Every Last Look

by Christa Wick

Using a fine edge, I outlined the water and the line of the trees with a greenish brown. Loading the brush up, I added in trunks, some of them massive, others scrawny from living in the shadows of giants. Switching to a fan brush, I slid it through the green and added in the foliage, then back to the brown for branches, a little yellow for highlights, dark blues for the water before moving on to the meadow.

  Gaze returning to my inspiration, I frowned at an outcropping of rock in the meadow. A rock that hadn’t been there earlier.

  A brown rock that was moving.

  A brown bear that was moving—its head lifting as if it had finally sensed my presence.

  The palette and brush slipped from my hands. I eased from the chair and started to walk toward the trees behind me, not once turning my back on the meadow.

  Rough bark scratched at my shoulders. I froze, my mind taking a few terrifying seconds to recognize that I had walked into a tree and not another bear. A few more seconds passed before I realized I had forgotten to grab the radio, gun and bear spray from the top of the bin.

  Oh God, Oh God, Oh God…

  I moved forward, heart pounding in my chest because the bear was definitely crossing the meadow, its big, furry body ambling slowly in my direction.

  Don’t run, I reminded myself, grabbing the gun first, then the radio and finally the spray. Barrett had told me that, if I ran, whether it was from a mountain lion or a bear, I would trigger the animal’s instinct to run down prey.

  Getting behind a tree, I peeked around the trunk as I held down the push-to-talk button.

  “Barrett, can you hear me?”

  I released the button, my hand shaking so badly I was in danger of dropping the radio. I brought the radio near my mouth again, finishing off a five count before I would repeat the message.

  Just as “four” quivered through my mind, I heard Barrett’s voice, his words delivered with a steely calm.

  “Quinn, what’s wrong?”

  “Bear,” I said, then realized I hadn’t pushed the button.

  “Bear,” I repeated. “Headed toward me. I think he saw me.”

  “Okay, you want to get behind something solid, stay quiet. You have your gun and spray?”

  “Yes, I have them,” I answered, my voice shaking as hard as my hands. “I’m behind a tree trunk, but there’s a bigger one nearby.”

  “I’m on my way, baby. If it’s safe to move to the other tree, do it—but remember, go slow, watch your step. You do not want to fall down.”

  “Okay, slow,” I whispered, the bear close enough that I could hear it huffing.

  Hooking the radio to my belt, I eased from tree to tree until I reached the one with the largest trunk, my gaze locked on the bear the entire time.

  The animal stopped at the easel, sniffed at the primed canvas then the chair I had been sitting on. The chair’s legs splintered as the bear put both of its front paws on the seat.

  The beast began to huff and puff, almost like it was hyperventilating, then came the second scariest sound I had ever heard.

  Rising up on its hind legs, the bear roared.

  Its upper torso swung toward the easel, knocking it and the canvas down. It pawed at my picture while its hindquarters upended the bin with the palette, brushes, and tubes of paint.

  A scream clawed at my throat but I refused to let it out. I stood stiff, shaking, one hand around the canister of bear spray, the other holding the 9mm.

  Behind me, something crashed through the trees. I spun around, arms swinging. Barrett appeared, legs pumping, the shotgun up and out, his other hand wielding an axe. An empty tool belt circled his waist, the long pockets softly slapping at his jeans.

  Seeing the 9mm pointed in his direction, he dove behind a tree.

  Slowly, he stuck his head around the other side of the trunk.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you,” I whisper-growled as he made his way to my side.

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  Putting his axe down, he grabbed my gun hand, turned the weapon to the side and switched the safety off.

  “Stay behind me,” he ordered before looking at where the bear was trampling everything underfoot.

  The noises the animal made were no longer frightening. If anything, I thought the sounds were more like whining.

  “Doesn’t like the chemicals,” Barrett said, keeping his voice low. “He’s leaving. We just sit tight until he’s a good distance away.”

