Hero for Hire Read online

  “What?” Fear nearly strangled her when the plane dipped again. Then yet again.

  Nina struggled to sit upright, to blink past the dizziness to focus. She saw Rick reach down and unhook the pilot’s seat belt, stepping over the body when it hit the floor. Sitting in the now empty pilot’s seat, he glanced quickly over his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “You are...flying.”

  “Yeah.”

  Again the plane jerked, violently, so that Nina thought her seat belt would tear her in two. “Rick!”

  “Come here.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Come here!”

  Easier said than done since the plane continued to dip and rise like a roller coaster, up and down, and also side to side as Rick struggled to regain control. She could hardly get her fingers around her seat belt to release it.

  “Hurry, damn it.”

  “Hurry,” she repeated, crawling on the floor to the front, grabbing Rick’s leg to steady herself. Poking her head up, she looked out the window to find that they’d lost altitude. Her stomach leaped into her throat. “Do you know what to do?”

  The plane dipped again, knocking her into Rick’s lap. At the feel of his tense, powerful thighs beneath her, she jerked back, nearly landing on top of the prone pilot on the floor. “Have you done this before?” she cried.

  He was busy fighting with the controls.

  “Rick!”

  “I’ve seen it done a few times.”

  He’d seen it done. Something was rolling around at her feet and she stared at it. “There is a soda can with foam coming out of it.”

  “Empty?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked down at the pilot, then let out a string of obscenities. “Does it smell like almonds? Never mind, don’t touch it! How is he?”

  She reached for the pilot. “He’s not moving. What do I do?”

  “Is he dead?”

  She stared down at the man in growing horror. “How do I tell?”

  “Check for a pulse.”

  “Check for a pulse. Checking for a pulse. Meu Deus, there is no pulse!” She didn’t know his name, but he’d worked at All That Glitters for several years, and he’d always been courteous. Did he have a wife? Children? This could not be happening. “Rick!”

  Rick closed his eyes briefly, then leveled his intense gaze on her. “Okay, listen carefully. We’re losing altitude.”

  She could only stare at him.

  “I’m not sure how to stop it.”

  All the air left her lungs.

  “Get back into a seat belt, Nina. Now.”

  She peered out the window at the lush, green Amazon jungle beneath, the jungle that was currently rushing up to meet them. Vertigo swamped her, but she shook it off and crawled back to her seat.

  “Are you in?” he yelled back.

  “Almost. Rick, are we—”

  The plane dropped and tipped to the side, throwing her against the wall. Her face hit, hard enough that she saw stars.

  “Nina, seat belt! Now!”

  He was craning his neck to peer out the windows, searching to the front and the sides of him with a deadly calm as he worked the controls with a sort of aim-and-miss method that made her very grateful she wasn’t prone to motion sickness. “Seat belt,” she repeated, afraid she knew the answer to her question, but she asked anyway. “Are we going to make it?”

  “Hang on.” The plane shuddered and let out a horrendous noise. He had to shout to be heard. “We’re going down.”

  “Do you know how to land?”

  There was a thin line of sweat running down his temple, his mouth was tight. “Don’t ask me anything you don’t really want to know.”

  He didn’t know how to land.

  By some miracle they’d stopped dropping out of the sky, but they flew low, too low, the belly of the plane brushing against the wild, lush growth that made up the jungle, stretching out as far as the eye could see, without a break in sight.

  “There is nowhere to put this thing down!” she cried. “We will never make it!”

  “Never say never.”

  The airplane pitched brutally, throwing her weight against the restraint of the seat belt, cutting into her chest, her ribs, until she was sure she would simply snap in half.

  “This is it,” he yelled back. “Tuck your body, cover your head with your arms. Don’t look up until we stop.”

  She started to tuck, then stopped. “What about you?” He’d never found the time to hook his seat belt, she thought with a surge of panic. “Rick! How will you protect yourself?”

  “Nina, damn it, tuck!”

  She tucked.

  The plane dipped again, and she bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

  They were going to die.

  She’d never really imagined dying, but she was suddenly sorry she was going to do so before they’d worked through their problems.

  She didn’t want to die like this. She didn’t want to die at all. She hadn’t had kids, or gone scuba diving. She hadn’t told her father she loved him.

  Or Rick.

  “Nina?”

  She started to look up, but remembered his directions. She stayed tucked.

  “Nina...” Rick sounded different now, frantic for the first time. “Nina, I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes against the onslaught of regret and anguish.

  So he didn’t want to die at odds with her, either. “I know.”

  “I should have told you.”

  He was only saying that because he thought they were going to die. They were hitting the tops of the trees now. The plane shuddered and made a horrendous noise. Nina was thrown left and right, then left again, her entire body pummeled from all directions, and she bit her lip again, not wanting to distract him by crying out.

  The noise was atrocious. As Rick took the plane down through the thin canopy of trees, they hit hard and fast, bouncing up off the ground twice more before smashing down for the final time, sliding through the thick growth and headlong into a tree.

  * * *

  AFTER ALL the earsplitting noise, the silence was deafening. In that silence, Nina heard Rick’s last words.

  I’m sorry.

  I should have told you.

  Should have.

  Should have.

  Those last words echoed in her head over and over, until suddenly it occurred to her.

  All was still. Too still.

  Everything felt like a dream. Even her own breathing, so harsh in the quiet, seemed surreal. Lifting her head, she opened her eyes.

  And at the sight of the dead pilot, on his back at her feet, eyes and mouth open, tongue hanging out, she screamed.

  The sound bounced around her head and in the plane, but there was no answer. The fog blurring the edges of her vision faded, and so did the sense of being asleep.

  She was horribly wide-awake, not dreaming at all.

  Where was Rick?

  Fumbling with her seat belt, she freed herself. She tripped over the pilot and landed on her hands and knees in the front of the plane.

  Rick lay slumped forward, and didn’t move when she sobbed his name. Scooting closer, she placed her hands on his back, leaning over him, looking into his face.

  His eyes were closed, which was a good thing, since blood was pouring down his temple from a long, jagged gash on the top of his head. “Rick!”

  “Told you...” His lips barely moved. Nothing else did, either. “Told you...I’d seen this done.”

  A laugh escaped her, but it was purely hysterical. “You need medical attention. Stitches for certain.”

  “Got...any thread?” Somehow he managed a smile, though it was a weak one. “Come on, it can be your revenge. Stitching me up without drugs.”

  The thought made her feel like throwing up, but then he shifted and groaned.

  “Don’t move,” she said quickly.

  “Not...planning on it.”

  “My God. What are we going to do?” He was fadin