Blaze (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 8)

by Ophelia Sexton

  "C'mon, Tony," Damaris begged, even though she knew it wouldn't do any good. "I got a daughter. If I go to prison for this, who'll take care of her?"

  "Don't worry, babe."

  Damaris shuddered at the shift from the usual "D" to "babe." Whenever Tony stopped calling her "D," it was never good news for her.

  Tony continued, "If Freddy blabs, I'll make sure that Sophie gets the best of everything until you're out on parole…as long as you make sure that you don't take me down with you." He paused and smiled at her, showing his teeth like a predator. "Or you could try to change my mind by going out on a date with me and bein' real nice to me, if you know what I mean."

  Damaris knew exactly what he meant, and it made her feel sick to her stomach.

  They both knew that Tony had her between a rock and hard place. Either way, he was going to get something he wanted.

  He watched her intently as she debated with herself, his smirk betraying his pleasure in forcing her to bend to his will.

  "So, which is it gonna be, babe?" he said after a minute. "You gonna take this assignment? Or should I call my wife and let her know I'm gonna be working late—real late—tonight?" His smirk turned into an open leer. "I still got those reservations."

  Damaris choked down bile rising her throat.

  Logically, she should go out on that date with him instead of agreeing to the hit. But if she couldn't even stand the thought of him touching her, then she knew that there was no way she could fake any kind of enjoyment when he put his hands on her for real.

  Man, I feel sorry for his wife, married to a creep like that.

  Besides, he hadn't actually promised that he'd let her off the hook for the assignment even if she did agree to a date. Knowing Tony, he'd take whatever he could get and then force her to take the job, anyway.

  No thanks.

  "I'll take care of Dimitri Medved," she assured him.

  He grinned at her surrender, and she thought she saw rows of sharp white teeth like a shark's. "Great. I knew you wouldn't let me down, D."

  She reached for the doorknob to escape from Tony's office.

  "Just one thing, though," Tony said as she turned the knob. "This is gonna be an out of town assignment. Freddy said he's willing to pay your travel expenses in addition to the usual fee. I'll be taking my usual commission off the top."

  Damaris knew she should probably count her blessings that she saw any money at all. With everything Tony had on her, he could have forced her to work for free. She often wondered why he didn't.

  * * *

  Later that night, after the dance recital—Sophie was definitely the cutest of the dancing flowers—Damaris returned to her modest two-bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn, shared a snack with her daughter, then tucked her into bed with a kiss and a story.

  Then Damaris retreated to the home office located in one corner of her living room and opened her laptop. She knew she wouldn't be able to fall asleep until she had the basic plan for her special assignment. And to come up with a plan, she needed information.

  Her eyes widened as she began to read the files that Tony had sent her on Dimitri Medved.

  When Tony had said this was going to be an out of town assignment, Damaris had assumed she was headed for Chicago, Boston, or maybe even Los Angeles.

  "Where the hell is Bearpaw Ridge?"

  Chapter 2 – Wayward Son

  Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho

  "I'm not moving back to New York, Mama," Dimitri Medved said firmly into his truck's Bluetooth system. "I like it here."

  It was the truth. If he had been living in New York City, he wouldn't have just been able to spend the afternoon fishing on a pristine river, breathing clean air and surrounded by bird song and the gentle rustling of leaves in the breeze.

  Being surrounded by nature felt like balm to his bear's soul.

  Now, sunburned and lugging a cooler full of Chinook salmon that he planned to barbeque for dinner tonight, he was driving down the highway back to his new house on the Grizzly Creek Ranch.

  Coming around a bend in the highway where red cliffs sloped down to the river, he slammed on the brakes of his Ford F150 pickup to avoid hitting a herd of bighorn sheep ambling across the road.

  They were a common sight around Bearpaw Ridge, along with deer, elk, and the occasional moose.

  "What? What was that?" Mama demanded, her usually faint Russian accent growing stronger with agitation.

  "Just some sheep crossing the highway," he assured her.

