Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  She held him until he finished, until he relaxed, until he slid down to his knees and finally sat on the floor of the shower stall.

  In a deliciously limber move, she too slid down to sit in his lap and lay her head on his shoulder.

  They sat there together for a long time under the warm spray. She apparently at peace, and Cal knowing that his opportunity to simply walk away from this woman by catching the next plane out had now passed him by.

  Chapter 11

  Cal had been strangely withdrawn while they’d eaten breakfast together before returning to the airport. Once again, Jeannie found herself making excuses for him; he’d been awake for three days and then slept a dozen hours like the dead. Maybe that was it.

  But what if it wasn’t? Was it about the sex? About their growing relationship? Was it…

  They were the last to arrive at the Alice Springs airport, even though it was still before dawn. Everyone was gathered around the back of the hangar.

  Jeannie attempted to apologize for being late, though she didn’t recall any meeting being called. Henderson waved her off, signaling that everything was okay.

  Cal simply grabbed a coffee and dropped into a chair.

  Henderson stood and any morning chatter faded away.

  “We’ve actually been asked to work two separate fires.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Vern. “The 212s and the MD500 need to report to this chap in Hamilton, Victoria. You’ll take the smokies and Denise’s crew with you. Sorry for the long flight. Go get ready, but don’t leave until I check in with you. The Firehawks will be there as soon as we can deal with this other fire.”

  The three pilots shrugged and headed back out to the pad to get ready. Denise eyed them strangely, then departed as well. Clearly she wasn’t happy about being separated from her two most important helicopters. Entrusting them once again to mere pilots was not making her happy at all.

  Jeannie looked around, and that was when the nerves really overtook her. Now she understood what was going on. She’d sat with a group like this just six months before. That time they’d been crouched together in the middle of the night around a small picnic table in western Oregon as they fought the New Tillamook Burn. It was an immensely uncomfortable moment that had changed her naive view of the world. She actually felt sorry for Cal. He could have no idea what was about to happen.

  Henderson and Beale sat at one end of the table, Tessa content with her milk bottle. Carly and Steve sat there looking as grim as Jeannie felt. And then there was Cal.

  Cal glanced around the table, then nodded to Henderson. “So, you ready to reveal your cards?”

  Jeannie blinked. She kept forgetting how smart Cal was. Smarter than Jeannie had been. She hadn’t seen it coming, but it sounded as if Cal not only expected it, but knew ahead of time what was going on.

  Henderson nodded an easy acknowledgment. “We’ve done some checking on you, Calvin Hobbes Jackson.”

  Jeannie tried not to snort. He really had been named for the cartoon characters and it fit him. Both the wildly independent man and the thoughtful, quiet tiger. The light and dark twins she’d guessed at when they first met were the same man. His name fit him perfectly—even more perfectly than she’d thought.

  Cal, however, had a very different reaction. He tensed and balled his fists, as if a real tiger was about to come into play.

  “By what right—”

  “By the right of what I’m about to ask,” Henderson cut him off. His voice was suddenly rough and brooked no argument. That must be how he’d sounded when he was a major in the Army.

  Jeannie wondered just what Henderson had found out about Cal. She’d very much like to know. It was the first time she realized how little she knew about her lover’s past. Prior to fighting fire, he didn’t exist. Actually, other than that he fought and photographed fire, she knew absolutely nothing about him. She’d told him all about her family, the effect of their losses during the Black Saturday bushfires, her brother’s career…yet Cal was a cipher. She didn’t even know where he lived. Just who was sharing her bed anyway?

  After considering, Cal nodded tightly for Henderson to proceed.

  Jeannie had seen many aspects of Cal Jackson, but she’d never before seen anger. She hadn’t even known he was capable of it. The man looked positively dangerous. Did she know him at all?

  “Mount Hood Aviation occasionally—”

  “—flies for the CIA. I figured that out on my lonesome. What does that have to do with me?”

  Henderson appeared unfazed. “What it has to do with you is that we’re on hold for a possible assignment. My question is: Do you want in, or do you want to climb onto one of the 212s and go take photographs of bushfires? If your answer is the former, then I somehow need to truly know I can trust you all the way.”

  The silence stretched out. Emily sat quietly, as unreadable as ever. Carly and Steve were holding hands tightly, seeking mutual comfort. Jeannie had no one. She was the odd woman out, always had been. Never fitting in, even when she was welcome. MHA was the first place other than her family that she’d ever really belonged.

  “I get nothing else to go by?” Cal asked.

  “We aren’t military, at least not anymore.” Henderson shared a wry grin with Emily. “We are never asked to do anything more dangerous than fight fire. But we are asked to go places where firefighters are welcome and others aren’t, in order to see what we can see. The other rule is that except for the people in this room, you can’t discuss anything we do on those special assignments, ever. Not with the military, not with the law, definitely not the press or media, and not even anyone else in MHA. This group is as big as the circle has ever gotten.”

  Cal turned to Jeannie and finally offered a nod acknowledging her tongue-tied moments. But she couldn’t read what he was thinking beyond that. She wanted to reach for him. To beg him to join them so she wouldn’t feel so alone. But she didn’t, couldn’t. He again studied Henderson at length.

