Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1)

by Susan May Warren

  He wasn’t sure why he said it, but it came out low, a growl of frustration.

  “Seriously? C’mon, Boss, she’s awesome.” This from Reuben, who’d finally managed par. “I fought a couple fires with her, when she jumped with the Boise team. I’ve never known anyone who could handle themself in a crisis like Kate. And she has uncanny fire instincts, just like her old man.”

  “Her old man got half his crew killed. He should have listened to Overhead.”

  Silence, and Jed closed his eyes. He had deliberately vowed not to talk about this, especially with Conner and Reuben.

  Mostly because they still hadn’t forgiven themselves for letting Jock run back into the fire. Reuben especially couldn’t seem to square himself with it—he heard the guy occasionally wrestling with Jock in his sleep.

  “Come again?” Conner said quietly, and Jed knew he might now have a real brawl brewing.

  He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s just that I was there that day. I heard the hotshot super tell them where to go. Jock ignored it.”

  Reuben put the controller down carefully on the windowsill. Shoved his hands into his pockets, kept his voice schooled. “Jock didn’t ignore it. He just knew better.”

  Jed stared at the men—he knew them, knew they loved Jock. Still, something about their voices... “Okay, what am I missing here?”

  Conner shrugged. “I don’t know. You read the report. The hotshot team was deployed over the face of Eureka Pass, cutting perpendicular to the fire, getting ready to do a back burn. Jock’s team hooked up with the shots, and that’s when Jock and Otis had words.”

  Otis Flannery, former JCHS Superintendent, now working out of Missoula.

  Conner continued, his voice even, as if he might be being debriefed. “Otis thought we needed to spread out more, split our teams into three to finish digging out the line for the burn. Jock didn’t like it. He said that we’d get cut off from communication and lose our eyes on the fire. Otis was listening to Overhead, though, and he ranked higher than Jock, so Jock fell back to the far end of the line with me, Rube, and Pete. He told Browning, Nutter, Deke, Suds, and Weiner to work the middle and connect the line with the shots higher up the mountain.”

  “Jim Winner,” Reuben corrected. “And Anthony Sutton, both from South Dakota.”

  Right. Jed knew them all.

  Nutter—Doug Turnquist—age thirty, father to a son he never met.

  Tom Browning, twenty-four-years-old and son of their small-aircraft mechanic on base.

  Deke Johnson, out of Minnesota, age twenty-five, kid brother to a seasoned shot Conner had trained.

  Bo Renner, rookie, former running back for the Ember Flames, and town darling.

  And, of course, Jock.

  Conner folded his hands over his chest, looked away.

  Reuben picked up the story then. “We constructed our line, and Jock was ready to start the burn, so we all went to finish hooking the lines together when we heard the shout. The fire was making a run up the middle, coming in fast. They hadn’t yet connected the lines above us, so a burnout wasn’t possible. Then Otis came over the radio and told us to run toward the safety zone he’d found—up the mountain. But Jock turned to us—and told us to run back, toward the cool black area—already burned over. It was about the size of a football field, and he said if we had to deploy our shelters there, we had enough distance to survive the radial heat. The fire was going to run over us either way, but he calculated the distance to safety and realized level ground would get us there faster.”

  “Except Otis’s route had them going half the distance,” Jed said quietly.

  “Uphill.”

  Reuben slid down, his back to the wall. “Jock knew that Nutter and the guys would never make it up the hill. He told them to drop their tools and run to us, but Otis came on the line and ordered them to him.”

  A heartbeat, then Jed filled in the rest. “Jock ran back into the fire to stop them, try and save them, bring them back down”

  “The shots on Otis’s crew, the ones working the far edge, ran up the trail,” Conner said.

  “They had to deploy their shelters,” Reuben said. “Four are still suffering from burns, but they lived.”

  “But the guys caught in the middle—Browning, Nutter, Suds, Deke, Renner, Winner and Jock...well, they simply couldn’t outrun it.”

  “If they’d obeyed Jock instead of Otis, they might have made it.”

