Wind River Protector

by Lindsay McKenna

  “You’d be back home with us,” Steve said. “That’s something we always wished would happen with our children. We know you have your own lives to lead, but with this regional airport getting ready to open in July of this year, there are finally some serious opportunities for you and maybe Sky, Luke and Gabe, too.”

  “Seriously?” Andy sat up. “Wow, that’s really good news. So? They’re hiring?”

  “Yes,” Maud said, hopefulness in her tone. “They’re taking résumés right now. I talked to Pete Turner, who has just been hired as director of operations for the sheriff’s department, and he said he’s already hired one pilot, who will be assistant director. They’re now looking to fill three other slots. Might you be interested?”

  “This is so funny.” Andy laughed and shook her head. “I woke up this morning asking myself what the hell I was doing with my life. I was wishing I was home with you, in the valley.”

  Maud made a small sound of surprise. “Then why don’t you come home, Andy? We don’t have many drone operators in this area. And you know our criminal issues sure aren’t anywhere near what LA has.”

  “It would be quieter,” Steve assured her. “Pete was saying that the biggest issue in the valley is drug running. Sarah said crime was actually down to a new low in Lincoln County. You might be bored on some days, but at least you’d be safe.”

  “And close to us. We’d love to have you back with us, Andy.”

  Andy saw her mother’s eyes glisten with tears. “I miss both of you so much,” she quavered. “That sounds like it’s a fit for me. I woke up knowing I no longer wanted to work here in the city. It’s just too big, too much pollution, and I guess I’m growing up or getting older. I want some peace and quiet. I miss the clean air of Wyoming, the winters and everything in between.”

  “Well,” Maud said, “you know Sky flies a sky crane helicopter water tanker for the US Forest Service?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re putting in a huge wildfire operational facility here, along with the ten-thousand-foot runway. They’re almost done with the aerial facility at the airport. They’re going to be hiring people to run it.”

  “Wow,” Andy said, “I didn’t realize that. Will they have a firefighting crew stationed at the airport?”

  “That’s what’s planned,” Steve said.

  Sitting back, Andy whispered, “This is stunning news . . . Have you told Sky about this?”

  “We were waiting for the final decision and it just came through,” Maud said. “There are still some minor roadblocks that have to be ironed out. As soon as they are, I’ll let her know.”

  “Wouldn’t that be great if Sky could come home, too? I know she misses the valley. Every time we talk she sounds homesick.”

  “I know,” Maud said. “And your dad has already talked with Luke. He’s a Hotshot firefighter stationed in Boise, Idaho, but he’d like to get into the action here, join the crew they’re assembling right now at the airport.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Andy whispered. “Three of us might be coming home.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I can’t tell you how good this makes me feel.”

  “Or us,” Steve said gently. “We miss our kids.”

  “What about Gabe? He’s working for the DEA over in San Diego. Is there a job opening for him, too?” she asked.

  “No,” Steve said. “Not that we know of.”

  “Well, maybe that will change,” Andy said. “I love our valley. We have so many friends we grew up with still there.”

  “Come on home,” Maud said, smiling. “Wind River is growing. As a matter of fact, I think I told you that a whole new condo unit was built on the outside of town?”

  “Yes. Are there any condos open for lease?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Maud said, “there are. Maybe one for you, but you’re welcome to have your old bedroom back here at the ranch.”

  Laughing, Andy said, “I’ll take you up on it, but I think a condo in the long run, if I get a job, sounds great. And I’d only be twenty minutes from the front gate of the ranch. I’m sure we’d be together a lot more often, and I love the idea of moving home.” She saw her parents’ face go soft and knew in that instant that going home, her home, was the most important decision she’d made lately. Her throat tightened, her voice off-key. “I’ve really missed you two, the ranch and the valley. I’ve been looking at my life like chapters in a book I’m writing and living. My first chapter was being abandoned, my mother leaving me on the steps of the fire department. And then you stepped in, adopted and loved me.” She felt tears leaking out of her eyes. Wiping them away, she managed, “My second chapter was graduating from college. My third chapter was military service, my love of flying. My fourth chapter was leaving it, learning to fly a helicopter and working with the LAPD.”

