Chasing Fire

by Nora Roberts

  briefly to his lips. “I’m listening.”

  28

  Gull figured he had an hour, tops. With Rowan hip-deep on her reports for the Alaska fire, she’d be occupied for at least that long. He came down from his duties in the loft, checking the time as he struck out on the service road at a light jog.

  Nobody would question a man doing his PT, and there’d be no reason to suspect he’d arranged a meeting away from any casual observers.

  Especially Rowan.

  In any case, he liked being out, taking a short extra run, getting inside his own head.

  The storm the night before hadn’t squeezed out more than a piss pot of rain, but it had managed to drop the temperature. They’d rolled a load that morning to jump a fire east, so he didn’t want to go far in case the siren went off.

  He didn’t have to.

  Half a mile out, Lucas stood in running sweats and a T-shirt talking on his cell.

  “Sure, that’d be great.” He gave Gull a slight nod. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.” After closing the phone, he tucked it in the pocket of his sweats. “Gull.”

  “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “No problem. I still run here some days, so I got a mile or so in. I have to figure this has to do with Rowan since you didn’t want to talk to me on base.”

  “With her, with everybody. Nobody knows the players better than you, Lucas. The staff and crew, the Brakemans, the cops. Maybe not the rookies as much as the long-timers, but I’m betting you’ve got some insight there, as they jump with your daughter.”

  Lucas cocked an eyebrow at that, but Gull just shrugged.

  “You’d size them up, ask some questions, get some answers.”

  “I know you’re fast on your feet, had a good rep with the hotshots, and L.B. considers you a solid asset to the crew. You don’t mind a fight, like fast cars, have a head for business and good taste in women.”

  “We’ve got the last in common. Let me ask you straight out, does Leo Brakeman have the brains, the canniness, let’s say, the aptitude to do all that’s being laid down here? Forget motive and opportunity and all that cop shit.” Gull shrugged it off. “Is he the man for this?”

  Lucas said nothing for a moment, only nodding his head as if affirming his own thoughts. “He’s not stupid, and he’s a damn good mechanic. Starting from the back, yeah, he could’ve figured how to disable equipment without it showing until it was too late. Killing Latterly . . .”

  Lucas stuck his hands in his pockets, looked away at the mountains. “I’d see him going after the son of a bitch once he found out Latterly was messing with his daughter. I’d see him beating the man bloody for it, especially considering Irene’s connection to the church. It’s harder to see Leo putting a bullet in him, but not impossible to see.”

  He sighed once. “No, not impossible. He’d be capable of shooting up the base. Aiming for anybody, I don’t think so. But if he had, he wouldn’t have missed. And that’s one I’ve thought long and hard on since he’d have had Rowan in the crosshairs.

  “Dolly? They kept at each other like rottweilers over the same bone. He’s got a temper, that’s no secret, and it’s no secret she caused him a lot of shame and disappointment.”

  “But?”

  “Yeah, but. The only way I can see him killing her is an accident. I don’t know if I’m putting myself into it, or if that’s a fact, but it’s how I see it. I guess what I’m saying is I can see him doing any of those things, in the heat. He’s got a short fuse, burns hot. But it burns out.”

  “You’ve been giving all of this some long, hard thought.”

  “Rowan’s in the middle of it.”

  “Exactly. Hot temper. Hot and physical.” And, Gull thought, straight down the line of his own take on it. “Latterly and the tampering. Those were cold and calculated.”

  “You’re thinking some of this, maybe all of it, comes from somebody who works on base. Maybe even one of your own.”

  He thought of the men and women he’d trained with, the ones he fought with. “I haven’t wanted to think it.”

  “Neither have I, but I started asking myself these same questions after L.B. told me about the tampering. After I settled down some. We’ve skirted around it, but I’m pretty sure L.B.’s asking himself the same.”

  “Are you leaning in any particular direction?”

  “I worked with some of these people. You know as well as I that’s not like sharing an office or a watercooler. I can’t see anyone I know the way I know those men and women in this kind of light. And I don’t know if that’s because of what we were—still are—to each other or because it’s just God’s truth.”

  He waited a beat, watching Gull’s face carefully. “You haven’t told Rowan your line of thinking?”

  “I did.”

  Approval and a little humor curved Lucas’s lips. “We can add you’ve got balls to what I know about you.”

  “I’m not going behind her back.” He thought of where he stood right now, and with whom. And grinned. “Much. Anyway, I made a spreadsheet. I like spreadsheets,” he said when Lucas let out a surprised laugh. “They’re efficient and orderly. She doesn’t want to think it could be true, but she listened.”

