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

by Susan May Warren

  “You here all week? Because I don’t see a tip jar.”

  “That one’s for free, because I’m still trying to understand. The parts I heard sounded like he was offering to settle down with you, start a family—yeah, he definitely deserves a kick in the knees.” She handed Kate the container. “Are we eating this straight out of the carton?”

  Kate lifted two bowls from the cupboard. “Apparently, Jed thinks I’m afraid of being happy, that I’d rather run away like a peeved teenager every time someone tells me something I don’t want to hear.”

  Silence as Gilly dished up the ice cream.

  “Gilly, that’s not fair.”

  “I didn’t say anything.” She dug into the ice cream, taking a bite. “Your temper tantrums did make excellent fodder for some awesome adventures.”

  Kate scooped out the ice cream, not smiling. “Jed said that I was scared of being betrayed.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “He said I love fire more than him.”

  Gilly put the spoon down. “Wow. Okay, I didn’t realize we had that fight.” She touched Kate’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  She sighed. “He said I’d never be his when I belonged to fire. And that I’d rather keep looking for the next epic fire than stick around and face the danger of loving him.”

  Gilly cast a look at the jeans, sweatshirts, running clothes, and the one pair of high heels tossed on the double bed. “Now he’s just talking crazy.”

  Kate’s mouth tightened as she poured the hot fudge over the ice cream. “He just couldn’t get the fact that I was born to this. Smokejumping is in my DNA.”

  Silence.

  “Gil?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking. What if...what if you only just wanted to be like your dad? I do remember ballet class.”

  “Are you kidding me? Ballet was my mother’s pitiful attempt to get me to stop hanging around the fire camp.” Kate scooped out another spoonful of ice cream. “You, on the other hand...”

  Gilly gave a half smile, something of sadness in it. “Yeah, well, my ballet days are long over, unless you include aerobatics.”

  “In an Air Tanker?”

  “Exactly.” Gilly picked up her bowl, and Kate gestured to the front door. The evening air had cooled with the leaving of the sun, a scant humidity gathering in the grasses, and with it a breathy nip lifting the hair on her neck. Her bare feet chilled against the boards of the deck. She slid onto the picnic table, her gaze falling to Jed’s house. Dark.

  Gilly sat next to her. “But the ballet thing only brings up a point. You were different before your mom left. Happy. Girly, even. I remember thinking—what would it be like to be an only child? I was so jealous of you. I remember we’d be in church, and I’d be squished between Abe and Colt or next to Jake, trying to get him to stop pinching me. You’d be across the aisle with your dad and mom and I’d be thinking—what must it be like to be the center of all that love? And then, you lost it. Just like that—your mom walked away and started a new life, without you. Of course it changed you, Kate. I might be a little skittish of getting hurt, too.”

  Kate let the ice cream dissolve in her mouth. “I was always a little worried that my dad regretted taking me in. Here I was, underfoot all the time. He had to ask your dad to take care of me when he got called out, and when he came home, I’d be there, bugging him with questions and details and...I just wanted him to be glad that I stayed with him. I can agree I went into smokejumping to make him proud of me.” She stirred her ice cream. “I never in a million years dreamed he’d be so angry.” She took a bite, let the spoon linger on her tongue, remembering.

  “He was so—undone when he came to Alaska after the fire. He came right out to the hospital, stormed in, and practically took me apart, right in front of Jed. I was mortified. I thought he was going to grab me by the arm and drag me home.”

  She took another bite, hearing his words, seeing his distraught expression. God isn’t a parachute!

  “He was pretty scared.”

  She glanced at Gilly. “I see that now.”

  Gilly nodded, gave her a wry smile. “Only took seven years.”

  Kate put down her ice cream, traced a falling star that unlatched from the sky. “I should have come home earlier. You have no idea how I regret that. But I...I was angry and embarrassed. And fueled by this insane need to prove him wrong. I only saw all that fury as rejection, not as love.” She wiped a hand across her wet cheek. “I probably should have stopped, taken another look.”

  “You’re not running now.”

