Firestorm

by Radclyffe

  Emily’s brows drew down. “You’re sure the photo was taken here in town?”

  “It had to be. It’s the only place we—” Mallory felt her face growing warm. Could she really be blushing at the mention of sex? Unbelievable. “We didn’t…we weren’t…last night was the first time we were together. The photograph was taken before that.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Mallory’s stomach tightened. “Something came up with her family. She had to leave.”

  Emily didn’t look like she believed that was the whole story, but she didn’t question. “Well, if the photo was taken at the bar, there are limited options as to who was responsible. After all, who around here would care about you and Jac being together?”

  “Motive,” Mallory murmured. “That’s it, isn’t it?” Really, who would care? No one she worked with. She had no exes, no one with a grudge or a score to settle. Not unless… The queasy feeling in her stomach sharpened into an agonizing blade to her heart. “Maybe a friend of Phil or Danny? Someone who blames me for their deaths?”

  “Oh, honey, I can’t believe anyone who worked on the line, or loved anyone who did, would do something like this. What happened last year wasn’t your fault, and the only one who blames you is you.”

  Mallory heard the words, and for the first time, started to believe them. “Why else would someone try to make it look like we were intimate?”

  “Maybe the message wasn’t for you. Maybe this is about Jac.”

  “I suppose there are a lot more possibilities there,” Mallory said. An old girlfriend? A jealous husband? A political rival of her father? God, anything was possible. “But it still leaves the how.”

  “Well, that probably could be anyone. The bar is always crowded, and no one is really paying much attention to what’s going on outside their own circles. I wouldn’t think a stranger would go unnoticed, though.” Emily traced a pattern on the cotton tablecloth with her fingertip. “But I can’t imagine why a local would do this.”

  Mallory thought back to that night, of the guys from the station who were there. Then she pictured the room, and the locals, and her jaw tightened. “I think I might have an idea about that. I’ll need to ask a few questions.”

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “No.” Mallory leaned over and kissed Emily. “Thank you. Can I take you to dinner sometime real soon?”

  Emily smiled. “No. But you can come here for a good meal. Bring Jac too.”

  The pain raced higher in Mallory’s chest. Would she even have a chance to see Jac again?

  *

  The next morning at dawn, Mallory roared into the field camp set up in a clearing beyond the end of the access road. Campfires smoldered in rock-ringed pits in front of a cluster of tents. She pulled her Jeep in beside the work trucks, jumped out, and pushed through the brush into camp. She smelled coffee but didn’t see anyone around. She dumped her gear by the central fire pit and debated announcing her arrival loud enough to wake everyone else up. She recognized Sully’s tent, but she didn’t want to face him yet. He wasn’t responsible for what she suspected, but he’d take responsibility anyhow. Not knowing what to do with herself, she found the coffeepot sitting on one of the boulders facing the fire and felt the side. Still hot. She dug her camp cup out of her gear bag and poured herself a cup of coffee so dark and so strong her eyes watered. The sound of a zipper sliding down on a tent flap brought her twisting around.

  Sarah emerged in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, yawning and brushing hair from her eyes. “Hey. I didn’t expect you until later.”

  “Had some things to take care of. Where’s Hooker?” Mallory said abruptly.

  Sarah frowned, the sleep leaving her eyes and her face tensing. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Long story. Where is he?”

  “You sound like you want to chew him a new one,” Sarah said, reaching back into her tent and coming out with her own tin cup. She joined Mallory by the fire and poured coffee. “I don’t know where he is. He told Sully early yesterday he had an emergency and needed the day off. He’s not back yet as far as I know. What’s going on, Mallory?”

  Fury hazed Mallory’s vision. “The cowardly bastard is running away.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s not coming back. He’s a stalker. Or a goddamn spy.”

  “Spy? For who?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but I think he’s been watching me and Jac.” Mallory ground her back teeth. “The bastard had Chantal taking pictures of us.”

  “Us who?”