  “And if we’d gone Otis’ direction, we would have died, too,” Conner said. “But because Jock defied orders, he’s the bad guy. Some of the shots claimed that while he was arguing with Otis, the guys could have been fleeing to higher ground, but I’m telling you, Jed, Rube and I hiked that pass, and there was no way to outrun that fire uphill. We lived because Jock followed his gut. And if the guys had listened to Jock, they’d still be alive, too.”

  Jed closed his eyes, seeing the old man, his dark hair salted with gray under a JCWF gimme cap, staring up at the mountains through his aviators. Always thinking.

  “Good decision, bad outcome.” Jed glanced at Reuben, then Conner. “His luck finally ran out. It just takes once. I wish Kate would get that.”

  “Like I said—she has instincts like her old man, Jed. Have a little faith in her.” Conner walked over to the Wii, turned it off. The music died. “She certainly has faith in you, dude. According to her, you saved her life a while back.”

  Reuben stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. “She told us about the fire and how you hiked out with a broken leg. That’s dope, man.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s telling it backwards. I might have saved her—briefly, but it was my fault. I read the fire route wrong, and we had to deploy our shelters. She climbed into mine and held it down for me.” He held out his hands, the skin rumpled along his knuckles, still reddened. “I would have died out there if it weren’t for her.”

  Another risk she’d taken to save a life.

  “I can’t help but think that ever since then, it’s like she’s trying to punish me for...Oh no.”

  He ran his hand across his forehead, as if pushing the truth into his head. “That’s it. That’s exactly it.”

  Reuben frowned at him. “Huh?”

  He got up and headed into the dark kitchen, opened the door to the fridge, letting the light and the cool air cascade over him. He grabbed a Diet Coke, closed the fridge.

  Conner and Reuben were watching him.

  He opened the pop. Took a long drink. “After we’d been rescued, they flew us to the hospital in Fairbanks. I had some pretty bad burns on my hands, and they did surgery on my leg to set it. When I came out of surgery, there she was, sitting on the end of my bed, wearing scrubs. She’d taken a shower, all the soot and grime off of her, and she looked at me with this grin, like, wow, we lived.”

  More than the grin, however. The tenderness in her eyes, almost an expectation of more of what transpired between them in the shelter and afterwards. The rekindling of everything he’d ignited at Grizzly’s. And that’s what scared him the most.

  “I can admit riding out the fire in the shelter just about took me apart. For the first time, maybe, I realized I wasn’t invincible.”

  And neither was she. Remembering the moment when right before he pushed her to the ground to deploy her shelter, she froze, fear holding her paralyzed, could still waken him in a cold sweat.

  “But it did the opposite for Kate. I looked at her in the hospital, and she had this look in her eyes—like someone who’s cheated death. We were nearly roasted. I was sitting there with bandages on my hands, my leg in a cast, still reeling from the sound of fire cooking over us, and she was standing there glowing, as if suddenly invincible.”

  And he’d been too afraid to ask what that glow might be about—the danger ...or him.

  He took another drink, and his gaze went to the window. The lights on the deck around the Airstream still blazed.

  “I told her to stay away from me. I still can’t
believe I said that.”

  But for good reason. Because if he couldn’t stop her, then he couldn’t watch.

  “And stay away she did,” he said quietly. “And has been punishing me for it ever since. Taking chances, proving herself...”

  Conner glanced at Reuben, back to Jed.

  “And it wasn’t only about me. She was punishing Jock, too. He’d heard about what happened and came to Alaska to get her. They—we—had a blistering fight. He basically told her to quit jumping, and she pretty much told him where he could put that idea. She jumped with the Alaska team for the rest of the summer. As soon as I could, I headed south, back to Ember. I quit the jump team, started heading up the Shots. And Jock and I had a back row seat watching her jump fires across North America for the last seven years.”

  The lights over the Airstream finally blinked out.

  “And now...lucky me, I’ve moved to a front row view.”

  He drained the rest of his Diet Coke then crushed the can, turned and shot it toward the garbage can. Netted it.

  “Except, I’m tired of watching. I’m tired of worrying. Kate Burns isn’t going to crash and burn on my watch.”

