CROSSFIRE (8 page)

If he missed, they went up in flames.

"Make love to me, Wesley." Long, sable hair tangled around her face but didn't hide the desire glowing in her eyes. "Make me lose control."

Adrenaline fueled determination. The plane barreled toward the target destination, gaining speed as they approached. He kept the flaps up as long as possible, releasing them at the last minute to slow the plane down.

"Sweet God," he said, more in prayer than exclamation. "This is it!" More than anything he wished he could turn to look at her one more time. Touch her. Take away her fear. But knew he couldn't. The valley, damn it. If he didn't get the plane down in the next ten seconds, they were going to miss the valley.

And if they missed the valley, they found the mountain.

"Mayday! Mayday!"
Elizabeth
shouted into the radio. "November Two Three Niner Bravo crash landing—"

He had no choice. None. No option.

Elizabeth
grabbed his arm. "Hawk!"

He never had a chance to respond, to look at her, to take her hand. They slammed down hard, the sleek jet cutting through a forest of pine. Christmas filled his line of vision, a brilliant explosion of light. Then nothing at all.

* * *

The birds were singing.
Elizabeth
shifted in her slumber, moving her head to rest in the crook of her arm. She loved listening to birds singing. A family of robins had a nest in the ancient maple outside her window, and when the sun nudged over the horizon, the entire family awoke in song. It wasn't so bad during the winter months, when the days were short and the sun didn't awake so early, but during the hot months of summer, when the sun rose long before
Elizabeth
wanted to, then she wasn't quite so fond of her little family of robins.

The robins didn't sing like this. The realization jarred her from her stillness, prompting her to concentrate on the unfamiliar song. The birds almost sounded … anxious.

And then she remembered.

Her heart slammed hard. She opened her eyes and stared at the remains of the cockpit. Amber lights still flashed, but the manic voice had stopped warning them to pull up.

Hawk.

The blast of cold robbed her of breath. Everything came crashing back, sharp, punishing, ramming into her with the force of the plane hitting the floor of the valley. The sudden loss of both engines. Wesley's unwavering determination to retain control. The mountains rushing up to greet them. The incredible skill with which he'd put the plane down in the valley and not against the side of the mountain. It was nothing short of a miracle that they'd survived—

Violently she swung to her left and saw him. Hawk. Slumped against the instrument panel. Still. Completely unmoving.

"Hawk!" she tried, but his name scraped against her vocal chords. "Wesley!"

Nothing. He didn't turn to her, didn't flash that carnal grin, didn't so much as move his shoulders in breath.

Horror screamed through her. Hawk
Monroe
was a man of action. He was always in motion, pacing, touching things, assessing a situation. That's what made him such a competent bodyguard. But now he lay hideously still against the panel of flashing amber lights and shattered glass, dark blond hair matted with blood and falling against his face.

And something inside her started to bleed.

"No!" She lunged toward him, cried out when the safety belt cut into the flesh of her stomach and chest. Viciously she fumbled with the clasp, lunging across the small cockpit the second it opened.

His body was big and hard and warm, the cotton of his shirt drenched from perspiration. And blood. "Wesley?"

Nothing.

Dread jabbed into her throat. They were in the middle of nowhere. The Lear had a first-aid kit, but she was no paramedic. If the worst came to pass— No, she wouldn't think it. Instead she muttered a silent prayer and slid a hand along the warm, clammy flesh of his neck, using two fingers to search for a pulse. "Wesley?"

Nothing.

The composure she'd been grappling for crumbled. "Don't do this to me, damn it!" she shouted, running a hand along his back. Her fingers fisted in the hair loose at his shoulders. "This isn't the way it's supposed to be!"

There. She felt it. A fluttering beneath her index finger. Faint at first, then stronger.

Hope surged. "Wesley. Can you hear me?"

There. She heard it. A low sound breaking from his throat. "What?"

"Quit … pulling my hair."

The words were slurred, but they rushed through her like the cool wind whipping through the plane. "Come again?"

His big body shifted, turning toward her to reveal eyes burning overly bright. "I'm not goin' anywhere, sweetness—you don't need to hold on so tight."

His breath rushed against her neck, warm and strong and vital. She went very still, staring at the swirling butterscotch of his eyes, the dilated pupils and gleam that warned of shock. Cuts streaked across his face, a tiny piece of glass embedded at the base of his right cheekbone. But he never blinked, never looked away. Very slowly she looked from his face to the back of his head, where her fingers clenched his hair like a lifeline.

Reality punched hard. Her lungs refused the oxygen she tried to deliver. "I got you awake, didn't I?" she asked with a simple logic she didn't come close to feeling. Fear and relief crashed inside her. She wanted to dive against him, feel the warmth and strength of his body, assure herself he was all right. Instead she forced her fingers to uncurl.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," she said. "Isn't that what you always say?"

The corner of his bloodied mouth lifted. "Since when have you listened to a damn thing I've told you?"

Only once, and the fallout had destroyed. "I didn't have a choice this time," she said, sidestepping. The more lucid he became, the more the heat of his body soaked into hers. She still had a hand at the base of his neck, could feel his pulse thumping more strongly every second. "You were out cold—"

"I'm fine." The flash of his eyes was the only warning she got. He came to life almost violently, pushing from the trashed instrument panel and discarding the safety belt that hemmed him in. And then, just like the night before, he had his hands on her body. They were big and warm, his callused palms surprisingly gentle, and everywhere he skimmed, she burned. He ran them along her sides and her arms, up her neck to her face.

The abrupt transition from out cold to in command jump-started her heart.

