Page 59 of Burning Hearts

Neil yelled back, “No! He just shut the alarms off.”

Logan glanced around. The smokejumpers were on the floor, wedged into small spaces. “Everyone good?”

Hammer nodded, his lips pressed tight together and nearly invisible in his beard. Tristan lay on the floor by him, his eyes closed. Hammer said, “He’s breathing.”

“Jade! Skye!”

They popped up between seats. Jade said, “We’re good. Tori?”

She groaned. “Fine. Orion and Cadee are good too.”

Vince was toward the front, a hard expression on his face. “That was a trap.”

Logan didn’t want to think about it. “We need to land before the plane falls out of the sky. After we survive that, we can discuss what just happened.”

Vince said nothing.

Logan went to the cockpit. “How long do we have?”

Saxon had binoculars trained on the window beside him.

Neil grasped the controls, the muscles in his arms straining to hold the plane steady, his face pink-tinted. “We’re leaking fuel. They must’ve hit the tank, because we’re leaving a trail behind us. The needle’s going down and so are we.”

“How long?”

“A minute or two, tops. But we need enough height so you guys can jump.”

Jade came up behind him. “We don’t have enough chutes for everyone.”

Logan said, “Can we double up?”

Saxon spoke to the window, the binoculars still up to his eyes. “We’re gonna have to. Otherwise you go down with us and the plane.”

Logan didn’t like the sound of that.

Neil said, “There’s a valley to the west. It was burning a few days ago, but the depression will give you enough height to jump.”

Jade squeezed his shoulder. “Do what you can for us, but don’t forget about yourself. You’re not going down with the ship, Neil.”

Saxon turned to them. “We’ve got another problem.”

Logan didn’t like the sound of that.

“Those guys on the ATVs? They’ve been following us.”

Logan ducked out of the cockpit and found the nearest window. He tried to see out, but there wasn’t much visibility. The engines were streaming smoke. “We’re so close to the ground.”

But he didn’t see gunmen in hot pursuit.

Jamie’s head rose between seats. “What are we gonna do?”

Those huge eyes she thought were too big for her face were rimmed with unshed tears. “We’re gonna survive.”

At least, he hoped they were.

Jade came to the door and faced the rows of seats in the back of the plane. “All right, listen up. Neil and Saxon are going to find somewhere for us to jump. We can’t all be on the plane when it lands. Our best chance is going to be in the air, doing what we do.”

Her voice hitched.

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