He had his hand cupped around her neck and moved in, his arms around her. Hers slid around his waist as she lifted her head, making a small sound he hoped might be delight.
Desire.
His kiss deepened and he nudged her mouth open, let his tongue taste her, a brush of sensation that lit his chest on fire. His entire body tingled with the sense of her touch, the way she made him feel whole and not at all like a broken guy who couldn’t make—or keep—promises.
Conner wanted to weep with the longing for them to figure out how to put what they could have had back together, for him to have enough faith to believe in an ending that didn’t end in tragedy, in breaking promises. Or both their hearts.
His fingers tangled in her hair, and he pulled away, pressing his forehead to hers, his chest rising and falling with his captured breath. “I love…” Oh. He wanted to say it, felt the word bloom in the center of his chest. Stuck. “…kissing you. Probably too much.”
Liza caught her lip in her teeth, but a smile broke through and she nodded. “You are dangerous to a girl’s heart, Conner Young.”
Oh, but he didn’t want to be.
And still the word lodged there. You. I love you—and was trying to figure out how to free it when CJ’s walkie, now hooked to his belt, crackled to life.
“Brooks, Young. Are you there, Conner?”
Liza stepped away from him as he turned, scooped up the radio, his heart still ranging about his chest, unhinged.
“I’m here, Pete.” Conner cleared his throat, tried to find his moorings, glanced at Liza walking away. He could still feel her curves against him, the smell of her hair, the taste—
“Give us your position. Gilly’s going to drop me back in, and I’ll hike to you. Please advise.”
Right. He’d spent the better part of the last hour sitting in front of the campfire—which he’d worked back into a small blaze—figuring out their position.
“Give me a second.” He pulled out the map and guesstimated.
“We’re about eight clicks by air from Shep’s point of extraction, below the next falls.”
Silence over the line. Then, “Gotcha. According to the topo map, there’s a clearing about a half-click to your northeast.” Pete read off coordinates.
Conner found the place on his map. “Roger that.”
“We’ll leave in ten—I’ll meet you there ASAP.”
Conner confirmed, clicked off.
He turned back around, found his compatriots standing by the fire, eyes alight.
“Today we find Esther,” he said. Then he looked at Liza. “And we find her together.”
Chapter 13
A white chute opened up against the arch of the blue sky, glazed with a thin layer of clouds, and with it blossomed a thrill of hope inside Liza.
Yes, like Conner said, today they’d find Esther. She’d be okay, they’d get back to camp, and then...
She wouldn’t think about then. Just now and watching Pete drop from the sky. Liza stood with her hand tented over her eyes as the plane dipped a wing and banked to circle for another drop.
Behind her, Conner confirmed Pete’s chute opening to the pilot—she recognized Gilly’s name—and requested her to drop the gear pack.
“I think I have to be a smokejumper when I grow up,” Skye said from behind Liza.
“You’re looking at the fun part,” said CJ. “Try dropping into a roaring blaze armed with just an ax and a couple of squirt guns.”
“And a chain saw,” Conner added from a few feet away. About fifty feet wide, the meadow was bordered on all sides by shaggy black pine and stands of aspen. A mountain creek about five feet wide crevassed the middle.
Pete angled his chute perfectly into the drop zone, landed, and rolled. In a slick acrobatic move that reminded Liza of Conner, Pete popped up. He hauled in his parachute, unclipping himself from his harness as Conner watched the metal drone box drop.
CJ and he went to retrieve it.
Pete had pulled off his helmet in favor of a gimme cap shoved into his leg pocket. He’d knotted his golden hair at the nape of his neck and wore a two-day grizzle on his chin. As he shed his jumpsuit, he looked at them and cast a grin that could take most any other girl off her feet. “Hey, ladies.”
“Yeah, I definitely need to get into smokejumping,” Skye said.
CJ and Conner hauled the gear box to the center of the field.
