Читать книгу The Tortured Rebel - Алисон Робертс - Страница 9

THE ocean was never far away in this island country and the lights of New Zealand’s largest city swiftly became a backdrop to the airborne helicopter.

The only communication on board had been between Becca and the mainland. The traffic controller supervised her clearance, confirmed her flight plan and provided a detailed report on weather conditions. For some time after that, the conversation was between others on the ground. Patchy conversations came through about the precise position of the closest ship to the island, the direction it was taking and how long it might be before they reached the island. Confirmation was sought and gained that Becca would be able to refuel using Department of Conservation stores on the island. A worrying update on the condition of the injured people was received and relayed and if it had been possible to fly faster, it would be happening.

With plans in place and the sense of urgency increased, it seemed that any further conversation between anybody was pointless for the time being and, nearly an hour into the flight, the only sound in the cockpit was the roar of powerful engines and the chop of the spinning rotors.

Jet was wearing a helmet with built-in earphones so he could hear whatever was going on. There were open channels to flight control, the helicopter rescue base and the army command in charge of this mission and he’d been taking notice of everything said. Becca could also flip channels so that they could talk to each other without being overheard by anyone else but so far Jet hadn’t bothered to pull his microphone attachment down from the rim of his helmet.

He’d been content to listen and simply watch, in no small way amazed that Matt’s little sister was doing this at all. Doing it well, too. He had plenty of experience in helicopters. He could fly one himself if he had to, so he could appreciate her skill and the calm control she had over this machine. Just as well, he thought wryly, given that they were carrying enough extra fuel to blow them both to smithereens if something had gone wrong on take-off.

Yep. However unlikely it seemed, Becca Harding had grown up to become a helicopter pilot. Maybe it shouldn’t seem so odd. Matt had loved nothing more than getting out with the rest of them and pushing his body and a big bike to the limits. Or was that one of the things that had created the bond between them? The knowledge that Matt didn’t have quite the same bravado and that his courage was tested every time? Part of Jet had been impressed. Another part had wanted to watch over him like a big brother and make sure that nothing bad happened.

But something bad had happened, hadn’t it?

Jet pushed the accusation back where it had come from with a ruthless mental shove but that only seemed to send other things bubbling to the surface. An image of the small girl he’d met, way back when he’d gone home with Matt for a school holiday. A lonely child being raised by very wealthy and largely absentee parents. Another from years later when they had all stopped in for a day or two at the country mansion on a road trip. More specifically, the memory was the absolute admiration and adoration on a teenage girl’s face as she saw her much older brother after too long apart. And the memory that had been captured unwillingly the next day when she had joined them in the swimming pool in her bikini and more than just his brain had taken note that she was no longer a child.

Holy cow! That particular memory had been buried with enough shame to ensure it never escaped. What was happening to him? Jet’s scowl deepened as he slumped into his harness, letting minute after minute tick past. Given the roar of engine noise, it was amazing how the atmosphere in this cockpit was starting to feel like a brooding silence. How the tension was ratcheting upwards.

It was ten years ago! It hadn’t been his fault, any more than it had been Max’s or Rick’s. They’d blamed themselves, of course. Especially him, because he’d been the one to have the hunch that Matt’s headache wasn’t just a hangover hanging on too long. He’d been the one to earn an ED consultant’s wrath, arguing that a CT was justified despite the lack of any real symptoms. They had been such junior doctors then—already branded as being brilliant but maverick. None of them had been able to juggle rosters to keep an eye on Matt when he’d decided he’d go to an on-call room and sleep it off.

And it had been Jet who’d gone to try and rouse him, hours later. Nobody had argued about the CT being needed after that. The horror of finding him and learning that a brain aneurysm had ruptured as he slept would never go away completely. Or the pain of being shut out for the next few days as Matt’s parents tried to cope with his grief-stricken sister and make agonising decisions about organ donation and turning off the life support.

They’d gone over and over it so many times. They’d made peace with it. He shouldn’t have to go through it all again. Shouldn’t have to be even thinking about it. It was Becca’s fault. For being here. For still hating him.

