Brandon's Bride

by Alicia Scott

  "He probably killed Al Simmons."

  She cupped his cheek and felt him tremble.

  "My wife probably died because of what he did!"

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tight.

  "You, your barn, your ranch. It's all his bloody fault. It's all his damn, bloody fault!"

  "Brandon, I love you."

  He put his arms around her harshly. She thought he would kiss her savagely, and she was prepared. But he buried his face against her neck, and she felt his shoulders begin to shake.

  "Come to bed, Ferringer. Come to bed."

  She stripped his clothes slowly in the moonlight. Then he was gripping her face, angling her head. He kissed her fiercely. This was Brandon Ferringer, raw, live and in person.

  This was the man she loved.

  They fell onto the bed, his clothes hastily pulled from his frame, her legs curving around his waist, her hands guiding him inside her.

  The first penetration was like silk. They stopped, they gasped, they enjoyed the pure, exquisite beauty. Then slowly, he began to move inside her, and she held his face in her hands, staring into his eyes while he filled her, stretched her and consumed her.

  His body bowed. She dug her teeth into her lower lip, wanting to prolong it, but the climax slapped her hard. She expelled her breath in a rush, and he bit back his gasping release in the silence. He fell on her heavily, and she stroked his sweat-streaked back.

  "It's okay. It's okay," she whispered.

  "I won't let anything happen to you," he said. "I'll protect you."

  "Of course, Ferringer. Of course."

  She held him until he fell asleep, but the night was long. He woke up four times, jerking in the throes of some nightmare and calling various names. Sometimes it was Julia. Sometimes it was Victoria. And once it was Ashley Jacobs.

  At six, she woke up to the sound of beeping. Brandon was already struggling out of bed. He found the beeper in the pile of clothes, glanced at the number and began pulling on his clothes. A hotshot saw thirty to fifty fires a season.

  He stood, and their gazes met.

  "I have to," he said simply.

  "I know."

  "My team."

  "I know."

  "Victoria, I love you, too."

  He strode out the door.

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  "C.J.'s taxidermy. You snuff 'em, we stuff 'em."

  "C.J.!" Brandon yelled into his cell phone above the roar of the plane engine.

  "Brandon? Where the hell are you calling from, a Laundromat?"

  "An airplane."

  "Oh. Of course. Back to Indonesia?"

  "Colorado."

  "Hmm. Looking for real estate investments?"

  "Putting out wildland fires."

  "Well, that was going to be my next guess."

  "I'm a hotshot, remember?"

  "You mean you actually did that?" C.J. sounded impressed, not a feeling he bestowed upon Brandon often. "Congrats, man. That's serious stuff. So wait a minute—you're on the way to a fire now?"

  "Yes." Brandon twisted away from his team and cupped his hand over the phone. What he was going to say next he didn't want overheard. But he hadn't had time to make the call from the ground. "C.J., someone's trying to kill me."

  "You mean Lydia finally figured out that social security windfall was from you?"

  "No, C.J. I mean someone is trying to kill me. I've found out about Max."

  At the other end, through the static there was stunned silence.

  Brandon spoke as calmly as possible. "Our father was a government agent of some kind, an assassin. He came to Beaverville in 1959 with his two best friends, Al Simmons and Bud Irving. They fell in love with the same woman, the woman from the locket. Bud married her and retired from the business. Al went berserk. Bud thinks Max killed him."

  "God," C.J. said.

  "I need to learn more, C.J. Do you have any military contacts, anyone who can ask around?"

  "I don't know, Brandon. Government agents are serious suits. I'm just a former Marine. We don't exactly do lunch."

  "C.J., I'm in trouble. Someone's been tampering with my equipment. Then a man shot at me, but someone shot him in the back and killed him. I thought maybe Bud Irving was the shooter, but he's not. In short, there's someone else out there I haven't identified yet, and whoever he is, he's playing for keeps."

  "That's it. I'll be on the next plane."

  "No. Listen to me. Find out what you can from your end. If I can figure out who we're dealing with, maybe I can get them to call off the dogs. Someone killed my wife to keep Max's secret. I want to know who that is. Do you understand?"