They set it on the ground and opened it. Inside, cushioned in foam lay a long white cylinder attached to a thin, stainless steel rod, about three feet long. A fixed wing lay alongside it, along with a detached tail assembly. And, nestled beside it, an extra battery pack, a black gear bag, a tablet, and a handgun in a holster.
Pete reached for the gun. “With the rangers still hunting the bear...”
“You’re not going to kill it, are you?” Skye asked, her tone identifying exactly where she stood on that idea.
“Not if I don’t have to,” Conner said, taking the gun from Pete. He clipped it to his belt then knelt beside the box and hauled out the drone.
“Is this bigger than your earlier models?” Liza asked, crouching beside him. “It seems from your pictures those drones were smaller.”
“This is big number 5, the mama of the tribe. Fifty-one inches long, this baby has seventy-four inches of wingspan.” He pulled out the tail assembly, fixed it to the rod.
“It has GPS, a 3DR radio, and a mile of range. It can fly at twenty-five miles an hour for nearly forty minutes on one rechargeable lithium battery. I have two batteries plus a recharging pack. And this little camera,”—he pointed to a tiny lens on the bottom of the drone—“can capture up to two hundred fifty acres in one shot. Then it feeds the data back to this device.”
He picked up the tablet. “My software translates the pictures into a 3-D map that we can then stitch together and lay over a topo map to pinpoint Esther’s location. It’ll also take video if we need it.”
“We call it Conner’s girl back at the ranch,” Pete said, reaching out to touch the drone.
“Hands off, Brooks.”
“See?”
Liza laughed.
Conner picked up the drone, moved it over to a bigger space to attach the wings. “I’ve written a program that not only takes pictures but determines weather conditions, measures flame lengths and heat, and predicts fire behavior.” He looked up at Pete, his expression solemn. “My drone might have saved lives.”
Pete’s grin vanished.
Something passed between the two, and even Skye caught it, because she looked at CJ. His mouth tightened into a grim line.
Conner walked back to the box and retrieved the black bag. He opened the zipper and pulled out a pair of oversized goggles. He put them on, then retrieved the remote control.
“I need to take it for a quick test run, make sure the instruments are working. I don’t need a line of sight to fly it—the goggles act as a dashboard and can tell me where I am. But I’ve been having some glitches...” He walked away from them, pulled down the goggles, and started fiddling with the remote control.
“What did he mean about it saving lives?” Skye asked quietly.
“He’s talking about Jock and the guys who were killed last year,” CJ said. He wore a grizzle on his chin this morning—dark blond, a touch of russet red. He, too, wore a baseball cap and had shucked off his yellow shirt for his blue Jude County Smokejumpers tee.
Pete got up, walked away, and stood over Conner, who was making adjustments on the tablet screen. He used his shadow to help to block out the sunlight, offering Conner a better view of the screen.
Liza watched him go, the way he stood, his hands on his hips, his chin taut. And thought about Conner’s comment about friends dying.
“Conner, Pete, and Reuben were part of the team. Their crew was spread out and separated from each other when the fire they were working on jumped the line. Jock, their jump boss, had ordered them all out to the safety zone, but there were conflicting orders from
another crew boss, and the communication got messed up. Jock went back for the guys down the line, and they all got trapped.”
Skye put her hand to her mouth. Liza’s breath tightened in her chest.
And she hadn’t answered his letters, returned his calls. She wanted to weep.
“Conner’s pretty quiet about it. But according to Pete and Rube, he spent the entire winter holed up in his camper working on those drones.”
“If I know Conner, he thinks he could have predicted the fire jumping the line,” Liza said, looking over at him. The wind ran fingers through Conner’s blond hair, ruffling it as he stood to launch the drone. His deft hands worked the controls as the plane bumped down the meadow, then lifted and soared.
Pete had dropped to one knee, was confirming readings on the tablet, answering questions.
And all of that narrowed down to one sharp fact.