  “If she listened, and didn’t kick the balls I know you have up past your eyes for suggesting it, it must be serious between the two of you.”

  “I’m in love with her. She’s in love with me, too. She just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

  “Well.” Lucas studied Gull’s face for a long moment. “Well,” he repeated, and sighed a second time. “She’s got a hard view of relationships and their staying power. That’s my fault.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s circumstances. And she may have a hard head and a guarded heart, but she’s not closed up. She’s too smart, too self-aware, not to mention a bred-in-the-bone risk-taker to deny herself what she wants once she’s decided she wants it. She’ll figure out she wants me.”

  “Cocky bastard, aren’t you? I like you.”

  “That’s a good thing, because if you didn’t, she’d give me the boot. Then she’d be sad and sorry the rest of her life.”

  At Lucas’s quick, helpless laugh, Gull glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to start heading back.”

  “I’ll walk back with you. I run here off and on,” he reminded Gull. “And I have something I need to tell Rowan, face-to-face.”

  “If it’s that you’re moving in with Ella, she heard.”

  “Hell.” Lucas scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as they walked. “I should’ve known it’d bounce through the base once I so much as thought about doing it. You’d think with everything going on, my personal life wouldn’t make the cut.

  “Well?” Lucas jabbed an elbow in Gull’s ribs. “How’d she take it?”

  “It knocked her back some. She’ll get used to it because she loves you, she respects Ella, and she’s not an idiot. Anyway, before we get back—and I’d as soon, unless she asks directly, Rowan assume we ran into each other on the road.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  “Generally I don’t mind pissing her off, but she’s got a lot on her plate. So, before we get back, I wanted to ask if I can e-mail you the spreadsheet.”

  “Jesus Christ. A spreadsheet.”

  “I’ve listed names in multiple categories, along with general data, then my take on each. Rowan’s take. Adding yours might help narrow the field.”

  “Send me the damn spreadsheet.” Lucas rattled off his e-mail address. “Want me to write it down?”

  “No, I’ve got it.”

  “Even if Brakeman didn’t do all this—or any of it, for that matter—as long as he’s behind bars it should end. You can’t frame him if you do any of this crap when the cops know exactly where he is twenty-four/ seven. I guess the question we should ask is, who’s got this kind of grudge against Leo?”

  Lucas lifted his eyebrows when Gull said nothing. “You’re thinking something else?”

&
nbsp; “I think it could be that, just exactly that. But I also think Brakeman, with his temper, his history with Dolly, makes a pretty good patsy. And I know whoever’s responsible for this is one sick son of a bitch. I don’t think sick sons of bitches stop just because it’s smart.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that and made me think the same. Fear the same. If I could I’d make Rowan take the rest of the season off, get the hell away from this.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to her.” Gull looked Lucas dead in the eye. “I know that’s a stupid and too usual a thing to say, but I won’t. She can handle just about anything that comes at her. What she can’t, I will.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that. Now, you might want to make yourself scarce while I go talk to her. Not too scarce,” Lucas added. “It’s likely she’ll need to take out how she feels about my new living arrangements on somebody after I’m gone. It might as well be you.”

  ROWAN FINISHED HER REPORTS, rechecked the attached list of paracargo she’d requested and received the second day of the attack. All in order, she decided.

  Once she’d turned it over to L.B., she could get the hell outside for a while, and then . . .

  “It’s open,” she called out at the two-tap knock on her door. “Hey.” Her face brightened as she rose to greet her father. “Great timing. I just finished my reports. Got your run in?”

  “I thought I’d take it this way, get a twofer and see my girl.”

  “I tell you what, I’ll dig out a cold drink from the cooler, trade you for glancing over my work here.”

  “If you’ve got any 7UP, you’ve got a deal.”

  “I always keep my best guy’s favorite in stock,” she reminded him as he braced his hands on her desk, scanning the work on her laptop.

  “Thorough and to the point,” he said after a moment. “Are you bucking for L.B.’s job?”

  “Oh, that’s a big hell no. I don’t mind spending the time on reports, but if I had to deal with all the paperwork, personalities, politics and bullshit L.B. does, I’d just shoot myself and get it over with. You could’ve done it,” she added. “Gotten in a couple more years.”

  “If I’m going to do administrative crap, it’s going to be my administrative crap.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s where I got it. Do you want to walk over to the lounge? Or maybe the cookhouse? I imagine Marg has some pie we could talk her out of.”

  “I don’t really have enough time. Ella’s picking me up in a little bit.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wanted to see you, talk to you about some things.”

