Protecting the Flame

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “You don’t know if he’s dead.” In fact, the odds were against it. By the time rescuers got to her, Scott had vanished, and one of the snowmobiles was missing. Knowing Scott, he was probably in Canada now, spending his money and figuring out what to do with that brick of heroin.

  “True. But now, Mom’s all alone again.”

  She thought Rachel had been alone for some time, ever since her husband didn’t come out of that drug house. She said nothing.

  “Do you think things will get better?” Mattie asked.

  “I think they’ll be different. Better in some ways, maybe worse in others.” Although that was hard to imagine. “Where will you guys go?”

  “Probably to Grampa’s ranch. It’s ours, now. I don’t know anything about ranching.”

  “Maybe you’ll like it.”

  “Maybe. There’s a lot to work out. Anyway.” Mattie thrust out the paper bag. “I brought you something.”

  She was about to refuse, to say that it wasn’t her holiday then got disgusted with herself. Oh, give it a rest, will you? Switching on a small bedside lamp, she opened the bag and peered inside. “Oh, Mattie.”

  “I did the best I could. I know it’s not the same,” the girl said. “Your pack got all messed up in the fire.”

  Her pack. She hadn’t even thought of it until now. That meant her camera and lenses were gone. Ben’s copy of The Waste Land was now only so much ash. Well, maybe that was all right. Although she really had liked her camera and those lenses cost a fortune.

  She pulled out Mattie’s gift. The menorah was small and golden. It was Sarah’s candelabra in miniature. “It’s beautiful.”

  “And it’s like your necklace, see?” Mattie pointed to a very tiny red crystal in the center of a Star of David. “That way, when you light it, you can think of your grandmother. You’re going to have a lot of extra candles, though,” Mattie said as Emma squared the box of candles next to the menorah. “It’s Christmas and last night was the last night of Hanukkah, so…”

  “We’re going to light them anyway.” Really, God or a god or whatever could take a joke. “And I’ll have a head start on next year. But, oh.” Grinning, Emma drew out the candy bar. “I thought I smelled chocolate and coconut.”

  “And almonds,” Mattie said. “Because sometimes you feel like a nut.”

  They smiled at one another for a moment and then Emma said, “Shall we light the candles now?”

  “Are we allowed?”

  “I kind of doubt it.” Although she wasn’t on oxygen or anything. “Tell you what. Why don’t we wait for Will to come back? He’s bringing pizza. It’s not sausage or anything, only veggie.” Bubbe Sarah would’ve been pleased. “Is that okay?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve done nothing but eat, and I still want to gnaw on your arm.” Mattie paused. “Can we say the blessings for real this time?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That would be nice.” Sliding her arms around Emma, Mattie buried her face in Emma’s neck. “Yehi ’or, Emma.”

  “Yes.” Emma held the girl close. “Light.”

  Chapter 3

  C’mon, c’mon, light, you motherfucker, light!

  Scott was shaking so hard he could barely hang onto the lighter to flick his Bic. Gritting his teeth, he forced his icy thumbs to bend and stroked the Bic’s wheel again and again. Tiny sparks sputtered briefly to life but quickly died.

  Light, light!

  Calm, he had to calm down. Shuddering with cold, he forced himself to stop and jammed his hands under his armpits. He’d lost his gloves somewhere along the way, he didn’t know where, probably back at the fuselage when he’d cut and run right before Emma, that bitch, that bitch, torched the place. Squatting in the snow before his sorry pile of twigs and crumpled bills laid atop rocks because even he knew you couldn’t start a fire in the snow…and, yes, he was going to burn his own fucking money because he didn’t have a knife either and no way to find tinder or kindling or whatever the hell you called that shit because he’d grabbed the one snowmobile that doesn’t have any gear, no matches, no clothes, no food, not even a gun… But at least by the time those helicopters appeared, the machine had gotten him far enough away before running out of gas. He’d bet everyone was so busy looking at that fireball and zeroing in on the wreck, no one even thought about, say, hadn’t there been three guys?

  He’d been lucky. But he was a lucky guy. That bullet Dave took? Totally meant for him. He ducked faster, was all, and then he got the hell out of there.

  So, yeah, okay, he wasn’t a fucking Boy Scout. He also didn’t know what he was doing here. He’d watched Mattie fuss at that signal fire, but she at least had wood and lighters, and she wasn’t freezing and starving.

