by Nora Roberts
He heard the roll of thunder, watched the tanker pitch through the smoke. So far the dragon seemed to swallow the retardant like candy.
He’d lost track of the hours spent in the belly of the beast since the siren had sounded that morning. Only that morning, looking into Rowan’s eyes as she moved under him, feeling her body rise and fall beneath him. Only that morning he’d had the taste of her skin, warm from sleep, on his tongue.
Now he tasted smoke. Now he felt the ground move as another sacrificial tree fell to earth. He looked into the eyes of the enemy, and knew her lust.
What he didn’t know, as he set down his saw to gulp down water, was if it was day or night. And what did it matter? The only world that mattered lived in this perpetual red twilight.
“We’re moving east.” Dobie jogged out of the smoke, his eyes red-rimmed over his bandanna. “Gibbons is taking us east, digging line as we go. The hoses are holding her back on the right flank at Pack Creek, and the mud knocked her back some.”
“Okay.” Gull grabbed his gear.
“I volunteered you and me to go on south through the burnout and scout spots and snags along the rim, circle on up toward the head.”
“That was real considerate of you to include me in your mission.”
“Somebody’s got to do it, son.” Those red-rimmed eyes laughed. “It’s a longer trip, but I bet we beat the rest of the crew to the head, get back into the real action sooner.”
“Maybe. The head’s where I want to be.”
“Fighting ass-to-ass with your woman. Let’s get humping.”
Spots bloomed like flowers, burst like grenades, simmered like shallow pools. The wind colluded, thickened the smoke, giving loft to sailing firebrands.
Gull smothered, dug, doused, beat, then laughed his way through the nasty work as Dobie started naming the spots.
“Fucking Assistant Principal Brewster!” Dobie stomped out the licking flames. “Suspended me for smoking in the bathroom.”
“High school sucks.”
“Middle school. I got an early start.”
“Priming your lungs for your life’s work,” Gull decided as he moved on to another.
“That’s fucking Gigi Japper. Let me at her. She dumped me for a ball player.”
“Middle school?”
“Last year. Bastard plays slow-pitch softball. Can you beat that? Slow-pitch softball. How does that count for anything?”
“You’re better off without her.”
“Damn straight. Well, Captain, I believe we’ve secured this line, and recommend we cut across from here and start scouting north. I’m still looking for crazy old Mr. Cotter, used to shoot at my dog just because the pup liked to shit in his petunias.”
“We’ll beat the hell out of old Mr. Cotter together.”
“That’s a true friend.”
They ate lunch, dinner, breakfast—who the hell knew?—on the quickstep hike, chowing down on Hooah! bars, peanut-butter crackers, and the single apple from Gull’s pack they passed back and forth.
“I love this job,” Dobie told him. “I didn’t know as I would. I knew I could do it, knew I would. Figured I’d like it okay. But I didn’t know it’s what I was after. Didn’t know I was after anything.”
“If it gets its hooks in you, you know it’s what you were after.” That, Gull thought, covered smoke jumping and women.
Murdered trees stood, black skeletons in the thinning smoke. Wind trickled through, sending them to moan, scooping up ash that swirled like dirty fairy dust.
“It’s like one of those end-of-the-world movies,” Dobie decided. “Where some meteor destroys most every goddamn thing, and what’s left are mutant scavengers and a handful of brave warriors trying to protect the innocent. We can be the warriors.”
“I was counting on being a mutant, but all right. Look at that.” Gull pointed east where the sky glowed red above towers of flame. “Half the time I can’t understand how I can hate it and still think it’s beautiful.”
“I felt that way about fucking Gigi Japper.”
Laughing, somehow completely happy to be hot and filthy alongside his strangely endearing friend, Gull studied the fire as they hiked—the breadth of it, the colors and tones, the shapes.
On impulse, he pulled his camera out of his PG bag. A photo couldn’t translate its terrifying magnificence, but it would remind him, over the winter. It would remind him.
