Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Fire Fall
Jenny Schwartz
Vanessa Araya is not hiding! She’s trying to find herself after the terror of being kidnapped six months ago. Who is she when her trust in people has been stripped away? How can she be free and brave and in love with life when a little part of her is always looking over her shoulder? Being the daughter of a billionaire hurts in unique ways.
Seth Bentham fell for Vanessa three years ago, and walked away. He’s a wizard mercenary: lethal, magical and in deep in a dangerous world. He would have only brought Vanessa pain. Now he’s hunting the southern Rocky Mountains for a kidnapped barrier wizard; not to save the man, but to learn more about the plot that involves him. The very last person Seth expects to stumble over while hiking is Vanessa, but here she is, strong, scared that she’s broken, and his.
This time, Seth won’t walk away.
But the price of stealing time together is high. Old enemies and new threats lurk in the mountains. There are fantastical creatures and there is the racing, hungry inferno of wildfire. Before the Fourth of July explodes in fireworks, someone will die.
***
Storm Road is a stand-alone novel in the Old School series.
The Old School series, publishing in 2017
Phoenix Blood
Fantastical Island
Storm Road
Fire Fall
Desert Devil
Amaranthine Kiss
Shangri-La Spell
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
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Chapter 1
The protein energy bar tasted of greasy cardboard and stale cranberries. “Mmm, yummy,” Vanessa Araya told the squirrel that watched her from the base of a ponderosa pine tree.
Back in New York, with the city sweltering through a typical summer of high temperatures and even higher humidity, escaping to the cool of the Rocky Mountains had sounded like a brilliant plan. She’d dreamed of hiking through the spectacular and lonesome beauty of southern Colorado. There would be alpine meadows filled with wildflowers and awe-inspiring sightings of elk and big horn sheep. She would take photos and simply be at one with nature.
“Want some?” She broke off a piece of the energy bar and held it out to the squirrel.
The squirrel chittered a noisy, offended protest and dashed up the pine tree. Its fluffy tail twitched with a final indignant swish before the creature vanished into the branches.
“I don’t think you’re meant to feed the animals.”
Vanessa jumped at the unexpected voice, and the pack on her back tilted. Arms waving wildly, she began an ignominious tumble off the granite rock on which she sat.
Strong hands caught her and set her upright, releasing her immediately.
“You!” She gaped up at the tall man standing beside her.
Like her, he wore a pack. Unlike hers, his pack didn’t have the sheen of newness on it.
It had been three years since she last saw Seth Bentham. They’d been busy years, and lately filled with drama, yet she’d recognized his voice instantly. His rangy build and immovable stance were just as ridiculously familiar. He’d stalked into her life with a determined stride and implacable intention. He’d been smart and quietly funny, and then, he’d vanished.
“What are you doing here?” She smiled up at him, inordinately pleased by this chance encounter. Then reality hit. Her stomach shriveled and cramped around the couple of bites of energy bar she’d managed. “My father sent you.”
Hazel eyes regarded her thoughtfully from beneath the deep brim of his Western hat. “No.”
Other men might have asked why her father would send a combat-trained wizard like himself after her. But not Seth. He didn’t play games. And they both knew why her dad worried about her safety.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. “So why are you here?” She wrapped the remains of the energy bar and stuffed it into a pocket. The bit she’d broken off for the squirrel—she wouldn’t really have fed a defenseless animal something so nasty—she popped in her mouth. For a minute, it meant she couldn’t talk. The energy bar was disgusting and gluey. Ugh. She prodded a bit loose from the roof of her mouth with her tongue.
Seth waited out her silence rather than answer her question.
She uncapped a bottle of water and drank. She was hot and sweaty and out of her element in the wilderness, but she wasn’t stupid. If Seth had wanted to avoid her, he could have done so easily. By his silence, it was obvious that he didn’t intend to answer her question, but he’d approached her for a reason, which most likely meant he had his own questions. “You want to know why I’m here?”
He nodded.
“You should sit down,” she said absently, gesturing at the flat rock beside her, while her brain picked over the problem. Should she answer Seth? If she didn’t, would he push the question or just move on? She recalled his implacability. Him moving on without answers was about as likely as the moon ducking out of orbiting the Earth to go visit Mars. So the real question was how should she answer him: with a shallow truth or with the heart of her purpose in pitting herself against the Rocky Mountains? Undecided, she filled the silence with babble. “First rule of hiking. Never stand when you can sit.”
A quirk of one dark brown eyebrow suggested he knew the old saying, and he was amused at her lecturing him on survival skills. She was the city girl. He was trained to deal with anything.
He compromised. He didn’t sit, but he took off his pack and rested it at his feet while he stood at ease. He wasn’t going anywhere without answers.
Why does my reason for being here matter to him? She considered him as she pondered the question.
He wore a khaki t-shirt and dark gray hiking trousers, the pockets of which bulged in a way that suggested he carried supplies in more than his pack. He was ready to abandon his gear if he had to act fast.
