They’d never talked about what happened next. How, after the fire had passed, turned to crackling and embers around them, she felt his skin turn cold, his breathing hiccupping, suddenly erratic.
“Conner has already walked the perimeter of the fire, says there’s no spotting, so we’ll start mop-up. Then I’m going to see if I can pinpoint the source and confirm what sparked this.”
She would never forget his whitened expression as he slid into a full-out delusional panic. Nor how he’d ripped himself free of the Kevlar cocoon, angry, afraid, leaping up into the blackened moonscape of the Porcupine forest.
Shock—she’d recognized it from their EMT training and knew that the fire could still kill him. The memory of him shaky on his feet, his eyes wild, could still send a tremor of cold panic through her.
“Kate?”
She looked up at him.
Jed was holding the map open and now frowned at her. “You okay?”
She nodded, but her gaze fell to his hands, hearing now his voice, his groan of horror as he’d looked at them, moaning as he’d dropped to his knees, his face crumpling.
She distinctly remembered her heart stopping at his gut-wrenching cry. Then his blood pressure dropped, and he’d faded away into blessed unconsciousness.
“I’m just...I just—yeah. I’d like to see where the fire started, too.” She picked up her helmet, her Pulaski, her pack, and headed toward the fire line, the memories grinding up to press moisture into her burning eyes.
Kate, don’t leave me. I need you.
The last thing she wanted was him knowing that somehow, despite herself...she’d never gotten over him.
“Let’s separate into sectors, we’ll get this thing mopped up faster.” Jed motioned to his crew, indicating on the map where they should begin work.
Conner headed out with Kate along the tail, through the burn area, toward the center. While he felled snags and cut apart burning stumps with his chainsaw, she used her Pulaski to turn over piles of white ash and rake through coals. Then she applied water from her pump and scattered the fuels.
The buzz of saws hummed in the air, the work dirty. Her eyes teared, and her nose was thick with snot, her mouth sawdust dry as the sun burned down on her neck.
She and Conner finally made it to the river, and she used her bandanna to cool her neck as she sat on a rock and took a long swig of now-tepid water.
“You do the work of two men, Kate,” Conner said, wiping his face.
“Thanks.”
“Nice to be back in the fight?” He uncapped his water bottle.
She glanced at him. “I guess, yeah.” She lifted a shoulder, watching him as he ran his shirtsleeve against the moisture on his forehead.
“I have to admit, I was surprised to see you show up in Ember. I mean, after the Buttercup Rim fire I thought I’d never see you again.”
She froze then, studying him, but he seemed to not have a clue that he’d unseated her. “What?”
He pulled out a granola bar, offered her a bite. She shook her head.
“I was on the mop-up crew. We heard all about the blowup, how you got trapped. Pretty tough stuff.”
She fought to keep her voice easy, her breathing metered. “Yep.”
“They said you were in the shelter for nearly two hours.”
She nodded. “It wasn’t that hot, just long burning. And in the low area I got trapped in, I thought maybe the air would be toxic.”
No one had to know that, actually, she had followed exactly in Jed’s footsteps and gone into shock.
And he hadn’t been there to keep her warm, calm, or hike her out to help. Oh no, she’d unraveled completely on her own, nearly incoherent when her team finally found her and airlifted her out.
Now, she leaned over, filled her water bottle in the river, and didn’t look at Conner, keeping her voice even, cool. “I hadn’t realized the word got out.”
“It didn’t, really. I was just there. And the Buttercup range is notorious. I think they’ve had like two hundred and thirty entrapments in the last ten years. That’s a lot.”
“It was my fault. I was separated from the crew, on lookout, and waited too long to evacuate.” God isn’t a parachute, and someday you’re going to find yourself in over your head.
Her dad’s prophecy finally came true as the flames licked the edges of her shelter.
She shook her hand to free the tremor, capped the bottle, then tightened it, and clipped it to her belt. “It’s no big deal.” She stood up, wondering if the question lingered on her face. Did Jed know? Had he discovered she’d spent the past two years in counseling, working the desk at the National Fire Agency in Boise, wrestling her fear into submission?
