“Is that his name?”
“Yes, Jeremy, that’s his name. And don’t make it sound so shitty. It was a good day. We beat the last fire of the season, got paid nicely, and they asked me back next year. Do you have any idea how good that felt?” She held one hand in the other and rubbed at the calluses.
“Sorry.” Everything he said to her seemed to come out wrong.
“You? You’re sorry?” Taz thumped the back of her head against the wall a few times. “I kidnapped you and Mike. Forced you to do something so much against your nature that I still can’t believe you did it. Then almost got you killed.”
“You gave me a parachute. Though I definitely need practice. I broke my arm when I landed,” he rubbed at the memory. The break hadn’t hurt once the bone had been reset, but the entirety of his forearm that had been covered by the cast still itched in memory sometimes.
“Great. Add that to the list. I’m sorry for a thousand things. You’d be so much better off if you’d never met me.”
“No! That’s not true!” He knew he was shouting at her. Which wasn’t nice but she was so wrong.
If there was one thing that had come clear to him over the last six months, it was how much better he was now for having been with her. However briefly.
“I still have nightmares about the explosions and the deaths.” They’d torn up four drug cartel headquarters with the Ghostrider gunship before it crashed.
“Great. Anything else to beat me down with?”
“No! It’s not like that.” He reached out to touch her but thought better of it.
Taz watched the gesture, but didn’t say anything in turn.
“That was the wrong thing to say. God, I wish I was Mike. He always knows what to say to beautiful women.”
Taz turned enough to rest a shoulder and the wall and face him directly.
“Jeremy, we knew each other for one day.”
“Twenty-eight hours and nineteen minutes. Crumbs! I’m doing it again.”
“What again?”
“Mr. Over-specificity. Mr. Anal Exactitude.” How many times had he been told not to do that? Thousands? Less than tens of thousands? Most likely…so…thousands of times—
And…he was doing it again. Crumbs!
Taz rolled her eyes. “It’s you, Jeremy. Don’t try to change that. Okay, twenty-eight hours and nineteen minutes. It can’t have been that important.”
21
And yet it was.
Even as Taz denied it, she knew it was true.
“Jeremy,” but she didn’t know what to say next. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
She’d spent the hotshot summer lying about who she was. During her nineteen years in the Air Force, she’d lied about who she’d been. Every day since crossing the border at eleven—and suddenly becoming fourteen because of a new identity—had been a lie. Even before that, while they’d still lived in Mexico City. Some of her first memories were being taught not to mention that her father was an enforcer for a drug cartel.
She’d never not lied about who she was.
“Oh shit, Jeremy. I’m such a screwed-up mess. Why are you even talking to me?”
“Because you are…were…are important.”
“To absolutely no one who matters.”
“To me.”
And how the hell was she supposed to argue with that? Taz held no illusions about her importance to Max beyond a mutual good time.
“So, what? We both morph into people we’ve never been, run into each other’s arms, and live some fucked-up version of a fairy tale?”
“Well,” Jeremy actually smiled. In the middle of all this mess, he actually smiled at her. “I did spend part of the day wondering just that. For a while I thought you’d been a magical fairy the way you evaporated at the crash site. If you hadn’t left your fire axe, I might have decided that I’d completely hallucinated you. Oh no! Your fire axe! I left it up there.”
“How can you worry about that— Never mind. It’s you. Of course you would. Well, don’t. I got it.”
“Oh good. I’d have felt bad about that.”
And he would have.
She could see that he was different than he had been, though at the core he remained himself. When she’d first met him on the Ghostrider, he’d been just “oh so excited!” to tell anyone willing to listen about the cool technology used to guide the HEL-A laser weapon.
Even when they’d made love, he’d had to talk about every aspect of how great and wonderful it was, as if it was his words that made it real.
Then she’d made him help her kill.
Taz hid her face. It was the worst thing she’d ever done in any of her lives.
“I can’t believe that I made you help me kill. I don’t regret their deaths, but I hate that I did that to you.”
Jeremy was staring at something so hard over her head that she turned to look. There was just the hammering man.
“I…” he hesitated even longer before looking back down at her. “I don’t regret doing that. I could never kill someone. But they were such awful people that I can understand why you would want to.”
“But…it changed you.”
“Yeah,” he leaned a shoulder against the same wall as hers. “You made me think more about the world around me than just the physical characteristics of the latest plane crash. Miranda at least tries to think about people. I never really did that before you.”
Then, of all the most ridiculous and stupid things—the man she’d probably hurt the most in her entire life—slid his arms around her and pulled her against his chest.
He stroked her hair and whispered in her ear.
“It’ll be okay.”
“How?”
Again that soft Jeremy half-laugh, “I have no idea.”
22
Out of more words—even Jeremy—Taz followed him back into the bar.
The first person she saw was Max. He sat at the barstool closest to the door, facing away from the others, just watching the door and waiting.
“I’ll be over in a minute,” she whispered to Jeremy, then turned to face the music. It wasn’t going to be some sweet song.