  “Oh-ka-kay,” I answered.

  Despite the danger moving away from us, the shakes running through my body intensified.

  “Can…can you put the safety b-back on.”

  Barrett slung the rifle over his shoulder, eased the 9mm out of my hand and slid the safety switch. After securing the pistol in one of the pockets on the tool belt, he guided me so that my back was against the tree.

  Pressing his chest against mine, he stroked at my hair, his worried gaze bouncing between my bloodless face and the back end of the retreating bear.

  “Everything is okay,” he soothed. He pressed his lips to my forehead, held them there until my body stopped quaking and my breathing returned to normal.

  “Looks like he’s going for a swim to get the paint off. Let’s see what we can salvage.”

  Peeling away from the massive tree shielding me, I followed a few steps behind Barrett. I fell a few more steps behind him when he left the trees and stepped into the open.

  The canvas I had been working on was ruined. Not only had the bear smeared the paint, but his long, sharp claws had shredded the material. The palette had cracked in half. The tubes of paint were pressed into the mud, their insides empty. The wooden legs of the chair were reduced to splinters, its padded seat sliced all the way through.

  Only the canvas backrest on the chair remained in one piece, its surface bearing a massive blue paw print.

  Moving slow and quiet, Barrett began putting everything into the bin. I picked up the backrest and looked at it.

  “Can I keep this?” I asked.

  He stopped loading the bin, his big body straightening to its full height. Moving to stand in front of me, he didn’t answer, just tipped my head back so he could stare into my eyes.

  “Are you okay, baby?”

  Hearing “baby” leave his mouth and realizing he had called me “baby” over the radio, too, I smiled.

  “That’s not an answer, Quinn. Are you okay?” He cupped the sides of my face, his gaze boring into mine. “Something like this can put a person in shock.”

  “I’m okay now that you’re here.” I held the backrest up. “Can I keep it?”

  He cocked a brow. “See, that question is at least half of why I’m worried you might be in shock.”

  “It’s a print. A blue…print. Get it?”

  I didn’t add what it was a blueprint for, but knowing this giant of a man would drop everything and race through the woods with an axe and a shotgun prepared to face off with a full grown bear, I was certain the mark the animal had left behind was a blueprint for happiness—for me and Barrett together.

  “I get that I need to have Sutton check you for other signs of shock,” he answered, before planting a fresh kiss on my forehead.

  Fixing the lid on the bin he picked it up and nodded at the trees.

  “Back to base camp, beautiful.”

  17

  Barrett

  I took Quinn to where Sutton and two helpers worked on building a water tank with a filtration system. The idea was to keep the tank filled with rainwater, but Sutton had dredged some up from the stream to get it started. At an elevation slightly above the cabin under construction, water would flow through a filtration system then down through pipes buried in the ground. I had been at the dredge when Quinn radioed me about the bear.

  “Well,” Sutton said after checking her over. “If she was in shock, I don’t think she is now. I think she just wanted a keepsake of her first encounter with a grizzly.”

  “That was a grizzly?”

  Hear
ing the awe in Quinn’s voice, I chuckled. “Yeah, probably one of the biggest in the state.”

  “Ursos arctos horribilis,” Sutton chimed in. “Did you get to hear him roar?”

  Quinn nodded, her face going slack for a second. Recovering, she offered a little smirk. “Not as scary as a mountain lion, though.”

  A shiver ran across Sutton’s broad shoulders.

  “Agreed,” he nodded.

  Looking at the tank, Quinn plucked a wrench from my previously empty tool belt. Thanks to her sharp gaze, most of the pieces lost in my mad dash to the meadow had been retrieved on the walk.

  “Do I get to help now?”

  “Definitely,” Sutton quickly answered. “I need a set of smaller hands for the filtration system. I keep losing my nuts.”

  Quinn looked at Sutton, then me, before busting into laughter.

  “Right,” Sutton rolled his eyes. “Hah, hah and all that.”

