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the bedding and slipped into her clothes.
    She stepped out of the crude shelter, her eyes looking out over the site, wanting to be wrong more than anything. Gone. Somehow she'd slept through whatever had happened. But everything was gone, even the remnants of the plane crash. The only thing that remained was her bags neatly piled by the fire pit and the stockpot.
    She saw the note propped up on the stockpot and walked over to it slowly. Reluctance made it feel like she was walking through honey, but she finally grasped the note and opened it. It was brief and to the point.
    "A rescue chopper will get you by lunchtime."
    The note was unsigned. A harsh pain shot through Jena's gut. She crumpled the note and threw it away from her in a rage. She wanted to shift and run into the woods. To just shed everything and be free. To let the rescue chopper come to an abandoned site.
    She threw her head back and screamed, trying to release some of the pain that was ravaging her. They left her. They didn't even say goodbye. They just turned their backs on her, like everyone else had. The pain wrapped itself around her, tighter and tighter, until all she could do was crumple to the ground howling in rage.
    She hated herself, she should have never trusted her fickle feelings. Proximity after surviving the crash, danger, all potent, creating false emotions and bonds. They didn't love her. She wept as she realized that even though it wasn't real, couldn't be real, she was shattering from the inside out.
    She wasn't sure how much time had passed when she finally sat up, pulled a water bottle off her bag and rinsed the sharp chemical taste out of her mouth. That 'special' hot cocoa must have been drugged. Jena shook her head, no wonder they hadn't wanted to make love, to just hold her. At least taking her while she was drugged was beyond the pale for them. She shook her head, she just felt so incredibly stupid.
    Jena gathered the few things that were left in the shelter. She hoped the note was true and they hadn't left her stranded. God, they'd even taken Don. They claimed it wasn't about trust, but they hadn't even trusted her enough to say goodbye, even if not why.
    She built up the fire, letting it burn bright and hard, heaping the hard earned fuel on it. She was watching the flames when she heard the thumping of the chopper. The dark and lonely years of her adolescence stood her well. Her face was closed off to the men who landed the helicopter, who just said that Don had sent them. Part of her wanted to bombard them with questions, to beg them to take her to Jack and Matt, or to just tell her they were safe. But she simply handed them her bags and said, "I'm ready to go home." She sat and stared stonily out of the window the entire ride back to civilization.
    Whatever pull the tattooed Kodiak had - no one asked her anything. She assumed it was the bear, everything about him screamed 'leader'. It was all very arranged and she found herself in her apartment several days later. She slowly unpacked her bag, realizing with a shock that she had nothing to remember the two men by, or even prove that they existed.
    She sat on her sofa and watched the waves roll in and out. It felt like she was already forgetting how they smelled and felt. The grief flashed hard inside her when she realized she would slowly forget what they looked like and cursed the fickle nature of memory. They would fade into blurred memories, until nothing was left but an aching heart.
    She didn't want to wallow in her grief. Jena tried to run the pain out, up and down the small beach her home overlooked. Pounding her feet on the sand until she dropped, finally dragging herself home when she had used up every bit of energy inside. It felt like a thousand years had passed, but when she finally flipped on the TV, she was shocked to realize it had only been a few days. The news was filled with blaring headlines about the shocking destruction of an isolated pharmaceutical research