Chasing Fire

by Нора Робертс

  Quinniock stopped, nodded at the man who hailed him. “That’s right.”

  “He just walked over to the loft. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  He changed direction. It struck him how quiet the base seemed. None of the crew training outside or hustling from building to building, though he had seen a couple of them hauling ass down one of the service roads in a jeep. Either a test or a joyride, he decided.

  When he made his way to the loft, passed what he knew they called the ready room, he saw why.

  Here the hive of activity buzzed. Men and a handful of women worked on tools, taking them apart or putting them back together. Others pulled equipment off shelves or replaced it.

  Routine inspection? he wondered, considered the organized chaos as he entered the loft.

  There he saw chutes spread on counters, being unpacked or meticulously repacked. More hung in the tower waiting to be inspected or already tagged for repair or repacking.

  He spotted Little Bear standing beside Lucas Tripp at one of the counters.

  “Iron Man.” Quinniock offered a hand with genuine pleasure. “Have they talked you back on the team?”

  “Just helping out for the day. How’s it going, Lieutenant?”

  “I’ve had better days, and I’ve had worse. You wanted to talk to me?” he said to L.B.

  “Yeah. Where’s the tree cop?”

  “Seeing to some tree cop business. Did you want her here?”

  “Not especially. I have crews in Alaska, and another just back this morning from Wyoming.”

  “I heard about the fires in Alaska, threatening Denali Park. What’s the status?”

  “They hope to have it contained within a few hours. It’s been a long, hard haul and my people jumped that fire with defective equipment.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Quinniock took another look around the loft. “You’re running an equipment inspection?”

  “What this is about is the fact that the equipment was tampered with. Stripped valves in pumpers, and one of them went into Wyoming. Chain saws with burned-out spark plugs and a frayed starter cord.”

  “I don’t want to tell you your business, but all of that sounds like it could easily be simple wear and tear, something that got overlooked during the height of a busy season.”

  L.B.’s face went hard as stone. “We don’t overlook a damn thing. Equipment comes in from a fire, it’s gone over, checked out and checked off before it goes back in rotation. The same valve stripped on three pumpers, and two in the load that went to Denali?”

  “Okay, that’s a stretch.”

  “You’re damn right. We’re inspecting everything, and we’ve already found two more defective saws, and four piss bags with the nozzles clogged with putty. We’re not careless; we can’t afford to be. We don’t overlook.”

  “All right.”

  “We have to inspect every chute, drogue, reserve. And thank God so far none of the ones we’ve gone over show any signs of tampering. Do you know how long it takes to repack a single chute?”

  “About forty-five minutes. I’ve taken the tour. All right,” Quinniock repeated, and took out his notebook. “You have a list of who checked off the equipment?”

  “Sure I do, and I’ve gone over it. I’ll give you the names, and the names of the mechanics who did any of the repairs or cleaning. It doesn’t fall on one person.”

  “Are any of your crew dealing with more than the usual stress?”

  “My people in Alaska who had to jerry-rig pumpers with duct tape, goddamn it, or lose their ground.”

  As he also sent men out into the field, bore the weight of those decisions, Quinniock understood the simmering rage. He kept his own tone brisk. “Have you had to discipline anyone, remove anyone from active?”

  “No, and no. Do you think one of the crew did this? These people don’t know when they’ll have to jump or where or into what conditions until they do. Why in the hell would somebody do this when they might be the one with a starter cord snapping off in their hands, or scrambling with a useless pump with a fire bearing down on him?”

  “Your support staff, your mechanics, your pilots and so on don’t jump.”

  “And Leo Brakeman walked into your house this morning. He’s already shot up mine, and isn’t shy about starting fires. Tampering with the equipment here takes a little mechanical know-how.”

  “And he has more than a little.” Quinniock blew out a breath. “I’ll look into it. If it was him, I can promise you he’s going to be sitting just where he’s sitting for some time to come.”

