The creases in the old man’s weathered face went deeper. “Lost
a boy over there. Appreciate the work you fellas do for our country.” He looked
up, seemed to shove the memories aside. “You don’t have to worry about the
chopper. We take real good care of her.”
Alex handed back the maintenance record. “Let’s take a look.”
Setting a hand at Sabrina’s waist, he guided her outside and they crossed the
tarmac to the helicopter. The woman he had spoken to on the phone had told him
it was a two-passenger Schweitzer 300C, a well-performing little chopper, and
not as expensive to rent by the hour as some of the bigger machines.
He knew Sabrina’s finances were tight. When he’d seen the
Toyota she was driving instead of her Mercedes, he’d done some digging.
According to Sol Greenway, the office computer geek, her retirement fund had
turned to worms, her clients were on the run from the bad market and Sabrina had
taken a leave of absence from work. That he’d found out by calling her
office.
No wonder she was hoping to find silver on her uncle’s
land.
Alex fixed his attention on the chopper, made a careful
inspection, determined it to be in good condition. Shoving his gear bag behind
the seat, he tossed in the flowered satchel and climbed aboard.
Sabrina stood by as the old man climbed in beside him for the
flight check. Alex performed the required takeoff and landing, enjoying the feel
of the stick in his hands, the lift, the mobility that was different than flying
a plane. He circled once, then returned the chopper to the tarmac.
Satisfied with the demonstration of his skills, Woodard nodded
and Alex turned off the engine, letting the rotor blades slow to a stop. The old
man climbed out, turned and helped Sabrina aboard.
“Have a good trip!” Mr. Woodard called out from a safe distance
as Alex restarted the helo and the blades once more began to spin.
“You ready?” Since there were no doors, he made sure she was
safely buckled in.
He caught her nod and grin. “I’m ready.”
She was looking forward to this. He was glad he was the one
giving her her first ride, but pulled his mind from where that thought took him,
and lifted off gently. The chopper rose into the air, moving higher and higher,
rising gracefully away from the ground. When Sabrina grinned wider, he laughed
and picked up speed, swung the chopper away from the airport and headed in the
direction they had pinpointed on the map.
He knew where her land was located, knew the coordinates, at
any rate. He had no idea what they would find when they got there.
* * *
Rina’s adrenaline was pumping. The thrill of being so
high in an open-air helicopter was a rush unlike anything she had ever felt
before. Add to that flying with Alex Justice, watching his long fingers work the
controls, seeing the capable way he handled the machine, made her heart rate
soar even higher. There was something about a man taking charge, a man who was
good at what he did, that turned her on.
Not that she would ever admit it.
Alex wasn’t her type and she wasn’t his and both of them knew
it. Still, she wasn’t dead and Alex was definitely eye candy and more.
She forced herself to concentrate on the search they were
making. They’d been flying for more than an hour and had located the property
but not the mine itself—assuming there was one. There’d been nothing in the will
to indicate its location or anything about it. Just the legal description of the
land itself: three thousand acres—five square miles—of what appeared to be
nothing but dirt, rocks and cactus.
Her gaze followed the contours of the property. Ravines scarred
the landscape. Ridges of granite rose out of the sloping desert floor.
Chaparral, mesquite and scrub brush dotted endless stretches of rocks and
sand.
“Not much out there,” Alex said above the sound of the
rotors.
“We haven’t covered that much area yet. Maybe we’ll find
something that marks the mine.”
“If there is one,” Alex said, reminding her there might not be
anything more than exactly what they were seeing—miles and miles of vast, empty
desert.
The hours began to blur together. Once they had reached the
property location, Alex had begun searching in a grid pattern to cover as much
of the area as possible. The temperature was rising, the heat building inside
the chopper, the afternoon slipping away. Rina yawned and rubbed her eyes, which
felt gritty from the wind and heat.
An odd noise caught her attention. The
whop, whop, whop
had been so regular she’d been trying not to fall
asleep. This sound was different, a kind of grinding that had her gaze shooting
to Alex, whose features suddenly looked grim.
Sabrina’s heart stalled and, a few seconds later, so did the
engine.
