“He’s sort of a communications wizard—worked as the com guy on his Green Beret team. He’s been working on the drones for a while now, hoping to use them to predict fire behavior. But, yeah, it could also be used to find Esther.”
Conner had started down the side of the gorge, gesturing for Liza and Skye to follow.
“You did the right thing, calling him,” Skye said. “And CJ. He’s great.”
Liza glanced over at her, couldn’t help the smile. Yeah, she’d worn the same silly expression when she’d met Conner. And it had only worsened as the Deep Haven fire ignited their friendship.
Friendship. They had been friends—the kind who knew each other’s stories. The ones that lurked in the darkness, the ones that still bruised with the telling.
I promise.
Oh, Conner.
See, that’s why a gal couldn’t escape falling for him—because the man led with his heart, despite what it cost him.
Like making a crazy, ill-advised promise to a sixteen-year-old kid.
Or responding to her panicked phone call with “I’ll be there.”
And maybe even taking her in his arms as the sun fell behind the red bluffs outside Sedona and kissing her. The kind of kiss that lit her entire body, that sometimes still made her lick her lips, the tingle, the taste of him right there, fresh, alive.
She probably shouldn’t blame him for panicking when he realized he’d gone too far—after all, she’d done the same thing when she realized just how much of her heart she’d handed over to him.
And now she’d dragged them right back into trouble.
She glanced at Conner, striding like a force through the woods some thirty yards ahead, followed closely by CJ, a younger, more cowboy version of his mentor.
“Yeah, CJ’s great,” Liza said. “Dependable, brave. But keep your heart in check, because guys like CJ—and Conner—thrive on saving the day. That’s what firefighters do—they’re heroes to the core. But you have to be willing to let them walk away. That’s their life—jump in, put out the fire, then move on to the next one. They can’t make you any promises.”
Skye frowned. “That’s a little harsh.”
It was? Liza shook her head. “I’m just trying to save you needless heartache. Smokejumpers are way too easy to fall for. But entanglements are the last thing they need, even if they are too nice to say it.”
Liza tendered a smile, hoping to ease her words, but Skye frowned. “Oh, I get it. CJ said you and Conner used to date. I understand. But I was just saying that CJ’s cute. And sweet. I’m not looking to hold onto him. A guy doesn’t have to promise me a ring for me to be his friend.”
Wow. She hadn’t realized she’d turned into such a jerk. But Skye was right. Liza knew she was playing with fire when she’d opened her heart to Conner. Knew that he couldn’t offer her more than just friendship. She’d set herself up for heartache and walked away from a friendship that he—and frankly, she too—enjoyed.
How many times had she answered the phone, listening to him wind down from a fire? Needing someone to listen, to care.
To let him know he wasn’t alone.
She caught up to him, downed branches and dry needles crackling under her boots. He glanced back, over his shoulder, and she gave him a smile.
Most of all, if he could make a promise, so could she—to help him keep that promise to save Esther.
Nothing more.
#
Half a mile from where Shep had fallen, the river flattened out, widening beneath the gorge. The water flowed around boulders jutting out from the rapids enough to serve as stepping-stones. Conner watched as CJ, then Skye rappelled down nearly fifty feet to the river basin, then worked their way across to the far bank.
CJ called in their position from the far side through the walkie. They’d already confirmed a rendezvous point two miles farther downstream should they not find Esther.
Please, let them find Esther. Something about Shep’s panicked voice, his pleading for a promise, had settled low in Conner’s gut, tightening as the sun sank into the Cabinet Mountains.
Below the cliff, the late hour turned the river to a deep indigo, almost black as it foamed and churned west toward the main river. Liza stood at the edge of the gorge scanning the basin for any sign of the girl.
A call to Pete on the walkie had yielded an update from Beck, who informed him that Pete had left in the camp pickup for Ember. He’d make an update via his cell phone to Beck, who would forward it to Conner.
This kind of wonky communication made Conner want to throw his walkie across the river and let out a scream—another reason to equip his drones with communication relay capabilities. Acting as a transponder in the sky, a communications drone just might save time and lives.
Not cost lives or start fires. Whatever the National Interagency Fire Center Arson team suspected, they’d guessed wrong.
But Conner couldn’t sit around waiting for them to clear him.
He knew exactly how effective the government could be at finding justice, thank you. The government didn’t have a prayer of getting their hands on his last working drone.
“The river only narrows from here, and the cliffs are higher,” Liza said, dropping the binoculars to hang around her neck.
“You know Esther. Could she climb out of the gorge?”
Liza lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “She’s probably scared and maybe hurt, and that rarely makes for rational thinking. She might have tried and fallen back in...” She caught her lip in her teeth, a shadow crossing her face.
Conner took her hand, the urge too great to stop himself.
“We’ll find her.” Then, because he didn’t want to add anything to it, he turned and tugged her along beside him.
Liza walked for a few feet, her hand tucked in his, and just when he thought she might acquiesce, let him settle into a place where their past didn’t jut up between them, she let go.
He clenched his fist before shoving it into his pocket. Walked out ahead of her.
