The Tortured Rebel Read Online Free PDF

now. Dark eyes gleamed beneath the visor of the helmet. They were breaking the rules and hurling themselves towards danger and hewas loving it. And … oh, Lord … that smile could probably persuade her to do anything, however dangerous it obviously was.
    Maybe she should turn back. There was a life raft on board. They would know their coordinates and another chopper could possibly already be on the way to meet them.
    But the islands were so close now. She could think about spotting the buildings and then locating the nearby landing site. People desperately needed the assistance she was bringing. If she got stuck on the island because an ash cloud prevented take-off then so be it. It wasn’t as though—
    The oath Jet breathed cut off any thought of potential safety.
    Had she really thought the sky was so light now? Against the glow of an erupting volcano, it had gone pitch black again.
    Ash would kill the engines. How long before it enveloped them? Becca began dropping altitude. Heading for the closest island. Except that was Tokolamu, wasn’t it? And maybe it wasn’t ash she had to worry about first. The force of the eruption was about to hit them. Wind shear would drop them like a rock.
    It
was
dropping them. Becca was fighting with the controls of her machine and she knew it was pointless. So pointless she didn’t say a thing when she found Jet leaning in to try and take over. She couldn’t hear a thing he was shouting because the noise outside was overwhelming everything. The sky was on fire and the island and its surrounding sea was rushing towards them so fast she could barely process the information.
    She was about to die and Jet Munroe was trying to save her.
    The irony of the situation barely registered before the cacophony of sound and light around her vanished and everything became black.

CHAPTER THREE
    H E WAS fighting for his life.
    For Becca’s life, too. Man, that look on her face was pure determination without a hint of fear. She was so small and fierce and seemed to believe that she could wrestle the force of Mother Nature and an out-of-control aircraft into submission.
    The impression would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so incredibly fleeting. Shoved aside with a million other, irrelevant thoughts as Jet let an automatic part of his brain loose. The part that stored emergency procedures backed up by remarkably honed survival skills.
    Even so, in that mental maelstrom he recognised another motive to win this challenge. Maybe he had to do this for Matt. It was too late to save his best mate but he could save the person who’d been so important to him. The small, lonely girl that he’d tried so hard to be a substitute parent to. As well as a big brother and best friend all at the same time. Matt would have given his life in a heartbeat to save his sister.
    Jet could do no less.
    Except … they weren’t going to die, dammit. Not if he could do anything about it. He added his weight to Becca’s to fight the controls and, for a split second thesickening downward spiral lessened and he could see straight ahead. Towards the foam of waves breaking on unforgiving black rocks. And past the rocks to a tiny area of shingle beach. Would solid land be a better option than an icy ocean and the pull of its current?
    Not that he really had much choice in the matter but the instantaneous, clinical evaluation of potential options filled those last few seconds before speed, gravity and the total failure of this machine to respond well enough combined and they hit.
something.
Hard.
    Hard enough to knock him out?
    He couldn’t be sure. His head was spinning, filled with a roaring sound and bright flashes of light. He could be regaining consciousness after God knew how long or … this could be moments after the crash and the window in which he could escape.
    And survive.
    Something overrode that pure survival instinct, however. The knowledge that he hadn’t been alone.
    ‘Becca … Becca …’
    He