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buried himself.
    He had to think. There was no way out of this frozen hellhole now. Fucking Ronnie, could’ve waited a couple more hours, given him time to sort things out. All he could hope for now was that Ed would expect him to run, send those two psychos on a wild goose chase...
    The heroin was trying to reclaim him and as tempted as he was to let it, Dale fought it now, giving his head a violent shake. The action created a moment of clarity and Dale listened into a silence marred only by the steady drip of the faucet...and something else. He thought, Is that a plane? and the thought was gone, his mind flipping back to the problem at hand.
    He picked up the gun in one wet hand, surprised by its heft, then set it back down. His gaze fell next on the heroin he’d skimmed from Copeland’s stash. That’d be the way to do it. He’d OD’d a few times already.
    Like going to sleep...
    The problem was, he didn’t want to die. He was twenty-eight years old with a grade nine education, a secret dream of opening his own pizza joint and a love for his brother as big as a boxcar. And now his brother was going to kill him—had no choice, really—because Dale thought with his dick instead of his brain. “That broad is trouble,” Ed had told him when Dale first hooked up with her. “She’ll take you places you don’t want to go.” He should’ve listened.
    It was getting hard to think. The water was cold now, his lean body starting to shiver. Another hit, that was the ticket. Just a small one. Get back to level, then sort this shit out.
    And there it was on the tray, waiting for him in its syringe like a patient lover. He couldn’t even remember cooking it up.
    He picked up the syringe with a hand that was steady now, and as he injected the drug in a warm bolus and the shivering stopped, he thought that fucking plane must be flying awfully low—
    Then the wall to his right exploded and the prop of Tom Stokes’ Cessna struck the side of the tub with its dying revolutions, snapping off in a hail of sparks, the leading edge of the fuselage missing Dale’s head by bare inches as he slid under water in a reflex action of lightning speed. Above him the belly of the plane scraped across the rims of the tub with a hellish screech, the sound amplified in Dale’s ears by the watery casket he now found himself in. There was a tremendous pain in his left forearm, a spike of shattered 2X4 skewering it, and a precious gulp of air boiled out of his gaping mouth.
    Then everything was still and Dale was drowning in his uncle’s bathtub.
    * * *
    Within seconds of the blow to his head Tom jerked into full consciousness, certain he was still in motion and the killing impact was about to come...but the plane was stationary now, and, incredibly, he was still alive.
    He did a quick inventory, moving his arms and legs, probing his chest and abdomen for obvious wounds. There was blood in his eyes from a gash at his hairline, the cut small, maybe a half-inch long, and he could taste blood, his bottom lip split and tender to the touch. Otherwise he believed he was fine, though he knew he could still be at risk from internal injuries or shock.
    Gingerly, he attempted to extract himself from the cockpit, slipping his seatbelt off and shifting his weight toward the buckled door...but he was trapped, debris across his thighs pinning him, the effort making his head spin. He gave the sensation a few seconds to pass, then pressed his shoulder to the door, trying to force it open. No luck there, the mechanism jammed.
    He shifted again, squinting out the shattered side window through swirls of dust and snow, trying to see where he’d wound up—and felt something bump the floor beneath his feet, two quick thumps, blunt and deliberate.
    Then he thought he heard a scream, except it sounded like it was coming from under water.
    * * *
    Dale opened his eyes to see the white underbelly of a small aircraft—he could actually read the word Cessna , black