Suddenly his protectiveness made perfect sense.
What a joke—she was a legendary, hotshot smokejumper deathly afraid of fire.
She tied her wet bandanna around her neck. “Ready to get at it?”
But Conner wasn’t moving. He stared out, away from her, up the river. “I’m pretty impressed that you went through another fire alone—and came out unscathed.”
She gave a wry chuckle, lifted a shoulder as if his words weren’t lethal.
But he stood up, met her eyes. “Or did you come out unscathed, Kate?”
Her mouth opened. “I—”
“It is a big deal,” he said softly.
She swallowed, studied his face, and uttered her worst fears. “Does Jed know?”
Conner’s mouth tightened into a grim line, at least a little compassion in his expression. “I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything. Probably not—I didn’t see him until later that summer when I joined up with him for a Minnesota fire.”
“Please—don’t tell him. I’m fine.” Now. And she would be, if everyone just left her alone, let her do her job.
But Conner searched her eyes, as if unsure. “Just because you’re afraid doesn’t mean you’re weak, Kate. It makes you more aware of what you can lose, how fast—”
“I’m not afraid. And I don’t need you—or Jed—worrying about me.” She said this with a sharper edge than she intended, but he didn’t flinch.
“Right. Ho-kay.” He picked up his chainsaw. “And just because someone cares about you—even tries to protect you—doesn’t mean they don’t respect you.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t need anyone to protect me either.”
He shook his head. “You know, for someone who’s spent her life working on a team, you know nothing about what it really means.”
He shouldered the saw, headed along the shore toward the black.
Oh, yes, actually she did. Every costly, brutal, betraying nuance of it.
She followed Conner into the dying smolder.
The mop-up work burned away the rest of the day, the sun dying in a rose-gold fiery sigh beyond the Cabinet Range.
Jed caught up to them as they were hiking back to camp. “There’s a truck coming to fetch us at the campground. Conner, take the gear and meet up with him. Kate, c’mere—I want to show you something.”
Jed looked as if he’d spent the day sloshing around in ash and mud—his face flecked with dirt, smudged into his two-day beard, his hair sooty, his yellow shirt smeared, stained, and dirty beyond repair. But he hiked through the forest, energy radiating off him. “I followed the burn pattern, all the way back to the campground, and I want your opinion on something.”
He did? She trudged through the ash behind him, her boots sifting up white powder as she stepped over charred trees and scorched rocks.
“We thought, at first, that fire was started by a lightning strike. But when I got to the site this morning and saw how the fire had spread, I realized that it started here, in this campsite. Which is strange, because the area was cleared out by fishermen, free of large pines, or anything else that might act as a conductor. When I got here, I couldn’t find a tree or any other charred remains. So I started hunting around.”
They stood in a makeshift fishing campground twent
y feet from the river’s edge. Kate made out a warped cooler, a blackened tent. “I certainly hope whoever was fishing got away.”
“Yeah, well, I radioed in, and no one has heard a thing about a camper, so we might actually have a fatality,” he said, walking to the campfire ring. “The fire was called in by some homesteaders who saw the smoke. I was already in the office, monitoring the lightning strikes, and by the time of dispatch the fire was probably already an acre.”
He kicked a can, blackened and charred, into the fire pit. “Let’s hope whoever camped here was long gone.” He crouched near the fire ring. “I thought the fire might have started here, from a stray spark. The valley is so dry right now it wouldn’t take much to light the entire thing. But looking at the V-shaped pattern, the fire started not here, but over there.” He pointed to an area just a few feet away where concentrated ash from a blaze which, according to the pattern indicated, had ignited a fallen oak and the brush around it.
Kate bent down, feeling through the blackness. “Look.” She pulled out a melted plastic cylinder about thirty inches long. Warped, with what looked like wings, gnarled on each side. “Is it a flare?”
He took it in his gloved hand. “No. It’s a drone—like a weather drone.” He turned it over, rubbing the surface. “Conner’s been working on something like this to help us fight fires.”