  C.J. understood too well. Someone had gone after Tamara once. He had paid.

  "I need you to do something else," Brandon said quietly.

  C.J. was still. Two requests for help in a single phone call. Send your brother to Oregon, and he comes back a whole new man. "I'm listening."

  "There's another woman."

  "Really?"

  Brandon ignored C.J.'s shock. "Her name is Victoria Meese. She lives in Beaverville with her son, Randy. If anything happens to me, I want you to make sure she's taken care of. And my estate… I love her, C.J. Make sure."

  "God, Brandon, you have been busy."

  "Promise—"

  "Brandon, nothing will happen to her. You have my word. Now, let me come out there—"

  "Her father's the sheriff. He's taking care of her for now. I could be in Colorado for who knows how long. Make the phone calls, C.J. That's what I need. Names."

  "Then I'll start at the bottom end of the Pentagon's food chain and work my way up. Something will fall down."

  "Give my regards to Tamara. And, if anything happens, tell Maggie I'm sorry I traveled so much. She was right. I shouldn't have shut you all out."

  "It's okay. We understood."

  "Yes, but you shouldn't have had to."

  Brandon hung up. For some reason, his hands were shaking. He folded up the cell phone. Business was attended to. Victoria would be taken care of. C.J. would push the investigation forward. Everything was under control.

  He turned to find Coleton staring at him. "Getting your affairs in order, rich Brit? It's just a measly fire."

  He grinned, and the scars on his face twisted. The plane began to descend.

  "Time to deal," Brandon said, straight-faced.

  Coleton's grin spread. "That's right. Time to deal."

  * * *

  The crew was strangely quiet when they deplaned. Already they could smell acrid smoke and burning pine. A low, dense smog hung in the air, and embers of burned grass floated around their cheeks. This area contained lots of dense timber, which created intense heat. If the wind picked up, the fire might crown or create fire whirls or both. Then the air temperature would reach two thousand degrees, devouring all the oxygen and burning out a man's lungs without ever touching a hair on his head.

  They shouldered their twenty-five-pound packs and got moving.

  Even Woody looked nervous.

  * * *

  Victoria picked up the phone on the third ring. Randy was enthusiastically devouring his oatmeal at the kitchen table. She'd merely been toying with hers. She missed Brandon.

  "Hello?"

  "Vic, honey, is Brandon there?"

  She relaxed at the sound of her father's voice. "Ferringer got called to a fire. The team just flew out."

  Her father was silent for a minute.

  "Anything wrong?"

  "Well," he said slowly, "it turns out we got a witness."

  "To the shooting?" She was honestly surprised. Randy perked up, looking startled.

  "Is there a break in the case?" Randy asked in a perfect stage whisper. She nodded vigorously.

  "Turns out some kid was out bird shooting. Saw a man ahead, carrying a Remington and trying to cover his tracks. The kid thought that was a little strange, reported to his father, and his father called me this morning. It
's the right time and area for your incident."

  "Who'd he see?" she asked breathlessly.

  "Tom Reynolds."

  * * *

  "Okay, hotshots, here's the drill." At twelve hundred, Superintendent Coleton Smith paced in front of his team armed with a topography map of the area and their undivided attention. Everyone was in full gear and wearing their packs. In fifteen minutes, they would join two other hotshot crews and one Smokejumper team. Already, a hundred acres burned.

  "This fire is slow and hot. It was started by lightning just twenty-four hours ago, so there could be more sleepers and spot fires waiting to happen."

  The crew nodded. When lightning struck a dead tree surrounded by light brush, the falling embers immediately caught the bush and burst into flame. But sometimes the tree was surrounded by rocky terrain or pine needles—more stubborn fuel materials. In that case, the burning embers from the tree would fall upon the pine needles and slowly cook, building up heat and fuel over time until suddenly, a fresh whiff of air hit the embers and the pine needles burst into flame. A new ground fire was born—sometimes three hours after the initial lightning storm, sometimes three weeks.

  Sleepers didn't start big, but they could become big if not spotted and handled. Then multiple fires burned in multiple places, calling to one another. The heat of the fire built a vacuum and sucked more fire toward it. Hotshot crews became boxed in. Team members got cut off. Life became tricky.