  “His wife’s leaving him,” Lucas put in. He’d finished packing the chute, tagged it, then turned to address Quinniock. “She’s giving the baby to the Brayners, the father’s parents. They’re coming in from Nebraska. She’s making arrangements to turn the house over, to sell whatever she can sell, cash out whatever she can cash out. She’s thinking about moving out near the Brayners so she can be near the baby, help out, watch her grow up.”

  “You’re well informed.”

  “My...” Did a sixty-year-old man have a girlfriend? he wondered. “The woman I’m involved with is a close friend of Irene’s.”

  “Ella Frazier. I’m well informed, too,” Quinniock added. “I met her at the funeral.”

  “She’s helping Irene as much as she can. Irene told Leo all this when she went to see him this morning.”

  Quinniock passed a weary hand over his face. “That explains why he shut down.”

  “It seems to me he’s got nothing left to lose now.”

  “He wants to take a polygraph, but that could be the lawyer’s idea. He’s sticking with the same story, and the more we twist it up, the harder he bears down. Maybe tossing this tampering at him will shake him. I want the timelines, when each piece was last used, last inspected, by whom in both cases if you can get that for me. I have to make a call first.”

  He flipped out his phone, called the sergeant on duty and ordered a suicide watch on Leo Brakeman.

  27

  The plane touched down in Missoula shortly after ten A.M. They’d hit very rocky air over Canada, with hail flying like bullets while the plane rode the roller coaster of the storm.

  Half the crew landed queasy or downright sick.

  Since she’d slept the entire flight, Rowan calculated she felt nearly three-quarters human. Human enough to take a yearlong shower, and eat like a starving horse.

  As she and Gull walked to the barracks, she spotted L.B. with Cards, supervising the off-loading. She suspected L.B. had been waging his own war while they had waged theirs.

  She didn’t want to think about either battle for a little while.

  She dropped down to sit on the bed in her quarters, remove her boots. “I want lots and lots of sex.”

  “You really are the woman of my dreams.”

  “First round, wet shower sex, after we scrape off a few layers of the Alaskan tundra, then a short and satisfying lunch break.” She unbuckled her belt, dropped her pants. “Then a second round of make-themattress-sing sex.”

  “I feel a tear of gratitude and awe forming in the corner of my eye. Don’t think less of me.”

  God, the man just tickled every inch of her. And, she decided, even with the scruff on his face, his hair matted, twanged her lust chords.

  “Then a quickie just to top things off before I start my reports. I’ll have to brief with L.B. at some point, and squeeze in daily PT, after which there must be more food.”

  “There must.”

  “Then I believe it’s going to be a time for relax-into-a-nap sex.”

  “I can write up an agenda on this, just so we don’t miss anything.”

  “It’s all here.” She tapped her temple. “So...” She strolled naked into the bathroom. “Let’s get this party started.”

  Rowan considered the first round a knockout. Now that she felt a hundred percent human, and with Gull shaving off the scruff in her bathroom, she we
nt out to dress.

  She picked up the note someone must have shoved under her door in the last forty minutes.

  FULL BRIEFING ALL CREW

  OPS

  THIRTEEN HUNDRED

  “Oh, well. Round two’s going to have to be postponed.” She held the note up for Gull to read.

  “Maybe he has some answers.”

  “Or maybe he’s just got a whole lot of questions. Either way, we’d better scramble if we’re going to get any food before thirteen hundred.”

  “Marg might know something.”

  “I’m thinking the same.”

  Since Marg liked him well enough, Gull went with Rowan to the kitchen.

  Probably not the best timing, he realized as they walked into the heat and the rush. Marg, Lynn and the new cook—Shelley, he remembered—turned, hauled, chopped and scooped with a creative symmetry that made him think of a culinary Cirque du Soleil.

  “Hey.” Lynn filled a tub with some sort of pasta medley. “Shelley, we need more rolls, and the chicken salad’s getting low.”

  “I’m all over it!”