Dobie stepped into the frame, set his Pulaski on his shoulder, spread his legs, fixed a fierce expression on his face. “Now, take a picture. ‘Dragon-slayer.’ ”
Actually, Gull thought when he framed it in, the title seemed both apt and accurate. He took two. “Eat your heart out, Gigi.”
“Fucking A! Come on, son, time’s a’wasting.”
He took off with a swagger as Gull secured his camera.
“Gull.”
“Yeah.” He glanced up from zipping his PG bag to see Dobie in nearly the same pose, reversed with his back to him. “Camera’s secured, handsome.”
“You better come on over here. Take a look at this.”
Alerted by the tone, Gull moved fast, stared when Dobie pointed. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Aw, shit.”
The remains lay, a grim signpost on the charred trail.
“Jesus, Gull, looks like the mutants have been through here.” Dobie staggered a few feet away, braced his hands on his knees, and puked up his energy bars.
“Like Dolly,” Gull murmured. “Except . . .”
“Christ, I feel like a pussy. Losing my lunch.” Bone-white beneath the layer of soot, Dobie took a pull of water, spat it out. “He started the fire, the cocksucker, right here. Like with Dolly.” He rinsed again, spat again, then drank. “He did all this.”
“Yeah, except I don’t think he did this to try to hide the body, or destroy it. Maybe it’s so we’d find it, or for attention, or because the son of a bitch likes fire. And it’s not like Dolly because this one’s got what’s got to be a bullet hole dead in the forehead.”
Bracing himself, Dobie stepped over again, looked. “Christ, I think you’re right about that.”
“I guess I should’ve taken that bet.” Gull pulled out his radio. “Because I don’t think we’re going to get back to action before the rest of the crew.”
While they waited, Dobie took two mini bottles of Kentucky bourbon from his bag, took a swig. “Who do you think it is?” he asked, and passed the second bottle to Gull.
“Maybe we’ve just got some homicidal firebug picking people at random. More likely it’s somebody connected to Dolly.”
“Jesus please us, I hope it’s not her ma. I really hope it’s not her ma. Somebody’s got to take care of that baby.”
“I saw her mother that day she and the preacher came to thank L.B. for hiring Dolly again. She’s short, little like Dolly was. I think what’s there’s too tall. Pretty tall, I think.”
“Her daddy, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“If I hadn’t volunteered us, somebody else would’ve found it. It’s right on the damn trail. Ro said Dolly was off it. Right on the trail. The rangers would’ve found it if we hadn’t. It really makes you think about what the fire’ll do to you, it gets the chance.”
Gull looked out at the red, the black, the stubborn lashing gold. And downed the bourbon.
The rangers let them go to rejoin the war. The fury built up in Gull all the way up to that snarling, snapping head. He channeled that fury into the attack so every strike of his ax fed his anger. This war wasn’t fought against God or nature or fate, but against the human being who’d given birth to the fire for his own pleasure or purpose or weakness.
For those hours the battle burned, he didn’t care about the reasons why. He only cared about stopping it.
“Take a breath,” Rowan told him. “We’ve got her now. You can feel it. Take a breath, Gull. This isn’t a one-man show.”
“I’ll take a breath when she’s down.”
<
br /> “Look, I know how you feel. I know exactly how—”
“I’m not in the mood to be reasonable.” He pushed her hand off his arm, eyes hot and vivid. “I’m in the mood to kill this bitch. We can discuss our mutual traumas later. Now let me do my job.”
“Okay, fine. We need men up on that ridge digging line before she rides this wind and shifts this way for fresh eats and builds again.”
“All right.”
“Take Dobie, Matt, Libby and Stovic.”
NIGHT, HE THOUGHT—or morning, probably—when he dragged himself to the creek. The fire trembled in its death throes, coughing and sputtering. Overhead, stars winked hopefully through thinning smoke.
He pulled off his boots, his socks, and stuck his abused feet in the gorgeously cool water. The postfire chatter ran behind him in voices raw with smoke and adrenaline. Jokes, insults, rewinds of the long fight. And the expected what-the-fuck? question about what he and Dobie had found.