They walked in silence, dread crawling into his bones as shadows crept from the folds of the forest.
It felt precariously like old times, when he needed the sound of her voice to break through the crusty layer of fatigue, of darkness. “What did you mean, you know I like sunrises?” he asked quietly.
He didn’t look at her, and for a long moment he couldn’t be sure she heard him.
Then, “Aside from the fact that...” She cleared her throat and spoke again, her voice kind. “You told me you did. That story, about your parents, that last summer they were alive. You took a trip to Mt. Rushmore, remember?”
He glanced over his shoulder, saw her smiling, and it lit a warmth in him he hadn’t realized he’d missed. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Of course I do. I remember... Well, maybe not everything, but most of your stories.”
His stories. The ones he’d told her as he lay in his bed, exhausted after a fire. Or if he had cell service, sitting by a campfire at a strike camp, sooty and on edge. He’d dredged the stories out of the dark places, just so he could keep her on the line.
“I remember most of yours, too. But...” He stopped, turned, and she nearly plowed into him. “But not the one about a pretty art student and a football player who had one thing on his mind.”
His voice had turned solemn, his chest tightening with each word.
Liza’s eyes widened. Then she shook her head, made to push past him. “It doesn’t matter—”
He grabbed her hand, stopping her. “It matters to me.”
She glanced at him, swallowed, and for a second, he saw it again—that expression he’d seen in the field, a crazy flash of what he could only name as fear.
Of him?
Then, just as fast, it vanished. Her mouth tightened to a thin line.
“It’s nothing.” She started again down the shore. “We have to find Esther. It’s getting dark.”
“We can look while you tell me why y
ou’re lying.”
She winced, shook her head, and looked away.
“Please? C’mon, Liza. I’m not the most sensitive guy, but even I can see that it’s eating at you.”
“Fine.” She angled her view down the river as she talked. “I was a sophomore in high school, and yes, it happened pretty much the way I said it. Except I went to an all-girls private art school, and he was from the neighboring high school. We met at a football game—I went with my roommate and some girls she knew. I had just moved from Minneapolis, my mom and stepdad were in the middle of a divorce and... Well, let’s say that I wasn’t welcome at home.”
Wasn’t welcome? He didn’t remember that part.
But she pushed on. “It was stupid. After the game, we went to a party, and I somehow found myself outside at the bonfire with this cute guy who was more interested in me than the party. He got my number and called the dorm. I was so flattered I didn’t stop to think that maybe he wasn’t being honest.”
Conner balled his fist in his pockets, a new kind of dread in his gut.
“But it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. I was young and pretty naive and suddenly…” She shook her head. “Let’s just say that when I figured out what he was doing, I didn’t know how to stop him.”
No! The word is No! He wanted to scream it out for her, but he could hardly breathe with the heat in his chest.
“Thankfully, we were at his dorm and his roommate walked in before...” She blew out a breath. “I ran all the way home—”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No! I was scared and...devastated. And I had nowhere to go so I just...I just stopped going out. I started spending more time in the art room...it was safe. I never saw him again.”
She stood on the shore, scanning the woods. “I don’t see her, Conner.”
He came up beside her. Called Esther’s name. It echoed against the cliff, eaten by the rush of the river.
Please, God, keep Esther safe. Help us find her.
“You should have told someone, Liza.” He didn’t mean for his words to emerge quite so sharp, but he didn’t know what else to do with the roiling in his chest.
She looked at him as if he’d suggested running naked through the school. “Are you kidding me? I was ashamed. I thought he liked me...I should have known better.”
Oh, Liza. “That’s not how a guy treats a girl he likes.”
Her mouth opened, and by the look she gave him, he knew he’d blown it. “Thanks. Thanks for that. I know, Conner. But I was fifteen, and I was a nerdy girl with stringy brown hair and thrift-store clothing who’d been sent to school to get away from my stepbrother’s lecherous friend. I didn’t know what love, or respect was. I just knew that I liked this boy way too much, and he used it against me.”
Conner swallowed, not sure where to put his emotions. Or the fact that his brain had stopped on lecherous friend. He took in a long breath.
“What?”
“Tell me about the lecherous friend.”
She frowned. “No. Listen, we have to find Esther!”
“We will. But once upon a time, we were friends, good friends, and then, suddenly we weren’t. And I still can’t quite figure out why. When I rewind it, all I see is us sitting together and me thinking about how amazing my life had suddenly turned out after everything I’d been through, and then we kissed. And the next day, you’re gone. Except now I’m starting to put the pieces together, and I’m beginning to see that maybe this had nothing to do with me and everything to do with some jerk in high school or with some lecherous friends of your stepbrother.”
She had stopped and now stared at him.
“Fine.” Her voice emerged so deadly calm it reached out and took hold of him, a fist around his heart, turning him cold.
“I told you how my mom worked at a camp, as an art teacher, right? Well, that’s where she met my stepdad. We’d attended camp for eight years, every summer after my dad died and my one friend was Charlie Bissel. His dad was the director, so he was stuck there all summer, too, and although he was two years older, he took me under his wing. He taught me to fish and ride a bike, and I taught him how to paint and sculpt, and we were inseparable. Until my mom fell in love with his dad and they got married.”