The other hotshots sounded like they were most of the way back to normal, celebrating a fire season. The party atmosphere dampened a little as she came over to them, but the hotshots were suddenly trying to pretend it hadn’t by calling loudly for another round and more platters of fries. Their sudden laughter sounded false, brittle.
This sucked!
She’d enjoyed her new life. Her “hotshot summer.” And now they were treating her like an outsider; only Max actually looked at her directly.
Fair enough, she was an outsider now. Didn’t mean she had to like it.
She stopped in front of Max.
“They got something bad on you, Taz?”
“It’s not blackmail, but it’s sure not good.”
Max harrumphed, “You’re pint-sized enough. I could always smuggle you across the border in my pack, and we could work that BC lumber camp together.”
Taz liked the sound of that. “Tempting…”
“But…no,” Max sighed.
“But no,” she agreed.
“See you next season?”
That was too much. It was the first time in her life where she’d just been herself. And liked herself—a wholly new concept.
She stepped between his knees and hugged him where he sat on the stool.
“God, that sounds so good.” She wasn’t going to cry, but it did sound amazing.
“But not gonna happen,” he whispered into her hair.
She could only shrug. Six months from now, at the start of the next fire season, would she be incarcerated in Leavenworth? On the run again? Dead? For real this time? None of those would be a surprise. No way to guess. Six months was all that this life had lasted.
Taz stepped back and patted his chest, “Keep an eye over your shoulder for me. Besides, you still owe me some sawyer lessons.”
/> “You show up, you’ll get ’em.”
They shook on it.
“That your past over there?” Max sobered, then nodded toward the table where the NTSB team still sat.
“Only a little slice. But they’re the ones who get to decide my future.”
“Shit, woman. No pressure. Need a friend in that circle?”
“Not afraid of the blonde’s knife up your nose?”
“Maybe a little.” His attempt to shrug it off didn’t look too convincing.
“No. Thanks, but no. I’ll take whatever’s coming. About time I did.”
“Go get ’em, hotshot.”
“Yessir.”
As she crossed to the table, she searched for her old take-no-prisoners confidence from Colonel Vicki Cortez.
No luck.
Instead, she found it in Taz Flores, the hotshot who’d earned her place.
23
Even after an hour, Miranda was still a little startled to see Taz mixing with her team.
She’d come over to the table, taken the open seat that Holly had placed between her and Mike, and asked Andi for her knife back as if she’d always been there.
For the rest of the meal, she’d told them about how she’d survived the crash and spent the summer hotshotting.
When they’d left for the airport, it had seemed only natural that she’d said goodbye to the hotshots, grabbed her personal bag from her team’s buggy on the street, and joined them.
Mike and Holly were waiting until Jeremey and Taz had talked about something, though Miranda wasn’t sure what.
Jon had tried convincing her that she needed to report to someone that Taz was alive; though Miranda didn’t understand that either, especially why it was up to her.
She had few opinions about that herself.
Taz had been General Martinez’s aide, and not a significant factor in the three related crashes of a Spectre gunship and two Ghostriders. So why would it be up to her to report Taz’s survival?
Besides, this team hadn’t investigated the final Ghostrider crash. Someone else had missed that Taz’s corpse hadn’t been among the wreckage.
Then she remembered the signature on the report and looked at Jon chatting with one of the air tanker pilots. How had he missed that? He’d headed up the final AIB investigation. That wasn’t good. Yet in all his protests about reporting Taz, Jon hadn’t said a thing about that failure.
Miranda still didn’t understand why it would be bad to call in and correct the inaccurate final report of the crash, but Mike insisted that it would.
Mike knew about such things, so she’d listen to him rather than Jon, who missed counting dead people.
Andi was right. It was better to not have to worry about everything herself.
For the moment, she’d worry about the preflight of her airplane.
“Nice jet,” Taz had done a quick scrub and changed in the hangar’s bathroom, so her presence no longer made Miranda want to sneeze like the other hotshot had. That was a relief.
“Thank you. Textron Cessna gave it to me last month. I’m testing the safety protocols and instrumentation for their next series of Citation jets.”
“Oh. Learn anything interesting?”
“Yes. I don’t like change. I already knew that, but this jet only emphasizes that. The convenience of transporting my team all at once is offset by all of the innovation. I prefer my F-86 Sabrejet.”
“Now that’s old school. By the time I joined the force in the spring of 2001, the last of the Sabrejet pilots were hitting mandatory retirement.”
Miranda liked that connection. “I missed them. I was given my Sabrejet in 2003 by a general whose father had flown it.”
“People seem to like giving you planes.”
“I only have one other. A Mooney.”
“Who gave you that one?”
“It was my father’s. Well, before I crashed it and replaced it, it was his.” She’d actually replaced it again with a newer model thirteen years after that but she guessed that might not be relevant to the current conversation.
“How did he feel about that?”
“He’d already been dead for seven years when I crashed it. I believe…no, he would have been glad that I survived. Though he’d certainly have missed his plane.”