  “Me and Jac. I think he left one in Jac’s locker.”

  “Chantal told you that?” Sarah sounded incredulous.

  “Yep. She couldn’t believe I was upset.” Mallory snorted, half-angry and half-disbelieving. “Hooker told her the pictures were for a work party—a joke. All in fun.”

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “Fortunately nothing too revealing, since we didn’t do anything then.” Mallory looked away.

  “Wait a minute. Intimate photos of the two of you?”

  Mallory flushed. “We were only dancing that night we all went out to Tommy’s. The shot made it look like more.”

  Sarah grasped Mallory’s arm. “My God, Mallory—that’s awful. Why?”

  “I’m not sure. To harass us maybe—maybe it’s just an anti-gay thing.” That would make sense if it hadn’t been for Fleming. Why send photos to Fleming if blackmail wasn’t the object, and it didn’t seem to be. Mallory kicked a rock into the fire pit. “He’s been a little bit belligerent since he arrived, but I thought it was just the typical macho reaction to a woman in charge. Now I’m not so sure. I think maybe he was here to watch Jac.”

  “You said nothing had been going on between you and Jac when the photograph was taken. Is there more now?” Sarah asked gently. “Between the two of you?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Where’s Jac?” Sarah frowned. “I thought she was coming up with you.”

  “She’s not. I’m not sure she’ll be back at all.”

  Sarah’s breath burst out. “Oh, I’m really sorry, Mallory. What a mess.”

  “I don’t care about the photos, but Jac does.” Mallory sat down on the boulder. “It’s a lot more complicated than a little bit of work harassment.”

  “After all that nastiness with the tabloid photos, I imagine Jac is really gun-shy,” Sarah said. “Will you be able to prove Hooker was behind it?”

  Mallory laughed bitterly. “I doubt it. Chantal doesn’t have the camera card. It’s just a he said/she said thing with her claiming he asked her to take some racy candids. If he denies it, there’s not much to do.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sarah said. “If you think Hooker was a plant, how the hell did they get him into our station?”

  “I pulled his personnel files last night. He was a last-minute applicant when another guy got injured. He was qualified, Sully passed him on to me as a probable accept, and I agreed when I reviewed the applicants.” Mallory shook her head. She should have caught that something was out of whack. “He looked really good on paper. Now that I think of it, maybe too good.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” Sarah sat on the boulder next to Mallory and wrapped her arm around her. “So what are you going to do now, Ice?”

  Mallory stood and tossed the dregs of her coffee into the smoldering ashes. “I’m going to finish up boot camp and see if Hooker comes back and proves me wrong.”

  “And what about Jac?”

  Mallory looked away, afraid if she saw the sympathy in Sarah’s eyes she’d embarrass herself. She’d walk through fire for Jac if Jac were hurt, but Jac had left by choice. If they hadn’t slept together, she might have gone after her all the same, but they’d blurred their boundaries now. That one night changed everything. Especially for her. “I’m kind of hoping she comes back too.”

  “If she doesn’t?”

  “I guess that’s the really big question, isn’t it. I wish to h
ell I knew the right answer.”

  *

  Three days later, Mallory still had no answers, but she was more certain of a few things. Hooker had not come back, and when she and Sully tried to track him down through the regional office, no one seemed to know where he was. When she wasn’t supervising the rookies while they climbed trees, cut lines, or assessed and laid out safety zones, she was digging into Hooker’s background. She didn’t come up with anything except that the paper trail stopped abruptly with the application that Sully had received early in the season. Hooker was a plant, and that had to have been arranged well before Jac was inserted into the team. No doubt, Fleming was a long-range planner.

