A Baby For Mommy

Rain began to pour over the plane, closing off the view of the clouds surrounding them. They were wrapped in gray and rocking violently.

“I scared!” Angelica exclaimed, hugging Rachel.

“We’re all right, love. Let’s get one of your books, and I’ll read you a story—”

A bolt of lightning struck with a bang like an explosion. With a blinding flash it rippled along the fuselage. Flames shot out from a wing, and the engine whined loudly.

Raffaela screamed while the nose of the plane tilted. Angelica’s thin arms clung tightly to Rachel. Sophie began to cry. “Aunt Rachel, I’m scared!”

“Get your heads down!” Jose yelled from the front of the plane. “We’re going down.”

With her heart pounding violently, Rachel wound one hand as tightly as possible around Angelica, leaning over the girl, while she put her other arm across Sophie’s shoulders. Praying, she clung to them while the girls sobbed.

The engine began to whine, and Rachel could feel Sophie shaking. Wishing she could protect them completely, she tightened her arms around the girls.

With a jolt and a deafening sound of metal ripping, the plane tore through the trees. As it rocked and bounced, Raffaela’s screams blended with the noise of metal tearing.

Suddenly there was a bang and an enormous jolt and everything went black.

Rachel regained consciousness. The interior of the plane was twisted and smoky; rain hissed over it and lightning flashed. The cockpit and Jose had totally disappeared. There was only thick green vegetation and trees where it had been. Memory returned to her and with it came panic. Rachel knew they had to get out of the plane.

Both girls squirmed, and Sophie sat up. “Thank heavens!” Rachel gasped, relief making her weak when she saw the girls were all right. Sophie had a cut across her forehead, but it looked superficial. Both were sobbing, and Angelica clung to Rachel.

“We have to get out,” Rachel exclaimed. Terrified that the plane might catch fire, she fumbled with Sophie’s seat belt and then her own. As she stood, she glanced at Burr who was leaning over an inert Raffaela.

“Get her out, Burr. Hurry! I’ll get the girls.”

Leaving her own purse behind, Rachel grabbed the bag with the girls’ clothing, Angelica’s bottles and cans of formula. Realizing they might have to wait to be found, Rachel yanked down her own carry-on.

Picking up Angelica and the bags, Rachel tugged Sophie behind her, going toward the gaping hole in the side of the plane. “Wait, love,” she said to Sophie and tossed out the bags. Then she climbed down onto a smashed tree and set Angelica beside her.

In spite of the rain, flames had begun to burn beneath the wing and belly of the plane. “Burr, the plane’s on fire. Get out!” she shouted again, grabbing Sophie out of the wreckage. Tumbling down over branches, ignoring scrapes, Rachel reached the ground.

She lifted the girls down one at a time. Slinging the bags over her shoulder, she picked up Angelica and grasped Sophie’s hand. Smoke burned her eyes, and terror gripped her, because she knew the plane could explode.

Rachel tried to run, but she found the bags cumbersome, so she tossed away her carryon. She scooped up Sophie instead. As she ran, vines, ferns and palmetto fronds tore at her. She glanced back to see Burr carrying Raffaela over his shoulder as he climbed out of the plane.

Rachel was fifty yards from the plane when it exploded. The deafening blast knocked her off her feet and sent a fireball rolling skyward. Heat seared her, and the flash of light was like a bolt of lightning.

She fell, the breath knocked from her momentarily as she scrambled to get the girls, who were sobbing wildly.

“Aunt Rachel! Help!”

She tried to cover both of them, holding them close against her body while parts of the plane rained down over them. Something struck the back of her thigh, and she cried out. Hot metal stung her shoulder.

And then quiet descended, broken by the crackle of the burning plane and the girls’ sobbing. The rain had suddenly stopped, now just lightly dripping from the trees. A shard of glass stuck out of Rachel’s arm and she pulled it free. She brushed bits of glass and metal from Sophie’s curly black hair.

Moving carefully, she tried to stand, biting back a cry as pain shot up the back of her leg. The smaller cuts stung, and she ached where metal had struck her, but nothing seemed broken. “Sophie—”

Something slammed against the back of her head. Dimly, Rachel heard Sophie screaming. Pain enveloped her, and then blackness closed in as she pitched forward.

One

Micah Drake gave a thumbs up sign to the pilot and slid open the door of the plane. Wind whipped against him as he looked below at the brilliant green canopy of treetops in the tiny country of Cruz in Central America. It was a bad place for a plane to go down. It was a damned bad place for him. He didn’t like this job or want it, but he needed the money. And he owed an old buddy from the military—Luke Webster had saved Micah’s life once in a clandestine operation in Saudi Arabia, and Micah was going to repay the favor now in a jungle in Central America.

