At least, up here, she wouldn’t freeze, get anyone killed. There was that.
Something rugged and breathtaking about the Alaskan mountainscape felt different than Montana. She was used to glaciers, to the cottony breath of the mountain slinking into the valleys, to the fresh breezes rife with the fragrance of wildflowers. But Montana, despite the big sky feel of the state, turned compact, jagged, and rugged where she lived, near Kalispell. Arching mountains that ringed tight valleys, jammed together as if pushed by ancient glaciers, forcing them to ripsaw peaks.
In Alaska, the mountains breathed. Sprawled. Yawned over great expanses of forests and valleys. The peaks towered so high that most of the time Denali’s face hid inside a wispy white beard. The air reaped the wind off the mountain, glacial cool, rife with pine and the scent of boreal moss, mixing now with the campfire smell of burning resin, pine, and willow.
Montana she knew. Had hiked and skied the mountains, put out fires in its forests for the past three summers as a hotshot. Camped and fished and paddled through its wilderness.
But Alaska—it was bold and surprising and wild, and a tiny sense of awe rippled through her as she sat down on the rock and let her binoculars scan the view below her.
Smoke and fire, yes, but the bluest of lakes to the south. Granite ridges and lush green forests, and to the east, a river that dissected the land.
Maybe this is what her father had seen that summer he worked as a hotshot for the Alaska Bureau of Land Management. Maybe that’s why he’d stuck around, met her mother, had decided not to return to college. Alaska had seduced him with its dangerous beauty.
She wouldn’t be quite so easily seduced.
Of course, her father had been seduced by many, many things. Hopefully, she wasn’t made of the same weak DNA. The last thing she wanted to do was die in prison like Liam Doyle.
And how she’d gotten to that dark place from the beauty of Alaska, she didn’t know, but she knew one thing for certain. She wouldn’t let her heart lead her into trouble, let it destroy the people she loved.
After all, what kind of man takes a match to his entire life by breaking the law and ending up behind bars? Not one she cared to remember. Or emulate.
A crackle over the radio and she caught Tucker’s voice. “Watchout, how’s it looking?”
“Flame lengths are about five feet, maybe less. Wind is scant. The fire is digging in, moving slowly.”
“Roger,” Tucker said.
The heartbeat of a chopper thundered in the distance, and Skye used her glasses to find the pinprick. Hopefully Barry Kingston bringing in a basket of water.
But no line dangled from the bird as it came into view, flying low and finally dropping into the meadow beyond the ridge. It landed, and she could barely make out through the screen of smoke a group of firefighters in bright orange shirts disembarking from the chopper.
The handcrew. Good.
They ran toward Tucker, carrying gear and covering their heads as the chopper lifted off. Skye scanned over to the fire again, and indeed, the wash had whipped it up. But as the chopper rose and pulled away—hopefully for water—the flames settled back down.
Tucker was rounding up the crew. Her vision tracked to her team, cutting a line down the western flank. Hanes and Eric were scrubbing out the initial line, downhill to the anchor point, with Seth, Riley, and Romeo coming in behind to fortify. Seth mowed down saplings and scrub brush with his chain saw, tossing them out of the path of the fire, while Riley and Romeo scratched the dirt down to the mineral soil in a line some three-feet wide. They worked quietly, with intention, their heads down.
Cinder and ash blew into their faces, and she imagined right now their eyes would be thick with mucus, itchy and watering, sweat curdling down their spines, their chests tight as they breathed the acrid smoke through their bandannas.
So maybe she didn’t hate being up here. But she did hate the fact that Tucker had so easily picked her.
Down over the ridge, he was scratching out a line with his new crew. Probably shouting rules at them—how Tucker loved his Firefighting Orders. And Watchout Situations.
Keep informed on fire weather conditions and forecasts. Rule number one.
Know what your fire is doing at all times. Rule number two.
Sheesh, she could recite them in her sleep, a casualty of rookie camp.
