Expect the Sunrise by Susan May Warren

gray of the shelter. Every muscle ached, and her head felt cottony and full. Where was she?
    With the emergency blanket pulled up to her nose and the body heat of the other passengers, she’d lived through the night. Oh yeah, plane crash. Sarah.
    Andee leaned over her friend, checking her pulse, her breathing.
    “She was moaning in the night,” a thin man said. He touched a cut across his nose, then moved his hand back under his blanket. Ishbane.
    “Did she say anything?”
    “Something. A name, I think”
    Andee closed her eyes, relieved. She opened one of Sarah’s eyelids. Pupils seemed normal. Thank You, Lord.
    Sarah moaned.
    Andee checked her other eye. “Sarah, wake up.” She patted her cheek. “Wake up.”
    Sarah seemed restless, as if trying to escape the bonds of her slumber. Andee took her hand and squeezed. Sarah squeezed back. Andee wasn’t sure if the response was involuntary or a message.
    She’d take it as a message. One of hope.
    Please, Lord, send someone to us today.
    She noticed Flint slumped against the back of the shelter, his back to the wall. He shivered slightly in his sleeping bag. She touched his forehead and found a slight temperature. She also noticed that Mac had vanished from his post. She’d slept soundly. “Where is everyone?”
    “Outside,” Ishbane said.
    Andee couldn’t believe they’d gotten past her position by the opening without her waking or that she’d fallen asleep in spite of her attempts to drive away her fatigue. She’d spent most of the night monitoring Sarah’s breathing and devising escape scenarios. She had to help Mac overcome his fear or dementia or whatever held him back from taking a full panoramic view of reality and agreeing to let her hike out—and soon.
    Twice she had caught Mac with his hand on Sarah’s head, as if testing her temperature. It almost made Andee want to forgive him. But the fact that he’d bullied his way into command of their battered group with his FBI pedigree kept her from letting forgiveness take hold.
    She couldn’t believe he was FBI. What kind of dumb luck did she have to be trapped with a Scottish FBI agent? Her mother would be trying to immunize her from the Scottish charm while her father would slap an arm around him, reliving old times at the bureau. Andee considered it history repeating itself, a sort of heavenly joke.
    As if things couldn’t be worse.
    She felt like she’d slept shoved into a tin can on a bed of baseballs. Leaning forward on her knees, she pushed aside the shelter flap. A gust of wind nearly stripped the breath from her lungs.
    Snow blanketed the bowl in which they’d crashed, a million tiny diamonds sparkling in the light. It might be pretty if she were soaring above it, enjoying the scene from her safe cockpit. But hidden beneath this morning’s white blanket, the jagged rock, crevasses, and loose boulders lay in ambush.
    Good thing Mac had collected much of their debris last night.
    Andee scanned the pewter sky, with the sun melting away the night. It boded well for travel today, and she’d be able to make excellent time.
    She heard popping and spitting, smelled smoke. Searching for the source, she climbed out of the shelter, pulled her blanket around her, and saw a pile of books and seat cushions.
    Nina knelt before the pyre, blowing on the fire, coaxing it to life. Already flames licked the base, and black smoke, fueled by the vinyl seats, rose in a thickening trail into the sky. Sparks spat out, grabbed by the greedy wind and tossed hither. Andee watched in shock as they blanketed the crash area, some landing on the broken wings of the plane. What was worse, she saw Phillips shoving a seat cushion out through the cockpit door.
    When Andee noticed a pile of used waterproof matches, she didn’t have to ask how they’d gotten the fire going. Had she packed another canister? Thankfully, she still had her lighter.
    “What. Are. You. Doing ?” She tried not to sound appalled, but had they any