Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  Instead, she’d done the only thing she was capable of doing.

  She’d walked through the little town, leaving Mickey to return the kayaks and other gear. A few people greeted her, but she didn’t know anyone here and just kept walking with only a nod of acknowledgment.

  When she reached the oddly named B&B, the Bookish Bed and Breakfast, she looked at the shower. The one that she’d been looking forward to showering in with Mickey.

  Instead, though it was still mid-morning, she crawled into her room—their room, his pack resting on the floor reminded her. She set his pack against the outside of the door and bolted it before crawling into bed.

  Robin didn’t cry. Didn’t believe in crying because it certainly never fixed anything. Crying is weakness! And though her eyes burned and her nose ran, she lay there under the covers until she finally lost herself in the oblivion of sleep.

  * * *

  Mickey had thought to return the gear and slink away. He’d seen Robin walk off to the B&B without a word. Maybe what he’d do was go sleep in his helo. Or call up Tim the smokejumper and see if the Alaska Fire Service needed some air drops until the next MHA call.

  Maybe he’d go find Vern and get good and truly shit faced.

  Maybe he’d find a bottle of scotch and do it all by himself.

  They’d pulled out on the riverbank right across the road from French Pete’s restaurant-bar. He carted the gear back up onto the porch, stuffed it down beneath the blue truck hood that might have dated back to the 1930s, complete with a Plymouth winged victory chrome ornament—all that was missing was the truck. Who knows, maybe it was somewhere here under all this crap.

  And then he stood there without a clue what to do.

  Well, if he was going to get plastered, he was standing on the front porch of a bar.

  He shouldered his way in through the front door, raised a hand once in case anyone was calling his name, and went up to the bar.

  A tough-looking man sat behind the bar playing chess with a girl who sat on a high stool across from him.

  “Scotch,” Mickey managed with a throat that had gone unexpectedly gruff with the morning’s disuse. He tried clearing his throat but it didn’t help. “Glass and a bottle”—he considered a moment—“without the glass.”

  The man looked at him for a long moment before turning back to the game and moving one of his pawns. Then he reached back without leaving his stool, snagged a heavy stoneware mug, and filled it from a nearby pot of black coffee.

  Mickey looked down at the cup in front of him and back up at the bartender.

  The man’s eyes were clear brown, frank, and assessing. At first, Mickey thought this was going to turn into a confrontation—maybe with him beating the shit out of the guy and climbing over the bar himself to grab the bottle he wanted, that he could see sitting on the back shelf.

  But the guy simply waited.

  The little girl, maybe ten years old, waited as well. Neither one was watching the board; they were both watching him.

  “That’s better for what ails you, lad,” the bartender offered in a laconic tone. “Trust me, I know.” And then he and the girl turned back to their game.

  Mickey stared at the cup for a long moment before reaching for the sugar. No packets around—not white, blue, yellow, or pink. There was only one of those old-fashioned glass jars with the silver lid. He poured a healthy spoonful and began stirring it in.

  He prepared himself for sludge but instead tasted a fine French roast—that he’d pretty much murdered with a sludge-load’s worth of sugar.

  He set the mug down on the bar as the floor creaked behind him. Mickey braced himself for one of Vern’s friendly slaps on the back, sure to be accompanied by a knowing nod and wink.

  That would be good.

  Because then Mickey could beat the shit out of him. He’d never actually been in a bar brawl before, but this felt like his moment. He clenched his fists in preparation.

  But instead of a heavy slap, the person moved from behind him and levered herself awkwardly up onto the stool on the side away from the chess game.

  “Emily? What are you doing here?”

  “I flew up to visit my husband.”

  “You flew? In your state?” She’d gotten bigger in the week since he’d last seen her.

  “On an airplane!”

  “Oh.” Duh.

  “Now that the pleasantries are over. What the hell did you do to my pilot?”

  “Does the whole goddamn world have to be mad at me?” He spun back to face his mug of coffee and stared across the bar at the scotch. Sitting right there, snuggled up between the Kentucky bourbon and the Irish whiskey.

  Another glance at the bartender was answered with a shake of the man’s head even though he hadn’t looked up from his chess game. Mickey sipped his saccharine coffee.

  Actually, having Emily Beale mad at him was a new one.

  “You”—the ire in her tone forced him to turn back to her as assuredly as if she had grabbed his chin and yanked—“mess up my new pilot so badly that she doesn’t even recognize me waddling down the street? You’ve earned a great deal to answer for, Mr. Hamilton.”

  Telling her that the way she walked had nothing to do with waddling and a great deal to do with striking terror into people didn’t seem like a good approach at the moment.

  As a matter of fact, he had no idea what was a good approach at the moment. He was ready to take someone apart just on general principles. But not a pregnant lady. Where was Vern when he needed someone to pound on?

  Or the fuck-’em-and-run excuse of a father who’d messed with Robin’s head in the first place? He was gonna hunt down the little shit and break him into teeny-tiny fireman bits and then bury his ass under a four-hundred-gallon load of retardant.

  “Mickey!” Emily’s call for his attention woke something deeper. It woke the memory of Robin tossing his food and his heart into the goddamn river and denying who she was.

