WILD HEAT

by Bella Andre

  “He was visiting doctors last week. For Joseph.”

  “Why the hell didn't he tell me? I would have gone with him.”

  She squeezed his hand. “He wanted to do this on his own. To give his father a reason to be proud of him.” She pressed her lips together. “You were right all along about Dennis. I don't think he did it.”

  A loud crack sounded from the first floor and Logan pulled her to the other side of the roof. They'd have to finish this conversation later.

  “We need to get out of here. Fast. And it looks like there's only one way out.” He pointed at the swimming pool off of what used to be his back deck. “We're going to need to jump into the water.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  He put down the axe and squeezed her hand. “We'll go together.”

  She looked up at him, trust blazing from the depths of her eyes. “Let's do this.”

  Maya was the equal of any man on his crew. She didn't let fear stop her. Even when it was a life-or-death situation. And she was right. It was better to act first, before thinking—and fear—got them in trouble.

  “On three. One, two, three.”

  Even one moment of hesitation would have been deadly as they sprinted across his roof and leapt into the air. Releasing each other's hands and curling into balls, they hit the water in a perfect bull's-eye.

  The force of hitting the water temporarily knocked the air from his lungs. He smashed his knees into the cement bottom of the pool and the water swallowed his roar of pain. His legs and tailbone hurt like hell. But he was alive.

  An instant later he was able to open his eyes and look for Maya in the churning water. She wasn't moving, she was simply floating facedown in the middle of his pool, her limbs limp.

  He prayed that she'd simply been knocked unconscious when she hit the water. What would he do without her?

  Logan swam to her side and yanked her unmoving form out of the water. As soon as her head was above the surface, he confirmed her pulse, then hit the heel of his palm between her shoulder blades in a steady motion.

  Her sudden coughing was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. He held her close in the water, rubbing her back, whispering “It's all right. We made it. Long, slow breaths.” Her inhalations slowed and he murmured, “That's it. Just like that.”

  She clung to his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist.

  “Do you think you broke anything?”

  “No,” she rasped out, then coughed hard several times in rapid succession. “We're not dead, are we?”

  “Not yet.”

  She pulled back slightly to look at him and he was so happy to see her eyes open and bright with life that he kissed her hard, then soft and slow.

  “See,” she said, “what did I tell you? Invincible.”

  He hugged her tightly, then said, “We've got to figure out who the next target is going to be. Who else could the arsonist want to destroy?” One name immediately popped into his head, and when Maya looked at him, he knew she was thinking the same thing.

  “Joseph.”

  He nodded. “For some reason, he and I were both set up to look guilty. Now that the arsonist thinks he's got you and me, I'm afraid he'll go after Joseph.”

  Maya started to swim for the edge of the pool. “We've got to get him out of his house, move him somewhere safe.” But when she saw that the shrubs all around his pool were encased in flames, which rose to twice the height of the plants, she stopped midstroke. “Oh God,” she said, “we're trapped in here.”

  They were surrounded by a five-foot wall of flames on all sides. It didn't help any that the morning was breezy and the flames reached out in all directions. There wasn't a single safe place to exit.

  Logan moved to her side and pulled her close, needing to reassure himself yet again that she was okay. “We'll have to wait it out in the water.”

  Of all the things he thought he'd be doing in a pool with a beautiful woman, he'd never thought it'd be watching the house he'd built burn down.

  “This really sucks,” Maya said, putting his thoughts into words. “I wish we could do something to save your house.”

  “The arsonist can have my house. But he can't have the woman I love.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MAYA WHIPPED her head around and stared at Logan.

  He loved her.

  She'd been a constant thorn in his side, an utter pain in the butt, and more prickly than a porcupine.

  But he loved her anyway.

  He put a finger on her lips, then kissed her gently. “Let's get out of this alive. Then we can talk.”

  Neither of them spoke again as they waited for the flames to die down. Fifteen long minutes passed before the fire pushed away from his pool and met up with the fiery ball of what had once been his home.

