by Nora Roberts
“I’ll tell her.”
“She’s been known to kill the messenger. That’s why I sent Cards,” L.B. added with a slow smile. “He’s just off the DL, so I figured she’d take it easy on him.”
“That’s why you’re chief.”
Gull swung by the barracks to grab a Coke, considered, and though he thought it the lamest form of camouflage outside a Groucho mustache, he grabbed caps and sunglasses.
On the way to the loft, he pulled out his phone, called Lucas.
Since most of the unit was doing PT or still at breakfast, he found only a handful working in the loft along with Rowan. She inspected, gore by gore, a canopy hanging in the tower.
“Busy,” she said shortly.
He tipped the Coke from side to side. “You know you’re jonesing by now.”
“Very busy.” Using tweezers, she removed some pine needles lodged in the cloth.
“Fine, I’ll drink it.” He popped the top. “L.B. wants you in Ops if we catch a fire.”
She jerked around. “He’s not grounding me.”
“I didn’t say that. You’re third load, so unless we catch a holocaust, you’re probably not going to jump on the first call. You’re a qualified assistant Ops manager, aren’t you?”
She grabbed the Coke from him, gulped some down. “Yeah.” She shoved it back at him, returned to her inspection. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“No problem. About this situation.”
“I don’t want or need to be reassured, protected, advised or—”
“Jesus, shut up.” He shook his head at the ceiling towering above, took another drink.
“You shut up.”
He had to grin. “I’m rubber; you’re glue. You really want to sink that low? I don’t think Brakeman’s your problem.”
“I’m not worried about him. I can take care of myself, and I’m not stupid. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy, here, in manufacturing, in the gym when I’m not out on a fire.”
Meticulously she removed a twig, marked a small, one-inch tear for repair before she lowered the apex to examine higher areas.
“Last night, Brakeman eluded two cops by pushing his full-size pickup across his backyard, cutting a fence, pushing it across another yard until he reached the road. He loaded up everything he’d need to live in the wild. That tells me he’s not stupid, either.”
“So he’s not stupid. Points for him.”
“But he leaves weapons, twice, so they’re easily found. A handgun properly registered to him, a rifle that has his name on it. That’s pretty damn stupid.”
“You’re back to thinking he didn’t do any of this.”
“I’m back to that. I’d rather not be, because this way, we’ve got nothing. We don’t know who or why. Not really. On the other hand, I’m also thinking it’s unlikely anyone’s going to be using you or the base for target practice. Unlikely isn’t enough, but it’s comforting.”
“Because it would be stupid for somebody else to shoot at me, when Brakeman’s on the run and the cops know what weapons he’s got with him.”
No, she wasn’t stupid, she reminded herself, but she’d been too angry to think clearly. Gull, it seemed, didn’t have the same problem.
“But if it’s not him, Gull, why is somebody working so hard to make it look like him?”
“Because he’s an asshole? Because he’s plausible? Because they want to see him go down? Maybe all three. But the point is, you’ve got to be smart—and you are—but I don’t think you have to sweat this.”
She nodded, inspected the apex bridle cords, then the vent hoods.
“I wasn’t sweating it. I’m pissed off.”
“Your subconscious sweats it, then.”
“All right, all right.” She inspected the top of each slot, then the anti-inversion net. There she marked a line of broken stitching.
Gull waited her out until she’d attached the inspection tag to the riser.
“I guess I have to call my father. Word travels, and he’ll get worried.”
“I talked to him before I came up. We went over it.”
“He came by? Why didn’t he—”
“I called him.”
She faced him with one quick pivot. “You did what? What do you mean calling my father about all this before I—”
“It’s called male bonding. You’ll never get it. I believe women are as capable as men, deserve equal pay—and that one day, should be sooner than later, in my opinion, the right woman can and should be leader of the free world. But you can’t understand the male bonding rituals any more than men can understand why the vast majority of women are obsessed with shoes and other footwear.”