  “I? Me?” He spun to face the only target he had. “This is somehow my fault?” His voice was climbing to a full shout and he was helpless to stop it. “I tell her I love her and this is what I get?”

  Emily didn’t even blink, like she was studying a toad.

  “Fine! To hell with her and to hell with you.”

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  Sorry, he mouthed to the kid, who just shrugged. Hanging out in a bar, she’d clearly heard worse language. He shoved off the stool and headed for the door.

  Vern came up to him, and Mickey didn’t care if it was going to be a friend’s commiseration of What’s wrong, buddy? or a What the fuck, dude?—he didn’t need either one. He shoved Vern hard in the center of the chest and sent him flying backward into a chair that would have dumped him to the floor if he hadn’t banged hard up against a wall first.

  Mickey pounded out the door and looked up and down the street. No liquor store.

  The only gin joint in town was the one behind him.

  Fine.

  He took a right and walked down the street.

  Past the point where Robin had walked away from him, he headed out of town.

  Chapter 12

  Robin ignored the knock that had woken her and the rattle of the doorknob that followed. After a long moment, a set of heavy steps walked back down the hallway and thudded slowly down the stairs.

  About a minute later, the heavy footsteps returned and she heard a key unlock the door.

  Didn’t Mickey get that his pack outside the door meant go away?

  A chair scraped on the wooden floor and creaked as someone sat in it close beside the bed.

  Go away, Mickey.

  She kept her head under the covers. It was hot under here with all her clothes on, but Robin was not going to talk to Mickey while she lay in a bed. They had made love in tents and
under the stars along the banks of Larch Creek in both broad daylight and soft twilight. They had yet to do so in a bed and she sure wasn’t going to start a fight from one.

  Go away, Mickey! Robin tried to think it louder, loud enough that he’d hear it.

  It didn’t seem to be working.

  Well, Mr. I’m-So-Patient-And-Calm, you’re just going to have to get the message at some point.

  He hadn’t even fought for her. She’d dumped his food, been a stonewalled bitch, and he’d let her get away with it like some kind of spoiled brat.

  “It’s not that I’m spoiled,” she told the corner of the pillow that was under the covers with her.

  Or had she hurt him so badly he wasn’t able to respond? She didn’t like that idea at all.

  “Then what are you?” The tone of the voice, muffled by the blankets over her head, was so unexpected that, for a half moment, she thought just maybe the pillow was answering.

  She lifted a corner to peek out.

  “Emily?”

  She couldn’t account for how Mickey Hamilton had transformed into Emily Beale. Robin went back under the covers but figured that was too chickenshit, even for her. Tossing back the sheet and too-warm blanket, she sat up and dropped her feet to the floor, still clad in boots muddy from the riverbank.

  “Crap!”

  “You’re a mess, Robin.”

  “Thanks for flying all the way to Alaska to tell me something I already know, Emily. Really helps.”

  “Tell me about the fire.”

  Robin eyed her for a moment.

  No hint of sarcasm or humor. No…

  “Shit! Next you’re going to say Tell me about your homeworld, Usul.”

  “Fine, we can talk about the Dune books and the sandworms first if you’d like, but I’d rather talk about the fire.”

  Robin rubbed her face, trying to shake off the last vestiges of the nap. She felt thick, confused. “Because you know if you asked about Mickey, I’d throw your ass out of here.”

  “I will say three things to that. First, I’m not stupid. Second, I’m pregnant, soon to be bigger than a Russian Mil Mi-26 super heavy-lift helicopter, so please throw gently. Third, you may find that I don’t throw so easily because I’m at least as nasty as you are.”

  “Yeah right.” Robin went to the small sink in the corner of the brightly decorated room. It was her first good look at it—room decor hadn’t been at the top of her list when she’d arrived—and she definitely wasn’t ready for the results.

  It was a room of Pooh. Not just in little ways, a stuffed animal here and a lithograph there. And it wasn’t just cutesy touches like pinecone-shaped soap and towels with large, black bear paw prints as if they’d been muddy like the impressions her boots had left on the sheets. Nothing at all Disney about it.

  A whole corner of the room had been reshaped to look like a tree had grown right into the side of the house, with a hole high on the side and a crooked sign that said “The Wolery.” There was a spinney thicket in the other corner, mostly made of pussy willow branches, that had what might or might not have been a woozle peeking out from among them.

  There was an actual round hole in the wall above the head of the bed with a small Kanga and Roo peeking out and an empty larder just visible inside.

  “Please tell me your room isn’t like this one.” She kept her back to Emily as she braced herself against the sink and tried not to look in the mirror. She’d actually be happier if—ha! There was one Mickey hadn’t come up with—Christopher Robin looked back out at her. She certainly wasn’t ready to face herself.

  “No.” Emily spoke as if this was somehow a rational place and a rational conversation. “We’re in the land of The Little Prince complete with baobab trees, a beautiful and rather vain rose under a glass dome, and most of an airplane. Tessa sleeps in the cockpit, and our bed is on one of the wings. Thankfully there is no giant snake that has swallowed an elephant whole.”

