Page 11 of Stranded with the Billionaire
“Who said we had to argue?” Jake asked.
She ignored his question and laid her blanket on the floor between the two seats, curving it up at the edges. It was going to be a tight fit for the both of them. Sterling laid down and pointed to the space beside her. “You go here and we put the second blanket on top of us.”
“Shared body heat,” Jake sighed and carefully lowered himself to the floor. “Are you sure the floor is the best spot?”
“Unless you want to try to share a tilted pilot seat,” Sterling shrugged. It didn’t much matter to her as long as she started to get warm soon. “You might be able to breath better sitting up, but we’ll be colder if we don’t share the heat.”
“If I stop breathing, don’t do to me what you did to Richard,” Jake muttered as he laid down, spreading his blanket over them both.
“Hey! I tried to save his life,” she defended herself. Sterling was squished between Jake and the seat. “Wait a minute, what is this?”
Something hard was digging into her ribs. Sterling managed to squirm around enough to grab the object out of her pocket.
“A phone,” Jake looked at it and her. “Mine was in the piece of the plane that’s missing. Do you have a signal?”
Sterling looked at the cracked screen. It wasn’t totally shattered so hopefully it would work. She turned it on and the screen came to life in a disjointed mess. “Maybe?”
Jake turned a little so they could both look at the phone at the same time. “I think there’s a bar. No, it’s gone.”
“We’ll just give it a try anyways,” Sterling hit the call button so she could dial a number. Putting in 911, she waited for the call to connect.
It didn’t. A message flickered across her screen and Jake puzzled it together. “No signal.”
“No kidding,” Sterling sighed and shut off the phone to conserve battery. “I’m not too sure it would have helped anyways. We don’t know where we are. What mountain, what state?”
“Can’t they just trace the phone?” Jake frowned. “Technology is so far advanced now, you think they would be able to do that.”
“Not unless it can be triangulated off three cell towers. The police need permission for that, which I would gladly give,” Sterling was starting to feel warmer. “Even then, the search area would be massive. We’d be extremely lucky to get found.”
“How do you know that?” he asked in surprise.
“I read extensively,” Sterling improvised. Truth was, she knew for her job. There had been a police case about a missing child that she had covered and cellphone coverage with emergency services had been part of her research. Fortunately, the kid had been okay.
A rare good news day in the world of negative news.
“We’ll have to keep trying for a signal as we make our way down the mountain,” Sterling said. She returned the phone to her pocket. The last thing she needed was Jake seeing her notes or files. Sterling would keep playing the flight attendant as long as possible. She hoped the police wouldn’t be mad at her when they were finally rescued. Was impersonating a flight attendant a criminal offense?
“When I don’t arrive at the airport on time the airline and my brother will notify the proper authorities,” Jake said with confidence. “They’ll start searching for us shortly.”
“We’re off course, remember?” Sterling hated to put a crimp in his belief, but it was better to be rational about this. “At three hours into the flight, we were still over a mountain range when we were to have cleared that within the first hour.”
At least, she was pretty sure they should have cleared it close to the hour mark. It seemed right to her way of thinking.
“We must be north of where we started,” Jake remarked.
“How do you figure?” she wondered.
“There’s snow,” he explained. “The northern states are starting to get colder for winter.”
“Higher elevations have snow,” Sterling responded with a dry voice. “We’re on a mountain.”
“You don’t think we ended up south in Mexico?” Jake didn’t like that thought. “Or even north into Canada?”
“I don’t think so. If anything, I think we went around in circles for a couple hours before we crashed,” Sterling shrugged and yawned. She felt exhausted from all the activity that had been happening. Or maybe she was tired from the bump on her head. “That’s my hope. Then we’ll be closer to where the search and rescue teams start looking for us. What are we supposed to do with a concussion?”
“What do you mean?” Jake frowned
“I bumped my head,” she explained.
“Do you have a headache? Feel dizzy or nauseous?” he asked.
“No. I’m just really tired,” Sterling snuggled against him. He was warm and that was all the invitation she needed. Plus, he smelled good. She took in a deep breath.
“Careful of the ribs,” he complained.
Sterling rolled her eyes. What a wuss. She yawned again and went to sleep.
