“Both?”
He shot Elizabeth a quick look, found her face devoid of color. “Do it. Now.”
A fierce will to live kicked through him. The Army had trained him for situations like this, drilled him relentlessly. In Kosovo, drills had become reality. But he’d never thought to need that training somewhere over nowhere Montana with Elizabeth’s life on the line.
“Billings Center,” he heard her say, and despite the fear sparking in her eyes, her voice rang strong and confident. “November Two Three Niner Bravo declaring an emergency.”
“Three Niner Bravo,” came the calm male voice of the air traffic controller. “State nature of emergency.”
“Three Niner Bravo has lost both engines…”
Someone had gotten to the plane. He knew that as sure as he knew there would be no miraculous restarting of the engines. He’d had the hangar protected, damn it. Armed guards on duty. But Hawk didn’t believe in accidents, or fate, or bad damn luck. He believed in instinct and motivation and revenge. Every man created his own destiny.
He wouldn’t let a coward like Zhukov put an end to his.
Or Elizabeth’s.
The memory flared before he could stop it.
The door to Ambassador Carrington’s richly paneled office opened, and she strolled into his world with a grace and confidence that knocked the breath from his lungs. A black pantsuit sheathed her killer body, but it was her smile that grabbed him, her smile that slayed, wide and knowing, yet at the same time, mysterious. Vulnerable. “You must be Hawk.”
Then, he’d sworn to give his life for hers, to take a bullet if necessary. A knife. An anything. But there was no line of fire to step into now, no attacker to fend off, just a disabled plane carrying them both down.
He wouldn’t let it happen. He wouldn’t let her meet a fiery grave, alone in the remote mountains of Montana. The glide didn’t fool him. Within minutes gravity would take over, and then there’d be nothing gentle at all.
Shoving aside everything but training, he focused on the emergency maneuvers he could rattle off in his sleep.
“Throttle,” he muttered, shoving them all the way back. “Cutoff.” Sweat beaded on his brow. His pulse blasted relentlessly. “Spoilers, gear, flaps, all up. Airstart…” He tried, no go. The engines were cold, dead.
The cemetery was serene, peaceful, row upon row of gently tended graves, shaded by an army of maples. Elizabeth knelt before her sister’s tombstone, a hand to her heart, tears swimming in her eyes.
His gut twisted. No, damn it. No. He was a man who thrived on the unexpected, who believed that’s when the majority of living occurred. But sweet Mary, not like this. Not like this. Clenching his teeth, he switched the fuel system to emergency, refusing to consider that in less than two minutes, he and Elizabeth might be dead, too. Failure was not an option.
The snow-capped mountains dominated his line of vision, closer, larger, with every frenetic riff of his heart.
“Pull up,” the aural warning kept insisting. “Pull up!”
Looking at her was a mistake. He saw her seated next to him, continuing her dialogue with Air Traffic Control, beautiful even in a cheap sweatshirt, but the steely resolve in her gaze barely registered.
A slow light gleamed from her eyes. Her mouth curved into a smile. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
“No, sweetness,” he said. They broke through a bank of clouds and cruised into endless blue. “You’re flying.”
Sable hair, loose around her face, caught on her mouth and fired his blood. “I’ve never felt so alive.”
God. “The best is yet to come.”
Hawk shoved the image aside, searched the rugged terrain for somewhere to put down the plane. They still had options. He was a skilled pilot. Any flat surface would work.
“Come on, come on. There’s gotta be a ski slope somewhere.”
Maybe in the movies, a voice deep inside snarled, but this was real life and smooth landing strips didn’t just appear in the middle of nowhere. Trees cluttered the landscape, taller by the second, thicker. A glistening lake in the distance.
A lake.
“There!” Elizabeth pointed toward the horizon.
Hawk squinted against the glare of sun and saw what she did. Beyond the lake, a valley sprawled against the base of a cruel mountain. If he could hit the grassy area, they had a chance.
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