She stepped up to the river now and lifted her binoculars. Scanned the bank.
“Mom and I moved back to Minneapolis with Charlie and Doug. I was thirteen, in eighth grade, and just starting to fill out. But you know how middle-school girls are, all knobby-kneed, buck-toothed, and generally terrifying.”
“I can’t ever imagine you terrifying,” he said quietly.
She blinked at him, then her face tightened in a frown. “Stop it.”
Huh?
“Charlie started bringing his buddies over after school, and suddenly they started paying more attention to me than to him.”
Lecherous, she’d said. He swallowed back a spur of darkness.
“They’d find excuses to hang out with me or invite me to watch television, and Charlie changed. He got angry and sullen, and pretty soon he started ignoring me completely. I was devastated, so I started hanging around him more, hoping he’d pay attention to me. Which only meant that I was hanging around his buddies. I just wanted them to like me. By the time I was in tenth grade, I was one of the guys, or so I thought. Charlie was a senior by then, and, well, I guess I wasn’t the gangly middle-schooler anymore.”
She gestured to the walkie. “Check in with CJ.”
He caught up with CJ on the radio, and no, they hadn’t seen Esther or any sign of her.
“Maybe we need to spread out or one of us climb down there—” Liza said.
“Let’s keep moving.”
She nodded, silent, as if maybe he’d forgotten.
“What happened, Liza?”
She made a face. Sighed. “Charlie had a bunch of his buddies over to the house one night, and they’d stayed up late watching a movie. I sneaked down in my pajamas to get something to eat and...” She sighed again.
Oh no. He couldn’t breathe.
“One of his friends came into the kitchen. I think he might have been drinking, I don’t know, but he cornered me, put his hands on me—”
A word formed in his brain, and when she frowned at him, he realized he’d said it aloud.
“Sorry—”
“Yeah, well, me too, because Charlie came in, saw us, and lost it. It was awful. Just—I was screaming, and Charlie was slamming his friend against the wall—”
“I suddenly have a great fondness for your brother.”
“Stepbrother.” She looked away, and he thought he saw her whisk her hand across her cheek. “Charlie did love me, I know it. But by then, it was too late. Mom and Doug were already on the rocks, so Mom called a friend who ran this private school and sent me away. She and Doug separated shortly after.”
Liza looked at Conner then, her eyes shiny. “Last thing I remember was Doug hauling Charlie off his friend and Charlie screaming at me like it was my fault. And maybe he was right.”
“He wasn’t right. How on earth was that your fault?”
“I got too cozy with his buddies.”
Conner couldn’t help it, couldn’t rein in his words. “A randy high school boy decides to feel you up because you were his friend?”
She recoiled. “Uh no, because—because—”
“Geez, Liza. You are you not to blame for the fact some jerk put his hands on you. You were vulnerable and hurting and, sheesh—” He turned away, his chest tight, his hands clenched. Shook his head.
“If you only knew how amazing and kind and beautiful—I’m so sorry that a couple of jerks took advantage of that.”
Silence behind him. Finally, he turned back to her.
He wasn’t prepared for the anger that lined her face.
“Stop it,” she said again, this time quietly.
He frowned.
“Please, just stop it.”
“Stop what?”
&n
bsp; “Stop acting like you...like you care.”
“I do care. I—”
“Fine, you care. But stop being nice to me. Because you’re...you’re acting like you like me, and the fact is, it makes me too vulnerable. I wish I was strong, but I’m not. You do that, and I’m not strong enough to stay away from you.”
He couldn’t move. “I don’t want you to stay away from me.”
“Yes you do, Conner. You’re just too nice to say it. And I can’t go through that again.”
He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that you are who you are.”
“And who is that?”
“A great guy. But a guy who doesn’t want more than just right now. And I was too clingy.”
“You—what?”
“I read between the quotes. ‘I can’t make any promises,’ you said, and I was an idiot not to see it, not to figure it out. Especially when you told me...”
Now he was really confused, trying to wrap his brain around a conversation he only vaguely remembered having. “Figure out what?”
“You didn’t want to hurt me by saying good-bye.”
From her expression, she was serious.
“But I didn’t want you to say good-bye. I liked you.” He swallowed, pushed out the rest. “I still do.”
There. He said it, and it felt good, even healing. “We simply miscommunicated.”
Which meant, they could fix it. He could fix it. Get them back to where they’d left off.
For the first time since her call, the noose around his chest loosened.
He unclenched his hand, the urge to reach for her coursing through him.
Except she didn’t respond, her face didn’t light up with sweet realization of his uttered feelings.
Instead, she offered him a sad smile. “I know you did. Just not enough.”
He gaped at her. Huh?
“See?”
“No, I don’t see. What does that even mean, not enough? Enough for what? To want to spend time with you? To call you every time I got off the fire line, hoping I’d hear your voice? To track you down in Arizona and drive a hundred miles just to take you out for dinner, or go hiking, or even skydiving? Because I did, Liza. I liked you enough.”
Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) Page 12