  "The terrain is tough," Coleton announced. He didn't like this fire. It was obvious from his expression, and he wasn't about to sugarcoat it. "It started in a canyon with dense timber. It's damn hot, moving half a mile an hour and running three hundred degrees. We got the river on the west for a natural fire line. Now it's already crested one ridge to the north and is moving down that side of the canyon." He illustrated the progress of the fire on the map, then halted at a point by the river. He tapped it twice. "You will hike in from a river landing. The gulch rises up to five thousand feet and bottoms out at three thousand. That is steep."

  They all nodded. That was steep.

  "The good news is that that side of the gulch is rocky and has only sporadic coverage of pine and fir—smaller trees only six to eight inches in diameter. The bad news is that the whole damn area is covered with cheatgrass and bunchgrass." He smiled grimly. "At least it's not August."

  The crew didn't return his smile. People were exchanging glances. Grass fires made a hotshot nervous.

  In the beginning, timber fires were what people feared—the heat and the intensity of a thick patch of Douglas fir catching flame. Those fires grew so hot they devoured everything in their paths, making trees pop and boulders tumble. But like a big dumb jock, a timber fire lumbered along slowly and awkwardly, giving crews plenty of time to plan, dig fire lines, lay hoses and trap the beast.

  Grass fires, on the other hand… In the forestry service's history, more men had died in grass fires than timber. Grass fires didn't produce much heat, but fed by light, dry fuel, they wicked over the terrain faster than the speed of sound, sometimes brushing over houses so quickly the roofs smoked but never caught.

  A grass fire could fry, however, and moving at phenomenal speeds, it easily gained on fire crews running for their lives, tapping them on the shoulder and consuming them whole.

  Timber and grass. Heat and speed. No, the hotshot team was not happy.

  "Close to the top of the ridge is rocky terrain," Coleton continued, stabbing a spot on the topography map. "Stick toward the top. If the fire gets out of hand, it's as good a safety zone as you're going to get."

  He picked up four handheld radios and tossed them. Woody caught one. Brandon got one, and Larry and Trish took the other two.

  "That's all the communication equipment we got," Coleton said, and the team groaned. "Hey," he snapped. "Be happy we got four. Budget cuts aren't designed to make our lives easier. Woody, Brandon, Larry, Trish, stand up. Woody, you're crew boss. Ferringer, you serve as second. Okay, folks, make sure one of these people is in your sight at all times. We got the national forecaster monitoring this situation every second. A warm front is currently sitting tight over the area, building up the heat. If a cold front moves in…"

  People nodded. If a cold front moved in, the wind would kick up, hit the crown fire and turn it into a blowout. Wonderful.

  "If the wind even hiccups," Coleton vowed, "we'll send out the call and get your butts outta there. Is that clear?"

  That was clear.

  "This fire is high risk," Coleton added. "Make sure you got your fire shields. And if things get out of hand, remember, you have four choices. Get to the safety zone. Start a backfire. Start an escape fire. And if all that fails, turn and hit the fire on your terms. Find the thinnest wall of flames, trust your fire suits, and run through the flames to the black. Do not let the fire pick the time and place it meets you. Because if you let it catch you, it's gonna hit you with the hottest, fastest, fiercest section, and you cannot wade through a three-hundred-foot front.

  "Okay, folks. One fries, we all fry."

  They stood. Brandon clipped the radio to his belt and they assumed formation. Woody, as crew boss, took the front. It was his job to size up the fire and spot threats. The most veteran member of the crew and a permanent employee, he would formulate the strategy for the fire line and give orders.

  Brandon brought up the rear. As second, his job was to make sure that all seventeen crew members were following orders and that no one was left behind.

  It was eleven in the morning. Most likely, they would work straight through the night.

  Charlie fell in beside Brandon along with Larry. Both carried chain saws, which meant they walked toward the rear where no one could trip and fall onto the vicious equipment.

  Brandon carried a Pulaski and a first-aid kit and his pack. Twenty-five pounds of gear.