How much longer was this ride going to last? Jet reached to touch the GPS screen and get an update on what distance had been covered.

‘Hands off,’ Becca growled. ‘I’m the only person who touches the controls in here.’

‘Whoa …’ Jet drawled, his hand now in a ‘stop’ signal of mock surrender.

Another minute of an even more tense atmosphere. He sighed inwardly and then flipped his microphone into place as he slid a sideways glance at Becca.

‘What if you pass out or something? You expect me to hurtle to my doom even when I’m perfectly capable of handling a BK117?’

Becca was staring straight ahead, as though she was driving a car and needed to keep her eyes on the road. A jerk of her head said that the notion was too farfetched to be worth commenting on.

‘You want information, you ask,’ she said. ‘My bird. My rules.’

Man, she sounded tough. Jet would normally find that worthy of respect but this was Becca and the image she was presenting jarred with what he remembered of her. Especially the last time he’d seen her, a few weeks before her brother’s death, at a party hosted by the four of them in the old house they’d rented together. Becca had just arrived in the city to start her nursing degree.

An eighteen-year-old, glowing with the excitement of launching herself into the adult world. She’d been all dressed up and ready to party with rings on her fingers and killer heels on her toes. Her hair had been a wild cascade of curls that bounced on her bare shoulders and she had even smelled. amazing.

The effect of witnessing this butterfly girl emerging into womanhood had been absolutely riveting. Matt hadn’t missed the way Jet’s jaw had dropped.

‘Don’t even go there in your head,’ his mate had growled. ‘You’re the prime example of the kind of guy I intend to keep my kid sister well away from.’

The warning had been tempered with a good-natured grin and a friendly punch on the shoulder but it had been serious enough to cause a flash of fear later that night. When Matt had almost walked in on what had happened in the kitchen …

Oh … man. Did that memory have to surface again now, as well?

Of course it did. It had never been buried all that well, had it?

Jet had to break this train of thought. He sent a sideways glare at the cause of this mental turbulence. Becca was still staring resolutely straight ahead, seemingly confident of being in control. He couldn’t even see that much of her head with that helmet on and it was helpful to remember that she was nothing like the way she was in that memory of that party night.

Now her hair was as short as a boy’s and, as far as he could tell, she was wearing neither jewellery nor make-up. And what had her boss called her?

Bec.

The shortest, sharpest diminutive of her name possible.

What was wrong with her old nickname? Was Becca too feminine now? Too soft?

What had happened to that girl?

Jet had to swallow hard. As if he didn’t know.

And he didn’t want to remember, anyway, did he? He hadn’t seen this woman in a decade. They were strangers now. Besides, maybe it wasn’t so out of character, now that he came to think of it. Jet felt a corner of his mouth lifting. He couldn’t help it. He actually snorted with amusement.

‘What?’ Becca turned towards him. The helmet seemed too big for her and it made her look younger. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips almost pursed with annoyance. ‘You have a problem with something? Like the fact that I’m in charge here?’

‘Not at all.’

‘What’s so damn funny, then?’

‘It just reminded me of something.’

‘What?’

‘You. Cheating at Snakes and Ladders.’

‘I didn’t cheat.’

‘No. You just made up your own rules. What was it? Throw an odd number and you got to go up the snakes instead of down?’

‘I was eight years old. A lifetime ago.’ Her tone was a warning. ‘Keep your memories to yourself, OK?’

‘My game, my rules,’ Jet murmured.

It was probably coincidence that they happened to hit some turbulence at that precise moment but he glared suspiciously at his pilot anyway. He might have no choice about her being in charge right now but he didn’t have to like it, did he?

Damn it!

She’d just begun to think that this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Jet had always been the brooding type. An intrinsic part of the group but inclined to listen more than speak. To be there. Often leading the action, in fact, but fully informed and able to watch everyone else’s back at the same time.

Powerful. With an edge of darkness that had intrigued her from the word go. She’d been scared of him on that first meeting, as any eight-year-old kid would have been, but then she’d finally seen him smile and chasing down that rare occurrence had become her mission. Learning that she could tease and coax him, as easily as her big brother, into doing exactly what she wanted—like playing Snakes and Ladders her way—had been a bonus.

