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3
“SONUVABITCH!” Max checked his instruments. Everything was normal. His fuel was good. He lowered the nose again and restarted the engine.
Somehow the center of gravity had shifted to the rear of the plane. He hadn’t noticed any of the cargo sliding backward. But that’s the only thing it could be. If he didn’t keep his nose down, the engine stalled. Which meant losing altitude. Which meant landing. And fast.
He scanned the ground below for a decent place to set down. The middle of freakin’ nowhere. Again. Memories flashed through his mind’s eye and panic settled in his gut. No. He shook his head, pushed it down. Concentrate, dammit.
He was about forty miles outside Nome. Not much here but tundra. And he wouldn’t be able to take off from tundra.
There. At two o’clock. A frozen lake. He banked to the right and fought to keep the nose down and the flaps steady.
He turned to Mickey, who was strapped in better than Max was. “Brace for impact, buddy. Here goes.”
The wheels touched down and he braked and immediately started to spin over the ice. It took every bit of strength in his left arm to hold the wheel while working the rudder with his right to minimize the spin and keep both wheels down so the plane wouldn’t flip. It was a small lake. He’d run out of ice soon. After three spins, the plane skidded into the embankment and he heard metal snap as the pilot’s side collapsed. Dammit!
Shutting down the engine, he opened the door and climbed out to inspect the damage. The long string of curse words he yelled would have made his grandmother cover her ears and offer up prayers to the spirits. The damn wheel strut was bent. He wasn’t sure he could repair it.
Flashbacks of the crash three years ago hammered his psyche and his vision got jittery. The sound of his friends screaming in pain. The blood. The death. The days-long walk in frigid temperatures. He couldn’t survive another ordeal like that.
Suck it up, Taggert. This was nothing like last time. The plane was mostly intact, including the radio. He glanced at his watch. Ten forty-seven. He was due in Nome for refueling right about now.
Hoisting himself back in, he got on the radio and contacted Nome, giving them his situation and coordinates. He’d have a better idea of his expected arrival time after he tried to make the repairs. He flipped the pilot’s seat forward and jerked his sunglasses off to check the cargo.
As if possessed, the tarp in the tail of the fuselage moved and then a head poked out from under it.
“You!”
The woman from last night flinched and bit her lip.
He truly was cursed.
So that’s what Mickey had been barking at. He looked over at his faithful companion and unbuckled the malamute’s seat belt. “Sorry I didn’t pay attention, boy.”
“Um, I can expla—”
“What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know what you’ve done? We’ll be lucky if we make it back to civilization alive.” Okay, so he might be exaggerating slightly.
Her face paled and there was fear in her wide eyes.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere and my damn landing gear is busted thanks to you! Are you insane? Even if I can fix it, I ought to make you walk back to Anchorage, you conniving little—”
“How is your plane breaking down my fault?”
Max ground his teeth. “Your extra weight in the back of the plane made the engine stall.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip again.
“Oh?” he roared. “I should sue you! By the time I’m through with you, you’ll be looking at federal charges.”
“If you’ll stop yelling I’ll explain.”
“Just get out.” He needed to pound something, but he settled for grabbing the closest box and hauling it up to the snowy embankment. Even with the worn leather on the soles of his caribou-skinned boots, his footing slipped on the ice.
He whistled for Mickey. “Come on, boy. Take care of business and keep an eye out for wolves.”
Mickey barked his answer and leaped out, loping across the ice and out into the snow. There was a line of trees about a hundred yards to the north, mountains to the west, and nothing but tundra to the south and east.
He went back for another box as the woman was climbing out.
She slipped as she set her high-heeled boot down on the ice. “Did you say wolves?” She glanced around nervously.
“Yeah, there’re probably several packs close by.” He stopped beside her and leaned into her face. “And they get real hungry in the winter.” He brushed past and grabbed the other box. “Aren’t you more afraid of being out in the middle of nowhere with an alleged murderer?”
“I don’t think you killed anyone.” But she didn’t sound quite sure.
He set the box down at the edge of the lake and turned to face her. “Yeah. I did.”
Her eyes widened and she blinked a couple times. “Who?”
“Hoping to get information for your story?”
“I get it. You could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me?” She spun on her heel and scrambled back into the plane.
What the hell did she think she was going to do in there? He hurried over the ice toward his plane.
A minute later she came out the pilot’s door tugging on one of the coolers.
“Here.” He pushed on her shoulder. “Let me get it before you break something else.”
“I can do it.” She tugged again and lifted the cooler into her arms. She turned to give him a triumphant look and for the first time he saw her up close in sunlight. Her deep blue eyes sparked defiantly, but her full red lips trembled. The sun turned her brunette hair a deep rich mahogany. Something about her beauty made him want to drag her into his arms and claim possession.
What was he doing? Going all soft—or hard—over a pretty face? He grabbed the cooler from her and snarled, “You want a medal?”
By the time he’d set the cooler down in the snow and headed back, she had the last one in her arms. He took it from her. “Get my toolbox.”
“Isn’t someone sending out help?”
“No.” He walked cautiously over the ice and then set the cooler down.
“But, I heard you on the radio.”
