by Amy Lane
“Theo?” Spencer said softly.
“Yeah?”
“Back when we were starting out, I dreamed of this. You and me out here watching the sunset, having a beer, with Colonel at our feet.”
Theo’s smile went all the way to his eyes—to his heart. “Yeah?”
“It’s my favorite dream. Every day we can do this, it comes true.”
Theo closed his eyes. “God, I love you.”
“Me too.”
They held hands in the quiet then, listening to the crackle of the flames. The lovemaking would come later, after the family dinner, and it would be wonderful, as it always was between them.
But that moment—that perfect moment—was one of many that let Theo know that Spencer’s arrival into his life may have been a complete accident, but the relationship they’d forged and the life they’d been building together was anything but chance.
Happiness didn’t just fall out of the sky like random helicopter pilots. Theo and Spencer had needed to work long and hard for that elusive dream.
And every time they watched a sunset together, Theo gave thanks, once again, that their happiness had come true.
THIS was posted on my Patreon about a month before I started writing Hidden Heart—just in case you were wondering why Spencer’s story about how he came to be living on Preston’s property was so detailed…
Rescue
By Amy Lane
“SHIT!” Spencer called over coms. “We’ve got another one. Elsie and I have fuel—we’re going in!”
“Goddammit!” Glen caught his breath as a vicious updraft caused by smoke, heat, and wind rocked the refurbished Black Hawk, and Damien, sitting next to him, swore.
“Where are they at?” he asked tersely.
“Out of Napa. Let’s get these guys to shelter and fuel up. This wildfire is moving like, well—”
“If you say wildfire, I’ll beat you,” Damien muttered. Another blast of smoky wind rocked them, and he shut up. Mother Nature was not fucking around with these wildfires, and apparently even bad jokes to lighten the mood were off-limits.
“C’mon, motherfucker, c’mon, motherfucker,” Glen chanted, wrestling the stick in his hands. The frightened people who’d been rescued at the edge of the lake as the fire had closed in on them couldn’t hear them over the sound of the chopper’s blades, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Glen’s arms ached from hanging on to the stick, his lungs and eyes burned from the smoke, and his heart ached from seeing half his state go up in flames while all he and his friends could do was bail out campers and residents who hadn’t been given nearly enough warning to flee. At this point Glen didn’t give a damn what the people in the back thought of him, as long as he got the helicopter down and the passengers safely delivered and could launch into the air quickly enough to get the next batch.
And as long as the next call wasn’t from his brother.
They had just landed at a field outside of San Francisco, where other refugees from the fires were grouping, exhausted and terrified and still coughing from the smoke. He and Damien were running a check over the helicopter while it refueled, making sure it was good to go in the air again, when Damien swore.
He was looking at his phone in agony, and he met Glen’s gaze with grim determination.
“It’s heading there?” Glen asked.
Damien nodded. “They’ve already started loading the truck with crates to get the dogs out, and they’re about to hook up the horse trailers,” he said. Both of them took deep breaths and quickened their pace.
Preston was in trouble.
PRESTON and Damien had outlined the evacuation procedure very specifically. Damien had been stressed—Preston could tell.
Preston could not fathom flames overtaking his grandmother’s vast acreage, but a sheriff’s deputy had just stopped by to tell them that the flames were ten miles away and they should think about heading out.
Now Preston was stressed.
He, Oscar, and Belinda worked quickly, putting the small dog crates in the back of Belinda’s van and the big dog crates—as many as they could fit—in the back of Oscar’s two-ton pickup. They’d had to pack their belongings—their go-bags, their electronics, their personal items—in between the dog crates, because even though Preston had a truck, there was no guarantee they could fit every last damned dog in the vehicles they had.
The thought of leaving dogs here in crates made Preston’s breath come hard and his brain fuzz out. They had to get all the dogs out.
They just had to.