The crews were making progress along both ridges, and she tried to keep her boredom out of her voice when Tucker radioed in. His new crew were bulldogs—they scraped out a cup trench at the bottom of the slope, just in case the fire rolled snags down the hill from the ridge. Their orange shirts had turned ruddy and black.
The afternoon dragged on, the fire burning deep into the reindeer moss, the loam of pine needles that embedded the forest. It exploded a stand of black spruce, a tower of black dissecting the blue.
Tucker finally hiked up the far ridge, surveying the fire as it ate its way to his southern line. She watched him turn, as if he could spot her through the smoke from this distance, and asked for an update.
“Nothing’s changed, boss. Same wind speed, same humidity. Flame lengths short and tight.”
“Just a bit longer, then I’ll get Romeo to spell you.”
“Whatever.” Oh, she didn’t mean to sound annoyed, but—
A gust rose, rippling through her shirt, a cool breath from some icy slope. It whipped down the slope, and she could almost feel the blaze tremble with an injection of fury as the wind fanned the combustion of fuel and chemical reaction. Skye lifted the walkie to inform Tucker, but his voice came across the radio.
“Riley, you get down the ridge and start the burn. Seth, you and Hanes and Eric, watch the flanks. Romeo—you spell Skye on watch. I’ll call in the drop.”
Okay, so maybe she’d been a little too annoyed. Riley offered an affirmative, and Skye kept the fire framed in her glasses as she watched Riley jog down to the southern fire line to join the other crew and start the burn.
Tiny droplets of fire splashed into the burn area, consuming the fuel between the oncoming blaze and the fire line.
The familiar whump-whump of a chopper indicated a drop coming in from the southeast. She could barely spot the bird but made out a long drop line swinging in the wind, carrying a bucket of water.
Yeah, they’d put this to bed, no problem. With no real help from her, but…
She centered her glasses on Tucker. He stood at the ridge line between the two fires, and from this angle—
“Tucker, if that’s you I see, get out of there. You’re standing between the two fires.”
Barry’s voice on the radio, but yeah, that’s what she would have said. The chopper rounded in and let the water drop along the leading eastern edge of the fire.
She’d taken her eyes off Tucker for just a second, but when she turned back, he’d vanished.
“Tucker?” Skye toggled the mic but got no response. But before she could call again, Tucker appeared again on the ridge. He must have ducked into the black for cover from the drop.
She let out a hot breath of relief. Silly. Tucker might not be a seasoned fire boss—their usual smoke boss, Jed, had only put him in charge of the team because he had to leave town to check on his pregnant wife. But Tucker was careful.
He knew the rules that kept them all alive.
The smoked turned gray, the fire gasping for air as it drowned under the water. The fog filled the valley, cut off her view. Tucker’s voice came over the line asking for another drop.
She barely made out his yellow shirt as he climbed to the top of the ridge again.
Where was Romeo? She got up, letting the glasses dangle around her neck, and picked up her pack.
The roar of the fire stopped her. A fierce gust of breath crested off the mountain as if refusing to let the fire surrender, raked past her, and poured into the flames.
With a feral growl, the fire regrouped, reignited, and flamed over, the lengths doubling.
Chewing up the forest towa
rd the ridge.
She scrambled for her glasses, searched for Tucker, but couldn’t make him out in all the smoke—
There.
A yellow shirt, right in the path of the flames. He’d fallen, maybe because he was struggling up the hill.
Watchout rule number seventeen—when terrain and fuels make escape to safety zones difficult…
She toggled her walkie, dropped her pack. “Tucker, get out of there!”
He was scrambling to his hands and knees, then up. Limping…
His knee. She’d seen him wrench it a couple times skiing, an old injury from his snowboard cross days. Now, it crippled him, sending him to his knees.
“Tucker’s in trouble!” she screamed and couldn’t take her eyes off him as he fought to climb out of the flames.
Oh God, please, please—
A man burst out of the smoke at the top of the ridge and scrambled down toward Tucker. He grabbed him around the waist and struggled up the hill with him. They disappeared over the ridge into the rocky, safe area.