Three
“A
lex, what’s happening?”
Alex heard the fear in Sabrina’s voice. There wasn’t time to
answer. Instead, his years of training and experience kicked in and he did what
he had been trained to do—slamming the collective down to neutral, taking the
pitch out of the blade. The chopper fell like a stone.
“Oh, my God!” Sabrina’s voice rose even higher as she realized
they were in trouble.
The blades were flat now, the wind whistling up between them,
making them spin even faster than the engine, which had gone deadly silent.
“Just hold on!” he shouted. “We’ll autorotate down! We’ll be
fine!” He’d done it dozens of times, knew without thinking exactly how to make
it happen. As the inertia built, he began to search the ground for a place to
land, but something didn’t feel right, something was altering their approach
while they were still too high to make a safe landing.
It was the blades, he realized. Instead of moving at the speed
they should have, they were sticking and slowing, jerking instead of spinning
smoothly. They were going to hit the ground hard. Way too hard.
At the last minute, he flared the chopper, hoping to slow it as
much as possible, hit a little softer, keep the helo in one piece, but the
chopper was coming in too fast and the ground rushed up.
Sabrina screamed as the windshield shattered and he leaned over
her, tried to cover her as much as he could with his body. The rotor blades tore
free and spun away, shattering into jagged pieces that flew like deadly knives
into the desert.
The chopper shook and continued to disintegrate. After what
seemed like minutes but was only seconds, the machine finally started to settle.
Alex popped his seat belt and reached for Sabrina, eased her back in the seat
and saw blood trickling down her forehead. She was moaning, conscious, but
barely. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the lick of orange flames behind
them, rushing up from what was left of the engine.
The fuel tank was going to blow. They had to get out and fast.
Reaching behind his seat, he grabbed his emergency gear bag, slung the strap
over his shoulder, then reached for Sabrina, popped her belt and started to pull
her out of the chopper from the pilot’s side.
The effort had him hissing in pain, his body telling him he had
injured a couple of ribs, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now.
Ignoring the sharp stab in his side, he pulled Sabrina free of the wreckage,
half dragging, half carrying her over to an outcropping of rock, settled her
behind it.
There was just enough time to throw himself over her,
protecting her as much as he could, before the helo exploded into a ball of
thick black smoke and searing flames. The blazing inferno shot into the sky, and
a barrage of shrapnel sliced through the air around them.
Alex felt a sharp sting as a jagged piece of metal cut through
his shirt and sliced into his back. A second explosion ripped through the air,
then the only sound he heard was the crackle of flames.
He took a quick look over the rock to make sure it was safe,
then turned his attention to the woman on the ground. Her face was as pale as
the sand under her head, and a thin line of blood trickled from her forehead to
her left temple.
She moved her head a little and groaned. Then her pretty blue
eyes cracked open and she looked up at him. “Alex...?”
The pain and fear in her voice made his chest clamp down. She
was lucky to be alive. They both were. Lucky he’d been able to make any kind of
landing at all.
“It’s all right, you’re safe. I need to take a look, see where
you’re injured.”
She reached a shaky hand up to her forehead. “My head...hurts.”
She swiped at the trickle of blood. “I think I cut myself.”
His jaw hardened. She had hired him to protect her. But he
couldn’t protect her from this. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No, I don’t...don’t think so.”
Jerking the strap of the canvas bag off his shoulder, he set
the bag aside and made a cursory check for broken bones, felt her legs and arms,
which seemed to be okay. He checked for neck or spinal injuries, didn’t find
anything obvious. There were nicks and cuts from the crash on her neck and arms,
but aside from that she seemed to be okay. Alex breathed a sigh of relief that
she hadn’t been hurt a lot worse.
“I’m kind of dizzy.”
“You probably have a slight concussion.” He held up three
fingers. “How many do you see?”
“Three.”
He checked her pupils. They looked normal. “You remember what
happened?”
“We crashed. I remember how scared I was, how fast the ground
seemed to come up from beneath us. Then I blacked out.”
“We hit pretty hard.”
To say the
least.