Luke’s father, Atlee Webster, had put up the money for the search for his two daughters and his grandchildren. Luke had wheedled, bribed and finally reminded Micah that he owed him one. But the convincing offer had come when Luke had promised Micah double his usual fee plus paying Micah’s future medical bills for his mom.

Luke had come to his office, blond, cocky as ever, leaning against the desk as Micah had stood in front of the window. “Think of the money, Micah. You can take some time off to be with your mother.”

“I’m thinking about all the times you said your one sister was a bitch,” Micah said.

“Raffaela is. Wild, bitchy, impossible. She cheats on Hector. He cheats on her. But she’s my sister and she’s got two little girls. Look at their picture, Micah.”

Micah had looked, and they were beautiful smiling little faces. “You know I don’t have any resistance when it comes to kids,” he had grumbled.

“And Rachel’s shy and nice. As sweet as the girls. She won’t give you a minute’s trouble.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Think of the money. Your bills will be paid, and you won’t have to worry about the care for your mother. Think about it.”

Micah had thought about it for a moment and had agreed to try to find the Webster women and children and bring them back to Texas.

He still had mixed emotions about the task as he looked down at the solid canopy of green below him. The small government of Cruz had made no search of their own because revolutionaries took all the official attention and resources. The Granillo pilot had lost radio contact shortly before going down. He had been fifteen miles off course, and Micah had a general idea where to search.

That morning Micah had found the downed plane. As he sped over the treetops, he had looked at the smashed trees where the plane had crashed. He circled to fly over the site several times, thinking that if there were survivors, they would try to signal. But as the trees swayed in the slipstream of his plane, no one had appeared.

He had been hoping to find them, rescue them and then get right back to Texas. It wasn’t going to be that simple.

Returning to Agapito, the coastal capital, he had phoned Luke to say he had located the crash site and promised to go back. Within the hour he made arrangements to be flown to the site again.

Now wind beat against him as he braced himself in the open door of the plane and double-checked his parachute harness. Eduardo circled the plane above the wreckage. As Micah looked down at the burned rubble, he thought about the passengers. Even though he hadn’t known any of them, he felt a wave of sickness at the loss. What hurt most was the thought of the little girls, Sophie and Angelica. He didn’t want to have to go back to Texas and tell Luke the little girls wouldn’t be coming home.

They approached the crash site the second time. Micah waved to Eduardo and received a salute in return. He saw the slash in the trees coming up. He jumped, dropping through the air, green treetops that looked as solid as the ground rushing up to meet him.

When he pulled the rip cord, the chute ballooned up behind him, yanking him up, and then he began to float toward the trees. Pulling the steering toggles on the risers, he guided his descent, watching the gash in the trees as it grew larger. The scorched ground and burned bits of plane loomed into view, and he couldn’t imagine survivors. Unless they had gotten out before the plane went up in flames or had been thrown clear.

For just an instant his stomach knotted as he thought of Shawna and the car wreck. He blanked out his thoughts, clamping his jaw closed grimly as he tried to angle down to where the plane had cut through the trees. He landed on his feet only yards from the wreckage and in seconds was out of the chute. He turned to look around him, listening as the sounds of the forest brought back memories of his years in the U.S. Army Special Forces. He hoped he hadn’t forgotten his survival skills, because he was on his own in a corner of the world that was swarming with rebel insurgents and gun smugglers. Tomorrow at noon Eduardo would return. If Micah found survivors before then, they could all get out by chopper. If he discovered all had been killed, he would have to get the bodies out. But if he couldn’t account for everyone on the plane, he was going to have to hunt for them on foot and get them back to civilization the best way he could.

Steamy heat made his body damp with sweat within minutes after dropping to earth. He could smell the earthy, rotting vegetation on the forest floor. Judging from the looks of the plane, there were no survivors. Micah poked through the wreckage, and five minutes later he changed his assessment. He couldn’t find any bodies in the burned metal.

He moved away from the charred rubble and circled it. Something caught his attention. Frowning, he crossed the clearing. A mound was covered with brush and branches and a couple of smaller tree trunks had been dragged over it. He knew he was looking at a hasty burial site before he began to clear away the brush.

He had seen many dead bodies on military assignments in hot spots in different places of the world. Some had been civilians, most had been soldiers. None had been a beautiful woman from Texas and he drew a deep breath, his stomach knotting as he finished clearing away the makeshift grave. He fished out the pictures Luke had given him.

Raffaela was a married socialite. He could remember Luke’s deep voice listing her jewelry with as much certainty as if he had presented her with each piece: an eight-carat engagement ring, a six-carat ring their father had given her, a diamond-studded gold wedding band, a ruby pendant with gold filigree, diamond stud earrings. This body bore none of the above. Rachel, the twin, seldom wore jewelry. She owned a diamond ring their father had given her upon her graduation from college, but she wore it only on special occasions.

So, Micah decided, he was looking at the body of Rachel Webster.