by MJ Fredrick
Peyton shuddered as she recalled the fire that chased them out of the scout camp. “Not in my experience.”
“It looks like the fire started here,” Kim said, traipsing through the ash on the mountain.
Peyton could see what she meant—the black spread in a fan up the mountain. The weird thing was that this area was so isolated, so remote, on Forest Service land. Who would come out here to start it? Maybe it had been a smokejumper.
“The FBI has already been here, right?” she asked.
Kim glanced over her shoulder. “They got the can, didn’t they?”
“I just don’t want to be messing up a crime scene.” Peyton watched Kim drag her feet through the ash. She hadn’t seen Kim walk that way before. “What are you doing? Making sure the fire is out?” She indicated Kim’s feet.
Kim’s face reddened a bit. “Yeah. You never know. And the FBI may have missed something.”
Peyton doubted it. She’d seen photos of arson crime scenes where the investigators had been on their hands and knees sifting through the ash. Had they done the same here? Or had they found the can and figured they had what they needed.
She stumbled over a burned clump of grass, and an object popped loose. Peyton crouched to lift a scrap of something manmade that had been blackened and bunched up against the roots.
A glove, asbestos, partially burned. And way too small for Doug Sheridan.
Chapter Fourteen
Where the hell was Peyton? The bodies had been returned to camp and loaded on the waiting hearses to go to the morgue, where they’d be prepared for the journey home. They’d pulled away, but Gabe still hadn’t seen any sign of Peyton.
She’d promised to wait for him, and on the ride down, all he could think of was letting her take him into her arms, letting himself forget.
Instead, he went to the showers to wash the scent of death from him. He didn’t want even that to touch Peyton.
When he emerged, the camp was overrun with reporters. Maybe she’d run into someone she knew and was off catching up. Did she have reporter friends? Did that mean he’d have to make nice to them too? He made his way through them, but they didn’t give him a second glance. They were awaiting the president’s arrival. He’d almost forgotten. He saw Jen coming out of the command tent and picked up the pace.
“Jen, do you know—”
He stopped short when a tall, lean-faced, casually dressed man ducked out of the tent behind her. Several dark-suited men, out of place in this filthy camp, materialized between Gabe and the tall man, their expressions severe.
Through the wall of Secret Service agents he saw Jen roll her eyes.
“He’s fine. He’s Gabe Cooper, crew boss of the Bear Claw Hot Shots.”
The President of the United States, Karl Hutchinson, studied him through narrowed eyes. “The man who saved those little girls from the camp.”
Gabe straightened in response, concern for Peyton temporarily forgotten. The man was taller than he appeared on TV, but just a regular guy. The unreality of meeting the man face to face, on his own turf, had him off balance, an uncommon experience. How did the president know about the camp, enough to relate his name to it?
He cleared his throat. “Yes sir, though, you know, I had my crew.”
The president inclined his head. “Still, it took a great deal of bravery. I’d like to shake your hand.”
The Secret Service wall parted infinitesimally so the president could reach through without Gabe causing injury. Gabe glanced at his perpetually dirty hand, rubbed it on his equally dirty fire pants and clasped the president’s hand. Despite himself, he felt a thrill at shaking hands with the most powerful man in the world. He was pleased to note it wasn’t a wimpy handshake, either. This man understood what hard work was. Gabe was glad he’d taken the time to vote for him.
“I’m sorry, sir, but how do you know me?”
Hutchinson grinned. “It wasn’t easy to recognize you without all the soot on your face, but you’re big news, son. All over the television.”
Gabe cast a look at Jen. “You’re kidding me.”
She shrugged.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen TV,” he explained to the president. “I guess it’s just as well, if I’m the best thing on it.”
Hutchinson laughed. “I admit, it’s not saying much, but it’s a good thing for the people of America to see the hard, dangerous work you do.”