  Logan was so strong, amazingly stoic as he watched his beautiful home burn down. Yet again she understood exactly why he was such a phenomenal leader: No matter how bad things got, he was a lone spot of calm in the midst of the storm.

  They swam to the edge of the pool and Logan pulled himself out first, giving her a hand up, lifting her into his arms.

  “I'm okay,” she protested. “I can walk.”

  “The soil's too hot. The soles of your shoes could melt into your skin.”

  He didn't put her down until they were at least a hundred yards away from the flames, even though his own feet had to be burning up. She didn't protest—she was enjoying the strength and comfort of his touch too much. When he finally released her, she had to work like hell to ignore the aches and pains that accompanied standing.

  She was alive, none of her bones was broken, and she was with Logan. Which meant she didn't have a single thing to complain about.

  “What's the fastest way to Joseph's house on foot?”

  “The deer trails behind my house.”

  Maya didn't hesitate. “Let's go.”

  “It's hilly terrain,” he warned. “We'll go at a pace you're comfortable with.”

  “You lead and I'll keep up.”

  Thirty minutes later, Maya's calves burned, her quads felt like jelly, and although the hot summer sun had quickly dried her clothes from the unexpected dip in Logan's pool, she was soaking wet from head to toe with sweat. She'd thought an hour at the gym four days a week kept her in good shape. She was wrong.

  Even though they were jogging up steep, rocky slopes, Logan was barely exerting himself. Considering he wasn't wearing 150 pounds of equipment, this was probably the equivalent of a stroll in the park for him.

  Without her, he could have gone at least twice as fast. But she knew he wouldn't leave her, so she saved what little was left of her breath.

  Finally, the deer trail they'd been following connected with a Forest Service–maintained trail. Logan waited for her to catch up.

  “We can slow down now. We're almost there.”

  She managed to get the words “Which way?” out between gasps.

  He pointed down the hill and she didn't waste another second before running toward Joseph's house. A handful of minutes later, she saw the roof. Logan sprinted past her and was already inside by the time she caught her breath. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes and stepped inside the cabin.

  It was much tidier than on her previous visit. Almost eerily so.

  Logan walked into Joseph's bedroom, concern etched into his face. “Where the hell is he?”

  “Could he have gone on a trip without telling you?” Maya asked, working to mask her own concern.

  “No way. I offered to send him to Hawaii but he refused to leave.”

  “Are you sure he didn't decide go stay with someone until the fire stops spreading?” Lord knew, that would have been the smartest thing to do.

  He opened closet doors, one after the other. “All of his things are here.” And then Logan's tanned face went white as he stepped away from a freestanding armoire. “He's out there.”

  Maya hurried across the room, saying “Whe
re?” even though she was afraid she already knew the answer.

  “His gear is gone.”

  “He's trying to fight the fire, isn't he?”

  Logan nodded. “It's possible that he forgot he retired. He probably heard the wildfire was spreading.”

  “And he decided to go help fight it.”

  She'd never seen Logan's eyes look so bleak, even in the hospital with Robbie. She knew how horrible it was to lose a father. She didn't want that to happen to him.

  “Go find him,” she said. “Go bring him back.”

  “I can't leave you alone. You've got to come with me.”

  “I'll only slow you down. I can take care of myself until you get back. You can't be in two places at once. Joseph needs your help more than I do.” She wrapped her arms around him. “I promise I'll be waiting for you when you both return.”

  Going on her tippy-toes, she kissed him with all of the love she felt but couldn't say aloud. He kissed her back, hard and sure, and then he was gone.

  She wouldn't let herself go to the window and watch him disappear into the hills. That was the kind of a thing a desperate, clingy girlfriend or wife did. Even after everything, she still didn't know what to do. Yes, she loved him. But was love enough? Would love prepare her for a dreaded phone call, for word from the Forest Service that Logan had been injured or, worse, that he was gone forever?