He and Oscar sent Belinda out first, with a minivan full of dog beds and the horse trailer hitched to the back. She and Oscar shared a frantic, tearful “be careful” kiss through the window as she left. As they kissed, Preston could see the flames over the trees on the horizon, and they all caught their breath at the roar of a water plane passing over their heads, recently filled from a skim over their nearby lake.
The plane dropped its cargo on the approaching flames, but Preston’s momentary excitement gave way to despair when another line of flames appeared.
He and Oscar looked at each other in absolute fear.
“We’ve got to get a move on,” Oscar said. Preston nodded shortly, and they got their asses in gear.
They packed the large crates in Oscar’s and Preston’s trucks as quickly as possible, placing the crates before calling the dogs from the kennel to jump in. The dogs, terrified, still obeyed crisply, and Preston couldn’t fathom rewarding that good will with desertion.
But when they were done, he realized that was exactly what they were going to have to do.
“Go,” he said thickly to Oscar. “Me and Preacher and Colonel will be along shortly.”
Preacher and Colonel both sat in the front seat of Preston’s truck, five-gallon bottles of water on the floor, as the two truckloads of crated animals bayed. On the horizon, the flames and the smoke were getting closer, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
“Soon,” Oscar said, his scared and lovely face twisting unhappily. “Soon, Preston.”
“I’m going to open the kennels,” Preston said, his voice thick and unhappy. “So they have a chance. They all know where the stream is.”
Oscar wiped his eyes with the back of the hand. “It’s the best you can do, but—”
He was interrupted by the sound of helicopter blades.
They both looked up and saw the modified Black Hawk, painted cream and decorated with Glen’s Gecko Inc. on the tail. Preston smiled a little. The helicopter wouldn’t get all the dogs—but there would be fewer left behind.
“Go!” he said to Oscar. “Go. Hurry to the shelter—we’ll be right behind you!”
“Be safe!” Oscar cried, and went running to his truck.
Preston petted Preacher and Colonel one last time before he ran for the kennels to stack the few remaining crates and count dogs.
There were way more dogs than crates.
DAMIEN knew that Preston was too stressed for more than a quick, hard hug as they finished loading the dogs into the copter, some of them pushed on reluctantly while Glen guarded the side door under the idling blades. Damien helped Preston care for the animals when he wasn’t working, so he had some rapport with them, and the thought of opening the kennel gates and hoping the dogs could get to water would have broken his heart, but watching Glen silently try hard to fathom clean-up costs for the newly refurbished Black Hawk was hard. Glen didn’t want to leave the dogs either, but keeping the business afloat wasn’t easy.
And there still wasn’t going to be enough room.
His chest constricted as Preston sprinted to the last kennel, and Glen gave him a helpless look.
“We can’t!” he said over the sound of the wind and the copter. “They’re dangerously packed in as it is—they can crush each other to death if we put in the last five!”
“Fuck!” Oh goddammit. Glen looked over the horizon at the approaching flames. While the periodic dumps of water in the last ten min
utes had slowed the blaze, they hadn’t stopped it.
Glen’s look at Damien was eloquent. Preston thought Damien and Glen were heroes—Glen would do anything not to let his brother down, but one way or another, some of Preston’s precious dogs were not going to make it.
“Preston!” Damien hollered, trotting toward the kennels again. “Preston, leave them! You’ve got to, baby—you’ve got to. We all need to go. It’s getting too close!”
“Damien!” Soot was falling fast and furious through the air, and they were all wearing bandanas over their mouths. Twin clean tracks coursed over Preston’s nose as he grabbed the last five dogs by the collars. “Just—just five dogs—”
But these weren’t Pekingese or Chihuahuas. These were Lab and shepherd mixes—one of them a Mastiff/Lab/Great Dane that would probably weigh 150 pounds after he was fully grown.
“Oh, Preston—”
And at that moment, they heard the unmistakable sound of another Black Hawk, this one the refurbished vehicle that Damien had flown over the mountains of Nayarit.