  “How are you doing to do that? You can’t follow her from jump to jump.”

  “Watch me.”

  Reuben raised an eyebrow, a smirk on his face. “Ho-kay.”

  Conner, however, drummed his fingers on his leg. “Listen, Jed. We all know she doesn’t have to prove she knows what she’s doing. She’s Jock’s daughter—and a trained fire behavior analyst. She wants to be a jump trainer—maybe it’s time to give her exactly what she wants.”

  “What?”

  “You’re so freaked out about her getting hurt. However, she’s never trained anyone, never had anyone she’s responsible for. Having someone you care about makes you safer, makes you take fewer risks, right?”

  Jed was catching on. “Yeah. If she were to take over the training, the game changes. And maybe then she would discover that you can’t have both worlds—you have to keep people safe or be their pal. You have to choose.”

  Maybe then, she would understand why—and deep in her core agree—that expelling her from his life was the only way to save them both.

  He waited for them to refute his words, but Conner just nodded.

  Reuben made a face. “Well, that sorta hurts my feelings. I thought we were pals. Are you saying you don’t care if I die?”

  Jed grinned. “Not when you rearrange my furniture.”

  Jed’s cell phone buzzed, and he pulled it off its clip on his belt. “I got a text, I gotta go in. Get some winks, guys. I think we’ll be jumping fire by morning.”

  He clipped the cell phone back on and headed to the bedroom to grab his gear bag. “And put my furniture back!”

  Chapter 5

  If he gave her a chance, they could knock this fire down in a day.

  Kate leaned toward the window of the plane and spotted a clear patch of forest, flame lengths of fifteen feet, maybe more, wrapped around black pine and spruce, flickering up as if in morbid greeting.

  Not a big fire, yet. Maybe she could let herself breathe. She might even live up to her own overblown, zealous words.

  You will. Oh, you will.

  Oh, her impulsive, angry, prideful mouth, leading the way yet again right to her doom.

  She had no room for fear. Never mind the clench of her gut, the acid crawling up her throat, the way her hands shook. She gripped the straps of her pack, holding on with whitened fists.

  She had a legacy to uphold. And now her own stupid declarations.

  Three thousand feet below, the two-acre blowup seemed a pinprick amidst the lush ladder fuels of lodgepole, Douglas, and ponderosa pine, climbing along Solomon Canyon up the slopes of the Cabinet Mountains.

  The spark had ignited near a campground along the Solomon River, a trickling creek that fed into the larger branch to the south, but narrow enough that, should the winds pick up, the fire could jump the river and head east, toward civilization. Or north, over the ridge, and into a collection of cabins that dotted the hillside.

  “It’s just a baby!” she yelled above the hum of the plane to Pete who sat next to her, face grid raised, surveying the blaze. Reuben gave her a nod.

  She shot a look at Jed, seated next to Cliff O’Dell, their spotter for the run. Jed seemed to be neatly ignoring her as he leaned over a topo map, checked his radio, and talked through fire fuels and scenarios.

  The man had appeared wrung out when she arrived at HQ for roll call at six a.m., stirred out of sleep by the siren blaring, echoing up the valley, accompanied by a text on her cell.

  Clear Fire—Kootenai National Forest—2 Acres along the Solomon River—Jump 01 responding from Ember.

  She didn’t even remember getting dressed; already had her gear packed. Jed, Reuben and Pete lived closer—just across the street from the base, and Conner’s fifth wheel was parked in permanent residence at a campground next to the base.

  The team had barely greeted her when they met in the ready room where Jed outlined the blowup. Then Kate donned her gear—helmet, jumpsuit, parachute harness, supply pack—checked her jump pockets, laced up her boots, and did a quick braid of her hair, tying it back with a bandanna.

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d hiked across the tarmac to the plane.

  Jed, in his jumpsuit and packs, gave her a cursory once-over, then checked her name off the list and gave her nary another glance as she boarded.

  Stay out of my way.

  Apparently, he’d taken those words to heart.

