Read Story: SEASON 2 EPISODE 34

Rustling to my left caught my attention, and I pulled my head out of the wreckage to see Chloe slowly working the pilot’s door open.

I moved to help her. Between the two of us, we were able to work the door open just enough to squeeze a body in, and Chloe ducked her head and shoulders through the gap before I could take the initiative.

“Is there anyone in there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Chloe responded a moment later as she pulled her head out. She looked grim. “If you want to hold onto whatever you ate, I’d stay out.”

Considering that I wasn’t sure when I’d get my next meal, I followed her advice and stayed back. “Fuck. I didn’t even know his name.” If I had to take a guess, it was probably John. Most of my security agents had some variation of that name.

“Robert,” Chloe said, moving to the passenger section of the helicopter and peering in. She tested the side of the wreckage herself. “We were going to spend the night in a cabin with the guy. I did my homework.”

“Jesus,” I said, giving Robert’s resting place a final glance before following Chloe back to the passenger’s section. She was already partially inside, carefully choosing her footing as she climbed deeper into the wreckage. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for the other chute,” Chloe said. “It has some rations and other supplies that could be useful while we wait it out. I’m not certain when rescue will come, so we need to gather and conserve.”

She began working her way deeper into the interior, continuing, “There were four of us, and any bodyguard with piloting experience would have packed four parachutes. Maybe more for redundancy.”

“Do you need help?” I asked. Chloe had one foot on some of the mangled seating and another on the sharp incline of the helicopter’s flooring. It was hard to tell what she was hanging onto because her sculpted ass in those wet jeans was doing a damn good job of keeping my attention.

“Too much weight could make this unstable. Rather, you stay where you are and watch for the chopper to shift,” Chloe said.

I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I took a few steps back and watched the wreckage, which stayed completely stable over the next few minutes as I heard Chloe rooting around inside. After nearly ten minutes of waiting, she said, “Here we go.”

A pack similar to the one I had strapped on moments before falling out of the plane dropped into view, hitting the ground and rolling over on its side. A second one fell beside its twin. Then, two more bags unlike the parachutes. One was a bulging canvas pack, while the other was my brown leather overnight bag.

“Damn!” I called out as I approached them and crouched beside my bag. “Nice. You didn’t happen to see my phone in there, did you?”

Chloe peered down at me and looked around, “Nope. We can try looking under the seats, but it’s a mess.”

“Yeah,” I said disappointedly. “I hope I didn’t drop it on my way down.” I glanced at the twin packs with harnesses attached. “Two parachutes? Do you think there was a redundancy, or do you think Astrid fell out?”

“Probably a redundancy,” Chloe said as she started to work her way back out. “She was strapping on a parachute when I went out, so she would have left with one.”

I’d started to root through my overnight bag when I happened to look up just in time to see Chloe place her foot on one of the seats, wedging the toe of her boot into it as she secured footing. Something caught my eye. Something red.

The seats were upholstered in white leather.

“Chloe!” I jumped to my feet and closed in on the seats. My outburst must have spooked her because she was on the ground in a flash with the rifle in her hand as I peeled from the seats away from each other to get a closer look. It was blood.

______

We set to work immediately, trying to pull apart the seats that had been crushed together, working slowly at the twisted metal in case Astrid really was underneath all of it and was possibly injured. Sure enough, after twenty minutes of prying at broken seating, we managed to finally pull it apart enough to reveal white blonde hair stained red with blood. I reached out and slid her hair aside, anticipating losing my lunch after all, but was surprised to see Astrid’s fine features remained relatively untouched. There was a large circle of darkening skin on the left side of her face, and on closer inspection, we saw a nasty-looking gash on her scalp, but other than that, she appeared to be unharmed. The seat cushions had likely absorbed most of the impact from the helicopter crash.

