Burn So Bright

by Jennifer Bernard

  “That’s okay. She can skip the thanks. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Sean sipped his coffee. His dark green eyes were bloodshot from days in the smoke. “Everything okay?”

  “This coffee tastes like ass, but other than that, sure.”

  “Then why don’t you answer Suzanne’s calls?”

  Josh swallowed half his coffee before he answered. “Because I never answer calls when I’m on a fire. I helped her get her dream house. She can thank me properly when I get back.”

  “I saw that kiss. We all saw that kiss.”

  “It’s not what you think, believe me.”

  “Don’t mess around with her, Marsh. She’s a good person. When my parents died, she made me a card and a mug.”

  “A coffee mug?”

  “Yeah. She was into pottery, I guess. Anyway, yeah, she made this lopsided mug with all these hearts all over it. No one else did anything like that. And then she got in trouble at her school because someone talked trash about me and she set them straight. She was a real scrapper.”

  “Yeah, a scrapper with a crush.” Josh laughed. “Didn’t she say she had a crush on you when she was twelve?”

  “I don’t know about that, but when she stood up for me, it meant a lot. Back then, I thought the whole world was against me. And here’s this fierce little blond girl in pigtails getting into a hair-pulling fight because someone called me a loser. I’ve never forgotten that.”

  Josh could picture the scene. “She wore pigtails?”

  “Yeah. Whenever she could. Her mother, Desiree, was a model or something. She was always curling her hair and trying to make her look like a little doll, but Suzanne would come over to Evie’s and stick her head under the faucet. She was more the tomboy type.”

  It was strange, but Josh thought he could listen to stories about Suzanne’s childhood indefinitely. “What makes you think I’m messing around with her? I did her a favor.”

  “I just know how you roll, that’s all. Everyone does.”

  “Yes, but…” Josh trailed off. He couldn’t deny that Sean had a point. His love-’em-and-leave-’em reputation was entirely deserved. He stated it upfront and never veered from it. But everything with Suzanne was upside down and backwards. He didn’t know what was what anymore. “It’s different with Suzanne. We’re friends. I helped her get the house, she’s watching my dog. That’s it.”

  “Your what?”

  “Long story.”

  Which he didn’t have to recount, because just then Rollo joined them. “Are you going to talk about girls all day or are you going to get your candy asses out on the line and cut some chain? Come on!” He roared like a pirate, causing a nearby flock of sparrows to swoop into the air.

  “We’re just waiting on you, Money,” said Josh. They rarely used that nickname for Rollo because it always got under his skin. Rollo came from an old-money, Mayflower family that highly disapproved of his chosen career. They were constantly dangling big bribes under his nose to get him to quit and come manage the family hedge fund or whatever the hell it was.

  Rollo snarled at him. Until he’d consumed his first sip of coffee, he wasn’t fit for human company. Josh helped him by tipping the thermos up to his lips. After a healthy dose of caffeine, he relaxed and looked around the collection of white canvas tents that made up the IC. “I smell the blood of a wildfire. Let me at it!”

  Josh slung his arm over Rollo’s shoulder, even though he had to rise on his feet to do so. “Are you going to scare it into submission?”

  “It’ll be scared once it gets a whiff of you, tell you that.” Rollo twitched his nose behind his big beard. All of them smelled pretty bad, since they’d been working nonstop without showering. They had access to the high school’s locker rooms, but the thought of the sheer number of filthy firefighters using those showers kept Josh away. His usual routine was to book himself into a hotel room with a shower as soon as they were released from a fire.

  They continued to rag on each other as they joined up with the rest of the crew. They geared up, putting on their Nomex outer layers and grabbing their packs. Then they piled into the crew buggy and drove out to the location where they’d be working.

  As a captain, Josh’s role was to lead the way, chopping down the bigger stuff with the chainsaw. From experience, he knew that the first ten minutes of work could be painful—his body had to get moving again after the strain of the previous day’s labors. His approach was to drink about a quart of water so he’d be properly hydrated, then hunker down and work that saw until it felt like it was one with his body. Once you had a groove down, the time passed more quickly.