The fire engulfed the hill seconds later. It swept over the ridge and down into the meadow to meet the burn.
For a second, Skye couldn’t move.
Please be okay. Please be okay—
“Tucker?” She listened for anything, but only got static over the line. “Tucker!”
That was just it.
She took off down the slope, her feet landing hard on the granite, not caring that one wrong step could send her flying.
She should have warned him of the upsurge in the fire before he went over the ridge. He could have burned to death right before her eyes!
She hit the ground and sprinted down the fire line, past Romeo, Seth, Hanes, and Eric, over to the anchor point. Heard one of her teammates calling her name. But she didn’t stop until she reached the rocky anchor point where the other line connected.
Turning, she ran along the southern line, black on one side, green forest meadow on the other. And all along the line, men in orange shirts, yellow hard hats, wearing the green Nomex pants of a fire crew. They used their shovels to put out spot fires that spiked over the line.
Riley had also run down to the end of the line, as if looking for Tucker. And that’s when she realized—one of the new crew had saved Tucker. A hero, running through the fire to drag her boss to safety.
Sweat trickled down her face and she leaned over, breathing hard.
One of the firefighters turned, his back to her.
She stared at the imprint on his shirt. CCCF.
And she hadn’t a clue what it meant. But she recognized the block-style lettering.
No. What—?
No.
Please let her be wrong. Because by the looks of it, the heroes who had shown up to fight with them were none other than…prisoners.
3
Rio had nearly been burned alive.
And to think, he’d actually been contemplating a change of profession. Because although the very marrow of his bones ached from hours of digging—evidence of how prison had stripped him of girth and muscle despite his in-cell push-ups—the breadth of Alaskan sky, the scent of the pine, the grandeur of the Denali range sluiced a freshness into his soul that Rio hadn’t experienced for a long, long time.
As if God had suddenly looked down and realized Rio needed to escape.
He’d tried not to let the smoke prick tears into his eyes, but yeah, he’d turned into a soggy-eyed mess as he fought to dig out the line in the soil.
Never mind that the boss—Tucker, who’d met them off the chopper—barked orders like he might be a prison guard. Rio could easily be back in juvie hall, listening to the guards remind him of the mindless rules that governed his pitiful life.
But he could live with a few rules in exchange for sunshine and cool air and the arch of the blue sky overhead. The sun gilded the snow-capped mountains to the east, turning them to molten gold as he worked. Even the earth smelled of hope and life and something better out there.
“Put out any fires that make it over the line!”
Another firefighter had come down from where he’d been working the western edge of the fire, armed with a long oil can that dripped fire. He ran along the line and dropped flame into the area between the line and the oncoming fire.
Rio could hear it over the ridge, roaring, consuming. Death, rolling toward him, finding his soul.
Not today. Although sweat poured down his face, saturated his body, and soot layered his skin, he could spend the rest of his life out here.
Or at least the next six days, until Darryl’s court date.
Rio kept his eyes on Darryl, of course. The man had said nothing as Rio climbed aboard the chopper, clearly still unaware of Rio’s assignment. Rio had played it cool over the past month, lingering around Darryl but rarely engaging, his job to protect.
Except, of course, a few times when he got close enough to suggest that Darryl might be in trouble from his boss. That even in prison, Buttles could find him. Rio went so far once as to suggest that Buttles had found him. Showed him an old scar on his rib cage that had nothing to do with Buttles but turned Darryl a little pale.
Just a gentle reminder that lives might be at stake—namely, Darryl’s.
Rio wasn’t sure why he’d noticed Tucker heading up to the ridge, probably to cast an eye on the fire, but Rio had heard the thunder of a chopper in the distance. He had stepped away from the line and smoke to watch as the bucket extending from the body of the bird dumped water in a smoky splash beyond the ridge.
The fire sizzled, gray smoke cutting into the black.
Then, Tucker had appeared on the ridge and stood there, a frame of yellow against the churning smoke.