  “Sorry,” she said, a big grin detracting from the apology.

  “Come on,” Sutton grumbled before winking at her. “I hope you’re not afraid of heights.”

  I watched as Quinn and my brother ascended the ladder. Reaching the tank’s platform, they followed its curve and disappeared from view. I didn’t track their path from below. Sinking to the ground, I pulled my legs close to my chest, wrapped my arms around my knees and dropped my head.

  Taking deep breaths, I finally allowed myself to process the fear that had first gripped me with Quinn’s radio call. In my time as a smokejumper, I had made a lot of desperate sprints. But I had never run so hard for so long as when I heard the terror in her voice. Even now, my heart jackhammered in my chest as her words repeated in my head.

  Slowly, a new tension crept into my chest. Just like I needed time to process what had happened, Quinn would, too. She seemed fine at the moment, but sometime later today, I knew reality would slam back into her. She would start to wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t shown up or if the bear hadn’t been distressed enough by the paints that it returned to the lake to cleanse itself. She would look at that big blue paw print on the fabric and imagine it swatting at her.

  What then?

  Willow Gap was small, but it had its share of people moving in then quickly moving on. The winters weren’t for everyone, neither were the dangers to be found in the surrounding wilderness.

  “Hey, Lazy Bones.”

  Lifting my head, I saw Quinn’s beautiful smile raining down on me.

  “Sutton says there’s a gate spigot or something down there.”

  I nodded.

  “He wants it opened. Does that make sense?”

  Grinning, I nodded again and got to my feet.

  “Word of advice,” I called up. “When you get back to Sutton, don’t call anything a thingamabob.”

  “Doohickey?” she inquired, the crinkle around her eyes visible from where I stood fifteen feet lower.

  “Also prohibited.”

  “Just go turn the thingamajig,” she ordered before offering a smart salute and disappearing once more around the tank’s curve.

  “Damn,” I whispered, following the pipe until I came to the spigot. “I really am in love with that woman.”

  Quinn stared at the two cots set up in front of the wood stove like they were snakes I had tossed into the cabin.

  “It was awfully nice of Sutton to fetch these,” she said, her tone changing the pitch on “awfully” to express her real opinion.

  “Wasn’t it?” I replied as I fed a log into the stove. “Between the stove keeping us warm and my not smooshing you into the tail of the trailer, you should finally get a good night’s sleep.”

  Quinn nodded, her mouth a glum line trying to pass as a smile.

  “It’s amazing how much got done today,” she said, looking up at the roof covering her head then around at the enclosing walls.

  There was still a lot of work to be done. Jester had lived without electricity. Dotty had ordered enough solar panels and batteries that, once everything arrived, Quinn would be able to have most modern conveniences in her new home. Wires and plumbing still had to be installed, insulation and drywall would go up after that, plus a real floor had to be installed over the sub-flooring that the cots and stove rested upon for the time being.

  But the overall shell was complete and provided better cover than the little trailer. It also provided me the physical distance from Quinn I needed after the day’s scare with the grizzly.

  It wasn’t a good night to be snuggled up against the woman I was head over heels in love with—not when I couldn’t touch her the way I wanted.

  “I’m going to have to get really good with a hammer and saw to put the slightest dent in paying everyone back for all their help—especially Dotty…and you.”

  Her voice dropped at the end, my gut clenching at the way she seemed to be yielding to me from where she sat on the cot.

  Ignoring the invitation, I walked over to the second cot and unrolled the sleeping bag.

  “I’ll fetch the blankets from the trailer,” I said as Quinn pulled her boots off. “Shouldn’t need them, but I don’t want you getting cold.”

  Her head bobbed, the flick of her gaze communicating she preferred a different type of warmth. Or maybe the gaze communicated nothing and it was my own wishful thinking, my own desires reflected back at me.

  Shutting the cabin door behind me, I huffed. I wanted the woman. I was pretty sure she wanted me, too. The math should be simple. So why did I keep holding back?