  “And now? Your fifth chapter is coming home,” Maud whispered, wiping her eyes. “Full circle.”

  “I’ve always missed you and home. It’s never far from my mind. You gave me and three other adopted kids a real chance to have a family who loved all of us. We all owe you two so much.” And never were her words more genuine than in that moment. Sky, Gabe, Luke and she had been abandoned and then rescued by Maud and Steve. All of them were very young with no memory of their biological mothers. She had been the first child they’d brought to their ranch, and then six months later, they adopted Sky. Two years later, Gabe and Luke came into their household.

  Steve gave her a wobbly smile. He put his arm around Maud, giving her a fond look and then gazed at her. “Come on home, Punkin. This is where your heart is, no matter where in the world you travel or work. We’ll always be here. The ranch will be here.”

  “Sounds awfully good to me,” she whispered, choking up. “I don’t know what the next chapter will bring, but at least I’ll be home, and that means everything to me.”

  Chapter Three

  June 11

  Monday

  “Andy?” Dev Mitchell blinked twice to make sure he was seeing correctly. He was standing in line at Kassie’s Café to grab breakfast when he saw her walk into the busy and popular Wind River restaurant. She carried a briefcase in her left hand. It was cloudy outside and, at six a.m., below freezing in the valley. Dressed in a long, black nylon jacket that fell to her hips, she wore a bright red muffler around her neck, black leather gloves on her hands and a pair of sensible jeans and work boots. On her head was a bright red knit cap, her once-short chestnut hair now shoulder length and longer than when he’d known her four years earlier. Best of all, as he met her widening gray eyes, which were framed with thick lashes, he saw that she recognized him, too. He grinned lopsidedly, shocked, and stepped out of line, walking back to where she stood.

  “It’s really you?” Andy asked, breathless, disbelief in her tone as she gazed up at him. “Dev Mitchell?”

  He laughed, feeling a little giddy along with the pleasant shock rolling through him. He held out his hand to her. “Yeah, it’s me. Of all the places in the world, Andy, we meet here.”

  She shook his hand. “It’s so good to see you again! What are you doing in Wind River?” and she released his warm, firm hand.

  “I was just hired a week ago to become the assistant flight operations manager for the Lincoln County Sheriff ’s Office. Everyone told me Kassie’s was the place to go for breakfast and I was trying it out. How about you? If I remember right,” his smile deepened, “you said you lived in western Wyoming.”

  “I was born here in Wind River,” she said, meeting his smile with one of her own. “Gosh, this is incredible! I’d lost touch with you when you left in that Humvee for Bagram’s helo facility for that flight back to your squadron. There was so much I wanted to say, to thank you for.”

  “I know,” he said, his smile dissolving, apology in his voice. “I was needed back at my black ops airbase ASAP; that’s why I had to leave. When I returned, I was put back on the flight roster. We were short of pilots and I was flying every other day for three wee
ks until we got some new pilots transferred in to ease our schedule.”

  “Oh,” she said, gesturing for him to come and stand in line with her. “I tried to find you, but you literally disappeared.”

  “Not on purpose,” he admitted. He gave her a warm look. “It’s nice to see you again, though. When I finally got back to Bagram about a month later, I visited the squadron you flew with, and they said you’d handed in your papers and left the Air Force shortly after returning from the crash.” He shrugged. “Not that I could blame you. We had a rough five days playing cat and mouse with the Taliban.”

  “It broke me,” she admitted, her smile gone, now more serious. “My mom and dad were always worried for me because I flew a combat jet in close quarters. After the crash and them not hearing from me because we were on the run, it broke them, too. I just didn’t want to put them or myself into a situation like we got caught in again.”