  Again, it struck her that Joseph's cabin was oddly quiet. Goose bumps dotted her arms. The room was warm, but there was a chill lingering in the air.

  She left the bedroom and poked her head into a second bedroom, down the hall. Two twin beds were on opposite walls, a Top Gun poster beside one of the beds, a Guns N' Roses poster over the other. It wasn't too hard to figure out which was which—Logan had definitely been in full-on badass mode as a teen. She smiled. He never would have gone for the regimented feel of the Tom Cruise hit.

  It didn't look like the room had changed much in the past twenty years. Without a woman around to spearhead a house-wide cleanup, Joseph certainly didn't seem to be the kind of man who cared about updating his surroundings.

  She opened the dusty dresser under the window and sneezed as she pulled out a pile of papers and photos. On top was a picture of Logan and Dennis jumping off a rock into a lake in cutoff shorts. She couldn't imagine having been a teenage girl and seeing such beauty. The years had given Logan a rugged, hard beauty, but even at seventeen, she could see the man he'd become.

  She tucked the photo into her jeans and continued flipping through the stack of photos, until one of them made her stop and do a double take.

  It was a fairly recent picture of Logan sandwiched between two women. And Maya was nearly certain that one of the women was Dennis's girlfriend, Jenny.

  Maya studied the photo, taking in the fact that Jenny was looking at Logan with naked adoration, and all at once, that niggling feeling that had been dogging her heels all day clicked into place.

  “Have you been under my nose the whole time?” she asked herself, her brain flying through the possibilities, through everything that had happened.

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she was just reaching for it when the front door creaked open. Her heart pounded hard beneath her breastbone.

  From the phone, she heard Chief Stevens tell her, “Tony dated someone named Jenny,” and she whispered, “I'm in Joseph's cabin. Help,” then closed the phone and slipped it into her pocket, along with a pen she found on top of an old wooden table in the hallway.

  Slowly, making sure she was as calm as she could possibly be, she rounded the corner. Jenny was standing in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Hey there, Jenny,” she said in an easy voice, even as the smell of gasoline permeated the cabin. Maya swallowed the bile that rose up in her throat.

  “It's so nice to see you again, Maya,” Jenny said, as if they were two girlfriends simply getting ready to go out and grab something to eat. “Do you remember me?”

  Maya forced a smile. “Sure. We met a couple of times yesterday.”

  “Oh no, I've seen you before. Six months ago, actually.”

  Maya's heart pounded hard. “Are you sure about that?”

  Jenny's mouth twisted. “I've never been more sure of anything.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  LOGAN RAN up the trail at a fierce pace, his lungs burning, sweat pouring into his eyes and down his chest. Smoke and ash fell from the sky, blanketing his clothes and skin in a dark, sooty layer of burned-up brush.

  On the run from his house, with Maya following bravely behind him, he'd noted the astonishing growth of the wildfire. There must have been a thousand acres between these trails and the original burning point, and yet they were close enough now, he could see new smoke columns rising.

  The fire was moving closer with every minute that ticked by. Time was not on his side. He didn't have the leisure of running every trail split to locate Joseph. He had to guess right the first time and pray he wasn't already too late.

  It was not yet noon, and the wind had picked up speed, blowing more powerfully than usual for midday. Another strike against Joseph, against each and every one of the hotshots on this mountain working to put the wildfire out. If the winds kept up, they would send the flames straight into town, which was crammed full of tourists for the summer. Wildfire always looked for a way down to the flatlands, to the houses and cars and campgrounds, which were full of fuel. With only two main highways snaking out of town, the enormous traffic jams would make casualties inevitable.

  Hitting a Y in the trail, Logan made a split-second decision to take the right fork north, even though Joseph tended to favor the other direction when hiking. If Joseph had suited up, it was because he intended to fight the fire. This trail would lead directly to it.