  “I can’t imagine you being nasty.” She grimaced a little at her early nickname of Queen Bitch Beale, but that had been before she knew Emily. “In what ways are you nasty?”

  * * *

  “One step closer, Henderson, and I will not be accountable for my actions.” Mickey sat on the riverbank across the road from the aircraft hangars that used the way into town as a runway. The helicopters parked out back, and his key to the Twin 212 was in his pack back at the B&B.

  Useless!

  Mark stopped three paces away and Mickey refused to look up. He’d only see his own face reflected in Henderson’s mirrored shades.

  “You know.”

  Mark tucked his hands in his jeans pockets and turned to look out over the river.

  Mickey had been watching a wolf slip silently through the thick stands of yellow larch trees on the other side of the river. No bridge across, the town was on this side and the steeply rising wilderness just fifty feet away on the other.

  “I think you’re only the second person to ever have yelled at Emily.”

  Mickey felt really lousy about that. She’d done nothing to earn the rough edge of his tongue, but he’d needed someone to lash out at.

  Mark finally sat two paces off, also facing across the water.

  “What did she do when you yelled at her?”

  “You think I’m a madman? That’s the most dangerous woman I ever met. I’m not suicidal enough to think that yelling at Emily Beale is any kind of a long-term survival tactic.”

  “Then who was first?”

  “Childhood friend named Peter Matthews. Now that’s a seriously brave man.”

  “Peter Matthews.” Someone that Mark Henderson considered to be brave must be something. “What? Like the President?”

  “One and the same.”

  Mickey had meant it as a joke. A look at Mark showed that it wasn’t.

  “They grew up next door to each other,” Mark explained as if this was somehow normal.

  President of the United States Peter Matthews? “What did she do to him?”

  “Married me. That seemed to upset him quite a bit. Though the yelling was back when they were kids and apparently had something to do with a brand-new pair of sneakers, the DC Reflecting Pool, and several policeman. She still calls him Sneaker Boy to this day.”

  Emily with a sense of humor was almost as hard to imagine as anyone calling the President that.

  “First time I let her know my feelings for her, it went about as well as it looks like your attempt did.”

  Mickey was absolutely not ready to talk about Robin. He tried to wait out Henderson as the wolf slipped away through the larches and out of sight. They were left with only the flowing river to watch.

  Mark didn’t explain and Mickey couldn’t help himself; he finally took the obvious bait.

  “So what did Emily do?”

  “We were on an aircraft carrier when I kissed her. She slammed me facedown into a ready-room table, then stalked out, climbed into an F/A-18F Super Hornet, and catapulted out of my life.”

  “Yeah,” Mickey agreed, never having even seen an aircraft carrier except on TV and in the movies. “I hate it when that happens.”

  * * *

  Robin moved to the bed and sat on it facing Emily. She did her best to ignore the small piglet peering worriedly up at her from under Emily’s chair.

  “You really did that to him? Planted his face hard?”

  Emily nodded.

  “Damn. Knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  And Emily smiled at her.

  Somehow that was all it took for all the pain and anger and hurt to just wash out of her.

  “I like you too, Robin.”

  “Well…” Robin looked for something do with her hands. She took one of the small Pooh pillows that she’d strewn to the floor—this one was hexagonal and made of honey
comb material that looked as if it was really dripping with honey—and gestured for Emily to lean forward. Robin slipped it down behind Emily’s back. “Don’t get all mushy on me, okay?”

  “That’s not the sort of women we are.”

  We? “How did you just do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Uh-huh. No Emily games. How did you just make me feel so goddamn important? No, important is the wrong word. So…pleased with who I am.”

  “That’s what I expected you to find in the fire.” Emily shrugged. “That’s part of why I wouldn’t let Mark fly with you. You were supposed to discover that for yourself. Reconnect with the soldier in you who knows who you are.”

  “Well, it was working until I was a total shit to Mickey this morning.” Which she so wasn’t going to talk about.

  Robin shed her boots, made the bed after brushing out the worst of the mostly dry dirt, and propped up some pillows of her own to lean back against the headboard. There was another chair she could have dragged over, but she didn’t want to disturb Eeyore, who was sleeping curled up beneath it. She reached up a hand to tickle Roo’s nose where his stuffed head poked out of the hole in the wall. She really was a basket case.

  “Maybe I did learn some things. The fire was harsh; the bastard fought us for a week. But the team, damn, Emily, the team you’ve put together. There’s nothing they can’t do.”

  “I know.”

  “She knows.” Robin eyed her carefully but could detect neither sarcasm nor smugness.

  Simple fact. If Emily Beale said it, what more was there to question?

  “Mickey”—she managed to say his name without wincing this time—“thought you wouldn’t let Mark train me because he wasn’t a natural pilot and I was.”

  “And what’s your assessment?”

  “Mickey is perceptive in a lot of ways.” And she needed to change the topic fast. “But if anyone’s a natural, it’s him. He’s almost as good as you are. And me? I’m not a natural anything. I’m not buying that explanation, even if Mickey did.”

  “Knew you weren’t stupid.” Emily settled back in her chair and rested her hands on her belly.