  “Bring the barbecue pan back when you come,” Marg told Lynn while she swiped a cloth over her heat-flushed face. “They’ll be ready for it by then. I know how they suck this stuff down.

  “Briefing at one o’clock,” she muttered, and wagged a spoon at Rowan. “Right in the middle of things, so they all storm this place before noon like Henry the Fifth stormed, wherever the hell that was.”

  “I could chop something,” Rowan volunteered.

  “Just stay clear. Once we get this second round of barbecue out to them, they’ll hold awhile.”

  “You were right.” Lynn bustled back in with a near-empty pan. Together, she and Marg filled it.

  “This tops everything off but the dessert buffet. Shelley and I can get that.”

  “Good girl.” Marg flipped out two plates, tossed the open rolls on them, dumped barbecue on the bottom, scooped the pasta medley beside it, added a serving of summer squash. Then pointed at Gull. “Get three beers and bring ’em out to my table. Take this.” She shoved one of the plates at Rowan before grabbing up flatware setups.

  She sailed outside and, after setting the plate and setups down, pressed her hands to her lower back. “God.”

  “Sit down, Marg.”

  “I need to stretch this out some first. Go on and eat.”

  “Aren’t you going to?”

  Marg just waved a hand in the negative. “That’s what I’m after,” she said, taking the beer Gull held out to her. “I’ve got the AC set to arctic blast, but by the time we’re into the middle of the lunch shift, it’s like Nairobi. Eat. And don’t bolt it down.”

  Gull lifted the sloppy sandwich, got in the first bite. Warm, tangy, with the pork melting into sauce and the combination melding into something like spiced bliss.

  “Marg, what’ll it take for you to come and live with me?”

  “A lot of sex.”

  “I’m good for that,” he said over another bite, pointing to Rowan for verification. “I’m good for that.”

  “Everybody’s got to be good for something,” Rowan commented. “What’s the word, Marg?”

  “L.B.’s on a tear, that’s for certain. You don’t see that man get up a head of steam often. It’s why he’s good at the job. But he’s been puffing it out the last couple days. He had every chute, every pack, every jumpsuit gone over. He’d have used microscopes on them if he could have. Every piece of equipment, every tool, every damn thing. He’s having the jeeps gone over, the Rolligons, the planes.”

  She took a long, slow sip of beer, set it aside, then surprised Gull by lowering smoothly into a yoga down dog. “God, that feels better. He called Quinniock out here.”

  “He wants a police investigation?” Rowan asked.

  “He’s made up his mind Leo managed to do this. He may be right.” She walked her feet up to a forward fold, hung there a moment, then straightened. “Irene’s leaving him. She’s already packing up. The Brayners are taking the baby tomorrow, and I don’t think she plans to be far behind. She’s going to move into your daddy’s place for a couple weeks, until she clears up her business.”

  “She’s moving in with Dad?”

  “No, into the house. He offered it to her. He’ll be in Ella’s.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t give me that WTF look. Talk to your father about it. Meanwhile, I hear they have Leo on suicide watch and he’s clammed up tight. He wants to take a lie detector test. I think they’re going to do that today or tomorrow.

  “That’s about it. I’ve got to get back.”

  Gull waited a moment, then scooped up some pasta. “All that, and I bet the only thing you’re thinking is your father’s going to be living with the hot redhead.”

  “Shut up. Besides, he’s just doing a favor for Mrs. Brakeman.”

  “Yeah, I bet it’s a real sacrifice. You know what I’m thinking?”

  Deliberately she stared up at the sky. “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do. I’m thinking, the way this is working out, I’ll move in with you. You’re going to have the room, then I can be closer to Marg and get this barbecue on a regular basis.”

  “I don’t think this is something to joke about.”

  “Babe, I never joke about barbecue.” He licked some off his thumb. “I wonder how a Fun World would go over in Missoula.”

  Rowan tried to squeeze out some stress by pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m losing my appetite.”

  “Too bad. Can I have the rest of your sandwich?”