  "Sheep!" she exclaimed in disgust. "Sheep. In the road." She sighed. "Mitya, my son, be sensible. You've had your fun playing cowboy. But do you really want to waste all of your education living in a little peasant village in the middle of nowhere? What about your career?" she finished plaintively.

  "I'm not wasting anything," Dimitri assured her. "I just finished building my dream house, which I'd never be able to afford in New York City. And I love my job. Ash's company is very successful, you know."

  And best of all, Dimitri had spent the past five years living 2500 miles away from his parents.

  At first, he hadn't wanted anything to do with either of them, not after the way they had treated him and Nika when his sister dared to mate Ash Swanson in defiance of their mother's orders forbidding the match.

  He'd actually felt relief when the federal authorities had showed up at Nika's wedding and arrested Anastasia and Mikael Medved at the end of the ceremony, ensuring that it would be a truly unforgettable event.

  "But what about us? We need your help, Mitya. Your father and I want to rebuild our bank," Mama informed him, and Dimitri choked.

  Thank God he had stopped for the sheep, or he might have driven off the road.

  Mama couldn't seriously be trying to revive the family's banking business, which had all but collapsed after she and Papa were convicted for money laundering and a host of other charges! Who would ever trust them with investments again?

  No way in hell was he returning to New York. He'd spent the last five years working hard to become part of Bearpaw Ridge's tight-knit community. With Nika safely married to Ash, Ash's mother Elle had adopted Dimitri into the Swanson bear shifter clan.

  Dimitri considered it an honor to be a Swanson. They were good people and exemplary members of the community. They protected not only their own clan members, as bear shifters should, but they protected others, too.

  Most of the younger Swansons, men and women alike, were members of the town's volunteer fire department. Wanting to help protect his new home, Dimitri had joined the fire department as soon as he had settled into his new lodgings at the Swansons' Grizzly Creek Ranch.

  Nika, Ash, and their little boy had moved back to Bearpaw Ridge last year, after Nika finished her medical studies and her residency in Seattle.

  Ash and Nika had recently opened the first shifter-focused medical center in the state, while Dimitri had taken a greater role in running Grizzly Creek Games's daily operations, which left Ash more time to create new games.

  Dimitri's parents had seemed truly repentant when they got out of prison, and for the first year, they had focused on being good grandparents and had visited Bearpaw Ridge often. Papa always looked like he enjoyed his visits. He had learned how to ride a horse and eagerly helped with chores around the ranch.

  Mama, on the other hand, had made it clear that she was a city bear and that she only deigned to leave her beloved New York City to spend time with her first grandchild.

  Unfortunately, it hadn't taken long for Mama and Papa to fall back into their old ways.

  "You must come back and help us. It's your duty as our son and heir," Mama pronounced.

  "Wrong," Dimitri told her, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "I stopped owing you anything after you forced me to attack Ash and then deserted me. You and Papa were willing to sacrifice me in order to kidnap Nika." He chuckled. "And you know what? It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Once you cut me loose, I got to live my own life with
people who understand what family loyalty really means."

  There was a long silence on the line, and Dimitri dared to hope that Mama had hung up on him.

  No such luck. She would never end a conversation without having the last word.

  "Oh Dimitri Mikaelovitch," she said brokenly, using the full-metal Russian version of his name, complete with patronymic for added effect. "Must you continue to hold a grudge against your poor parents?"

  "It's not a grudge," he said. "It was your choice to throw me away. I've just come to terms with it, that's all."

  Another silence. Dimitri half-hoped his mother would disconnect in a rage.

  Again, no such luck.

  Then, in an entirely different tone, Mama asked, "So, have you found any nice bear shifter girls yet?"

  "No," Dimitri said shortly. It was a sore spot with him right now.

  Looking at how happy Ash and Nika were together, not to mention Ash's older brothers and their mates, Dimitri had realized a while ago that he was ready to settle down with a mate of his own.

