Impossible.
Sick fear washed through her. Her hands shook and her knees wobbled, forcing her to grab an empty passenger chair for support.
“You okay back there?” Jacob called, his voice carefully calm.
“The parachutes are gone!” She fought to keep the tremor from her voice, and mostly succeeded. She could handle this. They could handle this.
She hoped.
Jacob didn’t bother arguing with her, didn’t tell her to look again. He simply said, “Come forward and strap in. It’s going to be a rough landing.”
There was no humor in his voice at the understatement. Isabella forced herself to look out a window. Through a break in the too close clouds, she saw a scattering of houses. A gray ribbon of road beside a gleaming snake of water.
But mostly she saw trees and hills. Rocks and canyons and treacherous terrain.
A nearly debilitating wave of terror washed through her, along with the thought that she couldn’t do a damn thing to save herself. She was trapped in a chunk of metal thousands of feet above terra firma, and she didn’t have the controls.
She wobbled to the cockpit and strapped back in with trembling fingers. “You were a hotshot pilot in the army, right? Tell me we’re going to be okay.”
Over the rush of wind and the ever dropping howl of the jet engines, she heard a squawk of radio traffic and saw a muscle at the side of Jacob’s jaw bunch and flex. He acknowledged the transmission, asked a question in a jargon as unfamiliar to Isabella as the Secret Service codes might seem to an outsider, then signed off.
The altimeter dipped beneath two thousand feet and her ears popped hard. He glanced over at her, a quick slide of dark green eyes shadowed with desperation.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
She was pretty sure he was lying.
“Hang on,” he said. “We’re going in. There’s a stretch of desert up ahead that should do for a soft landing.”
Isabella thought to herself that sand was hard as stone when you hit it going fast enough, but she didn’t bother saying it out loud. Instead she folded her arms across her body and tried to stay limp. Let the harness do its work. The more she braced, the more she’d hurt herself.
At least that was the theory.
The engine whirl dropped to nearly subsonic and she became aware of Jacob muttering beneath his breath. Curses, perhaps, or a prayer.
The ground rose up to meet them gently, slowly, as though the landing would be no problem. But Isabella knew they’d stayed in the air so long because the engines had died gradually, maintaining their speed and keeping them airborne.
But that bonus was also a liability. They were still going fast.
“We’re coming in hot,” Jacob said, confirming her fear. He fought the yoke one-handed while he flipped switches with the other. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to reverse the engines once we’re down. It’ll all be flaps and sand.”
He gripped the yoke two-handed, tense and waiting. As the lowest clouds rushed past them and Isabella’s stomach lurched up into her throat, she saw that he was absolutely, preternaturally still. His finger wasn’t tapping, his foot wasn’t jiggling to an unseen rhythm.
A whimper built in Isabella’s throat and lodged there, cutting off her breath. Outside the cockpit—which suddenly seemed far too close to the front of the plane, to the approaching earth—she saw a dry, rock-walled canyon. And sand. Lots of sand.
She locked her fingers together and wished she’d done things differently. Wished she’d tried harder to help her mother, tried harder to reconnect with her father when he’d blown back through her life a few years back, then disappeared again on the wind.
Most of all, she wished she knew she’d be missed.
And feared she wouldn’t be.
“Hey.”
At Jacob’s soft word, she looked over. He touched his fingers to his lips and pressed the secondhand kiss to her cheek. “Trust me.”
Then he returned his attention to the rising ground and the falling jet, which was still going—Isabella checked and gulped—nearly two hundred miles an hour.
He needed both hands on the yoke, both feet on the floor, but she felt his touch on her skin. It was more distraction than comfort, but it was something.
Knowing it might be the last thing she ever felt, she was obscurely glad it came from Jacob.
“Going in,” he said tersely, and she focused on relaxing. On breathing.
On praying.
At the last moment, when the yellow sand rose up to meet them and a line of scrubby trees blocked their path, Isabella closed her eyes tight. Then, when the darkness seemed too final, she opened them again and stared straight ahead, braced for impact.
The jet plowed through the trees without slackening speed. An explosion of wood and cactus needles slapped the windows and was gone, then they bellied down once, twice, three times onto the sand, each jolt worse than the one before.
Jacob cursed and prayed and fought the yoke, then gave it up when the engines died and the jet bounced in the air one last time. He shouted, “Hang on!” and the words sounded too loud, too frantic in the sudden quiet of their last airborne hop.
Then the jet slapped the sand once more. Wing first.
And cartwheeled.
Isabella screamed. The world exploded into a dizzy whirl, counterpointed by howling metal and a muffled shout from Jacob.
The aircraft slewed viciously and went into a flat spin. A wing came free and ripped a section of fuselage with it, opening the cockpit and cabin to the outside world.
Dust and hot air billowed in, choking them and carrying the noise of shredding metal and chaos.
Fear clutched at Isabella’s heart with greedy fingers. She gripped the armrests and braced her legs against the floor as her stomach fought to invert itself. To hell with staying relaxed!
Then there was a horrendous jolt, as if they’d slammed into a cement wall, though she hadn’t seen a building for miles. Isabella’s body whipped against the harness, which cut into her shoulders and upper thighs.