Rio could like Tucker. He had a no-nonsense, get-’er-done attitude about him. Too bad Tucker had already pegged him as trouble—maybe they could have been friends.
Rio had heard Tucker chatting with Archer Mills, the ex-cop, about the crew during a water break. In his late fifties, Archer had taken natural command of the crew, and why not? He knew how to handle criminals, if his history as a cop was correct. He’d huddled up with Tucker to give him the lowdown on their rap sheets. Rio hadn’t caught much of the conversation, but when he heard, “Don’t worry, kid. I’m watching him,” he tried not to think the worst.
Okay, yes. They had probably been talking about him. Because out of all the crew, he was the one with the gang aura. A tattoo on the back of his neck, a scar on his jaw—although that had been from a ski accident when he was ten—and enough of a wariness about him that probably came off as a tough guy stance.
Really, he was just keeping everybody in his sights.
Although, honestly, no one else looked like trouble. The three youngest with the drunk and disorderlies worked like they might be at summer camp, grinning and laughing. The guy named Thorne was tall and quiet and screamed military with eyes that looked right through a man. But he worked hard. Pudgy and red-headed, Darryl looked like he wanted to collapse on the ground and weep. He probably wondered how he’d gotten signed up for this gig.
The last guy was a tourist. Brown hair. Glasses. Skinny, but with a little muscle. Clancy Smythe, college professor-slash-pot enthusiast. Probably had come to Alaska on summer break to explore his hippie side.
So maybe Rio could loosen up. It wasn’t like he was working with Ocean’s Eleven.
His gut, maybe, had made him cast another gaze toward Tucker on the ridge.
Tucker had turned on the hill, as if to head back toward the fire line.
And just like that, he vanished. Disappearing behind the ridge where the flames licked up the hill.
Rio didn’t stop to think.
Maybe it was the cauldron of fire boiling over the ridge.
Maybe it was the suddenness, the shock of seeing it happen right there.
Maybe it was simply the fact that for once in his life he could do something right now to help someone. He didn’t have to sneak into a prison or an outlaw biker ga
ng, make friends, deceive people with the hopes of betraying them.
He could do something.
He’d dropped his shovel and sprinted down the line, then up the ridge on the rocky edge where the fire couldn’t burn.
And yeah, he heard yelling, but he ignored it. Topped the ridge, breathing hard.
The fire rocked him back. The flame lengths had doubled, the cinders circling in the tornado of ash and smoke. It charged up the hill, consuming brush and grass, stump and tree, and scrambling just feet ahead of it with an ugly gait was Tucker.
About to be burned alive.
Yeah, Rio could do something.
Rio raced down the hill, hooked Tucker by the waist, and hauled him up to the ridge. Tucker gulped ragged breaths, his body working hard. They reached the top, and Rio armed them into the rutted, rocky area filled with scree and boulders and other inflammable debris.
“Get down!” Tucker had shouted and hunkered behind a wash of boulders.
And right then, the flames whooshed over the ridge, smoking, churning down around them. Rio ducked, his heart fat in his throat.
Wow, that was close.
Now, Rio looked over at Tucker. “You okay?”
Tucker stared at him, his face black, eyes reddened. “What—how—?”
“I was on this end of the burn and saw you go over the ridge.” Rio was still watching the fire, how it flickered red, orange, yellow, tongues consuming everything to black. “That was close.”
“Mmmhmm,” Tucker said as if he did this every day.
Huh. Rio looked down at him. “I think it’s working—your plan.” He offered a small, one-sided smile. See, I’m not a criminal.
“Yeah,” Tucker said. “The fires should collide, collapse in on themselves as all the fuel is consumed, and if we can hold this right flank, we’ll get to spend tomorrow mopping up.” He turned around, putting his back to the boulder and rubbed his knee. “Thanks.”
Rio turned too, his gaze on Tucker’s movements. So that’s what happened—he’d twisted his knee.
He looked back at the fire, at the smoke coughing in the meadow, the fight to survive. “Feels good.”
Summer of the Burning Sky Page 16