"I'm okay, Wesley," she said,
wanting
—needing—
his
hands off her body. "Really."

He skimmed a finger along her cheekbone, drawing her attention to moisture she'd not noticed. "The hell you are you."

Wincing, she lifted a hand to her face, feeling the warmth of his fingers and the stickiness of blood. "Just a cut." So much less than what could have happened. "There's glass—"

He didn't let her finish. He had her against his body before her heart could beat, his mouth on hers before she could pull away. The kiss was hot and hard and demanding, completely without finesse. He had one hand against the small of her back, the other tangled in her hair. Whiskers scraped her jaw.

Shock staggered deep. Pull away, she told herself. Now. But the intensity of his kiss kindled a like intensity in her. The need to affirm life blazed as strongly as the pulse humming through her blood. She opened to him, lifting a hand to his chest, where beneath the damp fabric of his shirt, his heart thudded a frenetic rhythm.

And then he was gone. He ripped away without warning and narrowed his eyes. His breathing was ragged. "Don't start something you're not willing to finish, sweetheart."

She just stared at him. Incredulity slashed at the haze surrounding her, letting shards of clarity bleed through. "I didn't start anything," she said quietly. But dear God, she'd responded.

"That's right," he muttered, adjusting the holster that still carried his Glock. "Your specialty is endings."

The words stung, but before she could say anything, he turned from her and shoved open the cockpit door, letting in a blast of sunshine. "Sweet mercy."

Elizabeth
crawled to his side and stared at where the fuselage should have been. The belly of her father's prized possession lay a good twenty feet away, as though giant hands had savagely ripped the Lear into two pieces.

Hawk stepped through the doorway and stood to his full height. His feet automatically went shoulder width apart, his hand to his gun. "Son of a bitch."

Elizabeth
scrambled after him, wincing when her weight came down on the ankle she'd twisted the night before. Crisp mountain air whipped at her, but rather than shivering, she said a silent prayer of thanks, starkly aware how different the outcome could have been. She wouldn't be standing on an injured ankle to feel the dull throbbing at the base of her neck or the whisper of wind against her cheek.

"This is wrong." Hawk broke toward the wreckage, stopped by the left wing. Eyes narrow, he inhaled deeply, roughly expelled the breath. "Smell that?"

Elizabeth
moved closer, drawing in a breath as he'd done. It was strange seeing him outdoors without his mirrored sunglasses. "Pine," she said, glancing toward the spruce that surrounded them. "Like Christmas."

His scowl deepened. "But no jet fuel."

And no burning wreckage.
Elizabeth
stared at the fuselage and felt a cold chill snake through her. Jet fuel was highly flammable. When a plane slammed down, explosions and fire usually claimed the lives the impact spared. They should have had a full tank, plenty to burst into flames and incinerate them both.

The truth staggered her. "This was no accident, was it?"

"He must have paid someone
off,"
Hawk said, moving toward the passenger section. He kicked a broken seat and sifted through a pile of debris. "That's the only way he could have gotten access."

Elizabeth
didn't need him to say who "he" was.

She was being hunted. Twice in less than twenty-four hours Jorak Zhukov had tried to end her life, all because her family had been instrumental in bringing his father to justice. The knowledge of how close he'd come to succeeding chilled.

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she stared at the sunlight glinting through the thick pine forest and wondered how in the world a search-and-rescue party would find them. If they would find them. She'd done her best to radio their coordinates during those frantic final moments, but she couldn't be sure the transmission had gone through. Days could pass before they were found. Nights. Long, cold nights. Alone. With Hawk.

The thought unsettled her in ways she didn't want to analyze.

He stood across the clearing, a tall man against a backdrop of pine, some downed by the plane, others standing tall. Big black birds circled against a sky as crisply blue as the one into which she'd first taken flight. Beyond, rugged mountains jutted up against the horizon. Snow already blanketed the highest peaks.

They really were in the middle of nowhere. Alone, but
alive.

"What can I do to help?" she asked, moving toward him. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up now, and if she didn't look too closely, it would be easy to mistake the bloodstains on the gray cotton for perspiration.

He pulled his gym bag from under one of the seats and slung it toward the edge of the clearing, where her roll-aboard lay on its side. "See if you can find the first-aid kit. It must have been thrown on impact."

Debris lay strewn everywhere, leather seat cushions, oxygen masks, a silver lockbox, recent editions of
Fortune
and
Golf Digest.
Her throat tightened when she remembered the huge smile on her father's face when he'd acquired the Lear. He'd said the plane afforded them a freedom they'd never had before. It had seemed like a perfect plan.

There's no such thing as a perfect plan,
Hawk had once told her.
There's always a weak spot, a vulnerability. There's always a way to intervene.

Frowning, she started to turn toward the wreckage, but went very still instead. The big black birds were gone, their caw replaced by a low rumble on the horizon. "Wesley—"

But he'd already heard. He stood at his full height, the lines of his face tight and his eyes narrow. "Shh."

Excitement surged, followed by a quick punch of alarm. The plane had come down in a pine forest. Without smoke, it was questionable whether a search-and-rescue team would see them.

And then she remembered the lockbox.

Her heart burst into a staccato rhythm. She ran for the silver box and fumbled with the fasteners, then reached inside and grabbed one of three flares. One quick shot and—

Wesley's hand came down on hers, knocking the flare to the ground. "No, damn it!"

"Are you out of your mind? We have to get their attention."

"Do we?" he asked with a chilling softness. "Are you sure?"

She didn't understand the hard glint to his eyes. "We don't have much time. They're looking for us. We've got to get their attention."