“Maybe it crashed. Does it carry enough fuel to ignite the forest?”
“Some do—depends on the drone. I’ll take it back with us.”
She got up, dusted off her hands. “Report it to Overhead. They’ll send some investigators out, take pictures, poke around.”
He dropped the drone into his pack.
She shouldered the Pulaski, turned to head back to the campsite.
“Kate, I wanted to ask you something.”
Oh.
She didn’t know why his words sent a cool finger down her spine. What if he had simply been waiting to get her alone to tell her he knew about her past? Maybe he’d been watching to see her reaction to fire—and yesterday’s panic after the slurry drop, coupled with the ensuing nightmare, only made him realize she was a hazard on the fire line.
He couldn’t work with someone who couldn’t be trusted not to come apart at the first hint of flashover.
She turned, wary—
“I need your help.”
“Huh?”
He stood, his Pulaski over his shoulder, met her questioning look with one of his own.
“You saw what happened at the Hotline Saloon. I’m losing recruits—and morale. I’ve been thinking about it all day, watching you work. No one knows this job better than you. What would you say if I asked you to help me train the rookies?”
She stood, nonplussed, just blinking.
“Listen, I get it. And I can admit that I don’t...well, that I don’t approve of the way you take too many risks. But you’re fire smart, Kate, and you’re an expert jumper, and...” He shifted, brought the Pulaski down, dug at the dirt. “As much as I hate to admit it, the cubbies could benefit from hanging out with you.”
Despite his cool tone, the way he kept his distance, offering the job almost offhandedly, she had a feeling what it cost him to say that.
But work with Jed every day? After last night’s kiss? Yes, it settled there right at the top of her mind, especially when he stepped up to her, smelling of smoke and fire and danger and looking so painfully handsome despite the sweat that trickled down from his temple into his rough thatch of whiskers. No, this could be a bad, very bad idea.
Talk about getting burned—her fragile, still-healing heart couldn’t take another go-around with frustrating, let-me-save-you Jed Ransom.
Maybe he saw her hesitate—more out of shock than apprehension—but he must have thought he needed more oomph to his request because he stepped closer, lowered his voice. “Isn’t that what you want? To train the best, just like your father?”
He knew how to find her tender flesh, push a thumb into it.
She nodded. And apparently she had no control over herself when Jed stood this close, lowered that deep baritone, because she added, “Is that what you want?”
She didn’t know what kind of answer she expected, dreadfully aware of the one she suddenly, desperately wanted.
In her wildest dreams, they fought fire side by side and heated up the nights in each other’s arms for as long as they both should live.
And how crazy was that—because she’d always told herself she wasn’t the marrying kind. The kind to stay home and settled down. Like father, like daughter, right?
She looked away, lest he see the imprint of her hopes in her eyes.
Apparently he hadn’t. Jed picked up his Pulaski, stepped away. “I want to save lives and fight fire. In that order.”
She took a breath. “Right,” she said. “Me too.”
“Good.” His expression warmed. “Like you said, we’re going to need all the jumpers we can pass. And, apparently, I’m begging you to stay.”
And this was exactly how she’d gotten-in trouble before, falling for his easy smile, the smoky, sweet texture of his eyes.
Oh, she shouldn’t do this again. Except her voice, her brain, had decided to jump first, to leave her heart hanging. “Yeah. I’ll be glad to help.”
“Perfect. Bright and early tomorrow morning then.” He whirled around as if to stride away, and she nearly bumped into him when he stopped, turned back. Took a breath. “And please, Kate. Don’t make me regret this. I’m counting on you not to do anything stupid.”
The warm feeling dissolved into a puddle of black. Her mouth tightened, but she gave him a hard, crisp nod. “Don’t worry, Jed. I promise I won’t get anyone hurt.”
His mouth tightened as she stalked past him, the embers of their barely rekindled friendship neatly snuffed out.
Somehow, with his suggestion Kate train the recruits, Jed had awakened the ghost of Jock Burns.