“It’s hard even when it’s not dangerous.” Gabe took a step back, ready to be alone. “I apologize for intruding, sir. It was a pleasure to meet you.”
“Don’t rush off on my account,” the president said good-naturedly.
Startled by the invitation, Gabe damn near tripped over himself. “I’m...ah, I’m sure your time is very valuable, sir, and Jen here has a lot to show you.”
“Gabe just came back from the recovery of the dead firefighters,” Jen said, not aiding in his escape.
The president sobered, the corners of his long mouth turned down. “Ms. Sheridan mentioned how close the firefighting community can be. Were they friends of yours?”
Gabe nodded, not wanting to discuss this. “Two were, sir.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Thing was, he seemed sorry.
“I appreciate it.”
“Actually we were just getting ready to fly over the fire,” Hutchinson said. “Are you up to joining us? I’d like to get your take.”
Gabe looked back at Jen again, hoping she would send him off, any errand would do. Just what he needed, to toss his cookies all over the president of the United States.
“I think your insight will be very helpful to President Hutchinson,” Jen said with a touch of smugness.
Why did she hate him? Okay, so he hadn’t been thrilled about her pregnancy but that was no reason to send him up in an airplane, was it?
“Jen is much more qualified,” he hedged, taking a step back. “She’s incident commander, after all.”
“Don’t be modest.” The president broke through the Secret Service line to slap Gabe on the back, good ol’ boy to good ol’ boy. “Of course I want to hear what she has to say, but I’d also like the thoughts of a man who was in the thick of this monster so recently.”
Gabe could tell him just as easily on the ground, but instead of saying it, he offered a sickly grin. He didn’t want to be the first man to say no to the president.
“Be glad to.”
Jen fell in beside him as they started walking toward the jeeps waiting to take them to the airfield. Gabe hung back as the president’s entourage, including four Secret Service and two staff members, surrounded the man. Hell, they’d need Air Force One for all these people.
It would beat the hell out of Tony’s six-passenger Beechcraft.
“I hope I don’t throw up in his lap,” he told Jen.
“Wouldn’t bother me,” she replied, a smile curving her lips.
He slanted a look at her. “Geez, Jen. I know you don’t like the guy, but you wouldn’t bring me along to sabotage this?”
“I brought you along so I don’t sabotage it. Have you ever known me to keep my mouth shut? Especially when his environmental policies helped cause this mess?”
“His and every president before him. Give him a break, Jen. A president’s decisions are only as good as his information. Let’s just make sure he gets the best information we’re able to give him. Have you seen Peyton?”
“She’s up on the mountain with Kim.”
Every nerve in his body tightened, on alert. “What the hell?”
“Kim wanted to show her the point of origin. Peyton wanted to see if she could find something to help Doug.”
He blinked. “And you let her go.” He pivoted, so tense he worried his muscles would snap.
“Of course you let her go. Anything to help Doug.”
Irritation vibrated from her every pore. “What is with you?” He stopped and held out his hand, palm out. “Do you have the list of firefighters who were
in Montana when the fire started?”
“Yes, sure, in the command tent, but—”
He spun on his heel and headed for the tent, fighting rising fear that he wasn’t out there to watch over Peyton. “How many names were on it?”
She glanced toward the president’s retreating entourage before she turned and fell into step behind Gabe. “I don’t know. Ten? Fifteen?”
“Any of them pop for you?”
“Pop? What do you mean?”
“Stand out? Raise suspicion? For Doug?”
“No. Why?”
“I have a bad feeling.” He shoved his way into the tent, scanned the map-strewn table for an out-of-place piece of paper, found it, snatched it up. “Hell and damn,” he said, when he saw two familiar names. Two injured firefighters, one of whom had no business in Montana the week in question. He looked up at Jen then. “We have to get Peyton off the mountain.”
*****
Raising Peyton on the radio didn’t work, so they tried to reach Kim. Gabe fought every nerve to keep his voice calm. He couldn’t let her see his suspicions, not when she was alone on the mountain with the woman he loved.
