To Save This Child

Somewhere over the remote mountainous regions of Chiapas, Mexico

KENDAL COLLINS breathed a prayer of thanks that at last they were safe. At last. Safe.

Though the mountains rolling beneath the belly of their small plane looked rocky and steep, forbidding in their vast isolation, Jason Bridges appeared to be in control, his hands relaxed on the yoke of his Cessna Conquest as he executed flying maneuvers with his usual precision.

Shuddering, Kendal released what felt like the first full breath she’d drawn in days. Even during the dark time of their captivity, Jason had always sworn he would keep her safe, but only now that they were airborne would she let herself believe it. Finally, they were leaving Chiapas far behind.

“Hang in there, sweetheart.” Jason released the yoke long enough to squeeze her hand.

She gave him a brave smile, then twisted her torso, extending that smile to the two dear people strapped together into one of the rear-facing seats. Miguel Vajaras, age two, slept like the baby he was with his beautiful dark head lolling against the slender shoulder of Ruth Nichols, Jason’s scrub nurse. Ruth adjusted Miguel on her lap and put a shushing finger to her lips. Kendal nodded her understanding. Miguel had been so frightened, confused and crying right up until the plane had lifted into the air.

“Miguel.” Jason had distracted the child. “Look! Mountains!”

At the sound of Jason’s deep voice, Miguel had quieted abruptly, straining forward in the seat to look out the window. “Moun-nan,” he had echoed in baby talk. “Moun-nan. Eh-pane.” He had repeated the unfamiliar English words over and over, until the drone of the plane’s engine had finally put the exhausted toddler to sleep.

Kendal studied her adopted son’s innocent brown face, so angelic in repose, not quite able to believe this sweet child was, at last, going to be safe and was soon going to be her very own. This ordeal had been so hard on all of them, but now they were safe. Safe.

She longed to be back in Ruth’s seat so she could comfort her baby, but Jason wanted, needed, Kendal in the copilot’s seat. They weren’t out of Vajaras’s territory yet.

“Get in front in case I need a navigator,” Jason had said as he helped her into the plane.

And Ruth would take good care of Miguel. Ruth had always been good with the children, adept at calming their fears. Miguel was in good hands. Kendal tried to relax as she gave her sleeping little boy one last loving smile.

Ruth returned Kendal’s smile before she closed her eyes in exhaustion. Their flight from terror had worn the poor woman out.

Kendal glanced at her future husband. His muscular neck was craned as he concentrated on the terrain below.

“Look at that, sweetheart,” he said.

Kendal glanced out the small plane’s window as the Canon del Sumidero came into view. The scenery rolling below them was exotic, breathtaking, but Kendal was sick of Chiapas and its strange seductive beauty. Right now she wanted to feast her eyes on the plains of Oklahoma…and on Jason.

She studied his handsome profile for a second before her gaze was drawn down to his hands gripping the control yoke. She had noticed those hands the very first time they’d met in his office. The rest of his appearance could border on scruffy at times, but his hands were always immaculate, smooth and clean like any good surgeon’s.

She would probably admire Jason’s hands for the rest of her life. Even the way he wrote was strong. She loved to watch as he jotted orders or slashed his signature across a chart in neat, bold strokes.

But it was seeing him use those hands in surgery that had finally won Kendal’s undying admiration. Jason Bridges made real miracles happen every day. She had witnessed those miracles in the worst of conditions down here in Chiapas.

Her eyes trailed from the control yoke down to his legs, also tanned and oh-so-muscular, bulging against wrinkled khaki shorts. It seemed his whole body functioned like one long, taut muscle. A six-foot-tall granite statue—that’s what Jason was.

Her gaze flitted up to his cropped hair, dark as midnight, with strands of silver at the temples that created a delicious contrast to his clean profile, his chiseled lips, his square jaw. His skin, deeply tanned from the Mexican sun, glowed in the slanting sunshine that streamed through the plane’s compact windshield. She sighed again, utterly content to just admire him.

He glanced over and smiled when he caught her doing so.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“How much I love you.”

He smiled. “I love you, too. Is Miguel okay now?”

She nodded and raised her finger in the same silencing gesture Ruth had used. Jason glanced back at his sleeping passengers. Then he reached across the narrow space and wrapped a possessive palm around Kendal’s inner thigh. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. His pulse felt steady, strong.

“God, I’m glad we’re finally out of there,” he murmured.

“Me, too.” But Kendal found that she could still summon up the fear. The danger is over, she reminded herself as she suppressed tears, and gripped Jason’s wrist harder.

“Ah, now.” Jason flipped his hand up, capturing her fingers. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart.” He leaned toward her, glancing back and indicating that he wanted to speak near her ear. Their heads touched halfway over the center console. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I know.” Kendal closed her eyes, flooded with relief as she pressed her head into his broad shoulder.

“Just remember how much I love you,” he murmured. “And that I can’t wait to be alone with you,” his voice lowered further still, “so I can show you exactly how much.”

She opened her eyes, tilting her head up to flash him another brave smile. The sun bounced off the Cessna’s white engine cowling up onto Jason’s aviator shades. Behind the sunglasses, Kendal knew, her lover’s eyes were as blue as the Pacific Ocean that stretched beyond the endless horizon at their backs. And she knew what those eyes looked like when they were brimming with tenderness, burning with desire.

“I can’t wait,” she said as she leaned in closer to him and caught a heady whiff of his scent. But in that same instant her vision was snagged by a peripheral glimpse of the fuel gauges.

“Jason!” She jerked her head up, pointing.

“What?” His voice echoed the sudden alarm in hers.

“Shhh!” Ruth shushed them from behind.

But Kendal ignored her. “The fuel!” The dial for pounds of fuel remaining read unbelievably low and the dial for fuel outflow read unbelievably high.

Jason stared at the gauges and Kendal blinked hard, hoping her eyes, her brain, had made some kind of horrible mistake. But when Jason pulled on the red knob to stem the flow and frantically flipped the switch for the backup tank, she knew he was seeing the same thing she was seeing.

“What’s wrong?” Ruth, sensing trouble, clutched the still-sleeping child’s head to her breast while she twisted to see, stretching her seat harness.

Right then the warning lights flashed, and the low fuel alarm started to blare.

“We’re almost out of fuel,” Kendal spoke above the insistent warning chimes and the even louder drone of the engine, which to Kendal seemed to be already making an ominous straining noise.

“How can that be? We just left!”

“I will,” Jason ground out through clenched teeth, “kill Vajaras with my bare hands.”

“How could he do this!” Kendal cried, horrified to realize the man was so evil that he would arrange the death of his own grandchild.

“How could he do what?” Ruth demanded, clearly panicking.

“Vajaras must have arranged for one of his goons to puncture our fuel lines before takeoff,” Jason explained as he eased the plane to a lower altitude. “He knew we’d be over the continental divide by the time it leaked out.” He was executing a careful fuel-conserving turn in a narrow mountain valley. “Stay calm,” he said. But his own lips were stretched white with fear. “Our best bet is to circle back to the airport.”

Jason gripped the control yoke while the low fuel signal continued to chime like a death knell.

In the back seat Miguel whimpered, awakened by the loud alarm. Kendal looked back to see his thickly lashed little eyes growing wide with fear.

“It’s okay, honey,” she said in a Chiapas dialect, “Mamá está aquí.”

But the toddler started to cry, struggling against Ruth’s seat belt and stretching his thin arms toward Kendal. All Kendal could do was reach a hand back, awkwardly trying to reassure the child. She rubbed her palm gently on his little shoulder while Ruth murmured reassurances in his ear.