Chapter Eighteen
The sand slammed against the cracked windshield as the helicopter listed violently, spinning toward the desert below like a dying bird. I clung to the seatbelt, fingers white-knuckled, the chip still clenched in my palm.
“Brace!” Liam shouted over the shrieking alarms.
The ground rushed toward us—then everything went black.
When I came to, there was heat. Blistering, smothering heat. And silence, the eerie kind that buzzed under your skin.
I pried my eyes open. The world was sideways. Flames licked the fractured edge of the cockpit, casting wild shadows over Liam’s unconscious form slumped beside me.
“Liam!” I croaked, reaching across the debris. My shoulder screamed in protest, but I shook him until he groaned.
His eyes fluttered open. “Isla?”
“We need to move.”
He nodded weakly, and together we kicked open the emergency hatch. Smoke poured out behind us as we stumbled into the burning wreckage of the desert floor.
The chopper was a smoldering carcass now.