More work waited, but would keep until daybreak. The fire hadn’t lain down to rest. She’d lain down to die.
Rowan sat down beside him, dropped an MRE in his lap, pushed a drink into his hand. “They dropped a nice load down for camp, so I made you dinner.”
“A woman’s work is never done.”
“More in the mood to be reasonable, I see.”
“I needed to burn it off.”
“I know.” She touched a hand to his briefly, then picked up the fork to shovel in beef stew. “I put some of Dobie’s famous Tabasco in this. Nice kick.”
“I was taking his picture. Him standing there in the black, and behind him the fire, and the sky. Surreal. I’d just taken his picture when we found it. It didn’t get to me, really, until we started up to meet you, and it just got bigger and bigger in me. Christ, I wasn’t even thinking about some guy burned to bone after taking a shot in the head.”
“Shot?”
Gull nodded. “Yeah, but I wasn’t thinking about him. All I could think about was this, and us. All the loss and waste, the risks, the sweat and blood. And for what, Ro? Since I couldn’t beat the hell out of whoever caused it, I had to beat the hell out of the fire.”
“Matt got hung up on the jump. He let down okay, but it could’ve gone bad. A widowmaker as thick as my arm nearly hit Elf when we had to retreat, and Yangtree’s got a Pulaski gash on his calf to go with his swollen knee. One of the Idaho crew took a bad fall, broke his leg. You were right to be mad.”
For a while, they ate in silence. “They want you back in the morning, you and Dobie, so DiCicco and Quinniock can talk to you. I can pack out with you.”
He glanced over, grateful—grateful enough not to mention she was taking care of him. “That’d be good.”
“I figured you’re pretty tired, so I can save you the time popping your tent. You can share mine.”
“That’d be even better. I love this job,” he said after a moment, thinking of Dobie. “I don’t know why exactly but what this bastard’s done makes me love it even more. The cops have to find him, catch him, stop him. But we’re the ones cleaning up his goddamn mess. We’re the ones doing whatever it takes to keep it from being worse. The wild doesn’t mean anything to him, what lives in it, lives off it. It means something to us.”
He looked at her then, slowly leaned in to take her lips in a kiss of surprising gentleness. “I found you in the wild, Rowan. That’s a hell of a thing.”
She smiled, a little uncertainly. “I wasn’t lost.”
“Neither was I. But I’m found, too, just the same.”
When they walked the short distance to the tents, they crossed paths with Libby.
“How you doing, Gull?”
“Okay. Better since I hear I get to skate out of mop-up. Have you seen Dobie?”
“Yeah, he just turned in. He was feeling . . . I guess you know. Matt and I sat up with him awhile after the rest bunked down. He’s doing okay.”
“You did good work today, Barbie,” Rowan told her.
“Never plan to do any other kind. Good night.”
Rowan yawned her way into the tent and, with her mind and body already shutting down, worked off her boots. “Don’t wake me unless there’s a bear attack. In fact, even then.”
She stripped down to her tank and panties. As she rolled toward the sleeping bag, Gull considered.
“You know, thirty seconds ago I figure I was too tired to scratch my own ass. And now, strangely, I’m filled with this renewed energy.”
She opened one eye, shut it again. “Do what you gotta do. Just don’t wake me up doing it.”
He climbed in beside her, smiling, drew her already limp-with-sleep body to his. When he closed his eyes he thought of her, of nothing but her, and slid quietly into the dark.
IT WAS HER KNEE pressing firmly into his crotch that woke him. His eyes crossed before they opened. Easing back relieved the worst of the pressure on his now throbbing balls.
Had she aimed, he wondered, or had it just been blind luck? Either way, perfect shot.
She didn’t budge when he rolled out to pull on his pants, fresh socks, boots. He left the pants and boots unfastened and crawled out into soft morning light.
Nothing and no one stirred. Then again, as far as he knew the other tents held occupants of one—with no one to jab a knee into their balls. Should they have them.