  “I understand,” he murmured, sympathetic. They inched forward in the line. At six a.m., the café was filled to capacity. It was the place where everyone went, his boss, Pete Turner, had told him. He was glad he’d come this morning. “Are you still flying?” he asked her.

  “Yes. When I left the Air Force, I went to a civilian helicopter training school and got a license to fly Black Hawks.”

  His eyes sparkled. “Ah . . . my bird. That’s amazing. What did you do with the license?”

  “I flew for the Los Angeles Police Department. I spent a year in the left seat as a copilot, on-the-job law enforcement, while learning what a police person does in a helo over that sprawling city. I stayed for nearly three years. We were recently flying over a neighborhood and my Black Hawk got hit by a drone. We made a hard landing, and we got lucky: we walked away from it.”

  Dev frowned. “Damned drones.”

  “Seriously. I decided to quit the police department and come home. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and my parents and I have been sussing out possibilities.” She held up her briefcase. “I have a nine a.m. meeting with you, I guess. When I emailed my résumé for a job with the Lincoln sheriff as a law enforcement pilot, they referred my call to the assistant ops manager. I left my name and phone number. A woman called me back, a Jackie Turnbull, who scheduled me to meet with you. She never gave me your name.”

  “I see. Jackie works with both Pete and me. We’ve just gotten our office put together in the last week. And we’re all running helter-skelter, organizing and getting up to speed. Either Jackie or Pete has your résumé because I haven’t seen it yet.”

  Wryly, she said, “I’d probably faint if I went into your office and saw you, of all people, sitting there behind a desk,” and she laughed, shaking her head. “What a weird, wild world we live in.”

  He joined her laughter. They were the next in line to get a booth. “We’re still trying to get things in order at the airport. I’d noted on my calendar that a female applicant was coming in at nine a.m., but no name. Jackie’s like a juggler with too many balls up in the air and trying to get our two offices online. It’s hectic.”

  “I’m glad we met here, then,” she admitted.

  “I am, too.”

  “When I talked with Jackie, she said that the assistant ops manager would be my first interview, and that he would evaluate my skills and my résumé. If he found I was qualified, I’d get a second interview with Mr. Turner, who heads up the operation.”

  “That’s right,” Dev agreed. The waitress came up to him with two menus, gesturing for them to follow her. As luck would have it, a booth near the kitchen, off in a corner, was open for new occupants. It was less noisy. He gestured to Andy. “Ladies first,” he said.

  “Throwback,” she accused, grinning and stepping ahead.

  “Guilty as charged.” They threaded through coming-and-going customers. Along the way to their booth, they halted three times because people who knew Andy stopped her and welcomed her home. When they got to the booth, the waitress gave them coffee and said she’d come back for their order in a few minutes.

  Dev tried to keep his focus on keeping Andy at arm’s length, but he was finding that impossible. When she got to the booth, she shrugged out of her black nylon jacket and hooked the red scarf and knit cap beside it. He wanted to tell her that her shining red, gold and light brown hair gleamed beneath the overhead lights, accenting her pink cheeks. From the moment she’d seen him, she had flushed, and he wasn’t sure what that meant. Wanting to drown in her light gray eyes with those huge black pupils, he knew he couldn’t. If she was a potential employee of the sheriff’s department, he’d be her boss. That deflated Dev as he opened the menu.

  “I already know what I want,” Andy said, pushing her menu aside.

  “Because you grew up here and know the menu by heart?”

  “Kassie has had the restaurant for nearly ten years. When I was in the Air Force and got sent stateside, my parents and I, and sometimes, my brothers or sister, would come here for breakfast.”

  “I see. Well? What do you recommend, Andy?”

  “I love their Denver omelet. Kassie buys as much local produce from the farmers in the valley as she can. Instead of using cheddar cheese in it, there’s a family here who raises goats and makes the most delicious feta cheese. So she puts the feta in the omelets, instead. It has green sweet peppers and onions in it, too.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The waitress came back and they ordered two omelets, plus hash browns and huge, light-brown sourdough biscuits, homemade by Kassie, to go with their meal.

