Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) (10 page)

Jed was catching on. “Yeah. If she were to take over the training, the game changes. And maybe then she would discover that you can’t have both worlds—you have to keep people safe
or
be their pal. You have to choose.”

Maybe then, she would understand why—and deep in her core agree—that expelling her from his life was the only way to save them both.

He waited for them to refute his words, but Conner just nodded.

Reuben made a face. “Well, that sorta hurts my feelings. I thought we were pals. Are you saying you don’t care if I die?”

Jed grinned. “Not when you rearrange my furniture.”

Jed’s cell phone buzzed, and he pulled it off its clip on his belt. “I got a text, I gotta go in. Get some winks, guys. I think we’ll be jumping fire by morning.”

He clipped the cell phone back on and headed to the bedroom to grab his gear bag. “And put my furniture back!”

Chapter 5

If he gave her a chance, they could knock this fire down in a day.

Kate leaned toward the window of the plane and spotted a clear patch of forest, flame lengths of fifteen feet, maybe more, wrapped around black pine and spruce, flickering up as if in morbid greeting.

Not a big fire, yet. Maybe she could let herself breathe. She might even live up to her own overblown, zealous words.

You will. Oh, you will.

Oh, her impulsive, angry, prideful mouth, leading the way yet again right to her doom.

She had no room for fear. Never mind the clench of her gut, the acid crawling up her throat, the way her hands shook. She gripped the straps of her pack, holding on with whitened fists.

She had a legacy to uphold. And now her own stupid declarations.

Three thousand feet below, the two-acre blowup seemed a pinprick amidst the lush ladder fuels of lodgepole, Douglas, and ponderosa pine, climbing along Solomon Canyon up the slopes of the Cabinet Mountains.

The spark had ignited near a campground along the Solomon River, a trickling creek that fed into the larger branch to the south, but narrow enough that, should the winds pick up, the fire could jump the river and head east, toward civilization. Or north, over the ridge, and into a collection of cabins that dotted the hillside.

“It’s just a baby!” she yelled above the hum of the plane to Pete who sat next to her, face grid raised, surveying the blaze. Reuben gave her a nod.

She shot a look at Jed, seated next to Cliff O’Dell, their spotter for the run. Jed seemed to be neatly ignoring her as he leaned over a topo map, checked his radio, and talked through fire fuels and scenarios.

The man had appeared wrung out when she arrived at HQ for roll call at six a.m., stirred out of sleep by the siren blaring, echoing up the valley, accompanied by a text on her cell.

Clear Fire—Kootenai National Forest—2 Acres along the Solomon River—Jump 01 responding from Ember.

She didn’t even remember getting dressed; already had her gear packed. Jed, Reuben and Pete lived closer—just across the street from the base, and Conner’s fifth wheel was parked in permanent residence at a campground next to the base.

The team had barely greeted her when they met in the ready room where Jed outlined the blowup. Then Kate donned her gear—helmet, jumpsuit, parachute harness, supply pack—checked her jump pockets, laced up her boots, and did a quick braid of her hair, tying it back with a bandanna.

Fifteen minutes later, she’d hiked across the tarmac to the plane.

Jed, in his jumpsuit and packs, gave her a cursory once-over, then checked her name off the list and gave her nary another glance as she boarded.

Stay out of my way.

Apparently, he’d taken those words to heart.

She, however, had rolled those words around, feeling the fresh sear of their fight.

Somewhere, deep inside, she must have believed that reconciling with Jed, at least enough to share memories of her dad, would somehow balm the rift they’d never healed.

Instead, she’d managed to turn it from a rift into a canyon. And set herself up for disaster. Yes, she knew how to fight fire, but getting up-close and personal...

Shoot. She tightened her grip on her straps before her entire body started to shake.

No one knew—and she certainly wasn’t going to ’fess up that she’d spent the past two fire seasons grounded, fighting fires via computer screens instead of in the field.

“Buddy check.” This from Pete, who checked her straps, her gear. She returned the favor. With only five of them jumping they’d all go together, one after another.

Jed first.

She glanced at him, took in his clenched jaw. His first official jump in seven years—she didn’t know what was making him break his streak.

Or maybe she did. Maybe he, too, was trying to prove that his fears couldn’t hold him down.

Gilly came over the coms, announced their altitude, then Cliff hooked himself into his spotter harness pigtail and opened the door. Cool air rushed in, laced with smoke and the aroma of pine.

She swallowed but couldn’t dislodge the burn wedged in her throat. Her pulse thundered in her head, just under the rampant rush of air.

Cliff threw out the drift streamers to gauge the wind currents and find them a safe path to ground. Kate struggled to her feet as the plane banked, hoping to catch a glimpse of the blue, red, and orange drift ribbons.

They fluttered down, the blue one tempted to the flame like a moth. The orange streamer headed south toward a ridge, the third found the meadow, a fifty-foot diameter just east of the fire.

They’d located their landing zone.

Gilly arched them over the ridge, just past the fire, and Kate glimpsed a homestead perched on the side of the mountain. A small corral held horses.

Property. Animals—possibly humans—in harm’s way.

They made another pass, and Cliff stuck his head out into the slipstream to assess the drop zone. Then he turned to the jumpers.

“There’s about four hundred yards of drift, and the winds are pulling to the west, so stay wide of the fire. The jump spot is in that meadow, just beyond that service road—see it?”

Jed nodded, and Kate willed her heart steady as she worked on her helmet, secured it, then lowered her grid. Jed sat in the door, his feet in the slipstream. The static line to his canopy attached to the plane and would deploy automatically. Although she’d learned to jump on squares—the self-deployed rectangular chutes the Bureau of Land Management used in Alaska—the Forest Service in the lower forty-eight still depended on auto-deployed rounds.

