Page 47 of Damned
Chapter Twenty-One
There was no turbulence forecast between New Jersey and Winterton, Maine, so Kruze was able to keep the plane steady. It shuddered a little after he cleared Portland’s airspace, but he attributed that to a rogue gust of wind. No big deal. Small planes were more susceptible to quirks in the jetstream. Other than that, it was blue skies all the way. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Bree was asleep. Finally. If nothing else, she was one stubborn woman. But relaxed, there was an innocence about her. The worry lines bracketing her mouth were gone, as were the tiny furrows between her brows. He’d give anything to see her smile again.
But Kee-rist, he hated her current hair color. Dishwater blonde made Bree look pale and washed out, and the lack of style took away more of her spark. He wanted that other Bree, the saucy redhead who’d captured his heart those few years ago. The sassy woman he’d made a baby with. The sexy, daring minx who’d lured him out onto that Paris balcony when she’d lifted the back of her nearly see-through nightgown and bared her tempting, sexy derrière. He’d taken her up on the invitation, then took her from behind on that balcony overlooking that busy Paris street. His heart flipped remembering the heat between them. She’d climaxed quickly because that Bree had loved taking chances. She’d been naughty, and she’d enjoyed the risk of being seen or caught. Just thinking about what happened that balcony turned him hard as a steel pike.
They were nearly to his home-away-from-home, his cabin near Eagle Lake, Maine. The Cessna was flying low and steady, over miles of green pines and wide-open space. Kruze shifted in his seat, adjusting his hard-on when a loud roar, followed by a wicked sputter sounded to his left. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. A flameout? That didn’t make sense, but he’d definitely lost the left engine. Taking fast emergency measures, he shut it down and called a mayday into the nearest airport, which, unfortunately, was a good fifty miles behind them.
There was no choice but to keep flying. Totally doable, Kruze wasn’t worried. He’d landed with one engine before, that time after a bird strike. He could do it again. But they’d need to land sooner than later, and they wouldn’t make it to his place. Which would put them in the middle of Nowhere, Maine, surrounded by miles of undeveloped forests,ifhe found a suitable place to land. A meadow would be nice. A road would be better. Hell, even a deer trail would be better than going down in all these trees.
It was a fight keeping the plane’s wings steady. Worried, he dialed Chance, hoping he didn’t get Paloma again. But he had to cut the call before Chance answered, when the right engine roared, crackled, and spit smoke and flames.
“Kee-rist!” Kruze hissed, glaring at the damned thing. Flames and smoke peeled like inky ribbons behind the already blackened propeller and over the wing. Two flameouts in one trip? That made no sense. He’d run through the safety checklist. Bruce was former Air Force, for fuck’s sake. They’d known each other for years. Kruze knew damned well he hadn’t sabotaged the Cessna.But someone had.He’d lost all power.
A nervous voice from the dead silence behind him asked, “Kruze?”
“Make sure you’re belted in,” he ordered, wrestling the dead yoke. “Double-check your harness. We’re going down.”
“In all these trees? Wait! There’s a river down there. I see it! Will that work?”
He shook his head, but looked down at the river, which from this altitude, looked more like a stream instead of the white-water rapids he’d expected to see. White water was a definite no-go, but that stream just might work.
“Good eyes, sugar,” he told Bree as he forced the flaps into landing position, then worked mightily to steer the Cessna where he wanted it to go. They might just make it, but bringing a dead bird down would be a helluva rough landing. Any one of those trees alongside the river could clip a wing, shearing it off. Never mind what river rocks and boulders would do to the landing gear and belly. The plane might break apart.
They were coming down too fast. By sheer willpower, Kruze refused the plane’s natural tendency to dive nose first. That would throw them end-over-end. Cartwheeling increased the likelihood of Bree or him being thrown from the plane and dying. Sweating buckets, he’d barely finessed the nose up, when the belly collided with what he hoped was shallow water. But he wasn’t that lucky. They weren’t skimming water, just the rocky shore. But they were horizontal. They just might make it—if the plane slowed down.