Taz cricked her neck. “I think my father would have been surprised that I survived this long at all.”
“Would have. Then he’s dead, too.” Miranda wondered what else they had in common. “When did he die?”
“I was eleven.”
“I was thirteen.”
Close, but not exact. “Was it in a plane crash?”
“No. He stole money from a drug cartel, and they executed him for it in the middle of the street outside our living room window.”
Apparently that wasn’t a common connection between them either. Though her own father had been in the CIA without her knowing, no illegal or even secret activity had been related to his death.
One of those silences happened where she’d noted that others grew uncomfortable because they didn’t know what to say next. Miranda never knew; she was fine with silence.
Taz eventually spoke, “I, uh, actually meant, when I asked if you’d learned anything interesting, was about you testing the jet.”
Miranda glanced over at her. Taz was five inches shorter than she was, which created a difficulty. At five-four, most people were taller than Miranda was so that she could just focus on their collarbone or shoulder and not have to look at their face.
Andi was slightly shorter than Miranda herself, but she’d kept the vivid colors in her hair, which made those easy to focus on.
When she looked downward while facing Taz, Miranda saw her face. Her thick dark hair framed her features, forcing her attention again to the face. Then Miranda found the solution: Taz’s hair was so thick that it didn’t seem to have a part. That was interesting. She, Holly, and Andi all had distinct parts.
She also liked that Taz had returned to her original intent in the conversation rather than dropping it. Someone else who appreciated the comfort inherent in completeness of thought.
“You meant to ask if I learned anything about the jet? Mike has told me to answer questions like that with a question: would you like the short answer or the long one?”
Taz laughed, but there was an odd tone to it. A small gasp for air right in the middle of it.
“Maybe we should just stamp this conversation for later. I’m all nerves right now; I barely know what I’m saying.”
“There’s no reason to be nervous. The Cessna Citation M2 is an exceptionally reliable jet. I’m a fully qualified pilot, and Mike is learning quickly.”
“I’m nervous about what the future holds.”
“Oh, we’re just going to finish our inspection of the crashed Chinook CH-47D in a more conducive environment. Though it’s late enough that I think we’ll put that off until tomorrow morning.”
“And you want me to come with you?”
“Want? I don’t think I have much of an opinion on the subject. You’re certainly welcome to.”
Taz looked around.
Miranda saw that Holly was watching them carefully. Just out of earshot, leaning on the M2’s hull with her arms folded as if she was bored, but not looking away when she and Taz glanced over at her. Mike too appeared to be hovering. Jeremy and Andi were already aboard.
“I don’t think I have a lot of choice,” Taz turned back to her.
“You always have choices.”
“Do I?” Taz shook her head. “I’m not so sure. I think that’s a luxury that passed me by when I could still count my age on my fingers.” She held up just one hand with the fingers spread, not two.
Without saying anything else, she too climbed up the M2’s few stairs.
Through the windows, Miranda could see that Taz had the advantage of only having to duck two inches to walk the length of the jet’s low interior. Close behind her, Holly had to practically scuttle down t
he aisle.
Miranda had often considered the disadvantages of being only five-foot-four rather than taller. She’d never considered the implications of not being even shorter. She pulled out her personal notebook and made a reminder to speak further with Taz about that.
Jon also climbed aboard.
“Everything okay?” Mike, the last of the team on the ground other than herself, strolled over.
“Well, I haven’t gotten very far on the preflight.”
“Okay. Why don’t you read them off and then you can check my technique as I do the tasks.”
Miranda began reading.
But a part of her wondered what it would be like to have no choices.
It just didn’t make any sense.
24
“So, I’m a prisoner. Or is this where someone shoots me and you lose my body?”
Jeremy looked at Taz, but couldn’t make sense of her question, “What are you talking about?”
Taz waved a hand around them.
Jeremy looked. The sun was setting over Vancouver Island, filling the skies above Miranda’s island with dark reds rather than the usual soft summer golds. The red was probably due to the lingering smoke and airborne ash from the smoldering remnants of the wildfire just a handful of miles to the southwest. He shrugged, still not understanding what she meant.
“Okay, it’s not a desert island and there’s no sand to bury me under, but it might as well be. It’s an island, surrounded by freezing water with wicked currents.”
Jeremy had never thought of it as a trap. Instead, it was where things came together. This is where he got to be near Miranda, even more than all of the hours they spent together at the office or inspecting aircraft debris.
Jon, Miranda, Mike, and Holly had filled the golf cart. Andi was perched on the rear-facing seat.
“I’ll come back for you.” Mike was at the wheel.
“We can walk.” Jeremy propped his big crash-site pack on the seat beside Andi. That left him and Taz with just their small personal gear bags. He waved Mike off.
Mike gave him an encouraging smile as he rolled down the grass runway toward the main house. That was nice. Just being around Taz, he was as nervous as…a sika deer during a Citation M2 jet landing. They were only now peeking back out through the forest along the edge of the runway.
Chinook Page 7
