Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2)

by Susan May Warren

  Susie May

  Burnin’ For You

  Chapter 1

  If they started running now, they just might make the lake before the fire consumed them.

  That’s what Reuben Marshall’s gut told him when the wind shifted and rustled the seared hairs on the back of Reuben’s neck, strained and tight from three days of cutting line through a stand of black spruce as thick as night.

  After a week, the fire in the Kootenai National Forest had consumed nearly twelve hundred acres, and, as of breakfast this morning, his team of smokejumpers, as well as hotshot and wildland firefighter teams from all over Montana and Idaho, had only nicked it down to sixty percent contained.

  Now, the fire turned from a low crackle to a growl behind him, hungry for the forest on the other side of the twenty-foot line that his crew—Pete, CJ, and Hannah—had scratched out of the forest, widening an already-cleared service road. CJ and Hannah were swamping for him as Reuben mowed down trees, clearing brush. Between the two of them, they worked like an entire crew, still proving themselves. Pete worked cleanup, digging the line down to the mineral soil.

  Reuben’s eyes watered, his throat charred from eating fire as he angled his saw into a towering spruce—one more tree felled and it would keep the fire from jumping the line or candling from treetop to treetop.

  Chips hit his safety glasses, pinged against his yellow Nomex shirt, his canvas pants. His shoulders burned, his arms liquid.

  In another hour they’d hook up with the other half of their crew—Jed, Conner, Ned, Tucker, and Kate—dragging a line along the lip of forest road that served as their burnout line. They’d light a fire of their own, consume all the fuel between the line and the active fire, and drive the blaze to Fountain Lake.

  The dragon would lie down and die.

  At least that seemed the ambitious-but-attainable plan that his crew boss, Jed, had outlined this morning over a breakfast of MRE eggs and protein bars. While listening, Reuben had opened three instant coffee packs into one cup of water and drank the sledge down in one gulp.

  Still, deep in his gut, Reuben had expected trouble when the wind kicked up quietly, early this morning, rousing the team. They’d been tucked into their coyote camp—a pocket of pre-burned space—their safety zone on the bottom of the canyon near a trickle of river. Already blackened, the zone shouldn’t reignite, but it left an ashy debris on Reuben, the soot probably turning his dark brown hair to gray under his orange hardhat. His entire team all resembled extras on The Walking Dead.

  He felt like it—the walking dead, his bones now one constant vibration, fatigue a lining under his skin. Ash, sawdust, and the fibers of the forest coated his lips despite his efforts to keep his handkerchief over his mouth.

  They’d worked in the furnace all day, the flame lengths twenty to thirty feet behind them, climbing up aspen and white pine, settling down into the crackling loam of the forest, consuming bushes in a flare of heat. But with the bombers overhead dropping slurry, the fire sizzled and roared, dying slowly.

  He’d watched a few of them—the Russian biplane AN2, which scooped water from the lake in its belly, and the Airtractor AT, dropping red slurry from its white belly.

  Way overhead, the C-130, a loaner from the National Guard, circled for another pass,

  Reuben wondered which one Gilly piloted—a random thought that he shoved away. It did him no good to let his thoughts anchor upon a woman he could barely manage to speak to.

  Not that he had any chance with her anyway.

  Keep his head down, keep working—wasn’t that what his father always said?

  Indeed, they all had expected the Fountain Lake fire to fizzle out with their efforts.

  Until the wind shifted. Again.

  And that’s when the fine hairs on Reuben’s neck stood on end, his gut began to roil.

  He finished the cut, released his blade from the trunk of the tree.

  “Clear!” He hollered, then stepped back as the massive tree lurched, crashed into the blazing forest.

  The fire roared, a locomotive heading their direction.

  It seemed Pete, twenty feet behind hadn’t yet alerted to the shift. Reuben couldn’t account for why his gut always seemed to clench as a second sense when he scented danger. The last time he’d felt it, he’d known in his bones that teammates were going to die.

  And they had.

  Not again.

  Reuben did a quick calculation. They’d completed about twenty-four chain lengths in the last six hours, about a quarter mile from the safety zone. They could run back to their strike camp in the burned-out section—a theoretical safe zone.

  However, he’d known forest to reignite, especially the loam that had been flashed over quickly and hadn’t been scorched down to the soil. Plenty of fuel left, if the fire got serious. And air was lethal, too, searing hot in their lungs as it cycloned around the safety zone.

  If they turned and ran another hundred yards along the uncleared forest service road, they’d be over halfway to the lake, less than a half mile away. But they’d be running into unburned forest with nowhere to hunker down into safety if the fire overtook them.

