Chapter 1 #2
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” His knuckles were white on the armrests.
He shifted in the seat and bumped his knees.
He was a pretty big guy. Rather mouthwatering too, if she was being honest, and she usually was.
There was a suppleness to all that lean muscle—and a good bit of pure power.
It was obvious that physical labor was a part of his lifestyle, weak stomach or not. Interesting.
Taking her eyes off him, she simultaneously turned the control wheel and applied rudder pressure for an eastward banking turn.
He let out a low oath.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I could fly this thing upside down and backward and still get us there.”
If possible, his grip on the armrest tightened.
“Really,” she said. “This is slightly more challenging approach than most because of the quick change in altitude, but I’ve done it so many times I could—”
“Yeah. Fly it upside down and backward. Got it.”
A smart-ass. That bothered her even less than the lack of charm, but because he’d gone an interesting shade of green, she wanted to keep him talking instead of puking. “You do this often? Volunteer?”
“No.”
“Yeah, I hear a firefighter’s schedule can be pretty hectic. Twenty-four-hour shifts, right?”
He lifted a shoulder.
“Well, I hope you’re braced for that because you’re going to hit the ground running down there. There are people in danger of losing everything. And believe me, they don’t have much to begin with.”
With another noncommittal grunt, Griffin pressed closer to the window so she could no longer see even his profile, but she had no problem getting the message.
Conversation over.
Fine. She’d only been trying to help him forget to lose his lunch in her clean plane.
Instead, she’d concentrate now on getting them there.
Time was of the essence this time around.
Beneath them lay Copper Canyon, a breathtaking network of more than twenty canyons covering 20,000 square miles.
Four times the size of the Grand Canyon, the place was a natural wonder.
Lost in there, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental, lay San Robledo.
The village had once been a miner’s jackpot but was now too remote and isolated for anything or anyone but the most rugged of ranchers.
The thought of them losing what little they had frightened her.
She could only hope this man had what it would take to direct the crew, who would likely be a bunch of ranchers and a few military laborers sent in by train, all with little to no fire training.
She dipped the plane into a low valley, her breath catching at the vast beauty of the forest, the undiscovered creeks and rivers. The deep gorges and canyons and high vistas were some of the most amazing in the world, unarguably among the most rugged and secluded.
Above her, the sky was a glorious blue —except for the ominous cloud billowing up from the ground. A cloud that began to threaten her visibility as she came in close.
Nearly there now, she stole another peek at her stoic passenger, over six feet of pure heartache. “You okay?”
He took his gaze off the window to send a baleful stare her way.
Right. He still didn’t want to talk.
The smoke thickened even more. It’d been a while since her passenger had spoken.
There was no sound in the cockpit except the drone of the engine.
She squinted a little, as if that could help her see.
No matter how many hours she had in the air, flying in conditions like this could mount tension faster than anything, and she mentally prepared for the inevitable difficult landing.
“Can you even see?” he grated out a moment later when visibility had gone down to next to nothing.
Not so much, no. But they were only a few miles out now. She could see the bright glow of the actual blaze. It was a horrifying sight, and she could hardly make out the land beneath, but she knew the layout extremely well. “Don’t worry.”
He let out a muttered response to that, but he didn’t understand. Flying was her life. Some women her age had husbands, or kids.
She had this.
Up here she controlled her destiny; up here she was free as a bird and just as content in all this wide-open space.
This would be a difficult and unwelcome challenge, but she wasn’t in over her head—yet.
She made a sharp bank to the right to accommodate the stunning landscape beneath her—and for one quick moment, visibility deserted her entirely.
Nothing but dark, thick, choking gray smoke in every direction.
She blinked rapidly but didn’t see even a crack in the smoke.
She let out a long breath and carefully checked her instruments, decreasing their altitude.
“We’re going down?”
One way or another, but concentrating on her instruments—all she had at the moment—she didn’t answer. Still no visibility. She dropped them even lower in a last-minute attempt on her part to clear the smoke. “Damn.”
“What?”
“The wind’s picked up to thirty knots.”
“Too high?”
Well, twenty would have been mildly challenging, forty would have been deadly.
“Hopefully we’ll miss any crosswinds, so really, it could be worse.
” Again she had to adjust their altitude, this time going higher to miss the craggy, sharp mountain she knew was there even if she couldn’t see it.
The rocky turbulence threw them around for a moment, but she fought for control and maintained it, barely. Even her stomach pitched.
Only a few more minutes.
Another rough drop but her hands and eyes remained steady, as did her heart, though her palms had grown damp.
Behind her she heard the slap of a sweaty hand on an armrest. Heard the low, muttered curse.
In her mirror, their eyes locked and held. “We’re okay,” she said.
“Don’t waste your breath coddling me, just get us there.”
She dropped altitude again.
At the abrupt shift, she heard another sharp intake of breath. She took one herself, then let it out slowly, using all her strength to guide them in.
Blind. “Hang on.” Thrusting the throttle forward, she executed a sharp climb to miss the crest that was leaping with flames, banking sharply to the right, swinging back around for another shot at the landing.
And again lost all visibility.
“Pull up again,” he said. “Take your time.”
She glanced down at her gauges. “No can do.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Not enough fuel.”
Their eyes locked. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple. Her own skin was damp. “Hang on,” she said again, and with another drastic maneuver brought them back around, slightly to the west this time, and over fire-free land. “Ready?”
“Shit.” He closed his eyes. Then opened them with a grim determination that took her by surprise. “Ready.”
Ready. And she took them directly into the remote, dizzying, dangerous, and definitely rough-around-the-edges Mexican mountains, flames and smoke and all.