  “Only because you brought ice cream,” Kate said, not entirely kidding. She dipped her spoon back in. “Jed overheard me tell Gemma Turnquist that if I didn’t have smokejumping, then I didn’t have anything.”

  “Oh. So that’s what the call to bravery was.”

  Kate glanced at her.

  “Jed said something like, if you stuck around, that would be a real act of courage.” Gilly held up her hands. “Hey, I was trying not to listen, but I thought someone should tune in, in case you needed a replay.”

  “I don’t need a replay. He was furious, hurt, and basically called me a coward. But he doesn’t get watching your parents’ marriage unravel, seeing your mother walk away, your dad retreat into himself.”

  “So you stop Jed from hurting you before it begins, is that it?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “For a woman who likes to take risks—yeah, I think Jed’s right. You’re afraid.”

  “I’m not—” She sighed. “Okay, yeah. The fact is, yes, I want it, okay? Everything Jed had unspoken in his eyes. The home. The family. The guy. Jed. I want it all—but—”

  “You’re afraid to reach for something that could burn you.”

  Kate pursed her lips, shrugged. “All I know is that I thought I was born to jump fire. Then, suddenly, everything turned on me. The fire, Jed, Dad...and the even God did it. Do you know how rare it is to have to deploy your fire shelter? There are some firefighters who spend their entire careers without deploying it once. And me—twice. What does that tell you about God’s love for me?”

  “It tells me He’s pretty crazy about you.”

  Kate stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  “Kate—think about it. You’ve got this all backwards. Yes, you got trapped by a fire—twice. And. You. Lived. Lived. There are smokejumpers who say that the only good reason for a fire shelter is so that they can identify your body, that you can have an open casket. People don’t live through fires—even in fire shelters. But you did. Twice. Wake up. I’m not sure how God can be more on your side.”

  Kate closed her eyes against a rush of thick emotion.

  “God loves you, Kate. You just don’t want to admit it. Because if you admit God is on your side, then you might have to admit that you haven’t done this alone. That you need help—and that, right there, is a killer. Because then you aren’t Blazin’ Kate Burns, but rather just regular old Kate needing God like everyone else. And if God is with you on the mountain, then He’ll be with you in—dare I say it?—marriage.”

  “I’m not afraid to need God.”

  “Are you kidding me? Of course you are. Because if you need God, then suddenly you have to listen to God. And if you listen, He might tell you something you don’t want to hear. Like—swallow your stupid pride, go and reconcile with the man you should be with.”

  Or reconcile with your father.

  Her throat burned.

  “But here’s the kicker—even if God asks you to do something hard. Like forgive. Or even—horrors—give up something you love for something bigger, it’s because He wants you to succeed! All this time, you’ve been thinking God is like your father—ready to turn on you. But God is for you, Kate. He is on your side. And any warning flags He waves—like, perhaps, your father or Jed—is not meant to steal your dreams but help them come true. I’m not trying to break your heart here, but what if you had stuck around, let your dad teach you his tricks? Pa
ss along his jump boss hat to you?”

  Kate looked away, her eyes slick.

  “I love you, Kate—and I’m not trying to hurt you. But that guy over there”—she pointed to Jed’s dark house—“he’s your dad’s protégé, and I can guarantee that he is just as miserable as you are. He loved your dad. You loved your dad. And you love each other. I think the last thing you should be doing is sitting over here cooling off with ice cream when you should be over there, rekindling that fire.”

  Down the road, across the fire base, Jed’s porch light flicked on, and she saw the front door open. Her heart gave a traitorous leap until she saw Conner’s truck back out of the driveway.

  “He thinks I take too many risks. That I’m stubborn and refuse to ask for help. He thinks I run away when someone stands in my way, go off and do my own thing and, most of all, that I don’t want to build a life with him. I don’t think he wants to have anything to do with me, Gilly.”

  “Oh, Kate. If anyone can prove Jed Ransom wrong, it’s you.”

  Kate let Gilly’s words sink in, settle into her bones.

  “The question is, do you have the courage to face the fire? Because that’s what love is—consuming, mesmerizing, exhilarating, terrifying, complex, and amazing.” Gilly got up, turned to her, her voice soft enough to heal the bruises. “The good news, Blazin’ Kate, is that nobody understands fire behavior like you do. Right?”