He stood, adjusted himself—carefully—then chose a direction out of camp to empty his bladder. Coffee, and filling his belly, would be next on the list, he decided. Being the first awake meant he had first dibs on the breakfast MREs. He’d sit outside, maybe down by the creek, give Rowan the tent for more sleep and enjoy a quiet, solitary if crappy meal until . . .
He stopped and looked. Looked over a meadow brilliant with wild lupines, regally purple. The faintest ground mist shimmered through them, giving them the illusion of floating on a thin, white river while dozens of deep blue butterflies danced over those bold lances.
Untouched, he thought. The fire hadn’t touched this. They’d stopped it, and now the wildflowers bloomed, the butterflies danced in the misty morning light.
It was, he thought, as beautiful, as vivid as the finest work of art. Maybe more. And he’d had a part in saving it, and the trees beyond it, and whatever lay beyond the beyond.
He’d fought in the smoke and the blistering red air, walked through the black that stank with death. And to here, where life lived, where it thrived in quiet and simple grace.
To here, which held all the answers to why.
HE BROUGHT HER THERE, dragging her away from camp before they packed out.
“We’ve got to get going,” she protested. “If we haul our asses down to the visitors’ center, they can van us back to base. Clean bodies, clean clothes. And, God, I want a Coke.”
“This is better than a Coke.”
“Nothing’s better than a Coke first thing in the morning. You coffee hounds have it all wrong.”
“Just look.” He gestured. “That’s better than anything.”
She’d seen meadows before, seen the wild lupine and the butterflies it seduced. She started to say so, grumpy with caffeine withdrawal, but he looked so . . . struck.
And she got it. Of course she got it. Who better?
Still, she had to give him a dig, one with the elbow in the side, the other verbal. “There’s that mushy romantic streak again.”
“Stand right there. I’m going to get a picture.”
“Hell you are. Jesus, Gull, look at me.”
“One of my favorite occupations.”
“If you want a shot of a woman in front of a meadow of flowers, get one with clean, shiny hair and a flowy white dress.”
“Don’t be stupid, you look exactly right. Because you’re part of why it’s here. This is like a bookend to the one I took of Dobie in the black. It shows how and why and who go into everything between those two points.”
“Romantic slob,” she repeated. But it moved her, the truth of it, the knowing they shared.
So she hooked her thumbs in her front pockets, cocked her hip and sent him and his camera a big, bold grin.
He took the shot, lowered the camera slowly and just stared at her as he had at the meadow. Struck.
“Here, switch off. I’ll take one of you.”
“No. It’s you. It’s Dobie in the black, the fire raging behind him, telling me how much he loves this job, what he’s found in it. And it’s you, Rowan, in the sunlight with preserved beauty at your back. You’re the end of the goddamn rainbow.”
“Come on.” Mildly embarrassed, she shrugged it off, started toward him. “You must be punchy.”
“You’re the answer before I even asked the question.”
“Gull, it weirds me out when you start talking like that.”
“I think you’re going to have to get used to it. I’ve fallen pretty deep in . . . care with you. We’ll go with that for now, because I think it’s more, and that’s a lot to figure out.”
A touch of panic speared through embarrassment. “Gull, getting wound up in . . . care for people like us—for people like me—it’s a sucker bet.”
“I don’t think so. I like the odds.”
“Because you’re crazy.”
“You have to be crazy to do this job.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “We’ve got to get going.”
“Just one more thing.”
He took her shoulders, drawing her in. His fingers glided up to her face as he guided them into a kiss made for meadows and summer shine, the flutter of butterflies and music of birdsong.
Unable to find a foothold, she tumbled into it, lost herself in the sweetness, the promise she told herself she didn’t want. Her heart trembled in her chest, ached there.
And, for the first time in her life, yearned there.
Unsteady, she stepped away. “That’s just heat.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” He hooked an arm around her shoulders in a lightning switch to friendly. The man, she thought, could make her dizzy.
DICICCO AND QUINNIOCK stepped out of Operations even as the vans pulled up to base.