  She got up before the sun and didn’t crawl into her tent until she couldn’t stand up any longer. Exhaustion allowed her to sleep, but it didn’t stop her from dreaming. She could keep Jac out of her thoughts during the day by focusing on the firefighters she needed to train, but she couldn’t prevent Jac from invading her thoughts when she lay down to sleep. She saw her quick smile, heard her easy laugh, felt the gentle touch of her fingers on her face. She saw her eyes darken with desire, heard her moans of passion, felt the immeasurable pleasure of Jac filling her, taking her, surrendering to her. She ached for her with every bit of the soul-lacerating pain she’d lived with since she’d lost her men. If she hadn’t had her crew counting on her, she might have broken.

  “On my mark,” she called to the three men set to scale the test trees. She stood at the base of one with her stopwatch. Sully and Sarah were timing the climbs at the others. “Go.”

  She stepped back, craned her neck, and clicked off the watch when Anderson reached the preset target high up in the air. She took note of his technique as he descended. The other men reached the ground nearly simultaneously. “Nice job.”

  “Thanks.” Anderson released his harness from around the base of the tree, hesitated, and said, “Have you heard anything from Jac?”

  Mallory’s jaw tensed. “No. Not yet.”

  “But if she comes back, she can make up what she missed, right?”

  “She gets points for the fieldwork during the search and rescue mission we did.” Mallory slid her stopwatch into her pocket and sighed. “But she has to make the last jump on Saturday.”

  Anderson pushed his hard hat back off his forehead, appearing to be fascinated by something in the trees beyond Mallory. Then he dropped his gaze to hers. “Sometimes a person goes AWOL because they don’t quite have their head on straight. That’s when someone in the squad needs to go get them and drag their ass back to base before they really get themselves into trouble.”

  “This isn’t the Army, Anderson,” Mallory said. If Jac had just been one of her crew, she would have gone after her already. But Jac hadn’t wanted her along. Maybe didn’t want her at all. Jac’s choice, not hers.

  “Close enough,” Anderson said. “If you tell me where she is, me and Ray will go collect her.”

  Mallory studied him. “You know who she is, right?”

  “Oh yeah, I know. She’s one hell of a wildland firefighter.”

  “Yes, she is.” Mallory tried to set aside her personal feelings, ignore the hurt. Anderson was right—Jac was crew. You didn’t abandon crew, ever. Her heart said something even more important, something she couldn’t deny. Jac was hers. “I’m the boss. I’ll go get her.”

  He grinned. “Good idea, Boss.”

  Mallory tucked her clipboard under her arm and motioned Sarah to follow her as she walked away from the group.

  “What’s up?” Sarah asked.

  “I need you to cover for me for a while.”

  “About time.”

  “Yes,” Mallory said. “It really is.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Daddy is going to be upset with you for wearing that,” Carly said, closing Jac’s bedroom door on her way to flopping down on the bottom of Jac’s bed. Her body-hugging white tank top rode up a good four inches above her very low-cut skintight blue jeans, exposing a glittering turquoise piercing in her belly button. That was new and, Jac was willing to bet, Daddy didn’t know about it.

  “Probably right.” Jac checked the crease in her dress blues in the full-length mirror behind the closet door and shook a fold out of her pant leg so the cuff fell smartly over her gleaming black shoe. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m all right. I guess there’s no way we can get out of this, is there?”

  Jac carried her uniform jacket to the bed and laid it out. “You know there isn’t. How come you’re not dressed?”

  “I don’t want to sit around being uncomfortable any longer than I have to.”

  “I thought you were the girly-girl in the family.” Jac took the regulation measuring guide and checked the placement of her insignia on her collars and over the right breast. Then she hung the jacket on a hanger and leaned her shoulder against the closed closet door. “You want to talk about all this?”

  Carly’s pretty face, more delicate than Jac’s, scrunched up. She kicked her flip-flop rhythmically back and forth against the bottom of her foot. Her hair was as black as Jac’s but longer and sculpted away from her face. She didn’t have the same dark eyes, though. She’d gotten their mother’s blue eyes. She was gorgeous and popular and just as insecure as any other seventeen-year-old. Suddenly being thrust onto national television couldn’t be very comfortable for her. Jac’s solution to the far more limited level of notoriety she’d faced at Carly’s age had been to secretly buy a motorcycle, start running with the rough crowd at school, and find herself a girlfriend, or a string of them. Carly was a lot more tightly wound, which was maybe even more worrisome.

