him from the mistakes of his past. God knows he’d had his share of tragedy and was long overdue for some happiness.
“Then I look forward to meeting her. Enjoy your honeymoon.” The call cut out as Jake was saying goodbye. Dex shook his head again and put the phone away as he tried to judge his altitude. Lower than he was comfortable with. He was about to edge the nose up to climb higher when he noticed a young woman in a canoe.
Her dark brown hair hung in waves to the middle of her back. Even from the cockpit he could see the long, shapely tanned legs that paired nicely with a curvy body wearing only a skimpy yellow tank top and khaki shorts. He whistled low in admiration. She looked better than anything he’d seen in months. He just wished he could make out the details of her face to see if it matched the rest of the sexy package.
On impulse, he waved at her, but she didn’t wave back. She might not have seen him waving, but more likely she probably thought he was an idiot. He couldn’t blame her for that. He was about to increase air speed when a thick mist seemed to come from out of nowhere and wrapped around the plane like a shroud. He tapped the instrument panel again, hoping he could at least get an altimeter reading. Nothing. He was flying blind.
A scraping noise sounded against the bottom of the plane. He cursed and put it into a climb. The mist suddenly cleared. An enormous cypress tree stood dead ahead, its moss-covered branches reaching out like giant claws.
He banked hard left while throttling up. The branches made a sickening scraping noise against the underbelly of his Cessna, but she did her job, clearing the deadly tree. He laughed with relief and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. That was close—too close.
A dull thump sounded from the engine. An alarming shudder ran through the fuselage, making the springs in his seat rattle. Instead of the familiar, reassuring dull roar of the twin turbocharged power plant, all he heard now was the sound of air rushing past the windows. He watched in stunned disbelief as the single propeller began to slow.
The engine had just died.
He immediately tried a restart with no luck. At such a low altitude there wasn’t much room to recover. The controls were sluggish. He fought to keep the plane on an even keel and catch some lift beneath the wings while continuing the restart attempt. But it was a losing battle with the engine refusing to catch. He flipped the button on his headset to make the one call he’d hoped never to have to make, and never had made in all his years of flying fighter jets in the navy.
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Naples Municipal, this is Bravo Two Seven One Charlie Baker, a Cessna TTX with total engine failure attempting a forced landing in the Everglades. Last known location approximately two nautical miles southeast of Mystic Glades. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”
No answer. Not even static.
* * *
AMBER FOUGHT DOWN her panic and paddled her canoe toward shore. The pilot in that fancy little green-and-white plane had waved at her. But that didn’t necessarily mean that he’d recognized her. Maybe he was the friendly type. It wasn’t like there was an airport in Mystic Glades, so he was probably just a stranger passing overhead. She’d hidden out here for over two years without anyone finding her. There was no reason to fear the worst now.
Tell that to her shaking hands.
She reached the shore and realized she could no longer hear the plane’s engine. The noise had stopped suddenly instead of fading away. A sickening feeling shot through her stomach. She hopped out of the canoe and ran around a clump of trees to look up at the sky in the direction where the plane had gone. It was a small spec now, probably more than a mile away. As she watched, the wings dipped back and forth and the plane dropped alarmingly low. Then it lifted, as if it were gliding and had caught a rush of air, before tilting crazily and disappearing behind a line of trees.
She clenched her hands together, waiting for the plane to rise above the trees again. Come on, come on. A full minute passed. Nothing. No plane. No sounds but the usual insects and frogs that created a constant low buzz that rarely ever stopped. He couldn’t have crashed. There would have been smoke, wouldn’t there? But if he hadn’t crashed, she’d have seen the plane again.
Maybe he was one of the drug runners who used the Everglades as their own private highway to ferry their poison from city to city. But usually they used boats to get through the canals. And the plane she’d seen couldn’t land on the water. It was sleek and expensive looking, like a minijet with a propeller—without a pontoon in sight.
She started forward, then stopped. No. Don’t try to help him. People who can afford planes like that don’t just disappear. Someone will notice that he’s missing. They’ll send a search party. At the most, he’ll be out here a couple of hours while they figure out how to reach the crash site.
If he’d even survived the crash.
Outsiders would need guides through the swamp. Guides meant hiring locals, most likely from Mystic Glades, which meant soon the place would be crawling with people who would recognize her.
She ran to the canoe. Grasping the sides, she put one foot on the bottom, ready to shove off with the other.
What if he survived the crash? What if he’s hurt? What if he’s hurt so badly that he needs immediate care?
She couldn’t help him. That wasn’t something she did anymore. She’d learned that lesson the most painful way possible. A familiar stab of grief and guilt threatened to overwhelm her. But she ruthlessly locked those useless emotions away.
Okay, assume he’s not hurt. He can find his own way to Mystic Glades. But he could just as easily wander into the swamp and get lost. He could stumble into a nest of alligators or step on a snake. The Glades might be beautiful but they were dangerous, teeming with wildlife, emphasis on wild. Only those who understood its dangers—and respected them—could avoid them and thrive out here.
He’s not your responsibility.
But he’s still a human being.
Her shoulders slumped. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know he was there. She had to at least check on him.
She stepped out of the canoe and tugged it up onto a muddy rise beneath some trees. Too bad he’d gone down in one of the areas unreachable by boat. She had a good, long hike ahead of her. She grabbed her walking stick, double-checked that her hunting knife was sheathed at her waist and then headed out. She hoped she wasn’t making a horrible mistake. But, then again, no mistake could be worse than the one she’d already made.
Dex drew a shaky breath. He was still breathing— definitely a plus. His heart was still beating, adrenaline making it pound so hard it seemed to be slamming against his rib cage. And the plane wasn’t on fire—yet. Two more pluses. But the big minus was that he was hanging upside down, strapped to what was left of his seat, with jet fuel dripping down the ruined fuselage onto his shirt. And he was pretty sure he’d cut his right leg, since sharp pain shot up his calf every time he tried to maneuver his foot out of the tangled mass of metal above him.
His main concern was the jet fuel. The noxious smell made it difficult to breathe. But more worrisome was that if any of the fuel made contact with the hot engine, he was going to go up like a human torch. He had to get out of the plane and out of his fuel-soaked shirt.
Without