  The sounds of firefighting rose around him. The whine of his chainsaw, the overarching roar of the fire, the yells between crew members. Sean, as the crew boss, was the one in communication with air support. When the C-130 did its first flyover, they all stopped what they were doing and watched the giant air tanker swoop over the treetops about a mile from them, a rooster tail of red liquid in its wake.

  “That was a little close, don’t you think?” Tim stared up at the C-130 as it headed across the forest canopy. Josh peered at him and noticed that he was plucking nervously at his Nomex coat. Even though Tim was new to wildfire fighting, he’d been deployed in Afghanistan. He should be used to big military-type aircraft.

  But this was the first wildfire this summer in which the crew had been working so close to the C-130s. And Tim was a rookie.

  “It’s all right, they have the best pilots around flying those things,” Josh told him, hoping to put him at ease. “They do their thing, we do ours. Just keep on the Pulaski, bro.”

  It didn’t work. Tim got more and more jumpy. He kept looking up toward the sky in the direction where the C-130 had disappeared. He kept stopping and starting, even dropping his Pulaski several times. Josh had never seen anyone get so jittery on the line.

  He tried to get Sean’s attention, but the crew leader was speaking rapidly into the comm. No matter—he’d keep an eye on the kid himself.

  Keep him engaged. Keep him talking.

  Josh fell back next to Tim and beckoned Baker to take his spot. Baker gave him a questioning look but didn’t argue. They’d all worked together so long they could communicate without speech much of the time.

  “Tim, my brother,” Josh said in a friendly tone once they were all back at work “How’s Rosario doing?”

  Tim didn’t answer. Maybe that was too serious a subject.

  “Have you heard about the movie they’re making about us?”

  He’d found this topic could light up anyone connected with the wildland firefighting community. It was a hot topic. People were torn between thinking it was about time wildfires got the movie treatment, and fear that it might trigger more lunatic firebugs.

  “Yeah, of course.” Tim relaxed enough to smile; above his face mask, Josh saw the skin over his cheekbones crease. “I heard they can’t get anyone to play you, Marsh.”

  “You heard right.” He paused for a high-five. He always appreciated a nice verbal jab, even if he was the target. “It’s hard to find the right combination of looks and fitness, not to mention personality. I think I might volunteer to play myself. Just to help them out, you know.”

  Tim’s gaze drifted away from him, back up to the sky. The C-130 was coming back, trailing a massive spray of red slurry. The closer it got, the more freaked out Tim seemed to get.

  He dropped his Pulaski and slammed his hands over his ears.

  “Noooo,” he moaned, the sound almost unearthly, like a cat yowling in the night.

  “Tim. It’s okay. Take it easy.” Josh stopped his chainsaw and stepped toward him.

  But something was seriously wrong with the rookie. His eyes rolled from side to side, as if he was witnessing something even worse than a wildfire. He shoved Josh away, grabbed his Pulaski and backed toward the forest. Toward the fire. And toward the path of the slurry.

  Josh strode after him, yelling. “Tim! Listen to me.
You’re going the wrong direction.”

  Tim brandished the Pulaski at him as if it were a machine gun. “Stop right there!”

  “I’m your friend, Tim. You’re going to get hurt if you go that way. You hear me? Tim!”

  But Tim was too lost in his freak-out to hear anything. He turned and stumbled through the trees.

  Josh ran after him. He didn’t bother yelling anymore. His voice couldn’t penetrate the fog of whatever flashback had gripped the young veteran. Tim was running hard now, tripping over roots, alternately moaning and shouting. The air got hotter as he ran—was Tim intending to run straight into the damn wildfire?

  Josh ran as fast as he could through the trees. If he didn’t catch Tim in the next minute or so it would be too late. The crew would lose a brother. Rosario would lose a husband, her baby would lose a father. The world would lose a good human being.

  Nope, there was no way Josh was letting Tim Peavy run into a fire.

  The drone of the C-130 overhead got louder and louder. It was dumping the slurry practically on top of them. It could be incredibly dangerous to be hit with flying slurry. The stuff hit the ground like concrete.