Becca was checking every single dial and switch on her control panel. Altitude and power. Fuel supply and speed. RPMs of the main and tail rotors. Checks that were only necessary right now due to her desperate attempt to focus on nothing more than the job in hand.

Yeah. It had been going fine while her passenger had been sitting there quietly. She’d been a bit too aware of him, of course. His size and the sheer … maleness he had always emanated. The tension had been noticeable but manageable, as well. Becca was only too happy to put up with a silent, sulky passenger in this particular instance.

But then he’d tried to mess with her controls! He’d almost smiled. Made fun of the fact that she was in charge here. He’d even brought up a somewhat embarrassing reminder of her past and taken her back a little too clearly. Good grief, she’d actually felt eight years old again for a heartbeat or two.

She hadn’t liked it, either. Not one little bit.

Because she didn’t want to remember or was it because she didn’t want him thinking of her as someone’s kid sister any more?

The tight feeling in her chest increased until it was painful to suck in a breath. She wasn’t anyone’s kid sister any more, was she? And it was his fault.

And she really, really didn’t want to spend the next couple of hours or so thinking about what life had been like back then and how much she still missed her big brother. It would have been bad enough simply seeing Jet from a distance. Being this close to him and only him, miles from anywhere, was almost unbearable. It was opening an old wound that had been too huge to ever heal over completely and the opening process was a threat. There were soft things underneath that scar that had to be protected at all costs.

Memories.

Feelings.

Hopes and dreams.

Her heart.

Maybe he was right to make fun of her being in charge and trying to sound tough.

Maybe it was all a sham.

The patch of turbulence was great. Becca could feel every tiny nuance of the buffeting and hear the changes in engine noise as though her chopper was talking to her. She became absorbed in her flying and found the thrill creeping back. Being so connected that she became a part of the machine. Or maybe it was an extension of her body. Whatever. They were aloft. She could see the patchy moonlight catching the whitecaps on the ocean below and they were speeding into the night. The turbulence added just enough to the adrenaline rush of it all and by the time they were back into calm air, Becca had found an inner equilibrium, as well.

It didn’t matter what Jet remembered or what he thought of her now. She was in charge. Of this chopper and who touched its controls. Of what communication, if any, took place between the people involved in this mission.

Flipping channels, Becca checked in with flight control and with her base. Richard was close to the radio.

‘Any update on patient status?’ she queried.

‘No further communication,’ Richard responded. ‘The link was patchy and we think we might have lost it.’

‘Roger that. Any update from the met office?’

‘Aftershocks being recorded. Nothing major.’

‘Roger. I’ll get back to you when we’re closer to target.’

Closing off her outward channel to the mainland, Becca left the internal link open. Just in case she felt like talking to Jet.

Which she didn’t.

They had nothing in common other than this mission. If it had been anyone else with her, she’d be practically grilling him about what it was like to be part of an elite group like the SAS. What kind of training they got and where they’d been. She would have soaked up every story she could extract and revelled in vicarious dangers. But to ask anything would be opening a Pandora’s box with Jet. She’d end up getting filled in on what he’d been doing for the past ten years. She’d probably hear about Max and Rick, as well, and she had to stay away from those connections to the past.

She didn’t want to hear about how close they would still be with each other. That whole ‘bad boy’ vibe that had been a secret pact and bond that she’d been so in awe of. Good grief, she’d actually taken up nursing simply to stay in their orbit. All of them had been special but Matt and Jet had stood out, of course. So different from each other but way too much alike in the power they’d had over her.

The power to be the centre of the universe. Trustworthy and indestructible.

Yes. She had to stay away from it to protect herself. Because she knew now that it wasn’t true. That it was just an illusion.

She had to focus on the present. That fact that she and Jet had nothing in common but this mission. She would take him to the island, drop him off and then fly out of his life and probably never see him again.

