by Nora Roberts
“Pay good money for it, too. Had a good one last week.” She spread her legs in a wide vee, grabbed her toes and again bent forward. “Couple celebrated their fiftieth anniversary with a jump. Gave me a bottle of French champagne as a tip.”
Trigger sat where he was, watching as she pushed to her feet to begin the first sun salutation. “Are you still teaching that hippie class?”
Rowan flowed from Up Dog to Down Dog, turned her head to shoot Trigger a pitying look. “It’s yoga, old man, and yeah, I’m still doing some personal trainer work off-season. Helps keep the lard out of my ass. How about you?”
“I pile the lard on. It gives me more to burn off when the real work starts.”
“If this season’s as slow as last, we’ll all be sitting on fat asses. Have you seen Cards? He doesn’t appear to have turned down any second helpings this winter.”
“Got a new woman.”
“No shit.” Looser, she picked up the pace, added lunges.
“He met her in the frozen food section of the grocery store in October, and moved in with her for New Year’s. She’s got a couple kids. Schoolteacher.”
“Schoolteacher, kids? Cards?” Rowan shook her head. “Must be love.”
“Must be something. He said the woman and the kids are coming out maybe late July, maybe spend the rest of the summer.”
“That sounds serious.” She shifted to a twist, eyeing Trigger as she held the position. “She must be something. Still, he’d better see how she handles a season. It’s one thing to hook up with a smoke jumper in the winter, and another to stick through the summer. Families crack like eggs,” she added, then wished she hadn’t as Matt Brayner stepped in.
She hadn’t seen him since Jim’s funeral, and though she’d spoken with his mother a few times, hadn’t been sure he’d come back.
He looked older, she thought, more worn around the eyes and mouth. And heartbreakingly like his brother with the floppy mop of bleached wheat hair, the pale blue eyes. His gaze tracked from Trigger, met hers. She wondered what the smile cost him.
“How’s it going?”
“Pretty good.” She straightened, wiped her palms on the thighs of her workout pants. “Just sweating off some nerves before the PT test.”
“I thought I’d do the same. Or just screw it and go into town and order a double stack of pancakes.”
“We’ll get ’em after the run.” Trigger walked over, held out a hand. “Good to see you, Hayseed.”
“You too.”
“I’m going for coffee. They’ll be loading us up before too long.”
As Trigger went out, Matt walked over, picked up a twenty-pound weight. Put it down again. “I guess it’s going to be weird, for a while anyway. Seeing me makes everybody . . . think.”
“Nobody’s going to forget. I’m glad you’re back.”
“I don’t know if I am, but I couldn’t seem to do anything else. Anyway. I wanted to say thanks for keeping in touch with my ma the way you have. It means a lot to her.”
“I wish . . . Well, if wishes were horses I’d have a rodeo. I’m glad you’re back. See you at the van.”
SHE UNDERSTOOD Matt’s sentiment, couldn’t seem to do anything else. It would sum up the core feelings of the men, and four women including herself, who piled into vans for the ride out to the start of the run for their jobs. She settled in, letting the ragging and bragging flow over her.
A lot of insults about winter weight, and the ever-popular lard-ass remarks. She closed her eyes, tried to let herself drift as the nerves riding under the good-natured bullshit winging around the van wanted to reach inside and shake hands with her own.
Janis Petrie, one of the four females in the unit, dropped down beside her. Her small, compact build had earned her the nickname Elf, and she looked like a perky head cheerleader.
This morning, her nails sported bright pink polish and her shiny brown hair bounced in a tail tied with a circle of butterflies.
She was pretty as a gumdrop, tended to giggle, and could—and did—work a saw line for fourteen hours straight.
“Ready to rock, Swede?”
“And roll. Why would you put on makeup before this bitch of a test?”
Janis fluttered her long, lush lashes. “So these poor guys’ll have something pretty to look at when they stumble over the finish line. Seeing as I’ll be there first.”
“You are pretty damn fast.”
“Small but mighty. Did you check out the rookies?”
“Not yet.”
“Six of our kind in there. Maybe we’ll add enough women for a nice little sewing circle. Or a book club.”
Rowan laughed. “And after, we’ll have a bake sale.”
“Cupcakes. Cupcakes are my weakness. It’s such pretty country.” Janis leaned forward a little to get a clearer view out the window. “I always miss it when I’m gone, always wonder what I’m doing living in the city doing physical therapy on country club types with tennis elbow.”
She blew out a breath. “Then by July I’ll be wondering what I’m doing out here, strung out on no sleep, hurting everywhere, when I could be taking my lunch break at the pool.”