  She left Kate sitting on the table watching the stars fall behind the outline of Jed’s once-again dark house.

  “This is it, gents—and ladies.”

  Jed nodded at his team, his gaze landing on Hannah and Kate, leaning against the table in the back of the room where the maps of the Kootenai National Forest denoted the latest fire call, a flare up in Powder Canyon. He’d spent the better part of the last fifteen minutes mapping out the area, comparing the terrain with the Doppler, the infrared geo-satellite images, and the latest weather reports.

  “This is the one we’ve been training for. We’re dropping into ten acres of heavy black spruce, one-hundred percent active and rolling through a canyon toward an RV park, a resort, and not a few fishing lodges. Air Attack will be supporting us with at least one Air Tanker. We’ll roll one load of jumpers, the second will stand by.”

  Jed scanned his clipboard, debating just a moment before he focused on the list. He read off Kate’s name without inflection, right after his.

  Some habits he couldn’t break.

  “Second load, wait for my order.” Jed tucked the clipboard back on the duty wall, next to the roster, the hours logged, along with the names and status of the hotshots. He told Miles to put the shots on standby for possible mop-up, if not deployment for attack. But with the route into the fire at least two hours by camp road, the jumpers had a better chance of cutting off the fire before it got out of hand.

  “Wheels up in fifteen,” he said, and the crew dispersed. He caught Conner by the arm. “Bring your drone,” he said. “This is a good fire to give it a try.”

  “Good idea, Boss.”

  Conner’s newest invention—a fire drone—could fly over the fire and, in the right conditions, measure fuels, wind speed, and fire behavior, give them more eyes, a better battle strategy.

  Twenty minutes later, Gilly lifted them off, and Jed positioned himself with his map, binoculars, and radio in the front of the plane, next to Cliff O’Dell, again spotting for them. The sun hung in the sky, blotted by a few bulbous, angry gray clouds, more bluster than potency. He leaned back, tried not to glance at Kate, thinking through his plan of fire attack.

  She’d shown up for roll call this morning as if they hadn’t had a spinout yesterday—all smiles, Yes, Sirs and Right Away, Boss, and it had him unbalanced.

  He’d expected ire, a cold shoulder, and, at the very least, a bucking of his leadership when he didn’t move her up to squad boss for the jump.

  Instead, she sat in the back of the plane next to Hannah, shouting into her ear, although her words didn’t carry to his position. Hannah laughed, Kate smiled, and it turned the knife in his chest.

  You never had her, not really. But you might, if you make room for miracles.

  Jed looked out the window at the blanket of black spruce, lodgepole pine, and the rolling mountains and canyons, the glacier rivulets that scarred the land. The hum of the prop wash filled his ears.

  A tap on his arm and Cliff pointed into the canyon to a deep, gray-blue wall of frothy smoke, rolling over itself as it bubbled up from tongues of flame. Jed guesstimated the flame lengths at maybe twenty to thirty feet at the head, making a run toward a river at the base of a canyon.

  The plane offered him a decent view of the ten acres, the way the fire settled into a crevice at the bottom of the canyon along a seasonal creek bed to the east, rising from the cauldron to lick up the edges toward a towering western ridge. A hiking trail ran across the top edge of the ridge, a feeble but possible fire break if they couldn’t get the blaze to calm down before it climbed the mountain.

  By the way the wind was blowing down the canyon, away from the ridge, it seemed the smarter attack was on the eastern side, to lay down retardant against the dry creek bed. They could use it as a boundary, snuff out any spurs, and drive the fire toward the river. Jed made a mental note to suggest it to Air Attack.

  “Hold on to your reserves!” Cliff yelled and opened the jump door. He had already clipped into the overhead line and now stuck his head into the slipstream, searching for a jump site.

  Cliff ducked his head back in. “You’ve got your work cut out for you!” he shouted to Jed. “If you can stop it along the riverbed, you have a chance of containing it in the canyon. Keep an eye on the winds. This fire is creating its own weather.” He leaned back out and dropped streamers, watching as two got sucked into the blackened smoke.

