The Cessna came down hard in a patch of black spruce. For a long minute Mara heard nothing but her own heartbeat. Then her cousin Dell coughed in the seat beside her, alive, his glasses cracked but still on. The radio was dead except for one thing: a clean tone, repeating, over and over, on an old frequency. A tower beacon. Somewhere out there, someone had left a light on.

Mara found the emergency kit jammed under her seat. Inside was a flare gun, two flares, a knife, and a half-working flashlight. "Okay," she breathed. "We've got tools. Let's figure out exactly what we have before we decide anything." Dell dumped his backpack out beside her.