  “Why me?”

  “Trained observer. You see things even I don’t. Carly sees pattern and flow like no one I’ve ever met. You see detail and connection at a similar level. I’ve talked to every crew boss you’ve ever worked with, including Alaska. Found him despite your name change.”

  Name change? Jeannie didn’t even know the real name of the man sharing her bed? He really had tried to leave his past behind. Maybe she now understood his reactions a bit better each time she touched his back, his poor, scarred back. The damage looked old enough to have happened to a child. Maybe she did know his real name: Calvin Hobbes Jackson. That was the man who mattered.

  “Every single one said the same thing,” Henderson continued. “That you were good, better than most, but not the best. Except for one thing. Every single one remarked that you always saw the details long before anyone else and that they were sorry every single time they didn’t listen to you. In these kinds of situations, I need to be a step ahead and I’m gambling that you can help me get there.”

  Cal brooded. Jeannie could see him getting ready to refuse, to walk out. She didn’t know why; what could possibly be driving him away? MHA had welcomed her, given her a home and a purpose, a gift of immense price. And yet Cal was preparing to walk away from it all.

  From her…

  Could that be it? Was she somehow the one driving him away? She wasn’t ready for that. Dammit, her heart wasn’t ready for that. As much as she wanted to deny it, her heart was fully involved. She had to stop him, but how?

  “Cal.”

  “What?” He practically snarled at her, but she didn’t take offense. She could see that something was hurting him, no matter how hard he was trying to hide it.

  “Show them the pictures.”

  That stopped him, but it didn’t quite alter his course. He was still on the verge of telling them all to go to hell. For invading h
is carefully protected past? She’d made up a hundred theories of how his back had been scarred, but somehow knew that not a one of them was even close. And the scars inside were clearly worse.

  “Please?”

  It cost him, but he finally reached into his camera bag for his computer. She just hoped it wouldn’t cost the two of them what they already had. It was so new, so precious, so fragile. If only she knew why he was fighting against it so hard.

  For her, answering the call to join had been easy. They were the best people she’d ever flown with. If Emily Beale asked her to fly to the moon, she’d sure try. And it had been an acknowledgment of her own value as well. She knew she flew well. MHA’s welcoming her to the inner circle said that she actually was of value in someone else’s opinion as well.

  Cal set up the picture viewer on the National Geographic folder and then tossed it down on the table in front of Mark hard enough for several of them to wince.

  Beale leaned forward from one side, Carly from the other. Steve rose to look over Mark’s shoulders.

  Cal sat back and crossed his arms tightly over his chest as if trying to hold himself together. He didn’t look at her. Twice she raised a hand to comfort him, and twice she pulled it back before she touched him.

  “Hey”—Carly pointed at the tablet—“that wasn’t in the article.”

  Jeannie watched as Henderson slowly swiped through the four pictures of the waiting silver shelters, the burnover, and the tragic aftermath. Especially the aftermath. After the last, Carly hid her eyes in Steve’s shoulder and cried quietly. Right, Jeannie kept forgetting that Carly had lost her father and her first fiancé to burnovers. Steve looked grim and held his wife. Emily faced the images unblinking, though a single tear ran unnoticed down her cheek as well. She reached out to rest a hand on her daughter’s head.

  Henderson gently set the computer back in front of Cal. “Okay, I trust you. Are you willing to trust us?”

  One last time, the steady gaze of the angry tiger.

  Jeannie could feel the anguish clogging her throat. What had been easy for her was a cliff edge for Cal Jackson. She wanted to beg him to cross over for his own sake, if not for hers. It was her first clue that there was something broken in him. He was as twitchy as…as when she’d touched his back. There was a connection, but she didn’t have enough of the pieces to find it.

  He started to turn in her direction, but then didn’t. Finally, staring at Henderson, he simply said, “Anything else you want me to tell the other pilots?”

  Henderson shook his head.

  Cal tucked the tablet back into his camera bag and walked out.

  Jeannie was devastated. They had already come so far together—too fast, but so far. And now he was gone. How could he just walk away from—

  Emily shook her arm and said one word: “Go.”

  Jeannie sat for three heartbeats trying to absorb that it wasn’t all decided, then leaped to her feet and ran. She sprinted through the unending hangar, through the narrow gap left between the massive doors, and broke out into the deceptive cool of morning in the Red Centre of the Australian Outback. A low fog danced along the ground, though it would be gone by sunrise.

  She spotted Cal standing with the other chopper pilots farther down the apron. His glance back at her brought her to a stumbling halt. For a long moment he looked at her before nodding to himself and turning away. He moved forward, shaking hands all around, then he stepped back and crossed his arms. He watched unmoving as everyone else loaded aboard and they started the engines. They took off, turning southeast. Still he didn’t move.

  Jeannie forced her legs into motion until she stood beside him. Together they watched the flight of choppers until it was out of sight and the sun had actually moved across the eastern sky.

  When he turned and pulled her into his arms, it was one of the best moments of her life. Fearing that she’d never see him again one instant and discovering her role as his anchor the next, she breathed him in and wept out her fears.