“I’m not obsessed with shoes, so don’t try to make this something cultural or—or gender-based.”
“You have three pairs of jump boots. Two is enough. You have four pairs of running shoes. Again, two’s plenty.”
“I’m breaking in a third pair of jump boots before the first pair gets tossed so I don’t get boot-bit. And I have four pairs of running shoes because . . . you’re trying to distract me from the point.”
“Yes, but I’m not done. You also have hiking boots—two pairs—three pairs of sandals and three of really sexy heels. And this is just on base. God knows what you’ve got in your closet at home.”
“You’ve been counting my shoes? Talk about obsessed.”
“I’m just observant. Lucas wants you to call him when you get a chance. Leave him a text or voice message if he’s in the air, and he’ll come by to see you tonight. He likes knowing I’ve got your back. You’d have mine, wouldn’t you?” he asked before she could snap at him.
So she sighed. “Yes. You defeat me with your reason and your diatribe over shoes. Over which I am not obsessed.”
“You also have a good dozen pairs of earrings, none of which you wear routinely. But we can discuss that another time.”
“Oh, go away. Go study something.”
“You could give me a rigging lesson. I want to work on getting certified.”
“Maybe. Come back in an hour, and we’ll—”
When the siren sounded she stepped back. “I guess not. I’m switching to Ops.”
“I’ll walk you over. Here.”
He handed her her cap and sunglasses, then put on his own while she frowned at them.
“What is this?”
“A disguise.” He grinned at her. “Dobie wants you to wear them. Let’s give him a break, or he might order fake mustaches and clown noses off the Internet.”
She rolled her eyes, but put them on. “And what, this makes us look like twins? Where are your tits?”
“You’re wearing them, and may I say they look spectacular on you.”
“I can’t disagree with that. Still, everybody should stop worrying about Rowan and do their jobs.”
By four P.M., she was jumping fire, doing hers.
23
July burned. Hot and dry, the wild ignited, inflamed by lightning strikes, negligence, an errant spark bellowed by a gust of wind.
For eighteen straight days and nights Zulies jumped and fought fire. In Montana, in Idaho, Colorado, California, the Dakotas, New Mexico. Bodies shed weight, lived with pain, exhaustion, injury, battling in canyons, on ridges, in forests.
The constant war left little time to think about what lived outside the fire. The manhunt for Leo Brakeman heading into its third week hardly mattered when the enemy shot firebrands the size of cannonballs or swept on turbulent winds over barriers so effortfully created.
Along with her crew, Rowan rushed up the side of Mount Blackmore, like a battalion charging into hell. Beside her another tree torched off, spewing embers like flaming confetti. They felled burning trees on the charge, sawed and cut the low-hanging branches the fire could climb like snakes.
Can’t let her climb, Rowan thought as they hacked and dug. Can’t let her crown.
Can’t let her win.
So they fought their way up the burning mountai
n, sweat running in salty rivers in the scorched air.
When Gull climbed up the line to her position, she pulled down her bandanna to pour water down her aching throat.
“The line’s holding.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “A couple of spots jumped it, but we pissed them out. Gibbons is going to leave a couple down there to scout for more, and send the rest up to you.”
“Good deal.” She took another drink, scanning and counting yellow shirts and helmets through the smoke. On the left the world glowed, eerie orange with an occasional spurt of flame that picked out a hardened, weary face, tossed it into sharp relief.
In that moment, she loved them, loved them all with a near religious fervor. Every ass and elbow, she thought, every blister and burn.
Her eyes lit when she looked at Gull. “Best job ever.”
“If you don’t mind starving, sweating and eating smoke.”
Grinning, she shouldered her Pulaski. “Who would? Head on up. We’re still making line here so—” She broke off, grabbed his arm.
It spun out of the orange wall, whipped by the wind. The funnel of flame whirled and danced, spinning a hundred feet into the air. In seconds, screaming like a banshee, it uprooted two trees.