Her salvation lay in that, she realised. Or was it a bad idea to break the silence that had filled in such a good chunk of time now? She could be professional but distant. Discussing the mission might be vastly preferable to sitting in a verbal desert for hours and fighting the pull into the past.

‘How much do you know about Tokolamu island?’ The question came out abruptly, almost an accusation of ignorance. No wonder Jet’s eyebrow rose.

‘As much as I need to know.’ The tone was laid back enough to be a drawl. ‘It’s the tip of a volcano that could erupt at any time. There are people on top of it who need to get off.’

His voice was right in her ears. As dark and deep as everything else about this man. That mix of being offhand and supremely confident was him all over, too. A lot of people would find that insufferable rather than attractive.

Maybe she was one of them.

‘Some of those people are hurt,’ Jet continued. ‘It’s my job to look after them. Your job is to get me there.’

Yep. She was one of them. Arrogance, that’s what it boiled down to.

‘Tokolamu’s more than just the tip of a volcano,’ she informed him. ‘It’s a significant nature reserve. It’s got about seventy species of birds on or around it and that includes a successful breeding programme for endangered kiwi.’

The grunting sound indicated minimal interest but the conversation was working for Becca. Impersonal. Safe.

‘There’s weka there, too. And even kakapo. Did you know they’re the world’s heaviest parrot?’

‘Can’t say I did.’

‘They’re also the only flightless and nocturnal parrot in existence.’

‘Flightless, huh?’

‘Yep.’

‘They’d be mates with the kiwis, then?’

It was Becca’s turn to make a vaguely disparaging sound. Was he putting her down again?

‘Well, I reckon the other sixty-eight or so species of bird must think they’re a bit inferior.’ There was something more alive in Jet’s tone now. ‘When did you decide you wanted to fly, Becca?’

Becca. Nobody called her that these days. She was Rebecca to people who didn’t know her well and Bec to her closer associates. A short, firm kind of name. No frills. Just the way she liked it.

So why did he make it sound like that was her real name? As though everyone else, including herself, had been using the wrong one all these years? She shook the disturbing notion away and latched on to his query with relief.

‘Ages ago. When I left nursing I went into the ambulance service. They needed an extra crew member on a chopper one night and I got picked. I’d only been up in the air for ten minutes when I realised I didn’t want to be sitting in the back. I wanted the driver’s seat.’

Oh … help. This was exactly what she hadn’t wanted to be doing. Raking over the past. Divulging far more about herself than she’d intended to. Opening doors that had to remain shut or they would both be sucked into the worst space of all.

Jet’s chuckle was so unexpected, her head swung to face him. The sound was more than one of amusement. It signalled sympathy. It said he understood. That he would have felt exactly the same way.

And that was when Becca remembered how he’d got his nickname. Not because his hair was jet black but because he’d had a passion for fast things. Motorbikes and cars. Aircraft. Even his women had to be sleek and ready to speed into his bed.

Hadn’t part of his attraction been that he’d had the aura of the kind of things associated with flying? Things like turbulence and danger. The thrill of feeling weightless and able to move with a freedom that could be pure bliss. Maybe the rush she got from flying was the best substitute she had ever been able to discover for how she’d once felt being close to Jet. Being the focus of his attention. Being close enough to accidentally touch.

Not that such a ridiculous notion had ever occurred to her during the process of falling in love with flying and chasing the dream of becoming a pilot. Why would it? She’d never seen Jet again. She’d never been reminded of what it felt like to be this close.

Her sigh was an admission of defeat. She couldn’t fight this. She might have lasted amazingly so far, given the distance they had already covered, but she couldn’t continue to keep this time together totally impersonal and safe. She had no choice but to face up to whatever emotional fallout eventuated. She had to deal with it and survive. She could do that. She’d done it before, hadn’t she?

‘So, when did you get your pilot’s licence, Jet?’

It was the first time she’d used his name. It curled off her tongue and hung between them like a white flag of surrender.

‘I didn’t.’

‘I thought you said you could handle a BK.’

‘I can. Through osmosis, to start with. Then I got to be mates with some army pilots. They were happy to bend the rules sometimes. And I learn fast.’