  Reuben listened for, but couldn’t hear the other team’s saws.

  Through the charred trees, the sun backdropped the hazy gray of the late afternoon, a thin, blood-red line along the far horizon.

  Jed’s voice crackled over the radio. “Ransom, Brooks. We’re battling some flare-ups here, and the fire just kicked up. Sit-rep on your position?”

  Reuben watched Pete toggle his radio, standing up to gauge the wind.

  “Must be the lake effect. She’s still sitting down here,” Pete said.

  Reuben frowned, nearly reaching for his radio. But despite his instincts, Pete was right. Except for a few flare-ups, the fire behind them seemed to be slow moving.

  Maybe—

  “Right,” Jed said, confirming Pete’s unspoken conclusion that they were safe. “Just don’t turn into heroes. Remember your escape route. To the fire, you’re just more fuel. We’re going to start bugging out to the lake.”

  Which probably was what they should be doing.

  As if reading his mind, Pete glanced up at Reuben. For a second, memory played in Pete’s eyes.

  Only he, Pete, and Conner had survived being overrun last fall in a blaze that had killed seven of their team, including their jump boss, Jock Burns.

  That had been a case of confusion, conflicting orders, and hotshots and smokejumpers running out of time. Fingers had been pointed, blame assigned.

  The what-ifs still simmered in low conversations through their small town of Ember, Montana. Thankfully, this summer had been—well, mostly—injury free.

  Reuben wanted to keep it that way. Except if their safety zone was not quite burned to the ground, it could reignite around them, trap them.

  If they left now they could probably make the lake. But what if the fire jumped the road, caught them in the middle of a flare-up?

  Reuben’s low-muttered suggestion could end up getting them all killed. And if he were wrong, God wouldn’t exactly show up to rescue them.

  Reuben couldn’t help, however, shooting a look back at Hannah and CJ still working and unaware of the radio communication.

  Embers lifted, spurted out of the forest, across the line, sparking spot fires near the edge of the road. Reuben ran over, stomped one out, threw water from his pack on another.

  Pete joined him. “We’ll head back to the black.”

  Reuben glanced up, back along the route. Clear, for now.

  “Roger,” Reuben said.

  Pete yelled to CJ and Hannah as Reuben shouldered his saw, started jogging back along the road to their safety zone. The air swam with billowing dust and smoke. His eyes watered, his nose thick with mucus.

  “Why is being a smokejumper so important to you?” The words, his brother’s disbelief after his father’s funeral, smarted in his brain,.

  Why indeed? He coughed as he ran, a blast
of superheated air sideswiping him, peeling a layer of sweat down his face. Sane people had normal jobs—like ranching or even coaching football. They didn’t bed down in ash, drink coffee as thick as battery acid, smell like gas and oil and soot, and run toward a fire, hoping to find refuge.

  If Reuben lived through this, he’d take a serious look at the answer.

  Behind him, he heard Pete yelling at CJ and Hannah. “We’re not on a scenic hike! Move it!”

  Around them, sparks lit the air, the roar of the fire rumbling in the distance.

  They should be running the other direction. The thought had claws around his throat.

  As if in confirmation, a coal-black cloud rolled down the road, directly from their safety zone, a billow of heat and gas.

  Reuben stopped cold.

  Jed’s voice burst through the radio, choppy, as if he might be running hard. “Pete. The fire’s jumped the road. Head to the black right now.”

  Except their safety zone was engulfed in smoke, embers, and enough trapped poisonous gasses to suffocate them.

  Reuben whirled around, and Hannah nearly ran him over. He caught her arm. “Not that way!”

  Pete had run back to him. He still held his Pulaski, his face blackened behind his handkerchief, eyes wide, breathing too hard. “We’re trapped.”

  He knew it—should have said something. But again, he’d kept his mouth shut, and people—his people—would die.

  He glanced at Pete who was staring down the road, at the flames behind him. He glanced at Reuben and nodded.

  The past would not repeat itself today.

  Then Reuben toggled his radio, searched the sky. “Gilly? You up there?”

  Please. Because though he might not be able to talk to her face-to-face in the open room of the Hotline Bar and Grill, this was a matter of life and death.

  “Gilly, it’s Rube. Please—”

  “Priest, Marshall. I’m here. Starting my last run right now—”

  “Belay that. We’re making a dash for the lake, and we need you to lay down retardant along the forest road. We’re about one click out, but the fire jumped the road about a quarter mile in.”