She shouldn’t have abandoned him. Shouldn’t have disconnected her landline, invested in a cell phone. Should have been his friend, despite her broken heart.
Her throat filled, her eyes burning.
I’m not ready for you to walk away.
And she wasn’t ready to walk away, either.
Because despite his inability to look beyond today, she could. And maybe that’s what he needed—someone to hold on long enough to help him see the future.
And sure, maybe he couldn’t promise her anything, but hadn’t he been giving her pieces of himself every day since he’d met her? His friendship, when he called from his strike camps or alone at home, preferring her voice to his team’s after a fire. And his crazy impulsiveness when he’d tracked her down in Arizona. He gave her his strength when he took her skydiving. When he told her about his brother, he gave her that part of his heart that was still wounded over the death of his family. And he gave her his heroism, his courage when he answered the phone and showed up just because she asked. No, he didn’t need to speak his promises.
She saw them.
She walked over to him as the drone landed. It bumped over to Conner and he bent down, his hand on it. “The batteries seem to be cool. I don’t see them as the source of a fire.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Dude, your place is a wreck.” Pete held the tablet. “Apparently the Feds came in yesterday after you left and they tore the place apart looking for your drones. They’d broken open your bedside table, but must not have recognized the remote. Jed told me to tell you that you’d better bring the drone back with you or you’ll have nothing to exonerate you.”
“Exonerate him from what?” Liza asked as Conner shook his head.
“We’ve had some questionable fires around Ember—looks like arson—and the investigators out of the National Interagency Fire Center Arson team have tied Conner’s drones to two of them.”
“My drones are not causing fires!”
Pete held up his hand in surrender. “I’m just the messenger.”
“Are you in trouble?” Liza asked softly.
Conner shook his head as Pete answered, “Yep. The Feds want to question him, but he jumped ship, and now they think he has something to hide.”
Liza did the math. “You jumped ship because I called you and asked you for help!”
“You needed me.”
“What if you get arrested?” She didn’t mean the spark in her voice.
Conner looked at her then, his blue eyes calm, dark. “Let’s just worry about Esther.”
“I’m worried about you going to jail.”
“My drones are not guilty, and neither am I.” He offered her a half smile. “But I’m not going to spend time thinking about what could go wrong, rehearse trouble in my mind. Let’s find Esther, that’s the important thing.”
She wanted to live in his world, where he put off worry for another day.
Except someone had to think ahead, right?
“When we find Esther, you are turning yourself in,” she said. “And you’re going to prove that your drones aren’t responsible for the fires.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Mmmhmm. Because I’m not interested in living life on the lam. Or lining up outside San Quentin for visiting hours.”
Then she held her breath. Please don’t freak out.
Conner’s smile came slowly, a sweet understanding in his eyes, a twinkle in his gaze that lit her entire body afire.
“San Quentin, huh?”
She shrugged. “I’m not well versed in my correctional facilities.”
Still wearing his smile, he turned to Pete. “So do you think you can figure out the coordinates from the map? Translate them to CJ?”
Pete nodded, and Conner called CJ over. “Listen. You and Skye head back to the river and work your way down the shore. I’m going to stay here and start working the drone. Pete will call in the coordinates as we clear areas.”
“I’m going, too,” Liza said, and held up her hand when Conner looked at her. “Listen, Esther is probably spooked, maybe injured, and needs a friendly face.”
“Who am I, Frankenstein?” Skye asked.
“Of course not. But Esther and I are friends and, frankly, I want to be there.”
Liza looked pointedly at Conner, and after a moment, he gave her a tight-mouthed nod.
“Did you bring fresh water?” she asked.
“And fresh first-aid and survival packs,” Pete said. “The supplies are in my jump pack.” He indicated a large backpack next to his folded chute.
She found the canister of water, then opened the survival pack and found the supplies—mag flashlight, whistle, blanket, leather gloves, fire starter, compass, mirror, rope, flare gun. “All I need is a life preserver.”