  “I sort of thought this was coming,” Jac said, hoping to get Carly talking. She’d been back in Idaho four days, and this was the first time they’d been alone. Four days that felt like forty years. She tried to keep her focus on her sister. Maybe it wasn’t too late to help her. “The announcement kinda took me by surprise all the same. You too?”

  “You think he’ll win?” Carly asked.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think the country just votes for the one who’s not in office, hoping that a change will make things better. Powell is pretty popular, though. I think he’s got a fight coming.”

  “I don’t want to live in the White House.” Carly sounded defiant, but her lower lip trembled, the way it always had when she was trying not to cry.

  Jac was ten years older, and she hadn’t been around a lot to help buffer Carly from the fallout of their father’s growing popularity. She’d thought staying away was the best thing to do. Maybe she’d been wrong about that. She thought about Mallory, remembered the stunned look of hurt on her face, and felt the air blast out of her chest the way it had when she’d been caught in a concussive wave from a bomb that had gone off on her approach, tossing her thirty feet in the air. Leaving hadn’t helped Carly. Leaving had hurt Mallory. Maybe she’d been wrong about everything, everything except the way she felt about Mallory. She was sure about that.

  “You okay?” Carly asked. “You kind of spaced out for a minute.”

  “I’m okay.” Jac decided her trousers could tolerate a few wrinkles. She sat down on the bed next to Carly and took her hand. “If he gets elected, you’re not going to have to live there. In another year, you’ll be going away to college.”

  “Yeah, but he’s traveling all over the place this year to campaign, and he’s talking about pulling me out of school and giving me a tutor so I can go with them. It’s my senior year. I’m not going to leave all my friends behind.”

  “Maybe you can work a deal with him—you stay here and go to school except for the really big events where he wants the whole family to be visible.” Jac could hear the defiance in Carly’s voice. Carly would run before she’d give up the security of the school and the friends she knew. “You can’t get away, Carly. I’m sorry.”

  “As if I don’t know that.” Carly snorted. “He’s already brought on more security staff, and they’re s
tarting to follow me around. You think he’ll let me stay here alone?”

  “You know the security is for your safety, right?” Jac didn’t envy anyone assigned to keep an eye on Carly, and if her father did manage to make it to the White House, pitied whatever Secret Service agent would be responsible for the family.

  “You never had anyone following you around,” Carly grumped.

  “Yeah. You’re right. I had it easier than you’re gonna have it. He’s a lot more visible now. A lot more important.”

  Carly picked at the comforter on Jac’s bed. “Are you going to go back into the service?”

  “Were you eavesdropping?”

  Carly shrugged. “I don’t think you can call it eavesdropping when everybody in the house can hear you yelling.”

  “We weren’t yelling,” Jac said, although she didn’t really remember all of the conversation with her father. She’d made it clear she wasn’t going to become part of his campaign entourage. When she told him she was going back to Yellowrock, back to Mallory, although she hadn’t said that, he’d informed her in his usual cool, calm, absolutely resolute tone that that situation was untenable now. The changes in his political obligations made it necessary for her to refrain from any questionable interpersonal activities. Apparently, she could get herself into problem situations wherever she went.

  She’d argued she wasn’t going to be on anyone’s radar in the middle of the national forest, but he hadn’t been swayed. She didn’t trust him not to make it impossible for her to go back to Yellowrock by simply making the entire operation disappear. The one thing he couldn’t stop her from doing was reactivating her enlistment. She had a valuable skill, and she knew she’d have no trouble being reposted overseas. She’d almost made the call that morning, but when she did she would be committing herself to at least a year away, and any hope of seeing Mallory again would be gone. Leaving had always been the right decision before, but this time the pain was tearing her apart.