Jed couldn’t help but feel he’d traveled back in time to his days as a recruit, drenched in sweat, wrung out, yet mesmerized by a leader who just didn’t know when to quit. And who made the entire thing seem like some sort of intense Outward-bound vacation.
Kate had clearly adopted Jock Burn’s magic recipe for team success—hard work plus prepared fire fighters, mixed in with generous amounts of camaraderie.
Oh, goody, goody, a three-mile run, but Kate had cold water and time off waiting for them after today’s PT.
The recruits were actually grinning.
Jed stood on the running board of his truck, holding the stopwatch. Overhead, the blue dome of the sky stretched cloudless, not a hint of rain, the air crackling with heat across the compound. The sun glared on the tarmac, bright off the red-and-white hull of Gilly’s Twin Otter jump plane, and the Air Tankers sat parked in orderly rows, gassed up and ready for a callout. The buzzing of an air compressor from the dome metal hangar suggested repairs or maintenance checks on one of their ancient Russian An-2s.
Kate had changed out of her Forest Service uniform into a pair of black running pants, an athletic shirt, her hair braided into two red pigtails and held back with a teal bandanna. She now stood at the head of the assembly of the remaining recruits. Apparently, she planned on leading the pack while Jed remained behind to harass the stragglers.
Figured.
It would help if she didn’t look like she belonged on the cover of Fitness magazine, her curves outlined in that purple V-backed running shirt.
She climbed onto the back of his truck, and he averted his eyes from her legs.
“Today’s run is just practice—you won’t get cut if you can't finish the three miles in less than twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds. But if you can’t pass this run next week, you’ll be cut, game over. Got it?”
She glanced down at him, and he knew she added the last for his sake—he’d already had it out with her once for coddling the team.
Give them a chance to prove themselves, she’d said yesterday afternoon as they
watched the recruits practice their landing rolls. I didn’t get it the first time either.
Yeah, well, look where letting her prove herself had landed him. Replaying their nearly combustible kiss in his head into the wee hours of the night, evoking even more memories all the way back to Alaska, and wishing he’d had the sense back then to send her packing back to Montana.
Then, maybe he would have gotten her out of his system, and she would have moved onto something safe, like grizzly taming, and he would be training the team with some grumpy, hard-bitten, bald and paunchy smokejumper from Missoula.
The sun hovered above the horizon, still cruel as the recruits lined up for their run, Kate in the middle. The base seemed hollow today, the standby barracks ghostly with the sight of so many pickups, motorcycles, and motley cars baking away in the parking lot.
Someone was unloading a truck of dry goods into the supply warehouse, now depleted of food and gear. A few more cars parked in front of the head shed where dispatchers, weather heads, and division commanders monitored the progress of the Glacier Rim fire.
The Jude County hotshot team—with Conner, Reuben, and Pete attached—worked mop-up on a fire in the nearby Glacier National Park, helmed by a smokejumping team out of Missoula.
“Go!” Jed started the watch, and the runners left him in a poof of dust and grunts. He hunkered down into his truck, put it into gear, and let it roll behind them.
In three weeks, Jed just might have a team ready to add to the attack, thanks to Kate and her morale-boosting encouragement, her stories of jumping fire, and not a little dare and challenge she threw out, especially to the youngsters—CJ, Tucker, and Ned.
Not to mention Hannah Butcher. The minute he’d introduced Kate as their jump trainer, Hannah glued to her like she might a big sister, seeing perhaps a kindred spirit. Kate’s addition to the training team lit a new fire under the recruit, and Hannah gritted her teeth as she bumbled landing after landing, refusing to give up long after the two other female recruits had walked off the course.
More, the young recruit bore adoration along with the fire in her eyes when Kate got up to teach. Like today, during Kate’s class on letdowns staged in the training area of the base. Located in an acre or more of meadow set off by a chain-link fence, the training area housed the jump tower and receiving berm, the letdown practice platform, the landing roll simulator, an old Twin-Otter, decommissioned and grounded, and the obstacle course, worn and muddied.
Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) Page 10