by Nora Roberts
“Ready to rock, Swede?”
“And roll. Why would you put on makeup before this bitch of a test?”
Janis fluttered her long, lush lashes. “So these poor guys’ll have something pretty to look at when they stumble over the finish line. Seeing as I’ll be there first.”
“You are pretty damn fast.”
“Small but mighty. Did you check out the rookies?”
“Not yet.”
“Six of our kind in there. Maybe we’ll add enough women for a nice little sewing circle. Or a book club.”
Rowan laughed. “And after, we’ll have a bake sale.”
“Cupcakes. Cupcakes are my weakness. It’s such pretty country.” Janis leaned forward a little to get a clearer view out the window. “I always miss it when I’m gone, always wonder what I’m doing living in the city doing physical therapy on country club types with tennis elbow.”
She blew out a breath. “Then by July I’ll be wondering what I’m doing out here, strung out on no sleep, hurting everywhere, when I could be taking my lunch break at the pool.”
“It’s a long way from Missoula to San Diego.”
“Damn right. You don’t have that pull-tug. You live here. For most of us, this is coming home. Until we finish the season and go home, then that feels like home. It can cross up the circuits.”
She rolled her warm brown eyes toward Rowan as the van stopped. “Here we go again.”
Rowan climbed out of the van, drew in the air. It smelled good, fresh and new. Spring, the kind with green and wildflowers and balmy breezes, wouldn’t be far off now. She scouted the flags marking the course as the base manager, Michael Little Bear, laid out requirements.
His long black braid streamed down his bright red jacket. Rowan knew there’d be a roll of Life Savers in the pocket, a substitute for the Marlboros he’d quit over the winter.
L.B. and his family lived a stone’s throw from the base, and his wife worked for Rowan’s father.
Everyone knew the rules. Run the course, and get it done in under 22:30, or walk away. Try it again in a week. Fail that? Find a new summer job.
Rowan stretched out—hamstrings, quads, calves.
“I hate this shit.”
“You’ll make it.” She gave him an elbow in the belly. “Think of a meat-lover’s pizza waiting for you on the other side of the line.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“The size it is now? That’d take me a while.”
He snorted out a laugh as they lined up.
She calmed herself. Got in her head, got in her body, as L.B. walked back to the van. When the van took off, so did the line. Rowan hit the timer button on her watch, merged with the pack. She knew every one of them—had worked with them, sweated with them, risked her life with them. And she wished them—every one—good luck and a good run.
But for the next twenty-two and thirty, it was every man—and woman—for himself.
She dug in, kicked up her pace and ran for, what was in a very large sense, her life. She made her way through the pack and, as others did, called out encouragement or jibes, whatever worked best to kick asses into gear. She knew there would be knees aching, chests hammering, stomachs churning. Spring training would have toned some, added insult to injuries on others.
She couldn’t think about it. She focused on mile one, and when she passed the marker, noted her time at 4:12.
Mile two, she ordered herself, and kept her stride smooth, her pace steady—even when Janis passed her with a grim smile. The burn rose up from her toes to her ankles, flowed up her calves. Sweat ran hot down her back, down her chest, over her galloping heart.
She could slow her pace—her time was good—but the stress of imagined stumbles, turned ankles, a lightning strike from beyond, pushed her.
Don’t let up.
When she passed mile two she’d moved beyond the burn, the sweat, into the mindless. One more mile. She passed some, was passed by others, while her pulse pounded in her ears. As before a jump, she kept her eyes on the horizon—land and sky. Her love of both whipped her through the final mile.
She blew past the last marker, heard L.B. call out her name and time. Tripp, fifteen-twenty. And ran another twenty yards before she could convince her legs it was okay to stop.
Bending from the waist, she caught her breath, squeezed her eyes tightly shut. As always after the PT test she wanted to weep. Not from the effort. She—all of them—faced worse, harder, tougher. But the stress clawing at her mind finally retracted.
She could continue to be what she wanted to be.