  The plane jostled against the turbulent wind currents, a product of flying through the boiling ash. Cliff dropped two more streamers and watched as they landed in a clearing to the north of the canyon. He shouted to Jed, showed him the landing zone, and Jed nodded. About a hundred yards from the fire, it felt a little close for comfort, especially with the wind driving against them. But it seemed the cleanest drop spot available.

  Jed gave a quick glance at his team—Riley and Hannah appeared a little white-faced. CJ, however, grinned, as did Conner and Pete. Pete reminded him, sometimes, of Kate—too eager to jump, to fly into the flames.

  Tucker, for all his bravado, seemed grim faced.

  Jed gave them a thumbs-up, sat down in the door, and waited for the tap. The flames bubbled up below him, and not for the first time he wondered just why he thought it might be a good idea to jump into what seemed like a boiling cauldron of fire for a living.

  He’d had a good job as a crew boss for the Hotshots. Perhaps he’d taken the smokejumping position because he, too, had something to prove. Like today—keeping his crew safe.

  Cliff tapped his shoulder and Jed launched. The exhilaration hit him, a gasp, tugging at his breath. Then the jerk, and his chute deployed, filled, and he floated.

  The smoke found his nose as he grabbed his toggles, steered clear of the fire, over a stand of towering spruce, and into the open.

  He landed hard, rolled, and popped up just in time to see CJ on his tail, landing in a graceful roll, used to hitting the dirt from his bull riding days. Behind him floated Conner, then Riley.

  Jed removed his gear, shucked off his jumpsuit, and looked up to see Pete, then Tucker, who overshot the drop, nearly hit a tree, and managed to land dangerously close to the edge of the blaze. He came running, dragging up his chute.

  Then Hannah, floating down as if she had wings. Her landing, however, had him wincing, one eye closed, and he met Conner’s grimace.

  Of course Kate landed with a grace that shamed them all. He radioed up to Gilly and she came around, Cliff dropping out their gear.

  The fire packs and five-gallon container of water drifted from the heavens.

  Jed spre
ad the map out, gestured his team in. “Once Pete and CJ unpack the cargo, we’ll fortify the tail, then spread out along the flanks.” In his head, he’d already made a plan, and now distributed the assignments without a glance at Conner. Let her do her job. Which, by the way, you’ll have to start doing if you want to be a leader instead of a lovesick boy.

  “Kate, I need you and Hannah to hustle up along the ridge on lookout. We’ll head up the left flank and call in a drop along the riverbed, try and put down the fire along the eastern flank.”

  He expected an argument, even a rolling of the eyes at his decision to send Kate into the safer area, but she simply began stepping out of her jumpsuit, arranging her personal gear bag. He handed her a radio. “Conner and I will stay here at the tail, make sure it stays tamed, and see if we can get his toy working. Keep a weather eye on the fire and call in any wind shifts.”

  For the first time since she’d arrived, Kate met his eyes. “No problem, Boss.”

  No problem?

  “Be careful.” He couldn’t help it.

  She nodded, offered him the barest grin. “Always. C’mon, Hannah.”

  Always?

  He watched her bug out, almost at a jog, her Pulaski over her shoulder, Hannah on her tail.

  No, really, be careful. He barely suppressed the urge to run after her.

  The rest of their gear had landed around the zone, and he confirmed it on the radio, said good-bye to Gilly. “Stand by for the second crew.”

  Conner had unpacked his drone, started assembling the remote airplane, about two feet long with a detachable wing assembly. Jed stood over him. “How does this thing work?”

  Conner picked it up, turned it over. “This camera will record the heat index and wind speeds and give us a look at the fire.” He pointed to his iPad mini. “It’ll display the results here.”

  Pete appeared, a chainsaw over his shoulder, on his way to the left flank. “Who’s my swamper?”

  “CJ, Riley, and Tucker will work on the scratch lines. The wind is with us—let’s dig out a line and start a burnout to the tail—the black will keep it from blowing back. Conner, get that thing up, and then report what you see. Guys—on me, we need to shore up the tail.”