“My name’s Rusty Carlson,” she said politely.
He barked a short laugh. His eyes moved up to take in her hair. “Rusty, huh?”
“Yes, Rusty,” she replied testily.
“Figures.”
The man had the manners of a pig. “Do you have a name?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a name. Cooper Landry. But this isn’t a garden party so forgive me if I don’t tip my hat and say, ‘Pleased to meet you.’”
For two lone survivors of a disastrous plane crash, they were off to a bad beginning. Right now Rusty wanted to be comforted, reassured that she was alive and would go on living. All she’d gotten from him was scorn, which was unwarranted.
“What’s with you?” she demanded angrily. “You act as though the crash was my fault.”
“Maybe it was.”
She gasped with incredulity. “What? I was hardly responsible for the storm.”
“No, but if you hadn’t dragged out that emotional, tearful goodbye to your sugar daddy, we might have beat it. What made you decide to leave ahead of him—the two of you have a lovers’ spat?”
“None of your damned business,” she said through teeth that had been straightened to perfection by an expensive orthodontist.
His expression didn’t alter. “And you had no business being in a place like that—” his eyes roved over her “—being the kind of woman you are.”
“What kind of woman is that?”
“Drop it. Let’s just say that I’d be better off without you.” Having said that, he slid a lethal-looking hunting knife from the leather scabbard attached to his belt. Rusty wondered if he was going to cut her throat with it and rid himself of the inconvenience she pose
d. Instead, he turned and began hacking at the smaller branches of the tree, cutting a cleaner path to make the fuselage more accessible.
“What are you going to do?”
“I have to get them out.”
“The...the others? Why?”
“Unless you want to be roommates with them.”
“You’re going to bury them?”
“That’s the idea. Got a better one?”
No, of course she didn’t, so she said nothing.
Cooper Landry hacked his way through the tree until only the major branches were left. They were easier to step around and over.
Rusty, making herself useful by dragging aside the branches as he cut them, asked, “We’re staying here then?”
“For the time being, yeah.” Having cleared a path of sorts, he stepped into the fuselage and signaled her forward. “Grab his boots, will ya?”
She stared down at the dead man’s boots. She couldn’t do this. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. He couldn’t expect her to do something so grotesque.
But glancing up at him and meeting those implacable gray eyes, she knew that he did expect it of her and expected it of her without an argument.
One by one they removed the bodies from the aircraft. He did most of the work; Rusty lent him a hand when he asked for it. The only way she could do it was to detach her mind from the grisly task. She’d lost her mother when she was a teenager. Two years ago her brother had died. But in both instances, she’d seen them when they were laid out in a satin-lined casket surrounded by soft lighting, organ music, and flowers. Death had seemed unreal. Even the bodies of her mother and brother weren’t real to her, but identical replicas of the people she had loved, mannequins created in their images by the mortician.
These bodies were real.