To Save This Child

In only minutes, the mountains gave way to a broad valley, then the patchwork of fields and forest revealed clusters of thatched huts and finally the large metropolis of buildings that was Tuxtla Gutiérrez appeared in the distance. When the airport runway came into sight the three adults held a collective breath.

Maybe they could make it down.

Jason’s strong fingers gripped the landing gear control handle as they closed in over the crude airport, but suddenly he lurched forward in his seat.

He cursed and, without further warning, jerked back hard on the yoke. The nose of the plane peeled up in a gravity-defying climb that pitched the three passengers sideways. In the same instant Kendal heard the unmistakable pop-pop-pop pop-pop-pop of gunfire from below. A bullet ripped through the fuselage as she twisted her face to the window, looking down to see several men running out of a hangar, strafing the sky with submachine guns.

In seconds Jason had pushed the little plane up to an air speed that made Kendal’s hair stand on end.

“What are you doing?” she screamed as he continued to climb.

“Keeping us alive!” he screamed back.

“The fuel!” she argued, knowing his maneuver was gobbling up what little remained. But Jason only pulled the plane up higher, out of range of the gunfire.

The Cessna’s engines were tough, but they weren’t designed for dogfight maneuvers, and the plane stalled as the fuel was sucked away to mere fumes. They plummeted back to earth in a screeching nosedive.

While the alarms rang and the warning light panel on the Cessna lit up like a Christmas tree, Jason managed to pull the plane out of the dive.

Dizzily, Kendal looked back to see the machine-gunners running across the landing strip toward an aircraft that she hadn’t noticed before. In the next few minutes those men would take off, and their plane looked bigger, faster than Jason’s.

“We can’t outrun them,” Jason yelled. He leveled the plane just as the engines coughed once more, sputtered, and died. “Put on the life jackets,” he commanded. “And strap Miguel in his own seat. We’ll have to go for a controlled landing out on the river.”

The Rio Grijalva came into view. It was wide in places where it had been dammed, but it was carved deep into the Canon del Sumidero. From their altitude it looked like a broad navy blue ribbon curving at the bottom of three-thousand-foot-high cliffs. But it was the only place where the jungle canopy and the rugged mountains parted enough to put a plane down.

“Oh, God.” Kendal felt her face draining pale, paler, as with trembling hands she pulled the life vests from behind the rear seats and hurriedly helped Ruth strap the wailing Miguel into his, then quickly slipped on her own. Ruth secured Miguel into the other seat.

Jason grabbed the CB-like microphone off the instrument panel.

“Mayday! Mayday!” he shouted into the mike. “We are making a forced uncontrolled landing over the Rio Grijalva gorge. Cessna Conquest call numb—”

His words were cut short as the dying plane tilted and careened, and he had to wrestle the yoke with all his might. In a panic Kendal tried to wedge a life jacket behind him, but he shrugged her hands away. She studied his grim face, and then twisted to see the steep rocky walls of the canyon below, hurtling rapidly toward them. We are going to die, she thought.

How had it come to this?

She reached back to clutch her howling baby’s tiny leg. With her other hand she gripped Jason’s muscular shoulder, then pressed her forehead against his hard flesh. She hadn’t touched either of them enough, not nearly enough. They couldn’t die now. Her mind rolled back to the amazing way it had all begun, and she thought, Oh, God, please. It can’t end like this. Not after all we’ve been through. Do not abandon us now, God. Not now. Not when at long last we have discovered the meaning of true love.

CHAPTER ONE

Three months earlier in the tenth-floor Oklahoma City offices of Dr. Jason Bridges. 7:06 a.m.

“I SEE YOU’VE GONE and pulled yourself another all nighter.” Kathy Martinez stated the words calmly, as if all-nighters were a boring fact of life with her boss, which they were.

“Now, now, Mother Martinez. Stop scowling. I feel great.”

But Kathy Martinez only frowned harder. “Well, Doctor, you don’t look great.” She patted her own kinky dark coif as she studied the young physician who had enticed her with a generous salary three years ago. Jason Bridges was a cutie-pie, all right. Mmm hmm. But this young man could sure use some neatness lessons. Jason Bridges ran around this hospital looking more like a rebel in a Gap ad than a gifted surgeon. Mussed dark hair, an overnight growth of beard, faded jeans, loafers with no socks, a leather jacket opened wide over a wrinkled gray T-shirt that looked like he’d slept in it. “If you ask me, you don’t even look like a doctor.”

“I didn’t ask you.” He reached for the clipboard with the day’s schedule.

The faded T-shirt stretched too tightly over a chest sculpted by weight training. But Dr. Bridges didn’t spend all that time in the gym so he’d look good. Although he most certainly did look good.

Dr. Bridges built his body up so he could use it like a machine. Or rather, abuse it like a machine. Everything this young doctor did focused on one thing and one thing only—performing surgery. Performing countless surgeries, in fact. Dr. Bridges worked like a man possessed, as if his were the only hands that could undo the damage, the defects, the heartache that fate had dealt his patients.