Preston looked up at the sky just as Colonel, his Spencer-sense on full, started to bay from the front of Preston’s truck.
Damien looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Fire up the chopper, man. The cavalry is here!”
“YOU know this is crazy, right?”
Spencer didn’t even need to look at Elsie to know that her usually round face would be tight and almost oval with tension.
“I know,” he said tensely.
“Nobody could blame us if we didn’t go in,” she said, deftly adjusting the lift as the winds that had spread the fire buffeted their craft.
“Not a soul,” Spencer confirmed.
“I mean, they’re bosses. Good bosses, but bosses.” She was trying to sound disgruntled, but they’d been flying together for nearly twelve years—first in the Air Force, and then three years on their own as civilians—two of them for Glen Echo and Damien Ward. They’d gotten job after job by vouching for each other. One job had treated Elsie like crap. Spencer couldn’t figure out if it was because she was a woman or a woman of color, but it didn’t matter. He’d heard that note in their boss’s voice once and he turned around and walked out, Elsie at his heels.
One job had treated Spencer the same way. Elsie had heard one crack about his sex life—that’s all it had taken—and she’d dragged him out by the collar, even as he was saying, “But Elsie, I could give a fuck!”
They worked as a team, and they did it with respect, and fuck all the fuckers that fucked them.
Glen and Damien hadn’t just given them a job. They’d given Spencer a place to live so he didn’t have to bunk on Elsie and Josh’s couch anymore. They’d dragged them both into the ridiculous love lives of Glen and Damien and into search-and-rescue operations that wouldn’t make the papers because nobody would fuckin’ believe what they’d seen.
They’d invited them to barbecues at Preston’s place. Elsie and Josh befriended Oscar and the painfully shy, beautifully maternal Belinda, and Spencer befriended the dogs. Glen and Damien had invited some of their favorite clients—Tevyn Moore, a gold medalist snowboarder, and his husband, Mallory Armstrong—and they’d stayed up late on the green between the main house and Preston and Damien’s cottage, wrapped in blankets, staring at the firepit and talking about adventures they’d all had.
Elsie had just spent a week at the big house, where Belinda and Oscar lived, consoling Belinda after her miscarriage. Spencer had bought out a stuffed-animal store of plush dogs that looked like the couple’s personal pet dog, Matilda, a Great Dane with more size than sense.
They weren’t just bosses. It wasn’t just a job. These were their friends, the family they had only recently begun to accept, and once Spencer and Elsie had dropped the fleeing residents off at the fire shelter, they hadn’t even asked each other. They’d just gotten back into the Black Hawk and taken off, headed for Preston’s, because even if it wasn’t in danger, it might be, and they wanted to make sure their friends were okay.
As they were flying in, they saw how close the dragon had drawn to this home they loved, and they knew that Preston only had so many crates—their friends might not be okay.
Over the coms, Preston heard Glen Echo from the cockpit of the other Black Hawk.
“Gecko-four-zero, this is Gecko-prime. We are taking off to give you room. He’s got five dogs. Get them and get the fuck out of there—he’s going to be racing the goddamned fire.”
Oh fuck.
Spencer didn’t even wait for Glen to leave the helicopter pad Preston had installed for Damien when he was commuting. He landed the fucking helicopter in the middle of the mown field Preston used to train the dogs. Roughly the size of a football field, it was not a lush green, but it was watered twice a week to help pack down the dirt and keep it from getting dry. Spencer was too freaked-out for finesse. He and Elsie dropped the Black Hawk down like a ton of bricks, and he left her in the cockpit.
“Get out if you have to,” he muttered.
“Fuck off.”
He paused as he unhooked his harness and looked her in the face. “Get. Out. If. You. Have. To. Love you, boo.”