  The trouble was finding a woman that he and his bear could agree upon. He'd dated any number of nice bear shifter girls since arriving in Bearpaw Ridge, including several of the female Swanson cousins. He had mostly enjoyed himself without feeling any special chemistry or connection with any of them.

  And thanks to the many enemies that his parents had made, he couldn't risk dating an Ordinary woman. Over the past five years, there had been three notable attempts on his life. They had all ended badly for the would-be assassins, but Dimitri had realized that if he'd had an Ordinary girlfriend or spouse, she would have been targeted instead of him.

  And that made Dimitri too dangerous for any Ordinary woman to date.

  A female bear shifter would probably be able take care of herself if yet another thug arrived from the East Coast to try to take vengeance on Dimitri for his parents' sins.

  He just needed to find the right shifter woman. And for that, he'd have to sign up with ShiftMatch, the online dating service for shifters in far-flung communities around the world.

  Tomorrow, he told himself. I'll deal with it tomorrow.

  Tonight, he was going to invite his new family to come over for a grilled salmon dinner.

  "Good-bye, Mama," he said.

  And then he pressed the hang-up switch on his steering wheel.

  Chapter 3 – Target

  Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho

  Two weeks later

  "Aw, crap," breathed Damaris. She peered through the windshield of her rental SUV, her binoculars raised to her eyes. "Don't tell me that's Dimitri Medved!"

  It was a warm sunny June afternoon. She and Sophie had been at the tail end of a long drive down from the Missoula airport in Montana when Damaris had spotted a column of dense black smoke rising into the clear air.

  A fire engine with flashing lights was pulled over to the side of the highway.

  Acting on instinct, she had parked a safe distance away and grabbed for her binoculars.

  Fascinated, she watched as a small group of firefighters worked to extinguish a car fire.

  Her first thought was: They sure grow their firefighters big and beefy out here in the middle of nowhere.

  Her second was shock at seeing the back of one firefighter's coat labeled MEDVED, D.

  It can't possibly be this easy! She'd been trying to figure out how to locate her target's whereabouts without arousing suspicion in a small town like this.

  His helmet and bulky fireman's gear hid his features, but there was no mistaking the fact that Medved was a tall guy with shoulders like a football player. And the other firefighters working at his side were just as big and tall. Based on the labels on their coats, they were all named Swanson and Jacobsen.

  Then came her third reaction. Freddy Fontina wants me to disappear a frickin' firefighter?

  Like most New Yorkers, Damaris admired the brave men and women of the FDNY and had grown up hearing about the firefighters who had courageously raced into the World Trade Center to try to save people on September 11th.

  Maybe there's been a mistake, and I'm out here looking at the wrong Dimitri Medved.

  But she knew it was wishful thinking.

  She studied Medved intently through her binoculars. He looked nothing like the guy in the photographs Tony had sent her.

  That guy had been sitting in one of New York's Michelin-starred restaurants, wearing a designer business suit that cost more than Damaris's monthly rent and sporting the kind of haircut that cost a couple hundred dollars, at least.

  This guy looked a lot bulkier in his dusty, stained firefighting gear. His face was tanned, stubbled, and beaded with sweat as he and his buddies wrestled hoses from the fire engine and trained thick streams of water on the burning car. It was the kind of heavy physical labor she'd never pictured someone of his background doing.

  Once again, she wondered what the hell the heir to a Manhattan investment bank was doing all the way out here in the frickin' sticks.

  "Mommy, why are we stopping here?" Sophie asked from the back seat of the rented SUV.

  After some sleepless nights racking her brain to work out childcare logistics, Damaris had decided to bring her daughter with her on this job.

  For one thing, summer vacation had just started. Other people had grandparents and aunts and cousins who could help out in a childcare emergency. But thanks to her entanglement with Tony, Damaris had deliberately isolated herself from anyone that she could trust to watch her precious daughter.

  And—this was the part she hated herself for—Damaris knew that no one would suspect a mom and daughter of being anything but innocent tourists. She was pretty sure that bringing Sophie along on one of her special assignments made her a very bad person.