Vanessa caught herself staring at the way his clothes hugged his muscular body, and transferred her gaze to the pine tree up which the squirrel had retreated. The rough bark had a scar where resin had oozed out to solidify in sticky amber tears. Scars healed. You bled, you wept, and then, you got on with living.
She rolled her water bottle slowly between her palms.
Seth would never be satisfied with a shallow answer. If it mattered enough for him to ask the question, then he’d want a real answer.
And now she was curious. Why was he here? What was he doing that her presence in the mountains mattered? The analytical part of her brain that searched for patterns and connected seemingly random data stirred with professional interest.
She took another swallow of water before putting the bottle away. If she wanted answers—information—from Seth, she’d have to give him a solid answer. She couldn’t think of how to do that without beginning at the beginning, even if that meant raking up old pain. “You heard about my kidnapping in January?” Six months ago she’d been snatched out of the sleet and sludge of New York and bundled upstate; held in a—but that didn’t matter right now. She pushed the memories away and her pulse steadied.
“I heard. And I heard how Stag failed you. I�
�m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
His mouth compressed. The Stag Agency was a group of mercenary wizards. They were combat-trained and ruthless. Seth was one of the best, but he hadn’t been part of the team that attempted her rescue.
She shrugged one shoulder. “The Old School got me out.”
There was a tiny bit of hidden rage in her that her father hadn’t gone to them first. If he hadn’t kept her kidnapping a secret from her friends, they’d have mobilized and dealt with her kidnappers. Scott Araya knew that the Old School network was resolute and effective, but he’d gone instead to the predominantly male Stag Agency. He’d thought them stronger than the network of powerful and multi-talented women that she served.
Stag had sent a team to rescue her, but what they hadn’t known was that the team included a traitor. Stag failed in its rescue mission because one of its own turned on them. The debacle had been terrifying, and, for two men, fatal.
A day later, the Old School extracted her, safely.
“Minervalle trains its students well,” Seth said.
“It’s not really the school.” As much as she loved Minervalle Girls School and its breadth of education on everything from unarmed combat, to magic, to the protocol for entertaining a head of state, the women who made up the Old School network received most of their training after graduation.
“It taught you to trust each other,” he finished his thought.
She couldn’t argue with that. Minervalle School had been founded as an English boarding school in the aftermath of the First World War with exactly that purpose: to provide its graduates with a network to rival the Old Boys’ network that had failed to prevent, and possibly even exacerbated, the tensions that sparked that nightmare war. Trust was essential to the network.
Minervalle girls all understood loyalty. Everyone contributed what they could, knowing that when they needed support, the other members would be there for them. As they were for Vanessa.
Not that the Old School worked primarily for its members’ advancement. No, the guiding principle was to build a better world. Members were doctors and artists, grandmothers and warriors. Some had money, others didn’t. Some had magic, and others, like Vanessa, were purely mundane.
The trick was to meet everyone’s complicated needs, while serving the international community.
Vanessa was one of three coordinators who managed the Old School network. In her office in New York she’d redesigned the database that held the records of members and the issues they were involved in. Current and past missions were detailed, along with possible future activities.
The Old School kept the lowest of profiles. Minervalle School’s founders had understood the importance of working quietly. Things got done if you didn’t care who got the credit. In fact, more could be done when people underestimated you. The Old School didn’t seek to be a force in the world. It just was.
Seth was one of the few people not directly connected with an Old School member who knew of its existence. As a senior Stag mercenary he’d been a liaison contact for her when, as the youngest Old School coordinator, she’d been tasked with maintaining the Old School’s relationship with the Stag Agency. In a world where magic was rare, those who had it and used it tended to cross paths. He’d been an intriguing and frustrating liaison, and then, he’d vanished.
He hadn’t even said good-bye.
“Andrew Krayle was stripped of his magic.” Seth didn’t look at her. He stared across the valley. The air had a shimmery quality to it, dry and hot. A hawk circled on the thermals.
“I heard.”
Andrew had been one of the combat wizards on the Stag team hired to rescue her. He’d been the traitor. He’d used his magic not to disable the kidnappers, but to blunt his own team’s attack. One of the Stag team died as a result.
Vanessa had watched the gunfire cut him down. She’d heard the deafening report of the semi-automatic pistol. Blood had gushed. The dying man’s mouth had opened in shock and surely in protest.
Andrew had torn from the Stag team their personal wards. Where they’d thought themselves bulletproof, he’d opened them to death.
Two others of the five man team had been wounded.
One of her kidnappers had died. Afterward, the dead man’s brother held a knife to Vanessa’s throat, threatening to kill her in a message videotaped and sent to her father.
How had the kidnappers known her father would go to the Stag Agency for her rescue?
She’d learned later that while Stag was tearing itself apart, trying to find answers for the failed rescue—for the death of one of their own—her father’s secretary had taken it on herself to contact the Old School.