  When red slurry slashed through the trees not fifty feet from them, Josh knew it was time to make his move. He launched himself through the air in Tim’s direction. He grabbed for his Nomex coat but missed and went crashing to the ground.

  A spray of slurry whipped through the air and caught Tim on the back.

  He screamed, then dropped to the ground, his limbs splayed out.

  Oh fuck. On his elbows and knees, Josh crawled toward him and felt his pulse. Still alive, but unconscious. He had to get Tim out before the fire got to them. They both had their emergency shelters, but with Tim unstable like this, he couldn’t count on him not to wake up and rip the thing off him.

  He scooped Tim over his shoulder and staggered to his feet. The dude probably weighed a hundred and eighty, minimum. Thank God for all those fucking lifts he’d done down in Mexico. He pulled his bandanna over his mouth and sipped at the air behind the fabric. Stay calm. Don’t panic.

  One step forward, then another. That was all it took. One, then another. One, then another. The world narrowed down to that simple task. Take a step. Breathe. Take a step. Breathe.

  Then a tremendous cracking sound split the world around him. Something hit his left leg and he lost his balance. He crumpled to the ground, Tim rolling off his back. He saw nothing but flames, ground, red slurry…then darkness.

  Darkness.

  But he couldn’t stay there. He knew that. He struggled up through the darkness, through the hellish heat.

  A series of flashes came after that. In one flash, Rollo was kneeling over him, his kind eyes wild with panic behind his mask. Then Rollo disappeared from view and a huge weight came off Josh’s lower half. Rollo is so freaking strong, he thought as he went back under in a flood of pain. In the next flash, he saw tall evergreens bending and swaying overhead, as if they were talking to each other. He was still flat on his back, but moving, every bounce and jostle sending pain through his body. He focused on the treetops and the dense black smoke swirling around them. How far was the fire? Who was carrying him? What about Tim?

  “Tim,” he groaned.

  “Right here,” came the kid’s voice from somewhere behind his head. “I don’t know what happened, Marsh. I freaked out. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t want to hear any of that shit. This was life and death here. No “sorries.” He went back under.

  In another flash, he was on a gurney sliding into a medevac chopper. This was getting real now. They only called in the medevac for the serious shit. He wanted to ask what was wrong, but there was an oxygen mask over his mouth and his throat was too raw anyway. Just flexing his vocal cords hurt. He spotted Sean, who was rattling off information to a medic. His best friend’s face was smeared with black soot and his hair stood on end. He looked almost comical. Josh wanted to laugh, but not as much as he wanted to be unconscious again.

  Rollo’s voice spoke in his ear. “You’re gonna be fine, Marsh. You’ll be flirting with the nurses in no time.”

  He tried to shake his head, but something was holding his neck in place. No flirting, he wanted to say. I promised Suzanne.

  The next thing he knew, he was airborne, with Sean and two medics crammed into the hull of the chopper with him. It was good to know that Sean had his back. All his firefighter brothers did. Knowing that someone had your back—that was the best thing in the world.

  Darkness swallowed him up again.

  14

  Snowball really detested her new leash. She kept whining and scratching at it, no matter how often Suzanne adjusted it.

  “You’re so spoiled,” Suzanne scolded her as they walked down Constellation Way. “I buy you the most adorable sequin-studded leash guaranteed to drive Josh up a wall, and you do nothing but complain.”

  Snowball scratched at it for the tenth time that morning, then decided to take a leak on a patch of grass outside the Rings of Saturn Jewelers. Suzanne didn’t mind, since that gave her the opportunity to examine the new rings displayed in the case nestled into the bay window storefront. It made her think of Logan, because the last time she was here, they’d spent a good hour perusing wedding ring options.

  From inside, Jack Drummond caught her eye, then came to the doorway to chat. He was a burly man with an obsessively neat Van Dyke beard. She’d heard rumors that he spent an hour every day getting it just right. “I’m still holding those rings for you, Suzanne. But I can’t hold them forever.”

  “I know,” she said regretfully. “I’ve run into a slight hitch.”

  “You dumped the lawyer for the fireman, I heard. That’s quite a hitch.”

