Firestorm

by Monette Michaels

  Firestorm

  A Security Specialists International, Book 6

  Monette Michaels

  Published: 2020

  ISBN: 978-0-9973565-3-3

  Copyright © 2020, Monette Michaels.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Editor: Terri Schaefer

  Cover Artist: April Martinez

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the USA

  She's a survivor.

  Former Air Force pilot Tara Nightwalker survived wartime flying only to come home to a civilian life that was anything but safe. Two years after surviving a brutal kidnapping, it’s time to get on with her life. She finds a job in Idaho as a park ranger and wildland firefighting instructor. After what she’s been through, men aren’t appealing at all. Not until she meets SSI operative Price Teague. He’s strong. Honorable. A warrior. And she knows in her gut…he’s the one.

  The only problem is—he doesn't seem interested.

  He's a patient warrior.

  Price Teague envies his fellow SSI operatives who’ve found women to love, because he sure hasn’t been as lucky. Not until the tough, beautiful firefighting instructor comes into his life. The day that some bastard in the woods shoots at them, Tara is cool, calm, and courageous in the face of danger. He recognizes instantly this is the woman he wants.

  He’s usually a direct-action sort of guy, but he can see Tara is wary about men. Maybe she’s been hurt in the past. He’ll take it slow…even if it kills him. But when her kidnapper escapes prison, bent on revenge, Price throws out the slow-and-steady approach. Time is not on his side, and there's no way he'll let anyone hurt her.

  Danger is all around. Then fire season kicks into gear.

  Dedication

  No book is written in a vacuum. Firestorm is no exception. Many of my inspirations are found in the daily news, magazine articles, and in documentaries.

  The heroine in Firestorm is a Native American named Tara Nightwalker. Her back story focuses on one of the most under-reported stories in America—the plight of Native American women who are preyed upon and stolen away, never to be found again.

  In this book, Tara is a strong woman who manages to beat the man who targeted her and finds justice for herself and her peers. While this is a work of fiction, I only hope justice can be found in real life for the women who have suffered similar fates.

  So I dedicate this book to all the missing Native American women and to all women who are abused and made victims—and to those who seek justice on their behalf.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Donna Bullard who suggested using the Blackfoot language to seek an endearment for Tara to use with Price. I went searching and chose píítaa, which means eagle. Shelly Parks Deagan gets an honorable mention for suggesting "eagle" in the Blackfoot language; while her specific Blackfoot word was too long, I liked the idea of using "eagle" to represent Price. My fans are the best.

  As always thanks to my wonderful and very thorough critique partner Cherise Sinclair. She always makes my books better. Thanks to my beta readers, Valerie Samouillan and Debbie Kline, who keep me sane and on task.

  Thanks to Terri Schaefer, my former editor in this series, who is now back (yay!) and freelancing just when I need her. Her cogent comments on military topics helped whip this book into shape.

  And as always, thanks to April Martinez who is the best cover artist ever.

  Finally, thanks to the team at INscribe/IPG for taking care of this and all my other books.

  Fire is never a gentle master.—A proverb

  A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

  A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound.—

  William Shakespeare

  Love’s Labour’s Lost (4.3.331-332)

  Chapter 1

  Saturday, May 30th, Sanctuary, Idaho

  Price Teague shut off his chain saw and set it aside. Another dead tree down and cut up, about a thousand to go. Or so it seemed. He stacked the logs into a pile.

  "Here." A bottle of water appeared in front of his face.

  "Thanks." Price took the water and shot Tweeter Walsh, Security Specialists International's resident geek, a grateful smile. "It's hotter than hell out here." And it wasn't even noon yet.

  "Yeah, we're in for a long, hot bitch of a summer," Tweeter muttered as he pulled a mini-computer tablet from the pack secured to his belt.

  After a decently wet winter, Mother Nature had gone hormonal and skipped right over spring and into summer. For the last month, abnormally hot, dry days were followed by extremely mild, dry nights. There'd been no measurable rain.

  As a consequence, the mountainsides were covered with thick, dry undergrowth, providing easily ignited fuels. Add in diseased pines killed by pine borers, making the trees drier and highly combustible, and it was a clusterfuck waiting to happen. Pine trees made excellent torches. Eighty-foot torches.

  "Yeah. Lucky us." Price removed his hard hat and goggles, then dribbled the last quarter of the bottle over his flushed, sweaty, saw-dust-covered face. Wiping his face on his sleeve, he took a deep breath of the pine-scented air and gave his body a short respite from the backbreaking work.

  He and several other SSI operatives were in the process of clearing snags—dead and diseased trees—in what had already become a dangerous, early fire season. The sound of chain saws and falling trees filled the air on the steep slope where Sanctuary shared a border with National Forest land.

  Over the last month, the hotshot crew from nearby Grangeville, backed up by SSI employees who'd just recently trained in wildland firefighting, had already contained two small fires set off by dry lightning in the National Forest lands surrounding Sanctuary, the site of SSI's headquarters and home to many of its operatives.

  Hotshots were elite firefighting teams called in to create firebreaks to stop wildland fires from spreading.