  She, however, had rolled those words around, feeling the fresh sear of their fight.

  Somewhere, deep inside, she must have believed that reconciling with Jed, at least enough to share memories of her dad, would somehow balm the rift they’d never healed.

  Instead, she’d managed to turn it from a rift into a canyon. And set herself up for disaster. Yes, she knew how to fight fire, but getting up-close and personal...

  Shoot. She tightened her grip on her straps before her entire body started to shake.

  No one knew—and she certainly wasn’t going to ’fess up that she’d spent the past two fire seasons grounded, fighting fires via computer screens instead of in the field.

  “Buddy check.” This from Pete, who checked her straps, her gear. She returned the favor. With only five of them jumping they’d all go together, one after another.

  Jed first.

  She glanced at him, took in his clenched jaw. His first official jump in seven years—she didn’t know what was making him break his streak.

  Or maybe she did. Maybe he, too, was trying to prove that his fears couldn’t hold him down.

  Gilly came over the coms, announced their altitude, then Cliff hooked himself into his spotter harness pigtail and opened the door. Cool air rushed in, laced with smoke and the aroma of pine.

  She swallowed but couldn’t dislodge the burn wedged in her throat. Her pulse thundered in her head, just under the rampant rush of air.

  Cliff threw out the drift streamers to gauge the wind currents and find them a safe path to ground. Kate struggled to her feet as the plane banked, hoping to catch a glimpse of the blue, red, and orange drift ribbons.

  They fluttered down, the blue one tempted to the flame like a moth. The orange streamer headed south toward a ridge, the third found the meadow, a fifty-foot diameter just east of the fire.

  They’d located their landing zone.

  Gilly arched them over the ridge, just past the fire, and Kate glimpsed a homestead perched on the side of the mountain. A small corral held horses.

  Property. Animals—possibly humans—in harm’s way.

  They made another pass, and Cliff stuck his head out into the slipstream to assess the drop zone. Then he turned to the jumpers.

  “There’s about four hundred yards of drift, and the winds are pulling to the west, so stay wide of the fire. The jump spot is in that meadow, just beyond that service road—see it?�
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  Jed nodded, and Kate willed her heart steady as she worked on her helmet, secured it, then lowered her grid. Jed sat in the door, his feet in the slipstream. The static line to his canopy attached to the plane and would deploy automatically. Although she’d learned to jump on squares—the self-deployed rectangular chutes the Bureau of Land Management used in Alaska—the Forest Service in the lower forty-eight still depended on auto-deployed rounds.

  The round parachutes made it safer to land in a forest made up of spears, the kind that could trap a man in a tree.

  Cliff patted his shoulder and Jed pushed off.

  She couldn’t help the urge to lean out, just to make sure—

  Reuben clipped his static line to the overhead cable, sat down, and slipped out next.

  When Pete sat down, Kate was still craning her neck. He pushed off just as she spotted Jed’s chute, white and fat, a round puff of cloud blooming against the smoky gray sky.

  She dropped into a sitting position, her hands on the door, the wind grabbing at her boots. Waited, watching now as Reuben’s chute popped open.

  Just a baby fire.

  Pressure, and she pushed hard against the door and out into the sky.

  She didn’t have to count, but it came to her anyway. Jump Thousand.

  Her chute deployed with a quick, hard tug, the quiet soothing the rush of adrenaline as she drifted down to terra firma.

  Conner launched himself out behind her—she searched for him and found his chute open by the time she hit Wait Thousand.

  Grabbing the toggles, she quartered with the wind and aimed for the meadow.

  The column of black smoke tried to drag her in, but she steered herself away, into the wind, watching the world become larger, pine trees taking shape, the jump spot looming.

  Below, Jed found the sweet spot, hit and rolled, then popped back up to his feet as if he were born to jump.

  Maybe, like her, he was.

  Reuben, then Pete. She came in soft, playing the wind, and landed perfectly, rolling like a dancer, wishing for a moment she might still be flying as the crackle and snap of the fire prickled her ears. The redolence of smoke drifting from the nearby forest scraped her eyes. They burned, watered.