“Fire devil. Run! ” She pointed toward the front of the line as its wind blasted the furnace heat in her face. She grabbed her radio, watching the flaming column’s spin as she shouted to the crew, “Go up, go up! Move your asses. Gibbons, fire devil, south flank. Stay clear.”
It roared toward the line, a tornadic gold light as gorgeous as it was terrifying, spewing flame, hurling fiery debris. The air exploded with the call of it, with its lung-searing heat. She watched Matt go down, saw Gull haul him up, take his weight. Keeping her eye on the fire devil, she shifted, got her shoulder under Matt’s other arm.
“Just my ankle. I’m okay.”
“Keep moving! Keep moving!”
It snaked toward them, undulating. They’d never outrun it, she thought, not with Matt stumbling and limping between them. Behind Matt’s back, Gull’s hand gripped her elbow, and in acknowledgment, she did the same.
This is it. Even thinking it she pushed up the ridge. No time for emergency gear, for the shelters.
“There!” Gull jerked her, with Matt between them, to the right, and another five precious feet. He shoved her under the enormous boulder first, then Matt, before crawling under behind them.
“Here we go,” Gull breathed, and stared into Rowan’s eyes while the world erupted.
Rock exploded and rained down like bullets. Through smoke black as pitch, Rowan saw a blazing tree crash and vomit out a flood of flame and sparks.
“Short, shallow breaths, Matt.” She gripped his hand, squeezed hard. “Just like in a shake and bake.”
“Is this what Jim felt?” Tears and sweat rolled down his face. “Is this what he felt?”
“Short and shallow,” she repeated. “Through your bandanna, just like in a shelter.”
For an instant, another, the heat built to such mad intensity she wondered if they’d all just torch like a tree. She worked her other hand free, found Gull’s. And held on.
Then the screaming wind silenced.
“It’s cooling. We’re okay. We’re okay?” she repeated, in a question this time.
“What can you see?” Gull asked her.
“The smoke’s starting to thin, a little. We’ve got a lot of spots. Spots, no wall, no devil.” She shifted as much as she could. “Get behind me, Matt, so I can look out.” She angled beside Gull, cautiously eased her head out to look out, up. “It didn’t crown, didn’t roll the wall. Just spots. Jesus, Gull, your jacket’s smoking.” She beat at it with her hands as he worked to shrug out of it. “Are you burned?” she demanded. “Did it get you?”
“I don’t think so.” He crab-walked back. “The ground’s still hot. Watch yourselves.”
Rowan crawled out, reaching for her radio. On it Gibbons shouted her name.
“It’s Ro, Gull, Matt. We’re good. We’re clear. Is everybody all right? Is everybody accounted for?”
“We are now.” Relief flooded his voice. “Where the hell are you?”
She stood, scanned the area to give him the best coordinates. “Matt’s bunged up his ankle. Gull and I can handle these spots, but we dumped most of the gear on the run so . . . Never mind,” she said as she heard the shouts, saw the yellow shirts through the smoke. “Cavalry’s coming this way.”
Dobie came on the run with Trigger right behind him. “Jesus Christ, why don’t you just give us all heart attacks and get it over with?”
He grabbed Gull, slapped his back. “What the hell happened to you?”
“A little dance with the devil. Better put out those spots before we end up having to run again.”
Trigger crouched beside Matt, held out a scorched and mangled helmet. “Found your brainbucket, snookie. You’re a lucky bastard.” He put Matt in a headlock, a sign of relief and affection. “A lucky son of a bitch. Have a souvenir.”
He set the helmet beside Matt before hurrying over to help Dobie with the spot fires.
“Let’s check that ankle out.” Rowan knelt to undo his boot.
“I thought we were finished. I would’ve been finished if you and Gull hadn’t gotten me in there. You saved my life. You could’ve lost yours trying.”
She probed gently at his swollen ankle. “We’re Zulies. When one of us goes down, we pick them up. I don’t think it’s broken. Just sprained bad enough to earn you a short vacation.”