And then it was over.
The roar of the impact and slide gave way to the sound of shifting sand and clicking metal. Isabella’s heart beat loud in her ears but everything else seemed unnaturally still.
Outside the cockpit, the sun glared down on an expanse of reddish-yellow sand and scraggly vegetation. In the aftermath of the crash, it appeared unnaturally quiet.
Then Jacob shifted beside her, breaking the moment of peace, the moment of thanks. He pulled off the headset and tossed it behind him, where it landed on a patch of sand bared by a hole in the fuselage. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I think I am,” she said, almost surprised. Incredibly, she seemed to be in one piece. Her upper body burned where the straps had held tight, but she wasn’t going to complain about that. Her head and neck hurt from that final whiplash, and puking sounded like a really good idea, but other than that, she was okay. “You?”
“Fine,” he said, seeming unaware of a fine trickle of blood running down from his temple.
She swallowed and asked, “Should we get out of here? Is the jet fuel going to blow?”
The very thought sent the nausea into overdrive.
“None left,” he answered laconically. “Either we were dumping fuel from a leak or the last full tank wasn’t full at all and the gauges lied.” Their eyes met, the message passed.
“The mechanic.” She winced, remembering. “I saw him come out of the cabin, but I didn’t think anything of it. The bastard sabotaged the plane.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” Eyes hard with fury, he unstrapped his harness and struggled to his feet. “Come on. I’ll grab the emergency kit, you get the portable radio under your seat and let’s regroup. Outside.”
He took one step toward the back of the plane and the floor tilted down. The cockpit lifted up.
The plane teetered.
He froze.
“Jacob
?” She didn’t bother trying to keep the quiver out of her voice this time. “What was that?”
“Probably nothing,” he said, but didn’t move a muscle. Instead he nodded very slightly toward her seat. “I want you to get the radio. Slowly.”
She eased forward and grabbed the red plastic box. When she sat back up, the plane shifted again. The tail tilted down another degree and the whole jet slid back a few inches.
Isabella’s heart lodged in her throat. She swallowed hard. “As we went in, I saw a canyon.”
“Yeah.” Jacob’s throat worked. “Me, too.” He took a breath and leaned toward the front of the plane. “Okay, I’m going to step back into the cockpit. When I do, I want you to go out the hole in the side.”
She got it in a millisecond. He was going to counterbalance the plane, keep it from falling while she escaped.
“No way. We go together or we don’t go.” She dug her trembling fingers into the red plastic case of the portable radio. “I want you to grab the emergency pack right now and we’ll get out together. You go, then I go. No heroics.”
“Isabella, don’t be a—”
Then there was no time for argument. With a shriek of metal and a hiss of sand, the jet broke free and slid backward, gathering momentum as it tilted more steeply by the moment.
“Go!” Jacob grabbed her and flung her through the torn hole in the side of the plane. A jagged shard of metal caught her shirt, her arm. Pain sizzled through her, followed by panic when the fabric caught and held.
The plane dragged her through the sand toward an abrupt drop-off. A cliff. A canyon.
The moment the jet’s tail cleared the edge and tipped down into the crevasse, it would all be over.
“Jacob! Help!”
A blur of motion skimmed over her, followed by a spray of sand as he leaped from the plane. “Isabella!”
He flung the emergency pack away and lunged toward her. He grabbed her outstretched hand just as the jet went over.
Pain sliced through her arm and her shoulder nearly tore from its socket. Then cloth ripped and she was free.
The battered jet slid away, tipped up and over.
And disappeared.
Moments later there was a horrendous crash and a puff of dust washed up and over the lip of the canyon.
Isabella lay still, belly down in the sand, and breathed.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. The nausea was gone. The fear was gone. Even the pain seemed far away. The only emotion resonating in her brain was dim surprise.
They’d survived.
She turned her head away from the canyon, toward the man who had saved her.
He was staring at her, his expression one of horror battling with fierce relief, twin to the emotions that burst through her the moment their eyes met.
Maybe she moved first. Maybe he did. Or maybe they moved in synchrony, scrambling to their knees and lunging together to press chest to chest, thigh to thigh.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and clung. He gathered her close, crushing her against the hard planes of his torso. Their bodies aligned perfectly, and she saw the intent in his eyes, perhaps even before he was aware of making the decision.
To hell with history, his expression seemed to say. This is now! We’re alive!
Her body wept with joy, with the feeling of his arms around her and the warmth of his body filling the empty places. His eyes darkened to a deeper shade of green and he leaned down, giving her time to back off.
She didn’t. She leaned in, making it as much her idea as his.
Their lips touched. Clung. Held. Heat rose to join the relief and color her survivor’s joy with something more physical. More elemental.
Jacob.
His taste exploded on her tongue, battered her senses and swept away the carefully constructed barriers in her soul with an overwhelming sense of finally!
Their tongues touched, met and melded. Jacob groaned, a harsh, needy sound that called to Isabella, to the things she’d told herself didn’t matter, like passion.