“It’s a long way from Missoula to San Diego.”
“Damn right. You don’t have that pull-tug. You live here. For most of us, this is coming home. Until we finish the season and go home, then that feels like home. It can cross up the circuits.”
She rolled her warm brown eyes toward Rowan as the van stopped. “Here we go again.”
Rowan climbed out of the van, drew in the air. It smelled good, fresh and new. Spring, the kind with green and wildflowers and balmy breezes, wouldn’t be far off now. She scouted the flags marking the course as the base manager, Michael Little Bear, laid out requirements.
His long black braid streamed down his bright red jacket. Rowan knew there’d be a roll of Life Savers in the pocket, a substitute for the Marlboros he’d quit over the winter.
L.B. and his family lived a stone’s throw from the base, and his wife worked for Rowan’s father.
Everyone knew the rules. Run the course, and get it done in under 22:30, or walk away. Try it again in a week. Fail that? Find a new summer job.
Rowan stretched out—hamstrings, quads, calves.
“I hate this shit.”
“You’ll make it.” She gave him an elbow in the belly. “Think of a meat-lover’s pizza waiting for you on the other side of the line.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“The size it is now? That’d take me a while.”
He snorted out a laugh as they lined up.
She calmed herself. Got in her head, got in her body, as L.B. walked back to the van. When the van took off, so did the line. Rowan hit the timer button on her watch, merged with the pack. She knew every one of them—had worked with them, sweated with them, risked her life with them. And she wished them—every one—good luck and a good run.
But for the next twenty-two and thirty, it was every man—and woman—for himself.
She dug in, kicked up her pace and ran for, what was in a very large sense, her life. She made her way through the pack and, as others did, called out encouragement or jibes, whatever worked best to kick asses into gear. She knew there would be knees aching, chests hammering, stomachs churning. Spring training would have toned some, added insult to injuries on others.
She couldn’t think about it. She focused on mile one, and when she passed the marker, noted her time at 4:12.
Mile two, she ordered herself, and kept her stride smooth, her pace steady—even when Janis passed her with a grim smile. The burn rose up from her toes to her ankles, flowed up her calves. Sweat ran hot down her back, down her chest, over her galloping heart.
She could slow her pace—her time was good—but the stress of imagined stumbles, turned ankles, a lightning strike from beyond, pushed her.
Don’t let up.
When she passed mile two she’d moved beyond the burn, the sweat, into the mindless. One more mi
le. She passed some, was passed by others, while her pulse pounded in her ears. As before a jump, she kept her eyes on the horizon—land and sky. Her love of both whipped her through the final mile.
She blew past the last marker, heard L.B. call out her name and time. Tripp, fifteen-twenty. And ran another twenty yards before she could convince her legs it was okay to stop.
Bending from the waist, she caught her breath, squeezed her eyes tightly shut. As always after the PT test she wanted to weep. Not from the effort. She—all of them—faced worse, harder, tougher. But the stress clawing at her mind finally retracted.
She could continue to be what she wanted to be.
She walked off the run, tuning in now as other names and times were called out. She high-fived with Trigger as he crossed three miles.
Everyone who passed stayed on the line. A unit again, all but willing the rest to make it, make that time. She checked her watch, saw the deadline coming up, and four had yet to cross.
Cards, Matt, Yangtree, who’d celebrated—or mourned—his fiftyfourth birthday the month before, and Gibbons, whose bad knee had him nearly hobbling those last yards.
Cards wheezed in with three seconds to spare, with Yangtree right behind him. Gibbons’s face was a sweat-drenched study in pain and grit, but Matt? It seemed to Rowan he barely pushed.
His eyes met hers. She pumped her fist, imagined herself dragging him and Gibbons over the last few feet while the seconds counted down. She swore she could see the light come on, could see Matt reaching in, digging down.
He hit at 22:28, with Gibbons stumbling over a half second behind.
The cheer rose then, the triumph of one more season.
“Guess you two wanted to add a little suspense.” L.B. lowered his clipboard. “Welcome back. Take a minute to bask, then let’s get loaded.”
“Hey, Ro!” She glanced over at Cards’s shout, in time to see him turn, bend over and drop his pants. “Pucker up!”
And we’re back, she thought.
2
Gulliver Curry rolled out of his sleeping bag and took stock. Everything hurt, he decided. But that made a workable balance.
He smelled snow, and a look out of his tent showed him, yes, indeed, a couple fresh inches had fallen overnight. His breath streamed out in clouds as he pulled on pants. The blisters on his blisters made dressing for the day an . . . experience.
Then again, he valued experience.
