Rina’s adrenaline was pumping. The thrill of being so high
in an open-air helicopter was a rush unlike anything she had
ever felt before. Add to that, flying with Alex Justice,
watching his long-fingered hands work the controls, seeing
the capable way he handled the machine, made her heart rate
soar even higher. There was something about a man taking
charge, a man who was good at what he did, that turned her on.

Not that she would ever admit it.

Alex wasn’t her type and she wasn’t his and both of them
knew it. Still, she wasn’t dead and Alex was definitely eye
candy and more.

She forced herself to concentrate on the search they were
making. They’d been flying for more than an hour, had
located the property but not the mine itself--assuming there
was one. There’d been nothing in the will to indicate its
location or anything about it. Just the legal description
of the land itself, three-thousand acres, five-square miles,
of what appeared to be dirt, rocks, and cactus.

Her gaze followed the contours of the property. Ravines
scarred the landscape, and ridges of granite rose out of the
sloping desert floor. Chaparral, mesquite, and scrub brush
dotted endless stretches of rocks and sand.

“Not much out there,” Alex said above the whip, whip, whip
of the rotors.

“We haven’t covered that much area yet. Maybe we’ll find
something that marks the mine.”

“If there is one,” Alex said, reminding her there might not
be anything more than exactly what they were seeing--miles
and miles of vast, empty desert.

The hours began to blur together. Once they had reached the
property location, Alex had begun searching in a grid
pattern to cover as much of the area as possible. The
temperature was rising, the heat building inside the
chopper, the afternoon slipping away. Rina yawned and
rubbed her eyes, which felt gritty from the wind and heat.

An odd noise caught her attention. The whop, whop, whop had
been so regular she’d been trying not to fall asleep. This
sound was different, a kind of grinding that had her gaze
shooting to Alex, who features suddenly looked grim.

Sabrina’s heart stalled and a few seconds later, so did the
engine.

“Alex, what’s happening?”

Alex heard the fear in Sabrina’s voice. There wasn’t time
to answer. Instead, his years of training and experience
kicked in and he did what he had been trained to
do--slamming the collective down to neutral, taking the
pitch out of the blade. The chopper fell like a stone.

“Oh, my God!” Sabrina’s voice rose even higher as she
realized they were in trouble.

The blades were flat now, the wind whistling up between
them, making them spin even faster than the engine, which
had gone deadly silent.

“Just hold on!” he shouted. “We’ll auto-rotate down! We’ll
be fine!” He’d done it dozens of times, knew without
thinking exactly how to make it happen. As the inertia
built, he began to search the ground for a place to land,
but something didn’t feel right, something was altering
their approach while they were still too high to make a safe
landing.

It was the blades, he realized. Instead of moving at the
speed they should have, they were sticking and slowing,
jerking instead of spinning smoothly. They were going to
hit the ground hard. Way too hard.

At the last minute, he flared the chopper, hoping to slow it
as much as possible, hit a little softer, keep the helo in
one piece, but the chopper was coming in too fast and the
ground rushed up.

Sabrina screamed as the windshield shattered and he leaned
over her, tried to cover her as much as he could with his
body. The rotor blades tore free and spun away, shattering
into jagged pieces that flew like deadly knives into the desert.

The chopper shook and continued to disintegrate. After what
seemed like minutes but was only seconds, the machine
finally started to settle. Alex popped his seatbelt and
reached for Sabrina, eased her back in the seat and saw
blood trickling down her forehead. She was moaning,
conscious, but barely. From the corner of his eye, he
spotted the lick of orange flames behind them, rushing up
from what was left of the engine.

The fuel tank was going to blow. They had to get out and
fast. Reaching behind his seat, he grabbed his emergency
gear bag, slung the strap over his shoulder, then reached
for Sabrina, popped her belt and started to pull her out of
the chopper from the pilot’s side.

The effort had him hissing in pain, his body telling him he
had injured a couple of ribs, but there wasn’t time to worry
about that now. Ignoring the sharp stab in his side, he
pulled Sabrina free of the wreckage, half dragged, half
carried her over to an outcropping of rock, settled her
behind it.

There was just enough time to throw himself over her,
protecting her as much as he could, before the helo exploded
into a ball of thick black smoke and searing flames. The
blazing inferno shot into the sky, and a barrage of shrapnel
sliced through the air around them.

Alex felt a sharp sting as a jagged piece of metal cut
through his shirt and sliced into his back. A second
explosion ripped through the air, then the only sound he
heard was the crackle of flames.

He took a quick look over the rock to make sure it was safe,
then turned his attention to the woman on the ground. Her
face was as pale as the sand under her head, and a thin line
of blood trickled from her forehead to her left temple.

She moved her head a little and groaned. Then her pretty
blue eyes cracked open and she looked up at him. “Alex...?”

The pain and fear in her voice made his chest clamp down.
She was lucky to be alive. They both were. Lucky he’d been
able to make any kind of landing at all.

“It’s all right, baby, you’re safe. I need to take a look,
see where you’re injured.”

She reached a shaky hand up to her forehead. “My
head...hurts.” She swiped at the trickle of blood. “I
think I cut myself.”

His jaw hardened. She had hired him to protect her. But he
couldn’t protect her from this. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No, I don’t...don’t think so.”

Jerking the strap of the canvas bag off his shoulder, he set
the bag aside and made a cursory check for broken bones,
felt her legs and arms, which seemed to be okay. He checked
for neck or spinal injuries, didn’t find anything obvious.
There were nicks and cuts from the crash on her neck and
arms, but aside from that she seemed to be okay. Alex
breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t been hurt a lot worse.

“I’m kind of dizzy.”

“You probably have a slight concussion.” He held up three
fingers. “How many do you see?”

“Three.”

He checked her pupils. They looked normal. “You remember
what happened?”

“We crashed. I remember how scared I was, how fast the
ground seemed to come up from beneath us. Then I blacked out.”

“We hit pretty hard.” To say the least.

“Can we...can we radio for help?”

“Chopper exploded. No time to call it in and now the
radio’s gone.”

Her eyes widened at the news. She sat up a little too
quickly and hissed in pain.

“Take it easy.” He tried to ease her back down, but she
moved his hand away and managed to prop herself against the
rock to look over at the slow-burning chunk of metal, all
that was left of the helo. “What...what caused the crash?”

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “I don’t know. Something
went wrong with the engine. We should have been able to
auto-rotate down safely, but the rotors jammed. We’re lucky
we faired as well as we did.”

Her eyes remained on the chopper, then swung to his face.
“You saved me. You got me out of there. I never would have
made it on my own.”

He thought of how close they’d both come. “You’d have made
it if you hadn’t hit your head. It’s no big deal.” He
could see by the set of her chin that she didn’t believe
him, but she didn’t say more.

He pulled his cell phone out of a pocket in his jeans,
noticed a burn hole in his pant leg, felt the sting where
the hot metal had struck. He had the same nicks and cuts
she had, a few more, maybe. His back was bleeding, but he
didn’t thing the cut was that bad. He was just grateful to
be alive.

Flipping open the phone, he saw there wasn’t any service, as
he had expected. There weren’t any cell towers this far out
in the middle of nowhere.

Sabrina silently watched him. Tentatively, she touched the
growing knot on her forehead next to her hairline. “God,
Alex, what are we going to do?”