Her pulse was weak, though, and no matter how much prodding we did, she wouldn’t regain consciousness. Chloe and I set to work clearing away more of the seating, finding the parachute that she’d been trying to put on wedged between two pieces of the frame in a way that might have saved Astrid’s life by keeping the seats from crushing her. We managed to retrieve the pack while still trying to clear as much of the debris off Astrid as carefully as possible. We eventually uncovered enough to discover why her pulse was weak. It turned out that the seats hadn’t done a perfect job of protecting her. In fact, part of the metal frame had folded over on her ankle, pinning it in place and breaking it. That was easy enough to diagnose, considering some of the bone was exposed, and the amount of blood covering that section of the helicopter and her leg made the amount I found the equivalent of a nosebleed. This time, I came really close to losing my lunch when I saw that.

We tried once more to move the metal frame enough to get the ankle free, but she woke up just enough to scream in pain before passing out again, and we hadn’t made any progress.

“She’s bleeding out,” Chloe said, her brown eyes examining the break. “Much more of this, and she won’t make it.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “That frame isn’t going to budge.”

She gave me a grim look and said, “We’ll just have to work around it. I need some clean rags and something to make a fire.”

“Got it,” I said, racing back to my overnight bag and opening it up. Thank god Erin was an over-preparer. I had two pairs of pants, two pairs of underwear and socks, and four different kinds of shirts. I tossed aside the stupid remote to Helen’s vibrator that Erin had packed and rummaged through another small bag I found that contained toiletries, including soap, shampoo, a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, and other odds and ends.

I returned with the clothes and toiletries, and Chloe was overjoyed to see the soap. Well… as close to overjoyed as I’d ever seen from someone like her.

Next, I went in search of fire and lucked out at finding that the canvas bag was actually a survival kit, which contained a few cans of Sterno for emergency fires and light sources. I brought her one of those as well and watched as Chloe set to work cleaning her hands and the wound as well as she could. Through it all, Astrid didn’t wake up at all.

When Chloe had finished, she opened the can of Sterno and lit it with the lighter I’d found in the pack. “Get a rag or a stick or something. Put it between her teeth.” She looked up from the little can of flame and said, if she woke up before, she’s sure as hell going to wake up this time.”

I could feel some of the blood drain from my face as I realized what she was going to do, grabbed the remainder of one of my torn shirts, and ran around to the other side of the helicopter, where her head still remained. Despite the bruise and the blood, she almost looked peaceful in her sleep, her fine elfin features making her appear almost angelic, and I hesitated a moment as I watched her. She’d been so nice to me when we first met and later when we’d gone on our date. Now, in her vulnerable state, I found myself wanting to stroke her face and whisper to her that she’d be alright… that we’d get her out of here. However, her cutthroat attitude at the board meeting and how she’d treated Bobbi last night suggested a much darker nature lurking behind that celestial facade. I really didn’t know this person at all.

“You ready?” Chloe asked, bringing me out of my thoughts, and I closed in on Astrid to work her jaw loose so I could slip the thick strip of twisted cloth between her lips.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Make sure to hold her down,” Chloe called out. “The less she moves, the better.”

“Ready,” I said, pressing my hands to her shoulders and waiting for the worst.

“AURGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Astrid’s scream was ear-piercing despite the cloth in her mouth, and I was certain that if there were any other Tanaka goons nearby, they knew where to look for us now. On top of being startled by the sheer power of her cries, Astrid was stronger than she looked, and I watched in horror as her blue-green eyes shot open, and she tried sitting up so hard that she nearly threw me off.

“Hold her down!” Chloe barked, but I barely registered it as I looked down into Astrid’s wild eyes. She looked insane as she continued to scream, biting down on the remnants of my shirt so hard that I was sure she would chew them into pieces. On top of that, the amount of venom she was shooting at me with her glare was unsettling. I wasn’t really in a place to judge how someone reacted when under this kind of pain, but damn… she really did look like a woman possessed as she screeched at me like a banshee.

“Easy, Astrid,” I said, doubling down on my efforts to keep her pinned to the seat she was under. “You’ve got a broken ankle, and Chloe’s trying to stop the bleeding. She’s…”

I didn’t bother to finish. Astrid’s eyes rolled back, and her head dropped onto the white leather as she passed out once more.