The round parachutes made it safer to land in a forest made up of spears, the kind that could trap a man in a tree.

Cliff patted his shoulder and Jed pushed off.

She couldn’t help the urge to lean out, just to make sure—

Reuben clipped his static line to the overhead cable, sat down, and slipped out next.

When Pete sat down, Kate was still craning her neck. He pushed off just as she spotted Jed’s chute, white and fat, a round puff of cloud blooming against the smoky gray sky.

She dropped into a sitting position, her hands on the door, the wind grabbing at her boots. Waited, watching now as Reuben’s chute popped open.

Just a baby fire.

Pressure, and she pushed hard against the door and out into the sky.

She didn’t have to count, but it came to her anyway.
Jump Thousand
.

Her chute deployed with a quick, hard tug, the quiet soothing the rush of adrenaline as she drifted down to terra firma.

Conner launched himself out behind her—she searched for him and found his chute open by the time she hit
Wait Thousand
.

Grabbing the toggles, she quartered with the wind and aimed for the meadow.

The column of black smoke tried to drag her in, but she steered herself away, into the wind, watching the world become larger, pine trees taking shape, the jump spot looming.

Below, Jed found the sweet spot, hit and rolled, then popped back up to his feet as if he were born to jump.

Maybe, like her, he was.

Reuben, then Pete. She came in soft, playing the wind, and landed perfectly, rolling like a dancer, wishing for a moment she might still be flying as the crackle and snap of the fire prickled her ears. The redolence of smoke drifting from the nearby forest scraped her eyes. They burned, watered.

Finally jumping fire again. This was what she wanted, right?

Jed had already packed his chute and was radioing for the gear drop—chainsaws, the Mack III pump, supplies for a strike camp, should they need to overnight.

She wound up her chute and watched as Conner drifted down, fighting the sudden up-churn of winds, bringing him in just on the edge of the meadow, about fifty yards from the fire.

He landed, rolled, and headed toward them, running from the heat as he wound his chute up.

All five safely down. A good way to start.

Zipping out of her jumpsuit, Kate walked over to Jed. Reuben and Pete caught the crates of supplies attached to chutes, now drifting down from the plane. “I got a good glimpse of the fire as we came in, and I have an idea.”

Not a tremor in her voice. All business. Yes, she might survive—even impress.

Jed was studying the topo map, confirming a safe jump with Cliff on coms. Now, he glanced up at her, gave her a quick once-over, as if to make sure she still had all of her moving parts, then sat back on his haunches. “I’m listening.”

Really? She’d expected pushback but pounced on this. “The fire is heading northwest, up the canyon, and I think if we can count on the river as a natural firebreak, we can secure the tail with the pumps. I’ll stay here and pinch off the flank with a burnout in this meadow and drive the fire north. We can use the Forest Service road as another natural break, reinforce it, and burn out along the edge.” She traced her finger along the route in the map that corresponded with the grassy road on the edge of the meadow. “I saw a thick stand of birch near the head of the fire, so if we can drive it there, the low-combustible birch will slow it down. With the leaf litter of the birch duff, combined with the cooler temps and higher night humidity, if the winds decide to cooperate, we’ll get this thing to lay down by morning.”

“I dunno. If we follow that route, that’s forty chains—a half-mile—of fire line dug by five people in sixteen hours,” Jed said quietly. “If the winds hold.”

“The burnout will work, Jed.” Kate kept her voice even, confident while she rolled up her jumpsuit, shoved it into her pack. “Especially if we call in a tanker.”

He looked up at her, his jaw set, as if in thought.

It stirred the memory of watching him train, his determination even as a teenager to impress, to become a hotshot firefighter. She’d admired him long before she fallen for him.

Probably, she could admire him again.

“Yes,” Jed said. “We’ll attack the head with retardant, slow it down, then reinforce it with another load here, along the road.” He tapped his finger on the map. “But that means we’ll need to reinforce the tail, keep it from turning on us.”

Jed glanced past her to where Conner and Reuben had assembled the paracargo—organized the chainsaws, the fuel and tool mixes, flares, and stuffed the personal gear bags with food.

Everything they’d need for an all-day, into-the-night-and-beyond attack.

Jed stood up. “I’m going to scout the head and call in a tanker. Kate, you organize the burnout, Pete, fall in behind her and dig us the fire line.”

Really? No argument? “Roger that.”

Kate grabbed her Pulaski, pulled her bandanna up over her nose, and surveyed the Forest Service road, a five-foot-wide swatch of dirt and weeds. She chose an anchor point where the road split and headed along the tail of the fire toward the river. Conner and Reuben, carrying the pump and fuel along with hose, had already taken off in a jog for the water source

She watched Jed, already on the com to Overhead, walking straight toward the smoke and ash.

Be careful.

She didn’t know where the niggle of worry came from, but she tamped it away.

The more she focused on work, the less she thought about the roar behind her. “Let’s do this!”

Pete dragged their gear into the safe zone behind the road. Kate dug in with her Pulaski, leading the way, attacking the earth, and sinking into a quiet, hard rhythm.

She’d never minded the back-breaking work of cutting line. On the bigger teams, with twenty shots working together in crews of five or seven, all digging a line in a rhythm, there was a beauty to it. One man cut away the brush, another ran a saw, clearing out the trees and stumps. Three or four cut into the soil with their Pulaskis, more behind them turned it over with shovels, and a final hotshot with a rake or maybe another shovel left the ground bare.

Between the smoke burning her eyes, the dirt and dust clogging her nose, grinding into her pores, and the sweat from the heat and work saturating her body, working a fire line could crush her bones to dust.

How she’d missed it. Despite the danger of it, the crackle of the fire just behind her, popping and snapping, and the bone-jarring work, she simply loved the camaraderie. Not unlike, perhaps, the brotherhood of battle.