The Tortured Rebel (3 page)

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.