  So far Sanctuary had been lucky.

  Ren Maddox, SSI's co-owner with his brother Trey, had made the decision to cut down and remove deadwood along SSI's entire perimeter with the hope, if nothing else, of slowing any fires approaching their one-hundred-square-mile property.

  "Lemme get your pile marked on the map for tomorrow's pickup." Tweeter entered precise GPS data that would show up as a blinking orange light on the 3-D map of Sanctuary kept in the Bat Cave, the high-tech computer control center located in the sub-basement of Sanctuary's Main Lodge. The tech command center was the secret to SSI's success in the highly competitive and secretive world of private security.

  Not ready to pick up his chain saw and get back to work just yet, Price scanned the slope and counted the wood piles from the morning's work. "There has to be an easier way to do this," he muttered.

  "Trust me, buddy," Tweeter replaced the tablet in its protective pack and zipped it shut, "if there were, I would've already made the suggestion to Ren."

  Price grinned. "Yeah, I'm sure you would've."

  Felling the trees and cutting them into smaller pieces was merely the first step. They also had to transport the piles of easily burned fuel off the slopes. Some of the worst fires in United States wildland firefighting history had occurred in former logging areas where clearcutting crews had left tree detritus lying around as ready fuel for a fire.

  Luckily SSI had the resources in manpower and equipment to do t
he job, unlike the underbudgeted and undermanned National Forest Service. Being not only conservation-smart, but a good businessman, Ren offset the costs of the cleanup by contracting with a company that sold wood to be turned into engineered wood flooring or to be chewed up into particles and made into laminates.

  "We've only been at this for four fucking hours." Price groaned as he twisted and stretched to alleviate a kink in his lower back. "My back is already killing me."

  Tweeter snickered and muttered "old man" under his breath.

  "I heard that, asshat." Price punched Tweeter's arm. "I'm only five years older than you."

  "That makes you thirty-five and a half, so like I said," Tweeter laughed, "old man," then danced out of the range of another punch. "Think of it this way, you'll have PT out of the way for at least a week by the time we finish clearing this slope of snags. After the down-and-dirty hotshot training Tara put us through over the last month plus this tree work, you'll be back to your SEAL fitness level in no time."

  Price glanced over to where Tara worked to cut up a felled tree. Tara Nightwalker was a badged, armed National Forest Service Park Ranger who did double-duty as a wildland firefighting instructor and an enigma Price was still trying to solve. One thing he did know—he wanted to be more than merely a friend and colleague to her.

  "I was already at SEAL fitness level, moron," Price replied. "And since you missed this morning's meeting, you didn’t hear that Ren and Tara have marked at least five more border slopes like this one for clearing."

  “Shit.” Tweeter groaned. "Thank fuck, Sanctuary has a lot of natural firebreaks or it could've been a lot more."

  Yeah, Ren and his brother Trey had chosen well when they'd bought the land for the SSI headquarters. The mountainous perimeter was comprised of sheer granite walls with negligible vegetation and numerous river tributaries. Of course, in the current arid conditions, fire egged on by winds could carry sparks for miles over even the best natural and man-made firebreaks.

  "While you were caring for your pregnant wife," Price continued, "Ren also announced that once he and Tara are satisfied we've created a decent firebreak perimeter, they want to clear some of the interior’s dead wood as well. Luckily, a lot of those areas can be reached by outside contractors with caterpillars and trucks. Oorah."

  "Good to hear. Let's pray we can get the perimeters cleared before any more fires catch hold." Tweeter stared toward the southwest where a SSI helicopter approached, a skid dangling from its belly. "Lunch and supplies are coming." He grinned. "Look at my girl hug the trees."

  DJ Poe-Walsh, Tweeter's bride of three months, was a former Army helicopter pilot, one of the best Price had ever ridden with and that included his time as a SEAL.

  "How's the morning sickness going?" Price shaded his eyes and watched DJ's approach. He smiled as she positioned the chopper perfectly over the only opening among the still-standing trees and lowered the skid loaded with extra fuel for the chain saws, box lunches prepared by Sanctuary’s resident chef Scotty, and large containers of water to replenish their water bottles.

  "It's getting better," Tweeter grimaced, "but morning sickness is a misnomer. She gets sick at odd times throughout the day. All I can do is put her to bed and make sure she hydrates and then leave her alone. If I hover, she gets all snarly."

  Priced snorted. He knew all about snarling females. He'd grown up in a household with three sisters, two older and one younger. Estrogen and touchy temperaments went together in his mind.

  However, given a choice, Price would take his sisters' unpredictable moods over his cold, autocratic father and his neurotic mother any day. He loved and respected his sisters, all of them strong women.

  His parents? Not so much. They were one couple who should never have had one child, let alone four. As far as he could tell, he and his sisters existed only to create the picture-perfect family for his father's business ambitions.

  Refusing to be the heir his father demanded, Price had joined the Navy and worked his ass off to become a SEAL. Because if there was one thing he knew, it was that he wanted to be the exact opposite of his old man.