Flashing glimpses of ramrod-straight tree trunks roared past the cracked windows. Horrific vibrations shook the plane. There was no sense fighting. Kruze took his hands off the yoke, just as the nose skimmed one edge of a massive boulder. Still on its belly, the sideways impact sent the plane pivoting. The first tree it hit sheared the right wing off, taking the flaming engine with it. They were still going too fast, propelled in a wide, dizzying circle, headed straight for the forest.
“Hold on!” he ordered, looping his hands and wrists through the suicide straps overhead. “Cover your face, Bree!” Kee-rist, he wished she were sitting with him, close, where he could reach out and hold her when they hit.
“I love you, Kruze Sinclair!!” a frightened Bree screamed, right before…
CRASH! OOOMPH!
The plane jerked to a dead stop, then bounced, damned near breaking his neck. Reeling from the impact, Kruze let go of the straps and shook his aching head to clear the cobwebs. Damn, it was cold. He blinked both bleary eyes, fighting to see, only to realize the cockpit had filled with black, oily-smelling smoke. The engine at his left was still burning. Didn’t that figure, drop out of Heaven only to land in Hell?
“Bree?” he called, waving a hand over his face, trying desperately to twist his upper body around far enough to see her through the smoke. “Where are you, sugar?” Something was stuck in his side, the soft part of his abdomen, below his ribs and above his hip bone. Made it damned hard to draw a full breath.
“Here,” she croaked behind him. “I can’t get out of my harness, but I’m okay. Are you?”
“I’m good.” Kruze honestly didn’t know how he was, but he wasn’t going to scare her. Nothing hurt too bad, but his lungs refused to expand. He couldn’t catch a full breath. The plane had come to rest on its belly, the trunk of a long-dead tree visible through the side exit window. With their escape blocked, one engine on fire, and the other missing, the only way out was through the shattered windshield.
With fingers that felt numb, fat, and useless, he finally unfastened his harness. Kruze bent his knees tight to his chest, lifted both boots over the instrument panel, and—Kee-rist!—the pain in his side had to go. Sweating up a storm, he managed a solid kick at the windshield. Then another. At last, the damned thing crackled and bent outward. Thank God. He was running out of power. Crisp, cool air flooded the cockpit, chilling the sweat he didn’t know was dripping out of his hair and running down his face. Sky. He could see the late afternoon sky. It’d be dark soon. They’d landed in the middle of nowhere. They needed to get out of this damned wreck.
But the nose of his plane was higher than its tail. They must’ve landed on a boulder or log or something. Kruze smoothed his sweaty hair back over his head to keep it out of his eyes. He was hurting. It was all he could to lower his legs enough to put his boots on the floor. Every inhalation took too much son of a bitchin’ effort.
“Bree. Climb up here… with me.” He rasped, then coughed. “The side exit’s blocked. Hurry. We’ll have to climb through the windshield. Are you out of your harness yet? Do you need help?” As if Kruze could help anyone. At the moment he could barely help himself.
“No, I’m good. Just stay where you are, I’m coming,” Bree replied huskily.
Normally, those lovely words out of a woman’s sexy mouth would’ve made Kruze grin. But too many black spots stalked the edge of his vision now. He needed to move faster, jump higher, and do it all with better efficiency before he passed out. Because something was dead damned wrong, and that something was stuck in his side. Pissed that he couldn’t seem to catch a break, he tossed his useless earphones to the safety-glass-cluttered co-pilot seat.
And just like one of his favorite dreams, Bree appeared at his side out of the murky black. The first thing she shoved forward was his heavy gear bag. She maneuvered that onto the co-pilot’s seat. Her backpack came next, then another bag and his jacket. The air was getting harder to breathe.
“Anything else I should get before we bail?” she asked, her slender fingers gripping the edges of both cockpit seats, as she prepared to climb between them.
The left engine was still burning. Bree was right. This might be their only chance to grab what they could to survive, before the plane blew. But Kruze wouldn’t take a chance with her life.
“No,” he decided, reaching for her, pulling her forward by one arm, then pushing her sweet ass over him to the window. “You first. Climb over me, yeah. Watch your head. There you go. Get out. I’ll be right behind you.”