The sun beat down on them, filtering through the yellow dust cloud lifted by their landing, giving the scene a golden, glorious hue. She let her eyelids ease shut, closing out the yellow light that seemed to hum just be neath her skin, collecting at the points where she and Jacob touched.
This was the thousandth time they’d kissed in their lifetimes, and the first time they’d kissed in this lifetime. In a moment the exquisite sensations had washed away the old, desperate memories and paved new paths of want. She crowded closer and slid her hands up his chest, until she could feel his heartbeat through the fabric of his shirt.
His pulse was quick and excited, like hers.
She let her head fall back in the glory of the warmth they created between them. He murmured his approval and kissed his way down her throat, to the hollow place between her collarbones that had always been her secret erogenous zone.
Nobody else knew about it. Nobody but Jacob.
He dipped his head, cupped his hands around her lower back and placed a single chaste kiss just below the spot.
Isabella’s nipples crinkled to hard, wanting buds and she nearly screamed with frustration as the need coiled within her, eager and greedy and mad. She pulled his shirt free from his pants and slid her hands along the strip of bare skin, then grabbed his belt and hung on for the ride.
The slight chafe of sand reminded her of something, something important, but that brief wisp of thought was quickly gone when he flicked his tongue out to lave the skin around her sensitive spot. She clutched his belt, aligning their hips and pressing close, and he murmured encouragement, or maybe a plea.
But pleas were beyond her. Speech was beyond her as her muscles locked tight and the deep pulsing began.
Then he dipped his tongue into the hollow between her collarbones, and all rational thought fled from her mind. The pulses took over her body and soul, and exploded from within, radiating outward in an instant that seemed to last forever.
Isabella bowed her body in his arms and pulled their hips hard together, grinding against him without conscious thought, driven wholly by the sensations cursing through her. She screamed, maybe his name, maybe no words at all, and left herself, anchored only by his strong arms around her waist and the rigor-locked grip she kept on his belt.
It was an incredible physical ride up and over the cliff of pleasure and down into a morass of passion.
Of insanity.
Then the whirling chaos drained, leaving her hollow and shaken. She became aware of the world around her, of the hot sun beating down on her face and on her chest where Jacob had pulled her shirt low.
Oh, God.
Disbelief crashed through her. She was fully clothed. He was fully clothed. What had they just done?
No, she corrected herself, jamming her eyelids tightly shut in an effort to shut out the world for a moment longer. What had she done?
A hot flush climbed her body and closed in on her soul when the answer emerged, clear and unavoidable.
She had gotten off on nothing more than a kiss. How desperate could she be? She shivered with reaction, with embarrassment, and shivered again when the motion brought intimate awareness of their positions, of his straining erection pressed between them by her hands at his belt, his hands around her waist, as though they had been frozen together, locked center to center.
Horrified, yet acutely aware of his desire and the heat that rocketed between them, she compelled herself to brazen through the awful awkwardness of what had just happened.
She’d gone over the edge, that was what had happened. She’d let the need take control, let the madness rule her.
God.
She forced her eyes open, forced herself to look at him, where he still bent over her, lips near her throat, as though he’d been paralyzed with shock.
His eyes were the deepest green she’d ever seen them, his lips moist and full from their kisses. His lungs labored to fill and clear, each breath shi
fting them slightly together and then apart in a shallow parody of love.
No, she told herself. Not love. Sex. It was bad enough she’d rubbed on him as though she was in heat. She wouldn’t make it worse by confusing chemistry with emotion, sex with love.
She cleared her throat, then fell silent, not sure what she could possibly say to ease the transition back to reality.
The noise seemed to snap Jacob from his daze. He blinked and swallowed. His hands relaxed at her waist, creating precious distance between their bodies.
He swallowed again and said, “Isabella.”
That was all, just her name, with his voice caressing each of the syllables as a lover’s hands might touch her naked body.
Only this was no lover. This was Jacob.
She pushed away and rocked back on her heels as he did the same. Suddenly self-conscious, she tugged her shirt back into place, trying not to shiver as her fingers brushed across the sensitized skin at the base of her throat. Trying not to remember the feel of his lips there, the feel of the spiraling madness.
“Jacob, I don’t know what to say,” she began, feeling the hot blush compete with the heat of the baking sun. “I’ve never—”
“Shh!” he interrupted her sharply, eyes intent on the horizon. “Listen!”
No! she wanted to shout through the tangle of nerves and lingering sexuality, You listen! But then she saw a dot on the horizon. Moments later, she heard the low thump of rotors. Relief slapped at her, both that they were saved and that she could duck the awkward moment after. She pushed away from him, scrambled to her feet and locked her knees to keep from swaying on her numb, boneless legs. “That was fast. They must’ve had a Search and Rescue bird in the area if they followed your mayday that quickly.”
Jacob rose and stood beside her as the dot swelled to the outline of a dark helicopter, coming straight for them.
He saw it the moment she did. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Jacob! It’s not wearing Search and Rescue markings!”
In fact, the black helicopter wore no markings at all. And as it swung around to come directly at them, the side door rolled open and a black-clad man stepped out onto the skid.
Holding an automatic weapon.
Bullseye Page 13