  As for women, he respected and adored most of the fairer sex. And while he had dated his fair share of women while looking for the "one," he hadn't dated as many as the local rumor mill suggested. He was proud of the fact that when he parted ways with his former dates, they remained friends. No use burning bridges or making enemies when it wasn't either party's fault that the spark of attraction had peaked and then died.

  Over the last month, Price had lived like a monk, hadn't even felt the urge to hit the dating scene. The change? He'd met Tara, the woman who'd protected his younger sister Fee from a dangerous drug cooker until he and the cavalry arrived. Tara was a woman he really wanted to get to know better. Yet, for a man who'd charged into battles when the odds were stacked against him, he still hadn't found the balls to approach her for a date.

  Why? Pure and simple, he was afraid of being rejected.

  From what he'd observed, Tara treated the men she associated with like scruffy, slightly goofy younger brothers. A highly successful approach that disarmed every man he'd seen approach her. From what he'd heard, Tara lived alone and hadn't dated anyone, local or non, since moving to Idaho from Montana.

  His gut and the fact she worked in fields dominated by men told him she had valid reasons for keeping men at a distance. As the protective brother of three sisters, he could easily imagine the kinds of darkness Tara might've experienced in her past, the kind that had affected his baby sister Fee.

  Price smothered a growl at the thought that Tara, like Fee, could've been harassed, stalked, abused…maybe even assaulted. Even acknowledging that Tara was a strong, independent, and highly trained former military officer who could kick some serious male butt, he wanted the right to slay her dragons…the right to place himself between her and any threat.

  Unfortunately, he was nowhere close to getting a date with Tara. She ignored or misunderstood each and every signal he’d sent. Maybe on purpose.

  "Let's get over there and help." Price spotted Tara alongside Ren as they moved toward the skid being lowered by the chopper. "The sooner we unload, the sooner we eat."

  * * * *

  Tara stopped cutting the tree trunk and propped her chain saw against the log pile she'd created. Using the back of her arm, she swiped at her sweaty face.

  A lot of good that did, her sleeve was damp from sweat and covered in as much sawdust as the rest of her. Walking to where she'd dropped her pack, she took off her gear, then pulled out a towel and wiped down her face and arms.

  She grabbed a water bottle and took long draws from it as she walked off the kinks and tight muscles from bending over and cutting the felled trees into logs. Stopping at a naturally formed rock shelf jutting out of the side of the mountain, she took a deep breath of clean mountain air and enjoyed the view. The slope on which she and the SSI team worked dropped sharply to a narrow ravine three hundred feet below. A stream gushing and roiling with snowmelt glistened and sparkled in the midday sun.

  Experience told her fighting a fire in this terrain would be hell on earth. Cutting down burning trees and clearing brush to put out a fire, or at least slow it down, was bad enough, but making your way up such an acute grade with a fully loaded pack on your back made for an even more exhausting battle.

  A hotshot never had a choice about where to fight a fire; a hotshot just got it done.

  Luckily, she hadn't hiked up from the valley to reach this stand of trees. She was working on SSI land and Ren had the equipment and support staff to fly them into the hard-to-reach areas of his property. Even with her new friend DJ transporting the crew in by helicopter, they'd still had to heli-rappel onto a postage-stamp-size piece of flat land and then hike downhill.

  She smothered a groan. The backs of her legs and her knees reminded her descending the equivalent of a ski slope was just as physically challenging as hiking up one.

/>   A bottle of water in his hand, Ren came to stand next to her. She smiled at the owner of SSI. He and his brother had built the private security organization into one of the most respected companies of its kind in the U.S. and internationally.

  For several long, silent seconds, they stared across the ravine toward the national forest land. The separation of the two slopes at this point was about the distance of a football field. Like the Sanctuary side, the opposite slope was populated by hundreds of diseased pines which looked like skeletons next to their still-green cousins.

  "How are we doing?" Ren asked, breaking the companionable silence. “Do you think we'll get this stretch done today?"

  Tara glanced at the co-owner of SSI and envied his wife. Ren was a tall, extremely fit man with dark hair and silver-blue eyes. She looked over her shoulder at another tall, extremely fit man with dark blond hair and blue eyes the color of a tropical sky and mentally sighed. She wouldn't let herself acknowledge the disappointment that the man standing next to her wasn't Price.

  Shifting her gaze, she scanned the team's morning's work organized into neat piles for a later pickup. A lot of piles. Thank the gods, she wouldn't be loading any of it onto the skids. Ren had hired an outside crew for that labor.

  "We're doing well, far better than I'd expected when we first surveyed the area from the air," she said. "We should easily finish up here so we can move onto the next priority area."

  Tara, Tweeter Walsh, and his wife DJ had spent a week earlier in May flying over the area, observing and photographing the areas of Sanctuary most exposed to the potential of wildfires spreading rapidly. Their survey showed a good number of natural fire barriers, but also highlighted pockets of highly combustible fuel.

  Utilizing a program of his own creation, Tweeter had used the photos and data to generate maps documenting the current conditions. Tara had then studied the maps and prioritized the areas to be cleared. Growing up on a reservation in a family of wildland firefighters, she knew what to look for.