The Tortured Rebel. Alison Roberts

new on here, then.’

      ‘I’m not surprised. Range for the radio should be better than the pager.’

      ‘Give me your phone.’

      The reluctance to let Jet read any text message she might have was surprisingly strong but Becca shrugged it off. It wasn’t as if there would be anything too personal in there. Like a message from a boyfriend. She almost wished there was. She could be sure that Jet’s love life wasn’t a desert and her single status would probably be enough to count as another putdown. Or was some of this feeling of inadequacy coming from something she’d considered long since buried? She wasn’t old enough. Or special enough. She was just Matt’s kid sister and Jet was.

      ‘Here it is. It says “Cancel, cancel. Seismic activity increasing. Eruption considered imminent. Risk unacceptable. Return to base.”’

      ‘No.’

      ‘What?‘ But there was something more than astonishment in Jet’s tone. It sounded like admiration. Respect, even.

      ‘Look.’ Becca pointed, and Jet peered into the grey sky of early dawn. ‘Two o’clock,’ she added.

      Lumpy shapes that weren’t waves. Getting larger by the second. The chain of islands of which Tokolamu was the largest. Becca could see it clearly now. Could see the tip of the volcano and it was as dark as the rest of the rocky land mass.

      ‘We haven’t got the fuel to get back,’ she said calmly. ‘Personally, I’d rather take my chances after a safe landing on an island than ditching in the ocean somewhere.’

      There was a moment’s silence as Jet absorbed the implications. Becca finally turned to look at him and, to her amazement, he grinned at her.

      ‘Your bird,’ he said. ‘Your rules.’

      His face was really alive now. Dark eyes gleamed beneath the visor of the helmet. They were breaking the rules and hurling themselves towards danger and he was 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.