And in certain respects, it could be argued that his were the only such hands. Because Dr. Bridges frequently, and successfully, attempted risky surgical techniques that other surgeons in his field were too intimidated, too terrified, to even try. Her boss, Kathy always said, was gifted. His hands, especially, were gifted. The most gifted of the gifted.

Others were not so admiring. Kathy had heard the stories. Nurses he’d had affairs with had labeled Dr. Bridges “The Wolf.” The image fit. His eyes, deep-set and icy blue, often squinted or flicked sideways with a sort of wariness, a watchfulness, that bordered on predatory. He seemed to be consumed by some sort of insatiable hunger, though he hid his drive behind a smoke screen of endless jokes. But when Kathy had seen him angry, which was not often and only in response to some idiot’s incompetence, Jason Bridges could be genuinely scary.

Kathy Martinez tugged the lapels of her starched snow-white lab coat over her broad bosom. With a renegade doctor like this one, somebody had to maintain standards. “No, sir. You don’t look like a doctor at all,” she sniffed. “In fact, I’d say you look like the devil himself.”

He looked up from the clipboard, and his bloodshot blue eyes flashed mischievously before they narrowed. He twisted his face into a mock diabolical expression, arched his dark brows and flared his nostrils. “You found me out, Mother Martinez.” He rubbed his stubbled jaw and leaned toward her. “I am…the devil himself. Mwah-ha-ha-ha.” He punctuated the fiendish laugh with a little pinch at her stout waist.

“Stop that.” Kathy slapped his hand. She pursed her chubby carmine lips, refusing to smile.

“You know what I mean.” Over her half glasses she skewered him with her black eyes. “You don’t get enough sleep and then you come in here looking like something the cat dragged in. It’s just plain shameful.”

“Ah, now.” Jason faked a pout. “Would you forgive me if I told you I had an emergency?”

“What was it this time?”

He sobered, shrugged. “Teenage girl who tried to exit her car via the windshield. Let’s just say her face looks considerably better now than it did at two o’clock this morning.”

Kathy gave a brisk nod of approval, then returned to her agenda. Middle-of-the-night surgeries notwithstanding, other doctors managed to shave. “You gonna get cleaned up before you make rounds?”

Dr. Bridges released a long, lionesque yawn. “Already made rounds, sweetie. And I’m sorry to report that the sticky buns on the ninth floor are done gone.”

Kathy planted her fists on her double-wide hips. “I didn’t say I wanted any dang sticky buns.” With a huff she stepped behind the desk and proceeded to rearrange the stack of charts that the staff had pulled the evening before. Only yesterday, she had embarked upon a strict diet. The latest in a long line of strict diets calculated to return her figure—in thirty days or less—to its prepudge state, before she’d added five pounds with each of her five pregnancies. Okay, ten pounds.

“Ah. You’ve found another foolproof diet?” Dr. Bridges’s grin was wicked. He was the devil, all right.

“Absolutely.” Kathy squared her shoulders.

“I’ve told you before, Mother Martinez. If you’d stop messing with your appetite, your body would eventually find its perfect shape.” He pulled a PalmPilot out of his hip pocket and started punching at it.

For a surgeon who spent his days repairing faces, Jason Bridges had some pretty laid-back notions about bodies. He always acted like Kathy wasn’t really all that fat. But she was F-A-T, fat. And she suspected it was her weight that had gotten her into a teensy bit of trouble. Well, they’d discuss her medical problems in a minute. Patients first.

“I wish it were that simple.” Kathy finished putting the charts in the proper order. The staff had to do everything possible to keep their gifted young surgeon on track. “What with the nurses and their sticky buns and the drug reps hauling in trays of food every week. Everybody’s always celebrating something around here. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, and sure enough, a basket of cookies has already arrived.” She flipped a dismissing hand at the end of the counter, where a gigantic red basket, lined with pink foil wrap, overflowed with gift pens, notepads, and heart-shaped cookies.

Dr. Bridges turned his head toward the gaudy basket. “Good Lord! Who sent that thing?”

“That drug rep from Merrill Jackson.” Kathy watched Dr. Bridges saunter over and pluck out the card protruding from the basket. He read it, sniffed at the paper, raised his eyebrows with interest, then slipped the note in the pocket of his leather jacket.

Kathy rolled her eyes. She would bet her last sticky bun that that young woman, just like every other eligible female around this hospital, was after a whole lot more than the doctor’s pharmaceutical business. Heart-shaped cookies. Phooey.

“Those drug reps are after you like ducks on a June bug. Another one was supposed to bring breakfast tomorrow, but she canceled.”

“Doubt I could have made it anyway. I’ve got that periorbital reconstruction at dark-thirty and then a bilateral resection of parotids.” Dr. Bridges returned his attention to his PalmPilot. “But you nurses can have a treat now and then without obsessing about your weight.”

“Easy for you to say. You aren’t a fat black woman.”