“Can we...can we radio for help?”
“Chopper exploded. No time to call it in and now the radio’s
gone.”
Her eyes widened at the news. She sat up a little too quickly
and hissed in pain.
“Take it easy.” He tried to ease her back down, but she moved
his hand away and managed to prop herself against the rock to look over at the
slow-burning chunk of metal, all that was left of the helo. “What...what caused
the crash?”
A muscle tightened in his jaw. “I don’t know. Something went
wrong with the engine. We should have been able to autorotate down safely, but
the rotors jammed. We’re lucky we fared as well as we did.”
Her eyes remained on the chopper, then swung to his face. “You
saved me. You got me out of there. I never would have made it on my own.”
He thought of how close they’d both come. “You’d have made it
if you hadn’t hit your head. It’s no big deal.” He could see by the set of her
chin that she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t say more.
He pulled his cell phone out of a pocket in his jeans, noticed
a burn hole in his pant leg, felt the sting where the hot metal had struck. He
had the same nicks and cuts she had, a few more, maybe. His back was bleeding,
but he didn’t think the cut was that bad. He was just grateful to be alive.
Flipping open the phone, he saw there wasn’t any service, as he
had expected. There weren’t any cell towers this far out in the middle of
nowhere.
Sabrina silently watched him. Tentatively, she touched the
growing knot on her forehead next to her hairline. “God, Alex, what are we going
to do?”
He grabbed his bag and unzipped it. He never went anywhere
without his emergency gear. Now he was damned glad to have it.
“The bleeding’s stopped. If you’ve got a concussion, it looks
like it’s pretty mild, but we’ll take precautions until we know for sure. That
means no aspirin or ibuprofen, at least for a while.”
He found a gauze pad and tore it open, located a bottle of
alcohol, poured some on the pad and wiped away the blood on her forehead, but
didn’t touch the wound. Instead, he put a Band-Aid over it, being careful not to
touch the injury itself. He had a couple of bottles of water in the pack. He
cracked one open and handed it over. Sabrina took a sip and handed it back.
“Thanks.”
He went to work pulling bits of glass out of her arms and used
the alcohol to clean the injured area. He pulled a sharp piece of glass out of
the back of his neck and some out of his arms, dabbed alcohol on the cuts and
put a Band-Aid on his neck. His back needed tending, but now wasn’t the time. He
needed to find some shelter, get Sabrina out of the sun.
She glanced around, taking in the barren landscape, the dry
earth and mesquite trees. “Okay,” she said, “how do we get out of here?”
“We don’t. We’re going to stay right here, close to the
wreckage until they find us. When we don’t get back by dark, they’ll try to
contact us on the radio. When that doesn’t work and we don’t show up, they’ll
start looking for us.”
Sabrina stared down at the hands in her lap. “They might not,
Alex.” She gazed up at him. “I told them when I reserved the chopper, we might
need it for two days instead of just one.”
He frowned. “You were planning to spend the night out
here?”
“I thought we’d go back and get a motel room, go out again in
the morning.”
He couldn’t resist the chance to put a little color back in her
cheeks, take away some of the worry. He grinned. “So you were planning to spend
the night with me?”
Those pretty blue eyes widened in outrage. “Of course not! I
was planning on us getting separate rooms.” She poked him in the ribs and he
released a grunt of pain.
“You’re hurt! Oh, my God, what is it?”
“Cracked a couple of ribs. They aren’t dislocated, so in time
I’ll be fine. Got a few cuts and bruises, just like you. The important thing, in
case you haven’t noticed, it’s hotter than a West Texas stripper out here. We
need to find some shelter.”
He eased her back down on the sand, dragged a silver emergency
blanket out of his pack and tented it over her head. “I’ll be right back.”
Sabrina opened her mouth to say something, then closed it
again. He could see she didn’t want him to leave her. But she was smart enough
to know there were things he needed to do.
He reached down and touched her cheek. “I won’t be gone long.”
Just long enough to find a place for them to spend the night, because it damned
well looked like that was going to happen.
Alex swore softly as he hoisted his gear bag over his shoulder.