“You want me to leave you here, just keep arguing.”
Her eyes widened and she dashed inside the plane.
He approached the Cessna just as she was climbing out with his toolbox in hand.
“I’m not calling for help over a damned bent strut.” Not unless he was forced to. He took the toolbox from her and recognized the gloves she wore as his. The ones he’d given her last night. Just before he’d kissed her. He glanced up, meeting her gaze.
The woman cleared her throat. “Here are your gloves back.” She held them out in front of him.
He spun and hunkered down to take a closer look at the broken gear. Dammit, she’d almost sucked him in again. Concentrate, you moron. Landing gear.
“Keep ’em.” He looked up at her, one eye closed against the bright sun. “For now.” He couldn’t really work with them on anyway. And he still had a traditional sealskin pair his grandmother had made him if he needed them. For now it wasn’t that cold.
He returned his attention to the job at hand. The wheel was sitting at an angle, the steel bar connecting it, bent. He could probably bend it back, but there was no guarantee it would hold through takeoff, much less another landing. He needed a new strut, and they probably didn’t even carry landing gear for a C-206 this old. Well, if he could get it good enough for now, he could probably find one at a junk sale online once he made it home to Barrow. If he couldn’t fix this, he’d be forced to radio to Nome for rescue.
“What can I do to help?”
“You mean besides never coming into my life to begin with?” He reached into his toolbox and pulled out a hammer.
“Yes.” From the corner of his eye he saw her cross her arms. “Besides that.”
“Nothing.”
“Fine.” She turned and walked away.
“Careful of the—”
She screamed and went down on her butt.
Max chuckled. “The ice.” His chuckle turned into a full out laugh as she tried to get up and rubbed her behind.
“Very funny.”
“Yeah, it is.” He hadn’t laughed out loud like that in…he didn’t know how long. “Maybe you could cut a hole in the ice with that glare of yours and catch us a fish for dinner.”
“Dinner? Are we going to be here that long?”
“Maybe longer. I don’t know.” He examined the busted gear. Might be able to use the oxyacetylene torch to heat the strut enough to hammer it straight. But he needed a way to keep the wheel elevated.
“Where are we?”
“About forty miles southeast of Nome. If you’re going to bug me asking a million questions, make yourself useful and grab that crate from the plane.”
“You ever heard of please?” But she was already moving.
He concentrated on how he was going to jack up the fuselage. “And you can bring me my sunglasses from the visor when you’re done with that.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she quipped from inside the plane. He tried not to smile. Didn’t she know killers don’t appreciate sarcasm?
He didn’t have a jack. He could forage for wood, but, what if…
She climbed out and set the crate beside him, then pulled his sunglasses off the top of her head and handed them to him.
“Ahem, your sunglasses, my liege.” She was bent over at the waist, holding his Ray-Bans in her palms with her arms extended. She had guts, he had to give her that. He took the glasses and she straightened and plunked her hands on her hips. “Will that be all, master?”
She had one brow raised and her ski jacket was unzipped, revealing a tight sweater beneath. It was cold enough her nipples were two tight little points through the sweater. Her bra must be thin. Or she wasn’t wearing one. The thought got him all riled up below the belt.
Her lips tightened into a thin line again and she zipped up her coat.
Dammit. His face heated and he brought his gaze to hers. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
For the first time he wondered why she was here. Sneaking into his plane, hiding out. Chasing after a years-old story. She must be desperate. Surely there were hundreds of other more important things happening in the world she could be reporting on.
“So, can you fix it?”
He pulled the oxyacetylene torch kit out of the crate and prayed he had enough propane. Then he unloaded the rest of the stuff, turned the crate upside down and sat on it. At least one of them would have a dry butt.
“How much do you weigh?”
She sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“Enough to unbalance the center of gravity in my plane and stall the engine? Say, one-twenty? One twenty-five?”
“Gee, you sure know how to charm a girl.”
He just raised a brow.
She pursed her lips. “That’s close enough.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He stood and went to retrieve one of the coolers. “I’m going to tip the plane over.”
“What?”
“Just listen.” He set the cooler next to the wing opposite the bent strut and went back for the second cooler. “When I tip the plane, you’re going to climb onto the wing over there with a cooler on either side of you.”
When he turned with the other cooler in his arms she’d narrowed her eyes at him. “And when you yank down the other wing I go flying off, never to be seen again?”
Never to be seen again. Like his friends.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Bad joke.”
He came back to the present, the heavy cooler straining the muscles in his arms. He carried it around to join the other, and the woman followed him.
“Is your name really Serena?”
She nodded. “Serena Sandstone. Named after my paternal grandmother.”
“If this doesn’t work, I’ll have to go into the forest and cut some timber to act as a jack. That could take hours.”
“Well, let’s get started then.” She dusted her hands together.
SERENA BIT her lip and clenched her hands into fists as soon as Max turned away from her. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep up the pretense of undaunted confidence. She had a feeling she wasn’t fooling anyone but herself, anyway.
Max went around, squatted beside the bent wheel and positioned his hands under the fuselage. “Ready?” he shouted.
“Ready,” she shouted back.