She looked up, smiled at him as she started to wrap it. “Lucky bastard.”
Though he protested, they medevaced Matt out, while the rest of the crew beat the fire back, finally killing it in the early hours of the morning. Mop-up took another full day of digging, beating, dousing.
“You volunteered to stay back, confirm the put-out,” Rowan told Gull.
“I’ve got to quit all this volunteering.”
“With me. The rest are packing out.”
“That’s not such a bad deal.”
“We’ve got MREs, a cool mountain spring, in which the beer fairy has snugged a six-pack.”
“And people say she doesn’t exist.”
“What do people know? I wanted to see this one through, all the way, and take a breath, I guess. So you’re good with it?”
“What do you think?”
“Then let’s take a hike, start doing a check before the sun goes down.”
They moved through the burnout at an easy pace, looking for smoke and smolder.
“I wanted to wait until it was over—all the way—before I said anything about it,” Rowan began. “I didn’t think we were going to make it back there against the fire devil. If you hadn’t spotted those boulders, reacted fast, we’d have all ended up like Matt’s now-famous helmet.”
“I don’t plan on losing you. Anyway, if you’d been on my side, you’d’ve seen the boulders.”
“I like to think so. It was beautiful,” she said after a moment, and with reverence. “It might be crazy to say that, think that, about something that really wants to kill you, but it was beautiful. That spinning column of fire, like something from another world. In a way, I guess it is.”
“Once you see one, it changes things because you know you can’t beat it. You run and hide and you pray, and if you live through it, for a while, all the bullshit in real life doesn’t mean dick.”
“For a while. I guess that’s why I wanted to stay out, stick with it a little longer. There’s a lot of bullshit waiting out there. Leo Brakeman’s still out there. He’s no fire devil, but he’s still out there.”
She blew out a breath. “Every time we get a call, I wonder if we’re going to stumble over another body. His, someone else’s. Because he’s out there. And if he didn’t start those fires, whoever did is out there, too.”
“It’s been three weeks. That’s a long time between.”
“But it doesn’t feel over and done.”
> “No. It doesn’t feel over and done.”
“That’s the bullshit waiting.” She gestured. “Why don’t you take that direction, I’ll take this one. We’ll cover more ground, then meet back at camp.” She checked her watch. “Say six-thirty.”
“In time for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”
SHE BEAT HIM BACK to the clearing by the bubbling stream. The campsite, a hive the night before of very tired, very grungy bees, held quiet as a church now, and shimmered in the rays of evening sun. She stowed her gear, checked on the six-pack of beer and the six-pack of Coke she’d asked L.B. to drop.
She’d rather have that, she realized, in this remote spot on the mountain than a bottle of the finest champagne in the fanciest restaurant in Montana.
In anywhere.
She went back for her PG bag and her little bottles of liquid soap and shampoo.
Alone in the sunlight, she pulled off her boots, socks, stripped off the tired work clothes. The stream barely hit her knees, but the cool rush of the water felt like heaven. She sat down, let it bubble over her skin as she looked up to the rise of trees, the spread of sky.
She took time washing, as another woman might in a hot, fragrant bubble bath, enjoying the cool, the clean, the way the water rushed away with the froth she made.
Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them, laid her cheek on her knees, closed her eyes.
She opened them again as a shadow fell over her, and smiled lazily up at Gull. Until she saw the camera.
“You did not take my picture like this. Am I going to have to break that thing?”
“It’s for my private collection. You’re a fantasy, Rowan. Goddess of the brook. How’s the water?”
“Cold.”
He, as she did, pulled off his boots. “I could use some cold.”
“You’re late. It’s got to be close to seven.”
“I had a little detour.”
“Did you find fresh spots?”
“No, all clear. But I found these.” He picked up a water bottle filled with wildflowers.
“You know you’re not supposed to pick flowers up here.” But she couldn’t stop the smile.