Burr paused in the aisle between Rachel and Raffaela.
“Jose thinks it will be better to keep going. The storm is all around us. It won’t help to turn around. We’re already over Central America now. Jose’s altering course and doing the best he can.”
“Are we going to crash?” Sophie asked, her brown eyes wide.
“No, sweetie,” Rachel replied, while the plane bounced violently. “There’s a bit of roughness because of rain clouds.”
Angelica gazed up at Rachel with wide eyes. Sophie had her father’s dark brown eyes while Angelica had inherited her mother’s green eyes.
Burr leaned down to whisper in Raffaela’s ear. “Move over, babe. I’ll hold your hand.”
Rachel clamped her lips together. All their lives Raffaela had been the wild and daring one, and Rachel had accepted it. But after marrying Hector and having the two girls, Raffaela’s flirting was starting to disturb Rachel. She worried about the girls, thankful that they were too young to know the significance of their bodyguard buckling up in the seat beside their mother and taking her hand in his.
The plane bounced, and Raffaela snatched her hand away from Burr. “Dammit, can’t Jose do something!”
Rain began to pour over the plane, closing off the view of the clouds surrounding them. They were wrapped in gray and rocking violently.
“I scared!” Angelica exclaimed, hugging Rachel.
“We’re all right, love. Let’s get one of your books, and I’ll read you a story—”
A bolt of lightning struck with a bang like an explosion. With a blinding flash it rippled along the fuselage. Flames shot out from a wing, and the engine whined loudly.
Raffaela screamed while the nose of the plane tilted. Angelica’s thin arms clung tightly to Rachel. Sophie began to cry. “Aunt Rachel, I’m scared!”
“Get your heads down!” Jose yelled from the front of the plane. “We’re going down.”
With her heart pounding violently, Rachel wound one hand as tightly as possible around Angelica, leaning over the girl, while she put her other arm across Sophie’s shoulders. Praying, she clung to them while the girls sobbed.
The engine began to whine, and Rachel could feel Sophie shaking. Wishing she could protect them completely, she tightened her arms around the girls.
With a jolt and a deafening sound of metal ripping, the plane tore through the trees. As it rocked and bounced, Raffaela’s screams blended with the noise of metal tearing.
Suddenly there was a bang and an enormous jolt and everything went black.
Rachel regained consciousness. The interior of the plane was twisted and smoky; rain hissed over it and lightning flashed. The cockpit and Jose had totally disappeared. There was only thick green vegetation and trees where it had been. Memory returned to her and with it came panic. Rachel knew they had to get out of the plane.
Both girls squirmed, and Sophie sat up. “Thank heavens!” Rachel gasped, relief making her weak when she saw the girls were all right. Sophie had a cut across her forehead, but it looked superficial. Both were sobbing, and Angelica clung to Rachel.
“We have to get out,” Rachel exclaimed. Terrified that the plane might catch fire, she fumbled with Sophie’s seat belt and then her own. As she stood, she glanced at Burr who was leaning over an inert Raffaela.
“Get her out, Burr. Hurry! I’ll get the girls.”
Leaving her own purse behind, Rachel grabbed the bag with the girls’ clothing, Angelica’s bottles and cans of formula. Realizing they might have to wait to be found, Rachel yanked down her own carry-on.
Picking up Angelica and the bags, Rachel tugged Sophie behind her, going toward the gaping hole in the side of the plane. “Wait, love,” she said to Sophie and tossed out the bags. Then she climbed down onto a smashed tree and set Angelica beside her.
In spite of the rain, flames had begun to burn beneath the wing and belly of the plane. “Burr, the plane’s on fire. Get out!” she shouted again, grabbing Sophie out of the wreckage. Tumbling down over branches, ignoring scrapes, Rachel reached the ground.
She lifted the girls down one at a time. Slinging the bags over her shoulder, she picked up Angelica and grasped Sophie’s hand. Smoke burned her eyes, and terror gripped her, because she knew the plane could explode.
Rachel tried to run, but she found the bags cumbersome, so she tossed away her carryon. She scooped up Sophie instead. As she ran, vines, ferns and palmetto fronds tore at her. She glanced back to see Burr carrying Raffaela over his shoulder as he climbed out of the plane.
Rachel was fifty yards from the plane when it exploded. The deafening blast knocked her off her feet and sent a fireball rolling skyward. Heat seared her, and the flash of light was like a bolt of lightning.
She fell, the breath knocked from her momentarily as she scrambled to get the girls, who were sobbing wildly.
“Aunt Rachel! Help!”
She tried to cover both of them, holding them close against her body while parts of the plane rained down over them. Something struck the back of her thigh, and she cried out. Hot metal stung her shoulder.
And then quiet descended, broken by the crackle of the burning plane and the girls’ sobbing. The rain had suddenly stopped, now just lightly dripping from the trees. A shard of glass stuck out of Rachel’s arm and she pulled it free. She brushed bits of glass and metal from Sophie’s curly black hair.
Moving carefully, she tried to stand, biting back a cry as pain shot up the back of her leg. The smaller cuts stung, and she ached where metal had struck her, but nothing seemed broken. “Sophie—”
Something slammed against the back of her head. Dimly, Rachel heard Sophie screaming. Pain enveloped her, and then blackness closed in as she pitched forward.
One
Micah Drake gave a thumbs up sign to the pilot and slid open the door of the plane. Wind whipped against him as he looked below at the brilliant green canopy of treetops in the tiny country of Cruz in Central America. It was a bad place for a plane to go down. It was a damned bad place for him. He didn’t like this job or want it, but he needed the money. And he owed an old buddy from the military—Luke Webster had saved Micah’s life once in a clandestine operation in Saudi Arabia, and Micah was going to repay the favor now in a jungle in Central America.
Luke’s father, Atlee Webster, had put up the money for the search for his two daughters and his grandchildren. Luke had wheedled, bribed and finally reminded Micah that he owed him one. But the convincing offer had come when Luke had promised Micah double his usual fee plus paying Micah’s future medical bills for his mom.
Luke had come to his office, blond, cocky as ever, leaning against the desk as Micah had stood in front of the window. “Think of the money, Micah. You can take some time off to be with your mother.”
“I’m thinking about all the times you said your one sister was a bitch,” Micah said.
“Raffaela is. Wild, bitchy, impossible. She cheats on Hector. He cheats on her. But she’s my sister and she’s got two little girls. Look at their picture, Micah.”
Micah had looked, and they were beautiful smiling little faces. “You know I don’t have any resistance when it comes to kids,” he had grumbled.
“And Rachel’s shy and nice. As sweet as the girls. She won’t give you a minute’s trouble.”
“Yeah, sure.”