She walked off the run, tuning in now as other names and times were called out. She high-fived with Trigger as he crossed three miles.
Everyone who passed stayed on the line. A unit again, all but willing the rest to make it, make that time. She checked her watch, saw the deadline coming up, and four had yet to cross.
Cards, Matt, Yangtree, who’d celebrated—or mourned—his fiftyfourth birthday the month before, and Gibbons, whose bad knee had him nearly hobbling those last yards.
Cards wheezed in with three seconds to spare, with Yangtree right behind him. Gibbons’s face was a sweat-drenched study in pain and grit, but Matt? It seemed to Rowan he barely pushed.
His eyes met hers. She pumped her fist, imagined herself dragging him and Gibbons over the last few feet while the seconds counted down. She swore she could see the light come on, could see Matt reaching in, digging down.
He hit at 22:28, with Gibbons stumbling over a half second behind.
The cheer rose then, the triumph of one more season.
“Guess you two wanted to add a little suspense.” L.B. lowered his clipboard. “Welcome back. Take a minute to bask, then let’s get loaded.”
“Hey, Ro!” She glanced over at Cards’s shout, in time to see him turn, bend over and drop his pants. “Pucker up!”
And we’re back, she thought.
2
Gulliver Curry rolled out of his sleeping bag and took stock. Everything hurt, he decided. But that made a workable balance.
He smelled snow, and a look out of his tent showed him, yes, indeed, a couple fresh inches had fallen overnight. His breath streamed out in clouds as he pulled on pants. The blisters on his blisters made dressing for the day an . . . experience.
Then again, he valued experience.
The day before, he, along with twenty-five other recruits, had dug fire line for fourteen hours, then topped off that little task with a three-mile hike, carrying an eighty-five-pound pack.
They’d felled trees with crosscut saws, hiked, dug, sharpened tools, dug, hiked, scaled the towering pines, then dug some more.
Summer camp for the masochist, he thought. Otherwise known as rookie training for smoke jumpers. Four recruits had already washed out—two of them hadn’t gotten past the initial PT test. His seven years’ fire experience, the last four on a hotshot crew, gave Gull some advantage.
But that didn’t mean he felt fresh as a rosebud.
He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching his palm over bristles from nearly a week without a razor. God, he wanted a hot shower, a shave and an ice-cold beer. Tonight, after a fun-filled hike through the Bitterroots, this time hauling a hundred-and-ten-pound pack, he’d get all three.
And tomorrow, he’d start the next phase. Tomorrow he’d start learning how to fly.
Hotshots trained like maniacs, worked like dogs, primarily on highpriority wilderness fires. But they didn’t jump out of planes. That, he thought, added a whole new experience. He shoved a hand through his thick mass of dark hair, then crawled out of the tent into the crystal snowscape of predawn.
His eyes, feline green, tracked up to check the sky, and he stood for a moment in the still, tall and tough in his rough brown pants and bright yellow shirt. He had what he wanted here—or pieces of it—the knowledge that he could do what he’d come to do.
He measured the height of the ponderosa pine to his left. Ninety feet, give or take. He’d w
alked up that bastard the day before, biting his gaffs into bark. And from that height, hooked with spikes and harness, he’d gazed out over the forest.
An experience.
Through the scent of snow and pine, he headed toward the cook tent as the camp began to stir. And despite the aches, the blisters—maybe because of them—he looked forward to what the day would bring.
Shortly after noon, Gull watched the lodgepole pine topple. He shoved his hard hat back enough to wipe sweat off his forehead and nodded to his partner on the crosscut saw.
“Another one bites the dust.”
Dobie Karstain barely made the height requirement at five six. His beard and stream of dung brown hair gave him the look of a pint-sized mountain man, while the safety goggles seemed to emphasize the wild, wide eyes.
Dobie hefted a chain saw. “Let’s cut her into bite-sized pieces.”