She nodded, because they only said that when things were really in the shit. “Love you back, boo.” Before she’d found Josh, before either one of them had found Gecko Inc., they’d been the odd-people-out in flight school, and they’d had each other’s backs. Spencer had lost track of all the leave they’d taken together because they didn’t have another soul they felt comfortable with. He wasn’t going to sacrifice her to tilt at a windmill, even if it was her windmill too.
He ducked until he’d cleared the propellers, and ran to open the side door, and then greeted Preston, who was struggling with the dogs.
“They’re afraid,” Preston said flatly, his own voice practically robotic because he was clamping down his own fear.
“I understand.” Spencer dropped down to his haunches and petted the dogs Preston was trying to manage with just the collars. He knew these dogs. They weren’t Colonel, who was the dog he wanted to live with, but he’d played with them, thrown the stick, held the bait, followed Preston’s interminable rules to help them be working dogs. These dogs had all failed at working, and Spencer was okay with dogs that failed at working. He’d pretty much failed at working too. All he could do was fly, and apparently all he could do was fly with Elsie and work for Gecko, but he would have appreciated some help out of the flames too.
He got a tentative lick on the face and then another, and he stood and gently disentangled Preston’s white-knuckled hands from three of the dogs and ran off at a trot toward the copter. Preston followed, and while the dogs whined as they got near the blades, Spencer didn’t take shit, and he tugged them firmly, prompting them with “Go on, there,” until they hopped into the back compartment. Spencer had just closed the door when there was another bark from the direction of the truck.
“The actual fuck!” Preston’s voice was almost tearful. The heat and the noise, the smoke and the ash, all of it was horrific, and it was closing in fast.
“Colonel opened the truck door,” Spencer said, and for the first time—the absolute first time—he could see why Preston got so mad when his working dogs misbehaved.
But Colonel didn’t go tear-assing into the flames or barking around the field. He made a beeline for Spencer, who opened his arms and let the 90 lb. German shepherd mix leap into them.
“Go!” Spencer told Preston. “Dammit, go. It’s getting too close. I’ve got him. Preacher’s staying in the truck. Go. Just go!”
Preston took a look around, and Spencer saw how much this cost him. His face, strained and wet with tears, showed nakedly that he was about to leave his whole world.
“The dogs in the truck are getting hot,” Spencer said. “You gotta get them to the hangar and get them water.”
Preston nodded briefly. “Gotcha.”
The dogs would do it, Spencer knew.
He kept his arms ar
ound Colonel and walked around the front of the Black Hawk, grateful that there was just a little bit of room between the two seats in the cockpit. He set Colonel down there, closed the door, and was strapping himself in as Elsie lifted them out.
She headed for the hangar, which was about twenty miles away from the leading edge of the fire with acres and acres of mown grass or dust between. Spencer grabbed the stick once they were in the air and he was fastened in, but not before he gave Colonel a reassuring pat on the head.
“That dog was not going to let you go,” Elsie said, her voice on the edge of quivering.
“Well, you know. Dogs, they got no sense.”
Neither of them looked back. If the flames took over either of the houses, it would hurt too much. If they didn’t, the devastation left by the flames on the woodland and brush had already broken their hearts as it was.
THE conditions at the hangar were pretty grim. Glen and Damien had killed their engines and unloaded the dogs from their hold. Belinda and Oscar were in the midst of making sure every dog had water, and all of them were watching the road.
“He left okay?” Damien asked nervously for what was possibly the fifty zillionth time.
Spencer—who could admit to himself that he was a complete asshole with an irritation threshold of zero—nodded. “Yeah, Damie. He was in the truck, heading this way. We couldn’t follow him. The crosswinds were—”
“Terrifying,” Damien conceded. “Yeah. I know. But the flames were close. And it looked like he had a lot of clearance on the road but….”
They knew. They all knew. Casualties from the Paradise fires a couple years back had brought home how horrifically fast the flames could move.
“He was driving like a bat out of hell,” Spencer told him. “I….” He swallowed, heartsick. “It was hard for him to leave, but, you know. He had to get the dogs to safety.”