Teresa Wilson had never attempted to play a maternal role in Vanessa’s life. Teresa had her own life and family. But thirty years as Scott’s secretary had brought her into the heart of Scott and Vanessa’s lives. It had been Teresa who’d paid the bills for Vanessa’s years at Minervalle School, who’d arranged her father’s visits to the school and Vanessa’s extracurricular activities. Teresa had never been told about the Old School network, not officially, but she knew that Vanessa kept in contact with her old school friends, and that a number of them were frankly dangerous.
So Teresa had contacted Vanessa’s best friend, Olga, and mentioned that Vanessa was missing, kidnapped.
Olga had acted, and when Olga took action, wise men leapt out of skyscrapers to avoid her. She’d led the team that rescued Vanessa. They hadn’t just gotten her out and safe. They’d captured her kidnappers, bound and questioned them. Olga had flown in an elderly Minervalle graduate who was a truth seeker for just that purpose.
Then Olga told Stag about the traitor in their midst.
It was a closely kept secret, but the Stag Agency had their own ways of dealing with traitors; one that the head of the agency had confided to Scott Araya in an attempt to make up for the bungled rescue bid. Stag employed a wizard who could bind other magic users’ magic. In effect, that binding stripped them of magic by locking their talent away from them.
So Seth’s statement of Andrew Krayle’s magic being taken from him wasn’t news to Vanessa. She knew that Stag had gone further. They’d found evidence to link Andrew to the kidnapping team and thrown him to the police, along with evidence of other crimes. Apparently, Andrew had been moonlighting for over a year, causing mayhem for a price that far exceeded what he earned as a Stag agent.
The Stag Agency was ruthless in protecting its reputation. Andrew wouldn’t see the outside of jail for decades.
Vengeance didn’t matter to Vanessa. It was her own response that counted.
She looked at the scars on Seth’s forearms and across his knuckles. Even backed into a corner, he would fight. He wouldn’t be haunted by his own passivity. Not like she was.
“After I was rescued, I tried to go back to how life had been,” she said. “Before the kidnapping.” That was her life, now. BK and AK. Before the kidnapping, and after the kidnapping.
He moved unexpectedly, sitting beside her on the rock.
Surprisingly, his nonverbal show of support made things harder for her. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and widened them to dry in the summer air. Crying was for sissies. “I owe the Old School my life. Since being rescued, I’ve focused on being the best coordinator I can be.”
“You’re a natural.” His low, resonant voice suited the quiet of the mountains. “You’re good with people. You even like people.”
Her breath caught in a half-laugh, and she turned to him.
Despite his attempt at humor to lighten the atmosphere between them, there was no laughter in his eyes. The hazel of them had darkened to gray with concern for her.
She looked away, but fumbled for his hand.
His fingers closed, warm and strong, around hers. “You can tell me anything.” He would keep her secrets. The vow was in his voice. Whatever his initial reason for asking why she was hiking, he was now deep in her story.
&n
bsp; So was she. “Dad’s terrified that someone will try to kidnap me again. I lived twenty six years before that without anyone making the attempt, but he’s scared.”
“Are you?” He ran his thumb over her knuckles.
“Sometimes.” The huge breath she took shuddered. “It’s getting better, but there are times when I’m walking through the city and I suddenly wonder who is around me. I used to love being submerged in a crowd. So many people. So many hopes and dreams. I’d study people and imagine their stories. Now…I wonder if there are enemies among them.”
She and Seth were so still that the squirrel ventured back down the pine tree. It scampered off.
“I look at a crowd and assess it for threats,” Seth said. “Awareness of your surroundings and an evaluation of danger is valuable.” He paused. She was obviously alone in the wilderness. “Do you have a bodyguard?”
She smiled wryly. “To outsource my hyper-vigilance?”
“So you don’t have a bodyguard.”
She sighed. The squirrel was gone. The hawk had flown out of sight. It was her and Seth. She wrinkled her nose, unsure if she smelled smoke. The park had banned fires other than at the designated fire pits in the official campsites. The weather was too dry and hot. Add a spark and the forest would go up. She inhaled deeply, concentrating. No, no smoke.
“Dad and I argued about a bodyguard. In the end, I won. Being followed everywhere isn’t normal.”
His fingers flexed around hers. “And you want to be normal.”
“Yes.” Her agreement was heartfelt. “That’s why I’m here.” She wanted more than normality. She wanted to be happy, again. “I want to play.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
She pulled her hand from his and stood. Without her pack, she felt lighter, closer to who she’d hoped to be here in the Rocky Mountains. Free. “I told Dad that I needed to get away for the Fourth of July. I didn’t want to be near fireworks. They sound like gunshots and bombs. I don’t have PTSD.” She had the assessment of a psychiatrist who specialized in trauma to prove it. “But I flinch at things that never used to bother me, and I wanted out. Out of New York. Out of my life. A chance to stop pretending to be me.”
Fire Fall (Old School Book 4) Page 1