  Cal kissed her atop her hair and simply let her weep.

  Her emotions were a train wreck, a disaster of conflicting needs and wishes. But for now she’d just be glad that Cal was still with her. All she could do was take it one day at a time, one moment at a time.

  Long after they’d stilled and simply held each other in the perfect silence that reigned during an Outback sunrise…long after her heart had returned to its normal pace in her chest…

  She heard Cal whisper to himself, “What the hell have you done this time, Hotshot?”

  Jeannie knew her own answer to that question. Yesterday and last night, watching Cal sleep, she understood what he’d done. He’d left his cameras with her, his most precious possessions, and walked into the fire for her. He had risked everything so that she wouldn’t have to face another bushfire destroying another family.

  And Jeannie knew exactly what she had done last night. Something she’d avoided so successfully her whole life.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, she’d fallen in love.

  Chapter 12

  “We need to move north, well north, but not staying at some airport. We need to get lost for a little bit.” Henderson and the others had come out to stand with them as the barely risen sun sent heat shimmers across the still morning. “Anyone have a suggestion?”

  Jeannie nodded against Cal’s chest where her head still nestled on his shoulder.

  “Apparently, yes,” Cal translated for her as she didn’t appear to be able to speak yet.

  The others moved off to pack up Steve’s drones and collapse the launcher to prepare it for transport. Cal wasn’t quite ready to let go of Jeannie yet. He might not have wept as she had, but it had been close. Too damned close to his anger driving him away.

  Something had shifted in Cal, several things, and he didn’t know which was the biggest. He’d put together most of what Henderson had said before he’d been told. It should have seemed like a great opportunity, and certainly it wouldn’t be dull. Then why had it felt like a trap closing over his head? Each word Henderson spoke had backed him further and further into a corner with walls Cal couldn’t see.

  He’d been dependent on no one since he was sixteen, and he’d learned long before that independence was his best path to long-term survival. Now he’d be bound to these people not by choice, as in his choice of what to publish and what not to. No, now he’d be bound by secrets, real secrets. That was a tie he wasn’t ready for.

  Damn Henderson for understanding why he hadn’t released the photos of the fallen firefighter. Damn the man for seeing into his soul and understanding that while the reason might not make sense, it didn’t need to. What it had revealed to Henderson was that Cal would follow his own unique code of conduct, and that he would adhere to it against all comers. Cal would rather die broke than release the photos of one of his best friends’ death. Perhaps Jacob had been his only true friend over the dozen or more crews he’d worked with.

  One thing was for damn sure: Cal would never again go back under a foil shelter and wait to see if he survived. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He shoved the memory aside before it could overwhelm him and returned his consideration to the woman nestled in his arms.

  Worse—or was it better?—he had ties to her now too. More than to anyone ever in his life. Even as a naive boy, so wanting to belong somewhere, anywhere, he’d never let himself become so attached. And it wasn’t as if he was willing to release her, either.

  The gods alone knew, but he’d never had such a lover. That shouldn’t be enough to do more than provide a happy distraction. But it did, much more. She too was winding invisible snares that wrapped around him. With the best of intentions, she had made it so that he didn’t want to walk away from her. She’d already sunk those hooks so deep into his soul that he knew it would hurt them both like hell when he finally had to tear the
m out. So he could walk away.

  And he would.

  He knew himself well enough to know that too was a truth. So, why hadn’t he been able to cut both of their losses and climb aboard the damn 212 with Bruce?

  The answer to that question slowly pulled his head down, and she offered a kiss of such gentle need that he let the next barb sink into his flesh while he relished the taste of Jeannie Clark’s mouth like dawn on a still summer morning.

  ***

  Jeannie took the lead of the flight. They fueled up at Tennant Creek, a sleepy little airport with a single rusting bowser, the sole pump for hundreds of kilometers that dispensed Jet A fuel. In Katherine, they landed on the civilian side of RAAF Base Tindal. Her brother had been stationed here for a while, but was now in Perth, or… They moved him around so often that Jeannie had trouble keeping track. Her family had scattered in so many ways.

  Cal sat close beside her in the cockpit of her Firehawk as she turned into Nitmiluk National Park. That was what she cared about. Their flight up had been comfortable, companionable, even if they’d barely spoken. Cal’s morning grouchiness had burned off with the morning mist and whatever decision he had reached. Instead, they’d continued his flight instruction.

  Beale and Henderson flew behind her with Carly, Steve, and Tessa riding passenger.

  Jeannie radioed Dale, the park manager of the Jawoyn aboriginal tribe, as they lifted out of Tindal.

  “Jeannie, luv. You been too far away for too long.”

  “Missing you too, Dale. Wonder if you’d mind if I led a flight up the gorge?”

  “No worries, luv. We don’t have another tourist flight booked for couple a hours. River she be all yours.”

  “We need to squat a bit too.”

  “Trouble, luv?”

  “No. Just need some quiet.”

  “You know the spot.”

  Jeannie did.

  “No be snitching fish in the national park up there. Ranger might catch you.”