That was true enough. Of all the ‘bad boys.’ Jet had undoubtedly been the smartest. That was why he’d won the scholarship to attend an elite, private school in the first place.

‘The formal endorsement of the ability was a bit out of my price range,’ Jet added dryly.

Yeah … not only the smartest. Despite all those boys being sent to boarding school for reasons they’d had every right to resent, Jet had had the biggest chip on his shoulder about his background. The others, including Matt, had been there because they had parents who could afford to offload the responsibility of children they weren’t particularly interested in. It had been years before Becca had learned of Jet’s multiple foster-family background. That he’d thought of himself as a charity case. She’d never heard more than hints, however. It wasn’t a topic ever up for discussion, any more than the blatant disparity in financial advantages.

Was that why he’d thrown it at her now? As some kind of barrier?

It was ancient history, surely. He’d proved how well he could do relying entirely on his own resources. Becca had a lack of patience for people who blamed life’s disappointments on their backgrounds. If you let either the pain of the past or fear of the future dictate your life, you were just shooting yourself in the foot as far as ever being happy. When it came down to it, everybody had to be able to draw on personal strength, no matter what their childhood had been like. Maybe Jet needed to get over himself.

‘Med school’s not cheap,’ she fired back. ‘You managed that, no problem.’

‘Unless you count the past ten years I’ve spent paying the loan off.’ Jet was scowling but then he shrugged. His next words were barely more than a mutter, as though he was talking to himself rather than Becca. ‘Maybe I will get my licence now. It’s not as if I want to save up for a house or anything.’

‘Gypsy lifestyle, huh?’

Becca regretted her choice of words as soon as she’d uttered them. It was supposed to be a light-hearted comment, to finish the discussion without adding more substance to that ghostly barrier coming into view. To make his life choices seem desirable, even. But the idea of a gypsy was a little too apt. A man going his own way in life, according to his own rules. A bit dark and dangerous. Yes, she could picture Jet Munroe as a gypsy all right. Or a pirate. Or. This had to stop.

‘I know what you mean about the osmosis,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I reckon I could get an IV line in, if push came to shove.’

‘I should hope so. Didn’t you say you’d been with the ambulance service?’

‘I didn’t get quite that far with my training.’ Becca knew she sounded defensive but did he have to make her sound inadequate? Was he determined to make her feel younger and far less experienced than she was? ‘I work with a lot of intensive care paramedics who are brilliant at what they do,’ she added crisply. ‘My job is just to get them there.’

That seemed to score a point. Conversation ceased and they flew on with the engine noise filling the space. Like it had done a while back but this time it was different. It was like they were both unwillingly forced to be taking part in some kind of dance, Becca decided. They’d drawn closer. Touched on some level. And now they were wheeling apart. Circling. Knowing that they would be drawn in again and next time it would be even closer. Acceptance of the inevitability didn’t lessen the dread so Becca said nothing. She was hanging on. Trying to delay the inevitable.

Jet seemed to be in tacit agreement with the tactic. It became a challenge. Who was going to break first? The time stretched and the challenge grew. A distraction all on its own. In the end, it wasn’t either of them who broke it. The radio crackled and buzzed inside their helmets. Someone was trying to contact them but reception was bad. Becca switched frequencies and tested them.

‘Flight zero three three. Are you receiving me, over?’

On her third attempt, Richard’s voice was cracked but audible. They were clearly far enough away from base to be pushing the boundaries for communication and static was wiping out chunks of the speech they could hear.

‘.return to base.’

‘Please repeat,’ Becca said. ‘Message broken.’

‘.in seismic activity …’

Good grief, had the volcano erupted? No. Becca looked up from the radio controls to stare into the darkness ahead. They were easily close enough by now to see the glow from such an event in the night sky. A sky that was lightening perceptibly with a faint line defining the horizon. Dawn was not that far off and that was good. It would make landing on the island a lot safer.

‘.wind shear in the event of eruption,’ came the end of Richard’s latest broadcast.

So it hadn’t erupted, then. Even better.

‘.ash.’ The single word was another warning.

