Page 21 of Stranded with the Billionaire
“Hey, was that Jake?” Max asked excitedly. “I’m so glad you’re okay man. When your flight didn’t come in, Dillon was having all sorts of worries.”
“We are not okay!” Sterling shouted. “We are stranded on a mountain top and need you to get emergency services to look for us.”
“Did you say the plane crashed?” Max questioned.
“Yes!” Sterling said in relief. Finally, he was starting to get their predicament. “Listen, we’re on a logging road in a shack of some sort. We don’t know where we are. You need to phone police to tell them what I’ve told you.”
“Here,” Jake puffed as he carefully went down on his knees in front of Sterling. He had a block of wood in his hands. “I’m going to use this like a hammer to get rid of some more of the wood that doesn’t look too good. Once I make a big enough hole, you should be able to pull your leg out.”
“As long as I don’t fall through,” Sterling couldn’t feel any bottom beneath her trapped foot.
“Grab hold of the doorway,” Jake began pounding the wood around Sterling’s leg.
“What is that noise?” Max’s voice was faint.
“Was that a phone?” Jake stopped in surprise.
“Yes. There was a signal and I thought I would try to see if I could call out,” Sterling tried to budge her leg but it remained firmly entrenched. “Unfortunately, it called Max.”
“Where is the phone?” Jake looked around.
“When I fell through the floor, I dropped it,” she explained.
“They’re stuck on a mountain,” Max explained to someone on his end of the call. “I don’t think they know where they are. Do you know where you are?”
“No!” Sterling wanted to scream and pull her hair out. She was pretty sure she’d already said that bit of information.
“Max! It’s Jake,” he called out as he leaned a little further into the outhouse, conscious of the rotting floor. “We need you to find out who is in charge of our rescue and let them know that we are on a mountain with a logging road and a small shack.”
“Wait a minute, I’ll ask,” Max said impatiently to someone. “Do you know what direction the face of the mountain is?”
“What?” Sterling looked at Jake in confusion.
“Are you on the south side, east side, north or west? It might help the search party,” Max reasoned.
“We don’t have a compass,” Jake sighed in frustration. “We don’t even know what state we are in.”
“How can you not know?” Max’s voice cut in and out with static. “Check the sun.”
“We’re going to lose him,” Sterling whispered. “The battery of the phone is low.”
“Max, just tell us that you’re going to talk to whoever is in charge of rescuing us and let them know that we are stranded,” Jake listened for Max’s faint reply.
They heard nothing.
“Max?” Sterling called out but there was no answer.
“I guess your phone is dead,” Jake stated the obvious.
She swallowed hard and tried not to cry. “They won’t be able to find us.”
“What do you mean?” he frowned.
“If the battery is dead, it’s not sending any signals to the cellphone towers. They can’t trace any further calls we make if we leave here so they won’t know our location,” she gave an involuntary sniffle. Sterling didn’t want to cry. It was useless to tear up in this sort of situation no matter how frustrated she was.
“Then we stay where we are,” Jake said reasonably. “They’ll find us from that last call. Plus, your knee isn’t going to be in good shape after we get it out of the floor.”
“What if they don’t find us before the food or the wood is used? We’ll have to move and they won’t find us,” Sterling wiped a tear away. She was going to lose her job over this. Without her cellphone she couldn’t take pictures, write any articles or email them to her boss. Unless they got rescued by the end of day, Grange was going to give her spot reporting on the Rameslys to someone else.
