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mother would join them. Mary hadn’t been to see him in years—a fact that still felt like a hole inside him, even though they corresponded regularly. But maybe time would heal that wound also.
    Time and forgiveness.
    He still remembered the first time Andee had shown up in Disaster—right after her sophomore year in college, toting a blonde-haired friend with a New York accent. Those were the days when he still looked over his shoulder, spooked at every creak in the forest, and didn’t leave the cabin without his gun. Andee had appeared on the four-wheeler, stacked with supplies, clearly intent on spending time with him.
    It had felt like living water to his parched soul. He drank in her company, her smile, and her laughter and ignored the waves of regret that threatened to pull him under.
    A stronger and wiser man might have made her leave. Instead, he hoped and prayed that the danger had passed. After twenty years, certainly the Rubinov family had forgotten or at least moved on to bigger acts of vengeance. Certainly his daughter and wife were no longer targets. He’d started to hope that they might be a family again. Despite Mary’s fears, Gerard had broken his own rules and let Andee stay. Not only that, he looked forward to her visits. Now he prayed for Mary to join her. And from her recent letters … well, a man had reason to hope.
    He closed the door to the stove and rose, walking to the cold storage to retrieve his breakfast. Usually he lived like a lonely hermit, evident in the scarce canned goods, the absence of curtains and pictures. But since Andee’s appearance, the place had lost its grease and fish odors. She’d cleaned, added the purple blossoms of Jacob’s ladder to the vase on the table, embedded the smells of oat bread and porridge into the pine walls, and displayed new photos of her and Sarah and her other Team Hope pals.
    Pictures that he’d hidden with nearly rabid paranoia years before.
    But those days had passed. Certainly , they’d passed. He’d even begun to consider Andee’s pleas to move to Disaster proper. He knew she’d feel better with him closer to town.
    He opened the cool-storage door, grabbed a slab of bacon, and turned. He froze, staring at the man in the doorway, the one holding a gun.
    He didn’t see the one behind him until a split second before the man’s blow sent him to the floor in an explosion of pain.

    Andee blocked out the screams that could be heard through her headset and above the noise of wind as the Cessna plummeted. Her entire body felt weighted, as if it too had gathered the ice that was forcing the aircraft to the ground. The plane fell like dead-weight, the stall warning still sounding, scraping her nerves. If she could get the plane below this cloud with enough air left, she could level it out and land … maybe.
    Andee tried to pull back on the yoke. Judging from the way her controls responded, sluggish at best, the ice had the final say on their rate of descent. Currently, they were plunging at 100 knots per second, banking west toward the mountains.
    And she couldn’t seem to pull them out of the dive. In a moment, they’d start to spin.
    Exhaling hard, she pulled back on the controls, struggling to even the artificial horizon. Her ailerons must be frozen into place, along with the rudder. Her foot pedals didn’t respond.
    Why had she climbed into the clouds? She’d collected ice over Murphy’s Dome on more than one occasion, but she’d always been able to fly through and cut out into the warming, lifesaving sunshine.
    Why hadn’t she listened to her instincts and simply stayed on the ground?
    Not now. She wouldn’t listen to the voices of guilt until later. When they were on the ground. Alive.
    “Mayday, Mayday. This is November-one-three-seven-four-Lima. We’ve been hit by lightning and are going down. Over.”
    Nothing but static. Had her radio been iced over too? The weight on the antenna may have broken it off. She turned on the