Total Exposure. Tori Carrington

reached a hand out to cup the back of her neck, then pushed her head between her legs. “Hold on. We’re going down….”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THIS WAS NOTthe way he intended to go.

      Dan struggled with the helicopter controls. The electrical system was on the fritz after the lightning strike. The aircraft’s engine cut on and off as if someone were gunning, then releasing the gas pedal of a car, while the rotor above him continued to spin. He eyed the rpm gauge on the console, watching the needle dive downward. Sheets of rain impeded Dan’s vision and his heart slammed against his rib cage. But he knew one thing for sure: this was not going to end him.

      “Medevac One, this is air traffic control.” A woman’s staticky voice came over his headphones. “The Emergency Alert System has been activated. Repeat, the EAS has been activated. Please—”

      A loud crackling cut off the transmission.

      Damn.

      The radio had either shorted out or was fried. His guess was the latter.

      “Dan?”

      He glanced over at Natalie, having forgotten for a moment that she was in the chopper with him. Although how he could have done so was a mystery to him. Her mocha-colored eyes were bigger and more mesmerizing in her pale face when shadowed with fear. Spike was cushioned against her side, and she had her arm around him. The sight sent warmth coursing through Dan’s bloodstream.

      He reached behind him for a thermal blanket and tossed it across her slender legs. “Put your head in your lap, Natalie. I’m going to have to put this bird down and it’s not going to be pretty.”

      That was if he could find a clear, safe spot to land her.

      As the helicopter rocked like an amusement park ride whose cable was unraveling, he sought a landing site. To the west lay the rough, steel-gray waves of the Pacific. To the east were the mountains of Courage Bay, normally beautiful, but treacherous in the current circumstances.

      A loud system alarm filled his ears. Dan heard Natalie’s gasp as the altimeter warned of a rapid loss of altitude and their quick approach to the horizon. He gripped the stick tightly in his hands and maneuvered the control pedals. Holding both steady, he aimed for a spot directly in the middle of Courage Bay.

      NATALIE TRIED TO KEEP her head down, but she’d never been the type to hide beneath the covers when the bogeyman might be lurking under her bed. Only this boogeyman was Mother Nature, and Natalie had never been so scared in her life.

      The helicopter’s quick descent made her feel eerily weightless and light-headed. There was water everywhere. Nothing but water…

      Oh, God, she thought. They were going to crash into the Bay….

      She cuddled Spike close, hoping her arms would help cushion him when they hit. Life jackets. They needed life jackets….

      That was the last thought she had before the craft hit hard, nearly jarring her teeth from her gums. The helicopter bounced, then hit again. It listed to the side, the grinding of metal nearly deafening her as the rotor blades struck something, then came to a stop. She was aware of a scream and distantly realized it was her own.

      “Get out!”

      Natalie blinked. At the last minute, she had closed her eyes and buried her face in the blanket.

      Spike wriggled free from her grasp. Natalie stared into Dan’s face as he released his own harness and quickly reached to unfasten hers. She couldn’t seem to make her fingers work as she stared out of the craft to find they weren’t bouncing in the waves like an oversize beach ball, but instead were resting on solid ground.

      How that was possible was a welcome mystery.

      Dan reached across her and opened her door, shoving her outside without preamble. Natalie fell to the wet sand, her bones shuddering as she fought to get to her feet under the pressure of the gale-force winds. Spike jumped out after her, and Dan followed.

      “Help me secure her.”

      Secure her…

      A wild gust of wind caught the chopper on the beach, sending it listing to the other side. Dan rushed to the door and reached inside to pull out a rope. “Here!” he shouted over the roar of the storm. “Secure this to a tree. A solid one as far inland as possible.”

      Natalie blinked against the rain stinging her eyes, and stumbled toward a grove of old pines bent nearly horizontal from the force of the storm. Movement out of the corner of her eye made her jump. She scanned the thick forest. There—to the right! She tried to blink the object into focus, but saw nothing but nature battling nature.

      She chose the thickest, oldest pine and ran the rope around the trunk. But as she stood staring at the cord in her hands, she couldn’t seem to fix on what kind of knot to tie.

      Dan appeared beside her and literally took the decision out of her hands, fastening a simple square knot.

      Of course, a square knot.

      “Come on!”

      She felt him grasp her shoulders, but couldn’t seem to get her feet to cooperate with her own commands, much less Dan’s. All she could think of was that they were all right. They were okay. They were not dead. They were very much alive.

      “Where are we?” she whispered, the storm stealing her voice away.

      “S-hamala Island.”

      Natalie tried to grasp his words. They were on S-hamala Island—a tiny stretch of land in the middle of Courage Bay that she could see from her apartment window on a clear day. She knew precious little about it except that its name referred to the local Chumash Indians. S-hamala was one of the few islands in Southern California that maintained its original Indian name, and it wasn’t open to the public because a number of protected brown pelicans called the south side home.

      “There’s a coast guard station here,” Dan said. “They should be able to help us.”

      She nodded. Or at least she thought she did. Right that minute, the only thing she could be sure of was that she was upright, that she was alive and that Dan Egan had his arm around her.

      CORRECTION, coast guard personnel would be able to help them if anyone was still there. And Dan had the unsettling feeling no one was.

      It was standard operating procedure that, given enough advance warning, the remote location be abandoned in favor of the mainland station when severe storms occurred. Dan also knew that rescue craft and personnel had been lost before in storms half as bad as this one was turning out to be.

      He squinted into the wind, noting the lack of boats secured to the pier. Nor was there any sign of coast guard staff. If anyone was there, they would have heard the chopper.

      Natalie’s soft, wet body curved against his, making him all too aware of her presence. Spike lumbered ahead of them, his coat soaked and matted, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he climbed the steps to the station, which was little more than a small cabin built against a cliff, stilts supporting the front, the rock face comprising the back wall.

      “Watch your step,” he told Natalie as they began ascending the twenty or so slick wooden stairs. Spike lost his footing ahead of them and Dan gave him a gentle boost, pushing him up to the observation deck that jutted out over the beach.

      Locked. The door was locked.

      “Stand back,” he told Natalie.

      She blinked at him in a way that only confirmed his suspicions: she was in shock. He helped her move a few feet to the side. Shrugging out of his windbreaker, he wrapped the sturdy nylon around his hand and smacked the windowpane closest to the door handle. It broke easily and he cleared away the shards of glass, reaching in to free the lock. The wind instantly pushed the wooden door open, slamming it against the inside wall.

      Dan hustled Natalie into the