The day before, he, along with twenty-five other recruits, had dug fire line for fourteen hours, then topped off that little task with a three-mile hike, carrying an eighty-five-pound pack.
They’d felled trees with crosscut saws, hiked, dug, sharpened tools, dug, hiked, scaled the towering pines, then dug some more.
Summer camp for the masochist, he thought. Otherwise known as rookie training for smoke jumpers. Four recruits had already washed out—two of them hadn’t gotten past the initial PT test. His seven years’ fire experience, the last four on a hotshot crew, gave Gull some advantage.
But that didn’t mean he felt fresh as a rosebud.
He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching his palm over bristles from nearly a week without a razor. God, he wanted a hot shower, a shave and an ice-cold beer. Tonight, after a fun-filled hike through the Bitterroots, this time hauling a hundred-and-ten-pound pack, he’d get all three.
And tomorrow, he’d start the next phase. Tomorrow he’d start learning how to fly.
Hotshots trained like maniacs, worked like dogs, primarily on highpriority wilderness fires. But they didn’t jump out of planes. That, he thought, added a whole new experience. He shoved a hand through his thick mass of dark hair, then crawled out of the tent into the crystal snowscape of predawn.
His eyes, feline green, tracked up to check the sky, and he stood for a moment in the still, tall and tough in his rough brown pants and bright yellow shirt. He had what he wanted here—or pieces of it—the knowledge that he could do what he’d come to do.
He measured the height of the ponderosa pine to his left. Ninety feet, give or take. He’d walked up that bastard the day before, biting his gaffs into bark. And from that height, hooked with spikes and harness, he’d gazed out over the forest.
An experience.
Through the scent of snow and pine, he headed toward the cook tent as the camp began to stir. And despite the aches, the blisters—maybe because of them—he looked forward to what the day would bring.
Shortly after noon, Gull watched the lodgepole pine topple. He shoved his hard hat back enough to wipe sweat off his forehead and nodded to his partner on the crosscut saw.
“Another one bites the dust.”
Dobie Karstain barely made the height requirement at five six. His beard and stream of dung brown hair gave him the look of a pint-sized mountain man, while the safety goggles seemed to emphasize the wild, wide eyes.
Dobie hefted a chain saw. “Let’s cut her into bite-sized pieces.”
They worked rhythmically. Gull had figured Dobie for a washout, but the native Kentuckian was stronger, and sturdier, than he looked. He liked Dobie well enough—despite the man’s distinctly red neck—and was working on reaching a level of trust.
If Dobie made it through, odds were they’d be sawing and digging together again. Not on a bright, clear spring afternoon, but in the center of fire where trust and teamwork were as essential as a sharp Pulaski, the two-headed tool with ax and grub hoe.
“Wouldn’t mind tapping that before she folds.”
Gull glanced over at one of the female recruits. “What makes you think she’ll fold?”
“Women ain’t built for this work, son.”
Gull drew the blade of the saw through the pine. “Just for babymaking, are they?”
Dobie grinned through his beard. “I didn’t design the model. I just like riding ’em.”
“You’re an asshole, Dobie.”
“Some say,” Dobie agreed in the same good-natured tone.
Gull studied the woman again. Perky blond, maybe an inch or two shy of Dobie’s height. And from his point of view, she’d held up as well as any of them. Ski instructor out of Colorado, he recalled. Libby. He’d seen her retaping her blisters that morning.
“I got twenty says she makes it all the way.”
Dobie chuckled as another log rolled. “I’ll take your twenty, son.”
When they finished their assignment, Gull retaped some of his own blisters. Then, as the instructors were busy, taped Dobie’s fresh ones.
They moved through the camp to their waiting packs. Three miles to go, Gull thought, then he’d end this fine day with that shave, shower and cold beer.
He sat, strapped on the pack, then pulled out a pack of gum. He offered a stick to Dobie.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Together they rolled over to their hands and knees, then pushed to standing.
“Just imagine you’re carrying a pretty little woman,” Dobie advised, with a wiggle of eyebrows in Libby’s direction.
“A buck-ten’s pretty scrawny for my taste.”
“She’ll feel like more by the time we’re done.”
No question about it, Gull mused, and the instructor didn’t set what you’d call a meandering pace along the rocky, quad-burning trail.
They pushed one another, that’s how it was done. Ragged one another, encouraged one another, insulted one another, to get the group another step, another yard. The spurring fact was, in a few weeks it would be real. And on the fire line everyone’s life depended on the other.
“What do you do back in Kentucky?” Gull asked Dobie while a hawk screamed overhead and the smell of group sweat competed with