“That’s not funny,” Conner said, not looking at her, but his mouth tweaked up anyway.
And bear spray. But she left that part out.
Certainly, however, their so-called predator bear had gone looking for other prey by now.
She shouldered the pack as CJ checked his walkie batteries, his connection with Pete, and his SAT phone. Skye headed for the forest, CJ following her.
Liza turned to follow but was stopped by a hand on her arm. “Liza.”
Conner stepped in front of her, shielding her from the sunlight, his outline bold and imposing, blocking her way. He reached out to her, cupped her chin in his hand, and raised it. “Please, be careful out there.”
The intensity in his blue eyes could lay waste to a girl’s lingering resolve to hike out, to leave him behind when this was over. “I’ll find her.”
“Just...” But he didn’t finish. Instead, he bent down and kissed her. Possessive, his hand moving to cup her cheek, his thumb offering a quick caress.
Then he leaned back, his eyes still on hers, filled with so much unshed emotion that it turned her body to flame.
Then he offered a tight, solemn smile.
She heard the words, even if he couldn’t say them.
Come back to me.
#
A little overhead perspective could change everything. The goggles gave Conner a view of the ground as well as a heads-up display revealing altitude, horizon, direction, pitch, and air speed. Behind him, Pete read the data, knitting together the pictures of the terrain acreage as the drone took photos.
Sweat trailed down Conner’s back, his neck tight from what felt like peering down over a knotted patchwork of lodgepole pine and towering oak. Their progress seemed achingly slow, with CJ and the girls making better time, moving back to their makeshift camp, then along shore. He’d worked his way toward the river, snapping so many shots that he’d had to bring the drone home and change batteries by the time Pete scanned them all and they reset their search grid.
Maybe he should call for reinforcements.
In fact, “What do you think about calling Jed, getting the team in here?” he asked Pete.
“I already checked in,” Pete said. “Gilly just finished dropping them in at a fire north of Ember about twenty miles. Just a flare-up, but Jed wante
d to get a handle on it before it became a conflagration, started threatening the town.”
“Another fire.”
“And two more in Glacier, one in the Bob and one in Yellowstone. Every jump team in the west is deployed, and Alaska is coming down to help in Idaho.”
Which meant that a drone like his could right now be tracking fires, saving lives. If it didn’t get confiscated, dissected, and tangled in lethal red tape.
Conner started the drone across another patch in the grid, the river on the far edge, blue and crystalline under the noonday sun. His shoulders burning with holding the remote, he knew he looked crazy with his inability to stand still, his urge to bob, duck, and dodge as he flew the machine lower into the trees. But Esther could be injured, and the closer he got to the ground, the clearer his shot would be.
He dodged a towering lodgepole pine and jerked back, nearly stumbling.
“Whoa, dude, you look a little woozy.”
“Nearly got hit by a tree.”
No comment from Pete. Until, “Huh. I was thinking it was that kiss you planted on Liza. I’d forgotten that you two hooked up in Arizona.”
“We didn’t hook up.” He flew the plane deeper along the grid, startled a fox, then a deer that ran springing away, her sprawl-legged fawn on her tail. “But, yeah. We sorta, I don’t know, had a date, I guess.”
“I guess? That wasn’t a date, I guess, kiss. That was a come-back-to-me-Scarlett kind of smackeroo.”
Conner smiled, remembering Liza’s expression—all wide-eyed and what-just-happened?—and another line of sweat trickled down his back. “Yeah, maybe.”
Yeah, definitely, it was a come-back-to-me kind of kiss. One full of promise and hope, and maybe he didn’t have to say the words. Maybe he could simply show her that he wanted her in his life. It didn’t have to be complicated—after all, she was staying here this summer. And after that, well...
After that he’d track her down back to Deep Haven if he had to. Because for the first time in a year, life didn’t feel so suffocating. And, if he looked up, past his tiny, dark world where grief lay in wait at every turn, he could spot something on the horizon.
Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) Page 17