  Static. Then, “Roger that, Rube. I’ll find you. Start running.”

  Pete had taken off with CJ, running along the still green fire road, toward the lake, some five hundred yards away.

  “You miss this, we’re trapped, Gilly.” Reuben started running, still holding his saw.

  More static, and probably he shouldn’t have said that because Hannah, jogging beside him, looked at him, her eyes wide.

  He didn’t want to scare her, but they couldn’t exactly run through a forest engulfed in flame. If Gilly could drop water or retardant on the road, it might settle the fire down enough for them to break through all the way to the lake.

  The fire chased them, crowning through the branches, sending limbs airborne, felling trees. Sparks swirled in the air, so hot he thought his lungs might burst.

  A black spruce exploded just to his right and with it, a tree arched, thundered to the ground, blocking the road.

  Flames ran up the trunk, out to the shaggy arms, igniting the forest on the other side.

  Hannah screamed, jerked back just in time.

  Pete and CJ had cleared the tree. The flames rippled across it onto the other side of the road, into the forest, a river of fire.

  “We’re trapped!” Hannah screamed.

  Reuben grabbed his water pump, a backpack of water they wore, and began to douse the fire, working his way to the trunk. “C’mon Hannah—let’s kill this thing!”

  She unhooked her line, added water to the flames. The fire died around the middle, the rest of the tree still burning.

  He grabbed his saw, dove into the trunk.

  Reuben had once won a chainsaw competition—sawing through a log the size of a tire in less than a minute. He’d have to make this faster.

  Sweat beaded down his back, his body straining as he bore down. Faster! The saw chewed through the wood, cleared the bottom.

  He started another cut a shoulder width away, from the bottom. “More water, Hannah!” The flames crawled up toward him.

  He turned his face away, let out a yell against the heat. Heated, blessed water sprinkled his skin as Hannah used the rest of the water to bank the flames.

  The saw churned against a branch. “Use my supply!”

  She grabbed his hose, leveled it on the fire biting at the branches, the bark.

  The fire had doubled back, along the top, relit the branches around him. He gritted his teeth, standing in the furnace, fighting the saw.

  Don’t get stuck.

  He broke free, the wood parting like butter.

  The stump fell to the ground, creating an opening through the trunk. Reuben grabbed Hannah and pushed her forward, commandeering the hose and dousing the flames with the last of his water.

  Pete and CJ, on the other side, had banked the flames with the last water in their canisters.

  Ahead of them, the fire edged the road—beyond, a wall of flame barred their escape.

  Reuben dropped his saw. “We can’t deploy here. We’ll die.”

  He looked up into the sky, saw nothing but gray, hazy smoke.

  He scooped his radio out of his belt. “Gilly, where are you?”

  Nothing. He looked at Pete, his eyes blurry from smoke and ash. Hannah was working out her shake and bake, emergency tent, and he didn’t have the heart to repeat himself. CJ had run ahead, as if looking for a way out.

  They had a minute, or less, to live.

  “Gilly,” he said into the walkie, not sure if she could even hear him. His voice came out strangely distant, vacant. Void of the screaming going on inside his head.

  “If you don’t drop right now, we die.”

  Get Burnin’ for You!

  And don’t miss Susie May’s newest series, Montana Rescue!

  Wild Montana Skies

  Search and rescue pilot Kacey Fairing is home on leave to Mercy Falls, Montana, twelve years after she joined the military to escape the mistakes of her past. With a job waiting for her as the new lead pilot of Peak Rescue in Glacier National Park, Kacey hopes to reconnect with her now-teenage daughter she sees only between deployments. What she doesn’t realize is that someone else is also back in town.

  Ben King has been building his country music career since the day Kacey shut him out of her life. Now all of that’s on hold when his injured father calls him home to help run Peak Rescue until he’s fully recovered. It doesn’t take long, though, to discover his father’s ulterior motives as Kacey Fairing walks into the house and back into his heart.

  With Mercy Falls in a state of emergency due to flash floods, Kacey and Ben are forced to work together to save lives. And when their daughter disappears in the wilds of Glacier National Park, Kacey realizes Ben’s betrayal all those years ago might not have been as simple as it seemed.

  Preorder now—out in October 2016!

  Montana Fire: Summer of Fire Trilogy

  Book Two: Playing with Fire

  Published by SDG Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 by Susan May Warren

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Scripture quotations are also taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc®. All rights reserved worldwide.

  For more information about Susan May Warren, please access the author’s website at the following address: www.susanmaywarren.com.

  Published in the United States of America.

  omantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2)