  Calm down. He had to calm down. He dragged in a sobbing breath. He couldn’t feel his face anymore. His cheeks were numb, and so was his nose. He was going to die if he couldn’t calm down and get a fire going. The problem was the damn lighter. There was only this much fuel left, and most of that probably vapors. God, he should never have gone through all those smokes! Rachel had always been after him to quit. Think of the baby and the secondhand smoke.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get through this night, this one night. It was Christmas. Hell, nothing bad happened to people on Christmas, right? He was on a mountain, he knew that, but lower than before. Right before dark, he’d spotted the twinkle of lights in a far-off valley. Ten miles, he thought. Maybe twenty. He couldn’t tell distance, but it didn’t matter because there were lights. A ranch, he bet. In the stillness, if he held his breath, he could swear he heard the moo of cows. So, that was good. People in the country were solid, good, decent folks. They’d help him. All he had to do was get there. Well, he could do that. It would be all downhill come morning, ha-ha, and…

  “What was that?” he said. He popped out of his slouch. He’d heard something off to his right. Not a snap or crack but a very soft, almost inaudible shushing that was the sound of plush slippers over a shag rug. He tried to listen above the fierce chattering of his own teeth but couldn’t still himself enough to be sure. He twisted right and then left. Nothing.

  The fire. Light the fire.

  “Please.” He held that lighter the way a penitent clutched a rosary… Christ. When was the last time he’d taken Communion? Been in a confessional? Well, I promise, God. He was quaking so hard the lighter jittered in his hands. He was worse than a drunk with DTS. The feel of the wheel was distant, more of an impression, his thumbs wooden. He stroked the wheel but so weakly there wasn’t even a spark. I promise. Get me out of this. He closed his eyes. One more time, last time, I promise. I’ll get clean, I’ll change. Please, just one light, just one.

  He rolled the wheel as fast and hard as he could, thinking this was it, this was all she wrote, he couldn’t possibly…

  The Bic caught with a tiny, thin, yellow flame.

  For a second, he was so stupefied, he only stared. Then he laughed. “There, there!” Cupping the flame, he touched it to a twenty and then laughed again, an almost maniacal cackle, as the bill caught. “Yes!” The Bic died, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. He held his hands over his burning stash. So he torched some money. So what? He had a duffel half full of the stuff. Thank God, he’d stuffed his pockets before he left. There was still the heroin, too. That was going to get him big money. Grinning, he fed more bills to the hungry flames. The fire was tiny, but hell, it was hot and going and that was all that mattered. He was going to be all right. It was like that really, really old movie with the gangster guy: Look at me, Ma! I’m on top of the—

  That was when he happened to look up and to his right.

  For a second, he only…he just…his brain simply hung there. If he’d been a cartoon, there would have been one of those thought bubbles filled with question marks over his head.

  But then, time started up again.

  Chapter 4

  “Did you hear that?” Looking up from her knitting, Jess reached for the radio, turned dow
n the volume at the same time old Burl was winding himself up about not knowing if there’d be snow, and twisted on her stool toward the barn door. “I heard something.”

  “Yeah?” Randall Cobb was trembling now; her tail was kinked the way Judd’s dad said it always did, and the hay around the cow’s hooves was wet. That calf was coming anytime now. “What did you hear?”

  “Sounded like a scream. Way far off.”

  He shot a glance at Carson…if there’d really been something, his dog was nearly as good as radar…but the shepherd was snoozing and deep into dreaming from the looks of those twitchy paws and that nose. “North or south?”

  Jess thought about it. “North.”

  Black Wolf Mountains then. “Boy scream or a girl scream?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Of course.” You’d think the woman had lived her whole life in a condo in the middle of New York where the only chickens anyone ever saw came wrapped in cellophane. Pulling his new Packers watch cap down over his ears, he said, “A girl scream, then it’s probably a mountain lion or a bobcat, but to carry this far, I’m thinking mountain lion. A boy scream, well…then it was probably a person.” All his time in ’Nam, seeing men holding onto their guts to keep them from slopping onto the ground or looking for that leg they didn’t have anymore, he’d heard a lot of screaming.

  “Oh.” Jess looked troubled. “I couldn’t tell. It was only the one. Could’ve been a girl-girl screaming.”

  “Maybe. If there was only the one, I guess we’ll never know.” Cobb was really huffing and puffing now. Another pinkish stream of liquid squirted to course down the cow’s back legs. A second later, there came another, more intense gush.

  “That calf sounds like it’s in a hurry,” Jess remarked.

  “I’m thinking so.”

  “Good. I’m thinking some eggnog afterward might be nice.”

  “Long as you hold the nog,” he quipped.

  “Oh, you,” she mock-scolded as if he hadn’t said that same line every single Christmas of their marriage and for the season before when he’d courted her. “That’s all we need, you with a snootful dancing around the kitchen.”