  “I just can’t believe you’re here,” Andy admitted after the waitress left. She folded her hands on the table, studying him. “I always wondered what happened to you.”

  “I stayed in the Army for another year after our crash and then left. I still wanted to fly my Black Hawk, so I ended up with the Seattle Police Department. I flew for them after that.”

  “What got you here, though?” she wondered, sipping her coffee.

  “Luck, I guess. Pete Turner had worked in operations for the Seattle Police Department. We were both getting tired of the big city. My folks live in Port Harbor, North Carolina, a very rural area, and I grew up by the ocean, fishing, swimming, doing some surfing and enjoying our small community. I wanted to get back to that.”

  “Pete told you about this job?”

  “Yes, we’ve been friends since I worked in Seattle, and that’s how I got this job as his assistant. We’re a good team and he’s an excellent boss.”

  “You and I were a good team under fire,” she said, her voice tinged with emotion. “Without you, I know I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  He gave her a humble look. “We all have strengths and weaknesses, Andy. What is important is that we both contributed to us getting behind the wire once more.”

  “I still have nightmares about that week,” she admitted. “PTSD, they said.”

  “That’s normal,” he assured her. “I get it, too, even to this day. I had a therapist tell me that dreams were a way for us to work out the terror and other very human emotions of that trauma. Each time we dream about those terrifying events, the emotional and mental hold on us is loosened a little more. She said that someday I’d stop dreaming about it.” Actually, that was half the truth. He’d dreamed about Andy from the time he left her outside the ER. And oddly enough, a week ago, when he’d arrived in the valley, he’d had a dream about her once more. At the time, when he’d awakened, he’d felt it was a good omen. Little did he know he’d be meeting her in the flesh! He saw her face soften at his words.

  “That’s nice to know.”

  “Did you get therapy?”

  Shrugging, she said, “No, not my style. I have a really good connection with my parents, and when I’m boxing myself in on something, I call them.”

  “Now that you’re home, are you living with them?”

  “I’m staying there for now, but if I get this job, I intend to rent a condo. Mom said there was a nice one at the end of town.”

/>   “I live there and it’s well maintained.”

  “Good to know.”

  The waitress brought their food. Dev said to the waitress, “I’ll take the bill.”

  Andy opened her mouth to protest.

  “Business,” he said. “I can write it off. You’re coming to interview with me in a couple of hours.”

  “Okay,” she said, cutting into the fragrant omelet, “this time. Thank you.”

  Dev hid his smile. She was independent, which he’d seen during their run for safety in Afghanistan. There was a quietness to Andy, but beneath it was a steel spine as far as he was concerned. She had the reserve that he’d seen in many pilots. They weren’t loud and neither needed nor wanted other people’s attention. “You’re welcome.”

  It didn’t seem like she was married or had kids. Dev was fairly sure she would have said something about it if she was. Why did he feel happy about that? He shouldn’t. If she was hired, Andy would be an employee, not a lover. Was that what he wanted? Sophie, his wife, had died when she was twenty years old of a heart attack. They called it the “widow maker,” and no one thought someone as young as she was could possibly keel over, dead. She’d been at the University of North Carolina, where they were both working toward degrees. Even now, an old pain stirred in his heart. Gently, he put those memories away. They had no bearing on the present. Or did they?

  “So,” he murmured, holding Andy’s gaze, trying to ignore that soft mouth of hers, “does this mean you’re coming home for good?”

  Dipping her head, she said firmly, “Yes. Let’s put it this way, Dev: I’ve been around the world and I’ve seen a lot. I guess I was getting homesick. And as we dropped twenty feet to the ground and made a hard landing in Los Angeles, it sort of cinched that realization for me.” She looked around the noisy but happy patrons in the café. “I grew up here. Now, all my friends are married and have kids. I have a lot of reconnecting to do with them, and I’m looking forward to it. Plus, I can drive to my folks’ ranch, throw a leg over a good horse and ride. Riding always blew off my tension, worry or stress.”