  "No laughs today," Charlie muttered as they moved toward launch point.

  No one disagreed.

  * * *

  "Vic, meet Tom Reynolds. Retired Agent Reynolds, CIA."

  "Huh?" Victoria looked at her favorite chocolate soda vendor blankly, then turned to her father. He'd asked her to come down to his small two-room sheriff's office to hear Tom's story. Apparently, it was some story. "You're kidding, right?"

  Her father held up a fax. "Got the verification right here."

  The fax from the Central Intelligence Agency stated that Tom Reynolds was recently reactivated and not to be bothered. They'd included his fingerprints to confirm his identity.

  Tom smiled pleasantly. "Kind of shocking, isn't it?"

  Victoria took a seat. "What the hell is going on? This is Beaverville, for God's sake. You own the general store!"

  "I do," Tom said. "That isn't a lie. I retired from the CIA fifteen years ago and moved here to live quietly. Admittedly, I was given an extra retirement stipend to monitor Bud Irving while I was at it."

  "Bud Irving is CIA?"

  "Former. He retired in 1959. But he had contact with Agent Maximillian Ferringer and Agent Al Simmons. Given the mystery surrounding both men's disappearance, we figured Bud was our best chance of learning more."

  "Oh, boy," Victoria said.

  Her father added, "Better start at the beginning, Tom. Er, Agent Reynolds."

  "Tom is fine." Tom got comfortable on the hard wooden seat. He looked from the sheriff to Victoria to the sheriff. "You have to understand, this doesn't leave this room. I'm only telling you because I've seen you with Brandon Ferringer, and I think you can help."

  "We can help," Victoria said forcefully.

  "Then here we go. As I told you, Vic, 1959 was a big year. Not because three of our agents fought over the same woman, but because of the results. Bud Irving married her, resigned his post and ran away with Ashley Jacobs to live under an assumed identity in Canada. Maximillian went to England. Al seemed to be continuing his job, but then we started to hear some nasty rumors.

  "We began to tail Agent Simmons, and by 1965
it was clear he'd become a KGB mole. Furthermore, he was actively trying to locate Bud Irving and Ashley Jacobs.

  "We did what we could, of course, assigning Agent Ferringer to the case, since he knew Al best and could anticipate him. He followed Simmons for many years, trying to pinpoint who he was working with and if there were additional CIA turncoats. We don't like to admit to such things, of course."

  "Of course," Victoria said dryly.

  "In 1968, Simmons disappeared. Max lost him cold. Then, just eight months later, Ashley Jacobs disappeared, and we knew it must be Al. Ferringer took it personally. He'd failed his watch. But the organization had had enough at that point, too. It was decided that Simmons was too dangerous to be left alive and the assignment went to code red—kill on sight. In 1970, two agents tracked down Al Simmons and planted a car bomb. The car went up, but Simmons's body was never found. We suspected he might be still alive. When Maximillian Ferringer disappeared in 1972, we knew the truth—Al Simmons was very much alive and still one step ahead."

  "Sounds like you guys are just brilliant," Victoria muttered.

  "The loss of Agent Ferringer was taken very seriously in the organization," Tom said levelly. "Al Simmons is good, though, very good. We'd given up on ever finding him when Brandon Ferringer suddenly started asking questions. Then, a month ago, we learned a hit had been placed on his head and he was coming here. I was reactivated, given that I already lived here and knew the situation. My assignment has been to monitor Brandon Ferringer, protect him and see if Al Simmons emerges to take the bait."

  "You're using Brandon Ferringer as bait?" Victoria scowled.

  Tom shrugged. "He stepped into the fray voluntarily. We would be fools not to take advantage of the situation."

  "Get to the shooting," Sheriff Meese interrupted.

  "The man I shot was Ray Bands, a longtime hit man. I think he was responsible for the accidents, as well. It took me a bit to catch on to his presence." He added a trifle defensively, "I have been retired for fifteen years."

  "What about Al Simmons?" Victoria prodded. "Have you seen any sign of him? Is he around?"

  For the first time, Tom appeared troubled. "I have a new theory," he said quietly. "But it shames me to admit to it."