Safe in My Arms

“I’m sorry,” she said after a couple of minutes, her tone solemn. “Your friend is gone.”

She heard a sharp intake of breath from the survivor and then a long exhale. “I was hoping I was wrong and he’d made it,” he said.

Mina moved close beside him as he hung upside down in his seat, and that was when he got a good look at her. She was twentysomething, about five-five, and slender. To him she had the face of an angel, a black angel with golden-brown skin and abundant black hair that she wore in braids down her back.

“Are you the advance person of a team of rescuers?” he joked.

Mina smiled as she began running her hand across his body, trying to ascertain the nature of his injuries. “My grandfather and I were hiking in the mountains when we saw your plane go down. We couldn’t get a cell-phone signal, so he’s on the way back down the mountain to notify the authorities. Until they get here, I’m all you’ve got.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help,” Jake said, “but I weigh two hundred pounds. I don’t think you could carry me if I’m unable to walk.”

Mina was still running her hands over his body. “Does anything on you hurt when I touch you?”

* * *

For a moment Jake forgot about the pain. He thought that must be a good sign. That a pretty woman could make him forget he’d just been in a plane crash. “I don’t think I have any broken bones,” he told her. “If you can help me out of this seat, I believe I can walk out of here under my own steam.”

“All right,” she agreed immediately. “I’m going to get close to you and spot you. You unfasten the seat belt on a count of three.”

Their eyes met. Mina’s dark brown eyes were encouraging. His probably looked doubtful. “Whenever you’re ready,” Mina said confidently.

Jake took a deep breath, counted out loud to three and hit the release button. Gravity did the rest. But what he had anticipated would be a painful experience was not, because the woman whom he had thought was not strong enough to carry him was supporting him securely in her arms. His legs felt weak initially, and when he felt the blood trickling down the bridge of his nose, he realized that he had a head injury. Being upside down, he had not noticed the blood. His hand went to his head.

The woman smiled at him. “It doesn’t look bad,” she told him. “I’ll take a look at it when we get outside.”

Jake’s legs felt stronger. Believing he could walk now, he gestured toward the door with a nod of his head. “Maybe we should get out of here. We’ve been lucky so far because the plane was nearly out of fuel when we crashed, but who knows?”

“I’m ready when you are,” Mina said.

They walked slowly to the exit, and Mina helped him step out of the plane onto the forest floor. He squinted up at the sky. It had taken Mina nearly three hours to reach the crash site after she’d spied it from her perch in the pine tree.

“Somehow I thought the sun would be lower in the sky,” he said. “It feels as though I’ve been in there for hours.”

“Only three hours,” Mina assured him as they continued walking away from the plane. “It was a bit after one when I heard the crash, and I got here about three hours later.”

He looked down at her in amazement. “I can’t believe you did that. You had no idea what you could be walking into. What made you do it?”

“Let’s find you a safe place to sit down before I tell you my life story, okay?” Mina said lightly.

Chapter 2

“Easy,” Mina cautioned as she helped the stranger sit down with his back against a sugar maple tree. They were out of the copse of pines in which the plane had crashed. Mina thought it wise to put some distance between them and the plane. He’d mentioned that the fuel had been depleted before the crash, but better safe than sorry.

She saw that the scratch on his forehead was still bleeding and shrugged off her backpack to look inside for something with which to stanch the bleeding. “I wonder if there’s a first-aid kit on the plane,” she mused as she searched. She didn’t relish having to go back on board where this man’s friend was still hanging upside down with a tree branch stuck in his chest, but she would do it if she couldn’t get the blood to stop flowing.

She found a clean paper towel and pressed it firmly against the two-inch-long cut. The stranger was looking at her with a hint of humor in his gaze.

“We haven’t introduced ourselves,” he said softly. “Hello, I’m Jake, and you are?”

“You can call me Mina,” she said.

“Whenever someone introduces themselves like that, there’s usually another name that they’re trying to conceal,” he observed with a smile.

“It’s short for Amina,” she said.

“One letter short,” he joked. “Wow.”

Mina laughed. She liked his accent. He wasn’t Southern, that was for sure. He sounded like a New Yorker. “I suppose Jake’s short for Jacob?”

“No, Jason. I know it should be short for Jacob, but Jake’s what my parents started calling me and it stuck.”

“Like mine, only one letter shorter,” Mina noted.

“You’re sharp,” he said.

“You’ve been hit on the head,” she countered. “It doesn’t take much to be sharper than you are right now.”

“And beautiful,” he added.

“The head thing again,” she said.

He ignored her. “Where are we, Mina?”

“You’re near a little town called Cherokee, close to the Tennessee/North Carolina border. Where were you headed?”

“Atlanta.”

“You’re quite a few miles away,” Mina told him as she continued to press the paper towel to his forehead. “What are you, a businessman? That Piper Matrix is some sweet plane.”

“You know planes?”

“I was a helicopter pilot when I was in the army.”

“How long since you were discharged?”

“Going on two years,” she answered.

“What was your rank when you left?”

“I was a captain,” she stated simply.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “I was in the army for a couple of years but did it mainly for the educational benefits.” He looked into her eyes. “Sit, Mina. Please.”

But she wouldn’t sit. “Are you thirsty?” she asked. “There’s water in my backpack.”

“I could use a drink,” he said. But before she could retrieve the water he reached up and grasped her hand. While he had hold of it, he brought it down to eye level and said, “Your hands are so small, but extremely competent. Is that you in a nutshell, Mina, small but extremely competent?”

Mina found both his words and his touch disconcerting. She pried her hand from his and got the water bottle her grandfather had given her earlier.