They worked rhythmically. Gull had figured Dobie for a washout, but the native Kentuckian was stronger, and sturdier, than he looked. He liked Dobie well enough—despite the man’s distinctly red neck—and was working on reaching a level of trust.
If Dobie made it through, odds were they’d be sawing and digging together again. Not on a bright, clear spring afternoon, but in the center of fire where trust and teamwork were as essential as a sharp Pulaski, the two-headed tool with ax and grub hoe.
“Wouldn’t mind tapping that before she folds.”
Gull glanced over at one of the female recruits. “What makes you think she’ll fold?”
“Women ain’t built for this work, son.”
Gull drew the blade of the saw through the pine. “Just for babymaking, are they?”
Dobie grinned through his beard. “I didn’t design the model. I just like riding ’em.”
“You’re an asshole, Dobie.”
“Some say,” Dobie agreed in the same good-natured tone.
Gull studied the woman again. Perky blond, maybe an inch or two shy of Dobie’s height. And from his point of view, she’d held up as well as any of them. Ski instructor out of Colorado, he recalled. Libby. He’d seen her retaping her blisters that morning.
“I got twenty says she makes it all the way.”
Dobie chuckled as another log rolled. “I’ll take your twenty, son.”
When they finished their assignment, Gull retaped some of his own blisters. Then, as the instructors were busy, taped Dobie’s fresh ones.
They moved through the camp to their waiting packs. Three miles to go, Gull thought, then he’d end this fine day with that shave, shower and cold beer.
He sat, strapped on the pack, then pulled out a pack of gum. He offered a stick to Dobie.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Together they rolled over to their hands and knees, then pushed to standing.
“Just imagine you’re carrying a pretty little woman,” Dobie advised, with a wiggle of eyebrows in Libby’s direction.
“A buck-ten’s pretty scrawny for my taste.”
“She’ll feel like more by the time we’re done.”
No question about it, Gull mused, and the instructor didn’t set what you’d call a meandering pace along the rocky, quad-burning trail.
They pushed one another, that’s how it was done. Ragged one another, encouraged one another, insulted one another, to get the group another step, another yard. The spurring fact was, in a few weeks it would be real. And on the fire line everyone’s life depended on the other.
“What do you do back in Kentucky?” Gull asked Dobie while a hawk screamed overhead and the smell of group sweat competed with pine.
“Some of this, some of that. Last three seasons I doused fires in the national forest. One night after we beat one down, I got a little drunk, took a bet how I’d be a smoke jumper. So I got an application, and here I am.”
“You’re doing this on a bet?” The idea just appealed to his sense of the ridiculous.
“Hundred dollars on the line, son. And my pride that’s worth more. You ever jump out of a plane?”
“Yeah.”
“Takes the crazy.”
“Some might say.” Gull passed Dobie’s earlier words back to him.
“What’s it feel like? When you’re falling?”
“Like hot, screaming sex with a beautiful woman.”
“I was hoping.” Dobie shifted his pack, winced. “Because this fucking training better be worth it.”
“Libby’s holding up.”
“Who?”
Gull lifted his chin. “Your most recent bet.”
Dobie gritted his teeth as they started up yet another incline. “Day’s not over.”
By the time it was, Gull got his shower, his shave, and managed to grab a brew before falling facedown on his bunk.
MICHAEL LITTLE BEAR snagged Rowan on her way into the gym. “I need you to take rookie training this morning. Cards was on it, but he’s puking up his guts in the john.”
“Hangover?”
“No. Stomach flu or something. I need you to run them on the playground. Okay?”
“Sure. I’m already on with Yangtree, on the slam-ulator. I can make a day eating rooks. How many do we have?”
“Twenty-five left, and they look pretty damn good. One beat the base record on the mile-and-a-half course. Nailed it in six-thirty-nine.”
“Fast feet. We’ll see how the rest of him does today.”
She knocked thirty minutes off her planned ninety in the gym. Taking the recruits over the obstacle course would make up for it, and meant she’d just skated out of a stint sewing personal gear bags in the manufacturing room.