  They laughed, and he thought how it was a damn fine life, yet another fine Christmas. He was where he ought to be: in his barn, with his girls mumbling at their feed, the seven calves he’d helped birth suckling at their mother’s teats, Jess’s knitting needles going click-click-click, and the promise of eggnog without the nog and a warm kitchen and an even warmer bed with this woman who had earned every wrinkle and all her beauty.

  Yes, he thought, pulling on gloves and squaring himself to help turn the calf if it was breech (or back the heck away fast so he wouldn’t get himself kicked if it wasn’t), it was like that movie with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reeve and Old Clarence. Even though he’d seen it every Christmas for well over half a century, he never tired of it. Always got kind of choked up and misty because, my, they just didn’t make them that way anymore.

  “Turn up the radio, would you, Jess?” He got himself ready to welcome this new little life to his ranch and this world. “I love that song.”

  Also By Ilsa J. Bick

  ELLE JAMES’S BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS WORLD

  SOLDIER’S HEART: PART ONE

  SOLDIER’S HEART: PART TWO

  SOLDIER’S HEART: PART THREE

  SOLDIER’S HEART: PART FOUR

  JASON SAUNDERS MYSTERIES

  THE KEY

  SECOND SIGHT

  THE ASHES TRILOGY

  ASHES

  SHADOWS

  MONSTERS

  THE DARK PASSAGES SERIES

  WHITE SPACE

  THE DICKENS MIRROR

  THE SIN-EATER’S CONFESSION

  DROWNING INSTINCT

  DRAW THE DARK

  Star Trek Novels and Stories

  STAR TREK: THE LOST ERA: WELL OF SOULS

  STAR TREK STARFLEET CORPS OF ENGINEERS

  WOUNDS, Part One and Two

  GHOST

  LOST TIME

  “A Ribbon for Rosie,” in STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS II

  “Shadows, in the Dark,” in STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS IV

  “Alice, on the Edge of Night,” in STAR TREK: NEW FRONTIER: NO LIMITS

  “Bottomless,” in STAR TREK: VOYAGER: DISTANT SHORES

  Mechwarrior Dark Age Novels

  BLOOD AVATAR

  DRAGON RISING

  DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON

  About Ilsa J. Bick

  Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film and television scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major—and an award-winning, best-selling author of dozens of short stories and novels. Her work spans established universes such as Star Trek, Battletech, Battlecorps, Mechwarrior Dark Age, and Shadowrun. Her original novels include such critically acclaimed and award-winning books as The ASHES Trilogy, Drowning Instinct, The Sin-Eater’s Confession, and White Space (longlisted for the Stoker).

  Ilsa’s also written in New York Times best-selling author Elle James’s BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS. Her four-part SOLDIER’S HEART series features Kate McEvoy, a cybernetically-enhanced Afghan vet and Sarah Grant, a veterinarian struggling to help her dead lover’s traumatized war dog, Soldier.

  Currently a cheesehead-in-exile, Ilsa lives in Alabama with the husband and several furry creatures. On occasion, she even feeds them.

  Drop by for a visit at www.ilsajbick.com or and check out her Friday’s Cocktails and Sunday’s Cakes and other assorted effluvia on

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  Brotherhood Protectors

  Original Series by Elle James

  Brotherhood Protectors Series

  Montana SEAL (#1)

  Bride Protector SEAL (#2)

  Montana D-Force (#3)

  Cowboy D-Force (#4)

  Montana Ranger (#5)

  Montana Dog Soldier (#6)

  Montana SEAL Daddy (#7)

  Montana Ranger’s Wedding Vow (#8)

  Montana SEAL Undercover Daddy (#9)

  Cape Cod SEAL Rescue (#10)

  Montana SEAL Friendly Fire (#11)

  Montana SEAL’s Mail-Order Bride (#12)

  SEAL Justice (#13)

  Ranger Creed (#14)

  Delta Force Strong (#15)

  Montana Rescue (Sleeper SEAL)

  Hot SEAL Salty Dog (SEALs in Paradise)

  Hot SEAL Hawaiian Nights (SEALs in Paradise)

  About Elle James

  ELLE JAMES also writing as MYLA JACKSON is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of books including cowboys, intrigues and paranormal adventures that keep her readers on the edges of their seats. With over eighty works in a variety of sub-genres and lengths she has published with Harlequin, Samhain, Ellora’s Cave, Kensington, Cleis Press, and Avon. When she’s not at her computer, she’s traveling, snow skiing, boating, or riding her ATV, dreaming up new stories. Learn more about Elle James at www.ellejames.com

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