  As if offing guys for money wasn't already gonna send me straight to Hell.

  Sophie had proven to be a good traveler, first on the plane ride out from LaGuardia to Missoula via Denver and then on the long drive from Montana down to Idaho.

  And what the hell kind of state doesn't have its own frickin' airport?

  Before departing NYC, Damaris had bought Sophie a couple of children's guides to the birds and animals of the Rocky Mountains. Sophie had spent the drive from the airport to Bearpaw Ridge eagerly staring out the SUV's windows, hoping to see wildlife.

  To Sophie's delight, they had spotted elk and buffalo grazing in a pasture fenced with weathered wooden posts and rusty barbed wire and had observed a red-tailed hawk repeatedly swooping from a tree in pursuit of something hidden in the tall grasses and wildflowers of a forest meadow.

  And then there had been the bald eagle nest, built on a high, manmade platform right next to the highway, complete with a large, charcoal-feathered eaglet and its white-headed parent.

  Bearpaw Ridge was located right smack in the middle of the kind of spectacular scenery that she'd only ever seen on Sophie's nature documentaries. Plus cowboys.

  And not a single Starbucks in sight.

  Watching her daughter's delight in seeing all of the wild critters, Damaris could almost convince herself that they were here on real summer vacation.

  "I just want to watch the firemen put out that fire, Ms. Kiddo," Damaris answered in response to Sophie's question.

  She frowned as she watched the firefighters work. So far, nothing about this special assignment was going the way she'd planned it.

  "I wanna see, too!" Sophie demanded.

  Without waiting for a reply, she unbuckled her seatbelt, scrambled to her knees, and leaned forward over Damaris's shoulder.

  Damaris picked up a smaller pair of binoculars that were sitting on the front passenger seat and handed them to her daughter.

  Together, they watched as the car fire was finally vanquished in a cloud of steam.

  "Show's over, Ms. Kiddo," Damaris announced, putting aside her binoculars. "Let's head for our motel and find a place to grab a bite."

  She had seen online that the Grizzly Creek Ranch offered v
acation lodgings, but staying that close to her target hadn't seemed like a smart idea. Instead, she'd searched for a large hotel chain where she could come and go with more anonymity.

  When she failed to find anything like that in the vicinity of Bearpaw Ridge, she ended up booking a room at a motel with good reviews located right in the middle of town, near the riverside city park and about a twenty-minute drive from the ranch where Medved was reported to be living.

  "Can we have Italian?" Sophie asked, retreating to the back seat and reaching for her seat belt.

  "Italian sounds good. I'll ask the people at the motel for a recommendation, okay?" Damaris put the SUV in drive and released the parking brake.

  "Okay!" Sophie said cheerfully as she fastened her seatbelt.

  In her rearview mirror, Damaris saw her daughter wave at the firefighters as they pulled past the scorched metal hulk of what had once been a small pickup.

  Medved waved back, and Damaris saw the flash of his grin, framed by dark stubble and a strong jawline under his helmet. She felt her chest tighten.

  Dammit. He's a hunk.

  All of her other special assignments had been for guys she had known were genuine creeps, low-life good-for-nothings whom no one would miss, maybe not even their moms.

  But Dimitri Medved the firefighter was a puzzle, and one she needed to solve quickly.

  I have to find a way to meet him before I figure out what to do about this special assignment.

  Then inspiration struck.

  "Hey, Ms. Kiddo," she said as casually as she could. "There's something we need to do before we check in at the motel."

  * * *

  Luckily for everyone concerned, no one was hurt when Ethan Jacobsen's pickup caught fire just outside the entrance to the Jacobsen Ranch.

  Twenty-one-year-old Ethan was understandably upset by the loss of the ancient battered Datsun that was older than he was by a considerable margin. He'd worked a lot of hours as a busboy and dishwasher at the Wildcat Springs Texas BBQ restaurant to save up for his first vehicle.