Chapter One
Three long days had passed.
The morning sun hid behind a wall of mist and clouds. Though it was drizzling again and her muscles fiercely ached, Oriana kept walking, desperately searching the brush for wild berries—or anything edible.
She had tried over and over again to fix the damn plane, but she couldn’t find anything wrong with it. No transportation, no radio, no cell phone signal... no food. She had eaten the last morsels of her protein bar the night before.
Oriana wrapped her arms around her torso, trying to ward off the chill and soothe her protesting stomach, which was clenching painfully with hunger. She was damp, she was cold, and she was tired. Afraid of missing an opportunity for rescue, she hadn’t really slept since making her emergency landing.
How had she ended up like this, starving and wandering aimlessly, lost and alone in the middle of a wildlife refuge? Had she become so jaded, so arrogant, that she had failed to be prepared for the worst?
She should have known better. When Oriana was young, her father had always preached about being prepared, drumming it into her like she was some damn Boy Scout and he was her troop leader. She should’ve heeded the lessons. Had she done so, she wouldn’t be stumbling around the forest like some pitiful woodland creature foraging for food when there was none to be found.
Her father used to always tell her to take a week’s worth of food and water with her whenever she had to venture away from civilization, and to pack equipment that would come in handy in the event she found herself without food or shelter—like matches, a fishing poll, a sleeping bag, and a tent.
But she hadn’t listened. After her father died and she inherited his one-man business, she removed the extra emergency supplies her father always stowed out of the small aircraft so she’d have more room for cargo. The only thing she bothered to keep on board was her first-aid kit and flare gun.
A lot of good that flare gun was when there was no one around to see it.
If only I had been making a food delivery when the plane gave out. Instead, she had been returning home from dropping off a group of hikers at one of the remote wilderness lodges.
With every long day that had passed, and with every step her weary body took, her hopes for rescue diminished. Though it galled her independent spirit and instinct for self-preservation, she had to contend with the reality of the situation...
She might very well die out here.