  Bundling up the blankets, I left the trailer and returned to the house no closer to an answer than when I left. Quinn was already in the sleeping bag, her boots, jeans and jacket under the cot. I tossed the thinner blanket onto my sleeping bag then folded the other blanket in half and draped it over Quinn’s body. Getting down on one knee, I stroked my thumb from the bridge of her nose up her forehead before placing a short, soft kiss against her lips.

  “I’m really glad the bear didn’t eat you,” I teased before adding a second, slightly longer kiss.

  “Thank you for rescuing me.”

  “Always,” I answered, turning off the camping lantern.

  I sat down on my cot, stripped off my jacket then my boots and jeans. Once inside the sleeping bag, I turned to face Quinn in the darkness. I could hear her breathing, knew by the cadence that she was still wide-awake.

  I said nothing. Neither did she.

  Eventually, we both fell asleep, our rest undisturbed until my radio went off a few minutes before four in the morning.

  A hundred miles to the north, a previously contained fire had jumped the river boxing it in. With a strong wind blowing from the east, the blaze marched inexorably toward a small town, toppling trees on the only road out.

  Dressed before Quinn could rub the sleep from her eyes, I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I have to go.”

  18

  Barrett

  “Gotta get some distance between us and the Devil!” I roared.

  Sweat poured down my face as I shot off a string of orders, dividing my team into groups of two and assigning points along the line of trees that bordered a natural fire break. Beneath the acrid smoke that hung heavy in the air, I could smell the toil of four straight days of chopping and digging, my crew sleeping on the hard ground for no more than a few hours at a time.

  Awake or asleep, every minute was a constant struggle as our bodies fought fatigue and dehydration. The team had lost Harper, one of its sawyers, on the third morning. The man was alive but evacuated to a hospital after a small rock side landed him face to face with a Montana Prairie Rattler. Harper had been lucky to only twist an ankle on the fall, but the rattler’s bite had been loaded with venom. I arranged a helicopter pickup while my team provided first aid and fashioned a litter to carry him to the rendezvous point.

  There had been quite a few slides in the area we fought to contain, the land a series of forested ridges. As the top of a
ridge burned, the air and ground heated, rocks expanded, pushing at other rocks until the pressure or the continued build-up of heat caused some of the stones to break. When a bottom layer crumbled like that, everything above it could get swept up in a slide. Boulders and entire trees would shoot down the hill like multi-ton sleds.

  Feeling the ground vibrate once more, I glanced up, my gaze sweeping directly above me, then to the left and right.

  “Watch the rocks!” I shouted, spinning to my right where Winston was felling a tree.

  Winston didn’t look up, just kept hacking.

  “Winston, rocks!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, legs pumping, arms waving to attract the man’s attention.

  With a heart-stopping familiarity, I heard the crack of a tree breaking low to its base, the periphery of my vision filled with the collapse and slide of a thick pine, its narrow tip down and directed like an arrowhead at Winston.

  With a fresh surge of adrenaline, I picked up speed, my mind processing two trajectories, mine and the tree’s, both of them pinpointed on Winston. The man lifted his axe, fatigue deafening his senses, everyone on the team shouting.

  Measuring the distance, I knew I couldn’t cover it just running. I needed a good, strong leap, a leap launched in that small microsecond of time where I would hit Winston while the axe was raised, not arcing down.

  One strong leap in three, two, one...

  19

  Quinn

  I paced in front of the fireplace in the great room of Lindy’s ranch house. There were no flames crackling behind the glass, but my imagination filled the space with an inferno. Four days straight, dreadful scenarios populated my thoughts. News on the third afternoon propelled my morbid speculations into overdrive.

  As if bears and mountain lions weren’t danger enough in the woods, a rattlesnake had bitten one of Barrett’s team members. The man, Harper, was recovering at a hospital. Barrett and the others remained in the danger zone.