  Well, that hadn’t taken long. Mrs. Murphy had risen beautifully to the challenge and happily spread the news about Suzanne’s love life. The town seemed to accept the fact that she’d switched Logan for Josh just fine. No one seemed to miss Logan, but that might be because Josh was so well-liked.

  What would people say when their charade was over?

  It didn’t matter. This was her life. No one else had a say in it.

  “It’s not quite like that,” she told the jeweler. “I promise you’ll be the first to know about any new developments.” Snowball tugged on the leash, and she gratefully followed.

  Sometimes a dog came in handy.

  She hurried past the Venus and Mars Café, even though the dog did her best to slow down the pace and scavenge up any breakfast crumbs. When she caught sight of the pretty Dutch-blue awning of the Sky View, she whistled to Snowball. “Behave yourself, rowdy girl. We’re going to an art gallery. Dogs aren’t usually allowed in, but it’s my cousin’s so we have special privileges.”

  She dashed across the street, with Snowball trotting at her heels. Mrs. Murphy was setting up a display in the front window of Fifth Book from the Sun. The theme appeared to be puppets, or maybe it was crash test dummies. Hard to tell. She gave a quick wave at the older woman.

  Mrs. Murphy was making wild gestures behind the glass, pointing at her ear, then at the wall. Clearly trying to tell Suzanne something. She wanted to stop, but Snowball gave a sudden yank on the leash and she had to run after her.

  Outside the Sky View, she finally got the dog to slow down. “Come on, wild thing. We’re going inside, unless you want me to tie you up out here? No? I thought not. Okay, then, behave.” She pushed open the door, with its pretty wooden “Open” sign depicting a radiant sun.

  “Hello,” she called, scanning the display floor with the stunning space photographs taken by the observatory telescope. No sign of Evie. The espresso bar was empty as well. “Evie?”

  Something crashed to the ground in the office out back.

  “Evie, is everything okay?”

  She gripped Snowball’s leash tighter, not wanting the dog to go after a mouse or a cat on the loose. But the sound came from neither of those. Evie came hurrying out of the office, her face
pale with distress.

  “Evie! What happened?”

  Her cousin came forward and took her by the shoulders. “I’ve been trying to call your cell phone. Do you have it turned off?”

  “Yes, because I can’t carry on a conversation while I’m walking Snowball. What’s the matter? Is it Aunt Molly?” Everyone in the family worried about Evie’s mother, who had an advanced case of Parkinson’s and was rapidly declining.

  “No, no. Mom’s fine. It’s…” She swallowed hard. “It’s Josh. He got hurt in the fire up north. They had to fly him out on a helicopter. Sean’s with him at the County Hospital right now. He’s in surgery but they should know more soon.”

  Suzanne went completely numb. Just like that, she couldn’t feel anything. She stared at Evie, at her beautiful, compassionate face, and felt as if she were floating overhead, as if nothing was real.

  Josh—golden-skinned, sun-streaked, muscled, vital, glorious, playful Josh—the most exciting man she knew, the kindest, too—Josh, her fiancé, was—no—NO—it couldn’t be—

  She backed away from Evie. “No.”

  “Sweetie, don’t freak out. They got him out of the forest before the fire—”

  “No!” She took another step backwards, horrified by the thought of a fire nearly touching her Josh.

  Her Josh?

  “Come on, Suzanne.” Evie came forward cautiously. “He’s okay. He’s alive. And Sean says his vitals were good.”

  Suzanne stopped backing up and allowed herself to listen to Evie.

  “It may just be a broken leg. They’re not sure yet. He was rescuing Tim, remember him? Rosario Lopez’s husband? He had some kind of nervous breakdown out there, probably PTSD related. Josh went after him and saved his life. But when he was carrying him out, a tree crashed on his leg. He got knocked out. Rollo went in and found him.”

  She stopped abruptly, biting her lip. She shuddered, and buried her face in her hands. “My God, Suzanne. The fire was so close to them. They all could have been killed.”

  Evie’s tears finally shook Suzanne out of her shock. She stepped forward and pulled her cousin into a hug. Suzanne’s mind started working again, plans clicking into place. “Where is Josh now?”