  “I heard Irene Brakeman’s letting her house go, and she’s probably moving to Nebraska. That you’re letting her use your house until she’s got it all dealt with. That was good of you, Dad. It has to be hard for her, being alone in the house, with all the memories. Added on to knowing it’s not really hers anymore.”

  “She’s moving in tomorrow. I need to pack up a few more things I’ll need with me now. Ella’s been helping her do the same—pack up what she’ll need—and pack up what she wants to take with her when she goes.”

  “It’s a big step she’s taking. A lot of big steps. Leaving Missoula, leaving her husband, her friends, her job.”

  “I think she needs it. She looks better than she has since this all started. Once she decided what she needed to do for herself, for the baby, I think it took some of the weight off.”

  He took a long, slow drink. “Speaking of decisions, big ones. I won’t be moving back into the house. I’m going to live with Ella.”

  “Jesus, are you going to marry her?”

  He didn’t choke, but he swallowed hard. “One step at a time, but I think that one’s right down the road.”

  “I’m just getting used to you dating her, now you’re moving in together.”

  “I love her, Rowan. We love each other.”

  “Okay, I guess I’m going to sit down for a minute.” She chose the side of the bed. “Her place?”

  “She’s got a great place. A lot of room, her gardens. She’s done it up just the way she wants it. Her house means a lot to her. Ours?” He let his shoulders lift and fall. “Half the year or more it’s just where I sleep most nights.”

  “Well.” She didn’t know what she felt because there was too much to feel. “I guess if I’d known that would be our last dinner in the house together, I’d’ve . . . I don’t know, done something more important than skillet chicken.”

  “I’m not selling the house, Ro.” He sat beside her, laid a hand on her knee. “Unless you don’t want it. I figured you’d take it over. We can get somebody to cut the grass and all that during the season.”

  “Maybe I can think about that awhile.”

  “As long as you want.”

  “Big changes,” she managed. “You know how it takes me a while to navigate changes.”

  “Whenever you got sick as a kid, we had to dig out the same pajamas.”

  “The blue puppies.”

  “Yeah, the blue ones with puppies. When you outgrew them there was hell to pay.”

  “You cut them up and made me a little pillow out of the fabric. And it was okay again. Crap, Dad, you look so happy.” Her eyes stung as she reached for his face. “And I didn’t even notice you weren’t.”

  “I wasn’t unhappy, baby.”

  “You’re happier now. She’s not the only one who loves you,” she told him, and kissed his cheeks. “So consider I’ve got my blue puppy pillow, and it’s okay.”

  “Okay enough that you’ll take some time when you have it to get to know her?”

  “Yeah. Gull thinks she’s hot.”

  Lucas’s eyebrows winged up. “So do I, but he’d better not get any ideas.”

  “I’m running interference there.”

  “You’ve had some changes yourself since he came along.”

  “Apparently. This is the damnedest season. Gull’s got it into his head that somebody on base might be responsible for what’s been going on, instead of Brakeman.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yeah, and in his Gull way he’s got all the data and suppositions organized in a file. I think it’s whacked, but then I start wondering, once he’s done laying it out. Then I go about my business and decide it’s whacked again. Until he points out this and that. I end up not sure what to think. I hate not knowing what to think.”

  Gently, he skimmed a hand over her crown of hair. “Maybe the best thing to do is keep your eyes, your ears and your mind open.”

  “The first two are easy. It’s the last that’s hard. Everybody’s edgy and trying to pretend they aren’t. We’ve jumped nearly twice as many fires as we did by this time last season, and the success rate’s good, injuries not too bad. But outside of that? This season’s FUBAR, and we’re all feeling it.”

  “Do me a favor. Stick close to the hotshot, as much as you can. Do it for me,” he added before she could speak. “Not because I think you can’t take care of yourself, but because I’ll worry less if I know somebody’s got your back.”

  “Well, he’s hard to shake off anyway.”

  “Good.” He patted her leg. “Walk me out.”

  She got up with him, chewing over everything they’d talked about while they walked outside. “Is it different with her, with Ella, than it was with my mother? Not the circumstances, or rate of maturity, or any of that. I mean . . .” She tapped a fist on her heart. “I’m okay with however you answer. I’d just like to know.”

  He took a moment, and she knew he sought out the words.

  “I was dazzled by your mother. Maybe a little overwhelmed, a lot excited. When she told me she was pregnant, I loved her. And I think it was because I loved what was inside her, what we’d started without meaning to. Sometimes I wonder if she knew that, even before I did. That would’ve been hurtful. I cared about her, Rowan, and I did my best by her. But you were why.