brought her to her feet. Behind her, the plane’s wheel was buried in a roadside ditch, the plane’s wing pointed toward the vanishing northern stars…and smoke curled from the engine.

A quarter mile away, a man stood on the porch of a farmhouse, filming the scene with his phone. She walked toward him, staggering from pain and shock. When she got close, she looked up at him—he was still filming—and she asked, “Where are we?”

“Montana.”

“Can you call 911? Because there’s a pilot on that plane and the plane’s about to explode.”

* * *

She spent one day in a small Montana hospital while they stabilized her, gave her oxygen and ascertained the hairline fractures in her sternum would heal with much pain, but no lasting effects. She was transferred to a moderately sized Montana hospital with a skilled orthopedic surgeon, who operated on her shattered finger. Her cast reached to her elbow, her fingertips were the only things showing and they were bruised and swollen, and learning to do anything with her left hand made every waking moment a challenge and sometimes a humiliation.

While she was recovering, she heard from everyone—Annie and Leo, who reported the resort had survived, Mr. Gilfilen, who reported he had survived, Birdie, who reported she had survived and that Mr. Lennex was a very nice man. Sheri Jean, who was aggravated that not only was Mara a villain, but her absence left a gap in the guest services lineup and how was Sheri Jean supposed to deal with that? Temo, whose sister was settling in nicely, and Adrian, who assured Kellen that the son of a bitch who had wanted to sell Regina had been shown a cliff that plunged into the ocean but had been allowed to limp away.

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