  The snort of laughter snuck up on her. “Damn it. Every time I should be annoyed with you, you manage to slide around it. And no.” With a smirk, she stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth.

  “Just for that I’m going to get some pie. And I’m not bringing you any.”

  “You don’t have time.” She tapped her watch. “Briefing.”

  “I’ll take it to go.”

  He didn’t get her any pie, but he did bring her a slab of chocolate cake. They ate dessert out of their palms on the way to Ops.

  Jumpers poured out of the woodwork, heading in from the training field and track, striding out of the barracks, filing in from the loft. A grim-faced Cards, shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets, turned out of the ready room.

  Rowan nudged Gull’s arm with her elbow and shifted direction to intersect.

  “You look like somebody stole your last deck,” she commented.

  “Do you think I didn’t do my job? Didn’t pay attention to what I load?”

  “I know you did. You do.”

  “That equipment was inspected and checked. I’ve got the goddamn paperwork. I checked the goddamn manifest.”

  “Are you taking heat on this?” Rowan demanded.

  “It’s got to go up the chain, something like this, and when shit goes up the chain, the hook drops on somebody. What’re we supposed to do, check every valve, nozzle, cord and strap before we load it, when every damn thing’s been checked before it goes into rotation? Are we supposed to start everything up before we put it on the damn plane?

  “Fuck it. Just fuck it. I don’t know why I do this damn job anyway.”

  He stalked off, leaving Rowan looking after him with a handful of cake crumbs and smeared icing. “He shouldn’t take a knock for this. This is nobody’s fault except whoever messed up the equipment.”

  “He’s right about the way things drop back down the chain. Even if they pin it on Brakeman, on anybody, Cards could take a hit.”

  “It’s not right. L.B. will go to bat for him. It’s bad enough, what we’ve been dealing with, without one of us getting dinged for it.” She stared down at her chocolate-smeared hand. “Hell.”

  “Here.” Gull dug a couple of wet naps out of his pocket. “Some problems have easy solutions.”

  “He’s a damn fine jumper.” She swiped at the chocolate. “As good a spotter as they come. He can be annoyin
g with the card games and tricks, but he puts a lot into this job. More than most of us.”

  Gull could have pointed out that putting more than most into it meant Cards had regular and easy access to all the equipment, and that as spotter he hadn’t jumped the Alaska fire.

  No point in it, he decided. Her attachment there ran deep.

  “He’ll be all right.”

  They went into the building where people milled and muttered.

  He saw Yangtree sitting, rubbing his knee, and Dobie leaning against a wall, eyes closed in a standing-up power nap. Libby played around with her iPhone while Gibbons sat with a hip hitched on a counter, his nose in a book.

  Some drank coffee, some huddled in conversations, talking fire, sports, women—the three top categories—or speculating about the briefing to come. Some zoned out, sitting on the floor, backs braced against the wall or a desk.

  Every one of them had dropped weight since the start of the season, and plenty of them, like Yangtree, nursed aching knees. The smoke jumper’s Achilles’ heel. Strained shoulders, pulled hamstrings, burns, bruises. Some of the men had given up shaving, sporting beards in a variety of styles.

  Every one of them understood true exhaustion, real hunger, intense fear. And every one of them would suit up if the siren called. Some would fight hurt, but they’d fight all the same.

  He’d never known people so stubbornly resilient or so willing to put body, mind and life on the line, day after day.

  And more, to love it.

  “L.B. hasn’t started.” Matt maneuvered in beside him. “I thought I’d be late.”

  “Not yet. I didn’t expect to see you for a couple more days.”

  “I’m just in for this. L.B. wanted all of us, unless we caught a fire. What’s the word?”

  “As far as I know they’re still inspecting. They found a few more pieces of equipment tampered with.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Did your parents get in all right?” Rowan asked him.

  “Yeah. They’re over visiting with Shiloh. We’re going to take her out for a couple hours later, so she gets used to being with us. She’s already taken to my ma.”

  “How’s Mrs. Brakeman doing?”