Damn good deal, Rowan thought as she put on her boots.
She grabbed the paperwork, a clipboard, a water bottle and, fixing a blue ball cap on her head, headed outside.
Clouds had rolled in overnight and tucked the warm in nicely. Activity swarmed the base—runners on the track or the road, trucks off-loaded supplies, men and women crossed from building to building. A plane taxied out taking a group up for a preseason practice jump.
Long before the fire siren screamed, work demanded attention. Sewing, stuffing, disassembling equipment, training, packing chutes.
She started toward the training field, pausing when she crossed paths with Matt.
“What’re you on?” he asked her.
“Rook detail. Cards is down with some stomach deal. You?”
“I’m up this afternoon.” He glanced skyward as the jump plane rose into the air. “I’m in the loadmaster’s room this morning.” He smiled. “Want to trade?”
“Hmm, stuck inside loading supplies or out here torturing rookies? No deal.”
“Figured.”
She continued on, noting the trainees were starting to gather on the field. They’d come in from a week of camping and line work, and if they had any brains would’ve focused on getting a good night’s sleep.
Those who had would probably feel pretty fresh this morning.
She’d soon take care of that.
A few of them wandered the obstacle course, trying to get a gauge. Smart, she judged. Know your enemy. Voices and laughter carried on the air. Pumping themselves up—and that was smart, too.
The obstacle course was a bitch of the first order, and it was only the start of a long, brutal day. She checked her watch as she moved through the wooden platforms, took her place on the field.
She took a swig from her water bottle, then set it aside. And let out a long, shrill whistle. “Line up,” she called out. “I’m Rowan Tripp, your instructor on this morning’s cakewalk. Each of you will be required to complete this course before moving on to the next exercise. The campfire songs and roasted marshmallows of the last week are over. It’s time to get serious.”
She got a few moans, a few chuckles, some nervous glances as she sized up the group. Twenty-one men, four women, different sizes, shapes, colors, ages. Her job was to give them one purpose.
Work through the pain.
She consulted her clipboard
, did roll call, checked off the names of those who’d made it this far. “I hear one of you rooks beat the base record on the mile-and-a-half. Who’s the flash?”
“Go, Gull!” somebody shouted, and she watched the little guy elbow bump the man next to him.
About six-two, she judged, dark hair clean and shaggy, cocky smile, easy stance. “Gull Curry,” he said. “I like to run.”
“Good for you. Speed won’t get you through the playground. Stretch out, recruits. I don’t want anybody crying about pulled muscles.”
They’d already formed a unit, she determined, and the smaller connections within it. Friendships, rivalries—both could be useful.
“Fifty push-ups,” she ordered, noting them down as they were completed.
“I’m going to lead you over this course, starting here.” She gestured at the low platform of horizontal squares, moved on to the steep steel walls they’d need to hurdle, the ropes they’d climb, hand over hand, the trampoline flips, the ramps.
“Every one of these obstacles simulates something you will face during a fire. Get one done, hit the next. Drop out? You’re done. Finish it, you might just be good enough to jump fire.”
“Not exactly Saint Crispin’s Day.”
“Who?” Dobie asked at Gull’s mutter.
He only shrugged, and figured by the sidelong glance the bombshell blonde sent him, she’d heard the remark.
“You, Fast Feet, take the lead. The rest of you, fall in behind him. Single file. If you fall, get your ass out of the way, pick up the rear for a second shot.”
She pulled a stopwatch out of her pocket. “Are you ready?”
The group shouted back, and Rowan hit the timer. “Go!”
Okay, Rowan thought, fast feet and nimble feet.
“Pick up those knees!” she shouted. “Let’s see some energy. For Christ’s sake, you look like a bunch of girls strolling in the park.”
“I am a girl!” a steely-eyed blonde shouted back, and made Rowan grin.
“Then pick up those knees. Pretend you’re giving one of these assholes a shot in the balls.”
She kept pace with Gull, jogging back as he raced for, charged up, then hurdled the first ramp.