‘Message broken,’ Becca said again.

‘.pager.’ The word was a command now. ‘.mobile.’

‘Roger. Over and out.’

They flew in silence again for a minute. And then another. Becca was reluctant to follow the instruction. Even as broken as the communication had been, it was clear the mission was in danger of being aborted. And they were almost there, dammit. With no obvious cause for alarm.

‘You going to check your pager, then?’ Jet queried. ‘And your phone?’

‘Yep.’

Another minute passed. The sky was definitely getting lighter. Becca peered ahead. Was it too soon to expect to make visual contact with Tokolamu?

‘Any time soon?’ Jet murmured.

With a sigh, Becca unclipped the pager from her belt and handed it to her passenger. He activated the device and started scrolling through messages.

‘These seem to be old messages. When did you go to Cathedral Cove?’

‘Yesterday. About eleven hundred hours. Idiot teenagers diving off the cliff into some big waves. One of them mistimed it and got banged up on the rocks. Winch job.’

‘And south of the Bombay Hills?’

‘That was the job before Cathedral Cove. Motorway pile-up.’

‘Nothing new on here, then.’

‘I’m not surprised. Range for the radio should be better than the pager.’

‘Give me your phone.’

The reluctance to let Jet read any text message she might have was surprisingly strong but Becca shrugged it off. It wasn’t as if there would be anything too personal in there. Like a message from a boyfriend. She almost wished there was. She could be sure that Jet’s love life wasn’t a desert and her single status would probably be enough to count as another putdown. Or was some of this feeling of inadequacy coming from something she’d considered long since buried? She wasn’t old enough. Or special enough. She was just Matt’s kid sister and Jet was.

‘Here it is. It says “Cancel, cancel. Seismic activity increasing. Eruption considered imminent. Risk unacceptable. Return to base.”’

‘No.’

‘What?‘ But there was something more than astonishment in Jet’s tone. It sounded like admiration. Respect, even.

‘Look.’ Becca pointed, and Jet peered into the grey sky of early dawn. ‘Two o’clock,’ she added.

Lumpy shapes that weren’t waves. Getting larger by the second. The chain of islands of which Tokolamu was the largest. Becca could see it clearly now. Could see the tip of the volcano and it was as dark as the rest of the rocky land mass.

‘We haven’t got the fuel to get back,’ she said calmly. ‘Personally, I’d rather take my chances after a safe landing on an island than ditching in the ocean somewhere.’

There was a moment’s silence as Jet absorbed the implications. Becca finally turned to look at him and, to her amazement, he grinned at her.

‘Your bird,’ he said. ‘Your rules.’

His face was really alive now. Dark eyes gleamed beneath the visor of the helmet. They were breaking the rules and hurling themselves towards danger and he was loving it. And … oh, Lord … that smile could probably persuade her to do anything, however dangerous it obviously was.

Maybe she should turn back. There was a life raft on board. They would know their coordinates and another chopper could possibly already be on the way to meet them.

But the islands were so close now. She could think about spotting the buildings and then locating the nearby landing site. People desperately needed the assistance she was bringing. If she got stuck on the island because an ash cloud prevented take-off then so be it. It wasn’t as though—

The oath Jet breathed cut off any thought of potential safety.

Had she really thought the sky was so light now? Against the glow of an erupting volcano, it had gone pitch black again.

Ash would kill the engines. How long before it enveloped them? Becca began dropping altitude. Heading for the closest island. Except that was Tokolamu, wasn’t it? And maybe it wasn’t ash she had to worry about first. The force of the eruption was about to hit them. Wind shear would drop them like a rock.

It was dropping them. Becca was fighting with the controls of her machine and she knew it was pointless. So pointless she didn’t say a thing when she found Jet leaning in to try and take over. She couldn’t hear a thing he was shouting because the noise outside was overwhelming everything. The sky was on fire and the island and its surrounding sea was rushing towards them so fast she could barely process the information.

She was about to die and Jet Munroe was trying to save her.

The irony of the situation barely registered before the cacophony of sound and light around her vanished and everything became black.