But no one answered.
“Where did they go?” Gabe demanded through a tight throat, not expecting a response.
“The point of origin, I told you,” Jen said.
His patience had reached its snapping point and he whipped his head around. “Which is where?”
“I can give you the general area on the map, but I haven’t been up there so I’m not exactly sure.” She frowned up at him. “What is going on?”
He braced his hands on the scarred table, holding her gaze. In the back of his mind, he realized he didn’t love her anymore. The thought was...liberating, but he pushed the sensation aside when she huffed at him.
“Kevin O’Doul told me he was on a fire in California two weeks ago, and he’d gotten a burn there bad enough to put him on medical leave. Kim had a burn on her palm when we met up here, not a line from the drip torch, but the whole palm was blistered.”
“Surely you questioned her.”
“I didn’t have to. She said she was baking with her mom, joking she couldn’t last an hour in the kitchen.” After hearing Doug was arrested on the same evidence, he hadn’t made the connection. Hadn’t wanted to, even now. “But for her and Kevin to both have lied about where they were—who’s to say they didn’t lie about how they got the burns?”
“Are you listening to what you’re saying?” Jen demanded, stepping in front of him. “You’re accusing Kim of being the arsonist. The woman who’s worked beside you for at least three fire seasons, the woman who worships the ground you walk on. She could no more set this fire than Doug could. She’s a firefighter, not a firebug.”
“Jesus.” He passed a hand over his hair. “Look what this is doing to me. Causing me to doubt everyone.” The person he’d trusted the most on the job. “Sorry.”
Jen put a hand on his arm. “It’s understandable. But put it out of your mind. The president of the United States is waiting for us.”
“Yeah.” But as Gabe followed Jen out of the tent, his instincts were screaming that he was forgetting something.
Gabe and Jen arrived at the airfield in the second jeep, and the president was already whittling down his following. They boarded the plane with two Secret Service men, leaving disgruntled aides on the tarmac.
Gabe would have happily traded places with them, but how did one say no to the president of the United States?
He wondered what the president, who sat facing him, would think if the hero who saved little girls used one of the barf bags in the back of the seat in front of him.
To think Jen had wanted him to go back to smokejumping.
The pilot, Tony, knew Gabe and his aversion to flying since his last accident, and still took great glee in the sharp turn the minute the plane cleared the trees. Gabe hoped everyone attributed his groan of dismay to the roar of the engines.
“I hope there’s not so much smoke we won’t be able to see.” The president pressed his forehead against the window like a little kid.
“You may not see much of the actual fire because of the smoke, but you’ll see a great deal of the devastation, like the ridge where the four Hot Shots died, and perhaps where Gabe and the campers were trapped,” Jen said from beside Gabe.
Jen kicked his boot to get him to say something. Why was she still pushing him? She had nothing to gain by his success anymore.
He opened his eyes to see the president watching him expectantly.
“I said, I understand you saved them by taking them into a cave,” Hutchinson repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
“How did you find out there were caves there?”
“Gabe always makes a point of studying the terrain on his way to a fire to make sure his crew has an escape route.” Then, as if it explained everything, she added, “He was on Angel Ridge.”
Gabe swallowed bile and looked back out the window. That didn’t help, so he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Angel Ridge?” Hutchinson asked.
A moment of silence hung in the air before Jen took it upon herself to tell the story. Just as well. Gabe didn’t think he could relive it again this week.
“We lost fourteen firefighters when a fire blew up, using a gully as a chimney and racing in a firestorm that overcame some helitack pilots, Hot Shots and smokejumpers, including one of our good friends,” Jen concluded.
“I was one of the firefighters who retrieved the bodies then too,” Gabe said at last. “I’d never seen anything like it. They hadn’t had time to deploy their shelters, and if they had...” He shook his head. “I always plan a way out when I go in.”