  A quarter mile later, a fire whirl lifted off the hillside below him. Logan jumped back against a rock and watched the fire and ash rush up the hillside.

  Barely breaking stride at the close call, he continued up the trail until he saw that the small meadow up ahead was burning. Without gear—without even so much as a fire shelter clamped onto his belt—he couldn't go much farther. He prayed that Joseph had realized the trouble and was turning back as well.

  A familiar sound buzzed through the sound of crackling flames. Moving closer to the fire, he scanned the area for a sign of life.

  A bright yellow body moved in front of the orange wall of flames and Logan shouted, “Joseph,” only once, knowing better than to waste any more breath trying to be heard over the imploding gases.

  Without any protective gear, it was borderline crazy for Logan to go in and pull Joseph out. But had their positions been reversed, he was certain that Joseph would have risked his life in the same way.

  Logan sprinted off-trail, making a beeline for the man to whom he owed his life. His debt would never be repaid, not even if he got Joseph off the mountain today in one piece.

  Fully intent on wielding his chainsaw, Joseph didn't notice when Logan ran up behind him. Knowing better than to tap on the arm a man holding heavy, deadly machinery, Logan picked up a rock and threw it at Joseph's leg.

  Joseph's head whipped around, his mask covered in black ash, and seconds later he'd moved far enough away from the flames to put down his chainsaw and flip up his mask.

  “Logan, what the hell are you doing out here? This fire's a killer. It's no place for a kid. Get back to the cabin.”

  Logan instantly understood that Joseph had traveled back to a time when he was lead hotshot and Logan was a teenage kid acting stupid. This wasn't the place to try to talk Joseph back to the present, not while a killer was on the loose.

  First, Logan had to get him to safety. Then they'd work on putting the pieces together and figuring out what had happened today.

  “You've got to follow me out of here, Joseph. Now. It's not safe.”

  Joseph had never once backed down from a fire. He had the scars from second-degree burns to prove it. But Logan couldn't wait for his ag
reement. He moved behind Joseph and put his hands on his shoulders, scorching his palms on the heat of the thick fire-resistant fabric, pushing Joseph in the direction of the trail, off the meadow.

  Joseph struggled over the rocky hillside under the weight of his gear.

  “Give me your pack,” Logan said.

  Joseph growled, “Like hell if I'm letting you carry my gear.”

  The wind howled across the mountain, taking the smoke—and flames—with it. In an instant, Logan had Joseph's pack off and in the dirt. Squatting down, he reached in and pulled out the fire shelter, praying it wasn't too old to be useful.

  Heat singed his shin and he grabbed Joseph in a bear hug and pushed him to the ground, struggling to deploy the shelter over both of them in the whipping wind, his feet to the fire, his boots jammed into the straps at the foot of the shelter. It took every bit of his strength to hold it down as flames and wind rushed over the aluminum and fiberglass tent.

  Joseph's breathing was ragged beneath him, and Logan hoped he hadn't caused the man any broken bones or other injuries that would prolong their hike back to the cabin.

  Logan had only deployed his shelter once before in all the years he'd been a hotshot. It wasn't something a guy wanted to repeat. The sensation of being micro-waved alive was even worse with two men under the silver aluminum and fiberglass cover. Radiant heat was one thing, but direct flames could burn right through to their skin.

  Still, Logan knew damn well that the most likely cause of death for a firefighter was getting scared and throwing off a shelter.

  He held fast to the hand-and-foot holds even as the temperature soared. The nickname “shake'n'bake” was well deserved.

  And then, as quickly as they came, the flames rushed over and off them, the wind taking them up the hill. Logan held fast in case another fireball was about to roll across the trail. He lay over Joseph for several minutes, until he was certain the fire had jumped them for good.

  Slowly, he pushed back the shelter, closing his eyes against the ash raining from the charred trees surrounding the meadow. He held out a hand to Joseph and pulled him up. In one glance, he could see Joseph's mental fog had cleared.