They’d get out of there, even if they had to walk. There was a road out there,
due west according to the map, but it was at least fifteen miles away from their
last charted location. And the road wasn’t traveled that often. He hoped to hell
it didn’t come to that.
* * *
By the time Alex returned, Sabrina’s mind had cleared.
The ache in her head still pounded away, but it was a little less violent now.
The bad news was, her ankle had begun to throb.
She’d thought about taking off the Reebok she was wearing, but
her ankle was swelling and if she did, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to
get the shoe back on.
She looked up at the sound of heavy footsteps muffled by the
hot, deep sand. True to his word, Alex hadn’t been gone very long. Being alone
out there just made it seem that way.
“You feeling well enough to get in out of the heat?”
“I’m feeling better, but I...umm...I think I sprained my
ankle.”
He frowned as he knelt in the sand beside her. “I should have
noticed. Damn.”
“It’s not your fault. It didn’t start hurting right away. Can
you help me up?” She reached out to him. Alex ignored her, handed her the foil
blanket and scooped her up in his arms. She caught a faint grunt of pain.
“I’m hurting you,” she said. “I can make it on my own. You
don’t have to carry me.”
Alex just kept striding across the sand. Sabrina looped her
arms around his neck to keep her balance, felt the muscles tighten in his
shoulders. The ground firmed a little as the desert floor sloped upward and he
lengthened his strides. She spotted a ridge of granite set in a windswept
hillside, saw that Alex had cleared away some of the brush, leveled the dirt and
spread a layer of dry grass on the ground, making a place for them beneath an
overhanging ledge that provided shade.
He had also dug a fire pit and stacked dry mesquite and
whatever wood he’d managed to collect beside it. He set her down gently on the
dry grass, then eased himself carefully down beside her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m all right. It’ll take time for the ribs to mend.” Removing
her sneaker and sock, he took a look at her ankle. It was swollen and turning
purple. He moved it a little, caught her intake of breath, but it didn’t appear
to be broken. But there was no way to know for sure until she got it x-rayed. He
eased the sock back over her foot but didn’t replace the shoe.
“Too bad we don’t have any ice.” Instead, he wound an adhesive
bandage around the ankle to keep it immobile.
“Maybe you should tape yourself up, too,” Rina suggested,
tipping her head toward his pack. “You seem to have just about everything in
there you need.”
“People used to do that. Found out it didn’t make a damn
difference for cracked ribs. In fact, it can make things worse.” He zipped his
pack open, took out a bottle of Advil and poured four tablets into his hand. He
twisted the lid on the plastic water bottle and took a small sip, just enough to
wash down the pills.
“We haven’t got much water so we need to be careful. I’ve got
what I need to pull a little liquid out of that dry wash down there, but it
takes a while to work and you don’t get all that much. I’m hoping they’ll find
us before it comes to that.”
Reaching into the pack, he lifted out a couple of items and
stuffed them into his pockets, pulled out a compact piece of canvas that
unfolded into a small backpack, then drew out something she hadn’t expected.
“Smith & Wesson .45,” he said, turning a little to show her
the heavy weapon. “If we’re going to be out here for any length of time, we’re
going to get hungry.”
She was already hungry. They hadn’t eaten since they left the
airport.
Next he pulled out what looked like a hunting knife and
strapped the sheath onto his thigh. He handed her an energy bar. “We’ve only got
two, so make it last.” Sabrina clutched the bar against her chest, wishing it
were a corned beef sandwich but grateful to have anything at all.
Rising a little stiffly, Alex shoved his arms into the canvas
pack and stuffed the gun into the back of his jeans.
“I spotted some javelina tracks while I was looking for
shelter. They’re fresh and they’re close. With any luck we’ll have roast pig for
supper.”
He started to walk away.
“Alex, wait! How...how long will you be gone?”
“Long enough to get us something to eat. Don’t worry, there’s
nothing out here that’s going to hurt you.”
Nothing but coyotes and bobcats, snakes and wild pigs, and God
only knew what else. She’d be fine, she told herself and wished she believed it.
“Do you have a compass?”