“I certainly underestimated the difficulty of your job out here,” Hutchinson said. “Oh, good Lord!” He leaned against the window and watched flames leap above the treetops. “How do you begin to fight a fire like that?”
Gabe shifted away from the window and started explaining the basics of firefighting to the president. It helped keep his mind off of Peyton. God knew where she was.
“Why don’t you put slurry on it?” the president asked after Gabe explained the firefighting tactic of dropping chemicals from modified bombers.
“Because the slurry only knocks it down for a little while. Once the plane drops it, you have to have a crew on site to take advantage of the lower temperature and higher humidity and stop it altogether. And each run of slurry costs thousands of dollars. Plus the pilots can’t always fly, if the wind gets too bad, or the smoke does. So there really isn’t just one way to fight a fire. It’s a massive collaborative effort with different agencies, and right now it’s all running through Jen here. She’s doing an awesome job on her first command. I wouldn’t do anything different.” It wasn’t a lie. If he considered going into management, Jen would be a good model to follow.
The president turned his attention to her, which had been Gabe’s goal. “How did you end up with the command? I mean, it’s an unusual job for a woman, isn’t it?”
Oh hell, Hutchinson blew it there.
Jen bristled, her opinion of the man not improving. “I’m more than qualified. I’ve been on the fire line fifteen years.”
“I’m sure you are,” Hutchinson placated. “I didn’t mean to offend. It just seems out of the ordinary. Don’t get me wrong. I like out of the ordinary.”
“You’re in the right place.” Jen sat back in her seat. “There’s nothing ordinary on a fire line.”
“What are they doing?” the president asked, pointing to two yellow-shirted people in a clearing that had been burned in a fan shape, uphill from where the two women stood. “They aren’t close to a fire.”
“That’s not good,” Gabe muttered, turning all his energy inward to settle his stomach.
Jen leaned over to look, sparing him another round of nausea. “It’s the point of origin.” Her tone alerted him. “A reporter went out with one of Gabe’s Hot Shots to see what t
hey could find out about who started this fire.”
His eyes snapped open and he leaned toward the window despite his twitchy stomach.
From this altitude, Peyton was nearly impossible to identify. Only her golden hair and her posture were recognizable. Would she remember to keep her wits about her? No one was there to pull her ass out of trouble this time.
*****
“Kim, Jesus, what the hell are you doing?” Peyton hated the shrill in her voice as she backed away from a pissed-off redhead whose Pulaski rested casually on her shoulder.
“Taking care of two birds with one stone, as it were.” The smile on Kim’s face was unholy. “Gabe’s lover and the woman who might expose me.”
She pulled out a drip torch, and Peyton noted the stiffness with which she operated it, like she couldn’t move her hand very well. Like the skin was stiff. Perhaps from a burn.
She searched her memory, remembered meeting Kim and the others when Jen assigned her to the crew. Remembered Kim’s bandaged hand.
“Like you did before,” Peyton said softly.
Kim’s eyes softened in a kind of admiration. “At least you aren’t a dummy, like some of the others.”
“Why did you set it? To be with Gabe?” Peyton asked, easing back, moving into the black. Above them, she could hear the distant buzz of a plane engine, fading in and out as the wind picked up. Could they see? And if they could, what could they do? There was no place to land around here.
Kim lifted a shoulder, showing no evidence of hearing the plane. “That was just a side benefit. I mean, we would end up on a fire somewhere. But I wanted it to be here, I wanted him to see Doug and Jen suffer, the way they made him suffer when they betrayed him.”
“You love him.” She’d hit that one on the head right away. Why hadn’t she carried it one step further? Seen the lengths Kim would go to for him?
“He doesn’t see me,” Kim said, her voice distant before sharpening again. “He will, when you’re gone.”
Peyton spun to scramble up the mountain, but a blow to her head brought her to her knees. She inhaled a mouthful of ash before everything went black.
