by Susan Sey
One of the men he’d tailgated into the building arched a bushy brow at him and jerked an impressive mustache toward the center of an open space that looked like it normally served as a kitchen/dining area. “That your boy? The new Incident Commander?”
Eli looked and found his uncle squaring off with O’Malley in front of one of those giant monitors. “Yeah. That’s Ben Bayfield out of Boise, my boss, my uncle and all around pain in my ass.” He sent an arched brow back toward Mustache Man. “That your boy he’s yelling at?”
“O’Malley?” Mustache had at least three decades on Eli, and the belly to match the mustache. He rubbed that belly now while he considered the question. “Known him since we were both tadpoles, sure. He was one hell of a point guard back in the day. Saw the whole court all the time, you know?”
“Yeah,” Eli muttered. “I got that impression.”
“Found Jesus in Vietnam, though.”
“Is that where they’re keeping him these days?”
Mustache chuckled. “Never ran across him there myself but O’Malley sure found somebody. Hasn’t been the same since.” He smoothed his ‘stache and studied Eli closely. “Some experiences will do that to a man.”
The back of Eli’s neck went itchy again but he arranged his face into noncommittal lines. “War being one of them.”
“Among others, I imagine.” Another freighted moment passed during which Eli realized that Peter had been right. Every single person in Devil’s Kettle with an internet connection had flagrantly Googled him, and was now fully briefed on his life story. Great. Eventually the guy held out a hand. “Mason Kennebec. Volunteer firefighter.”
“Eli Walker.” He shook. “Just passing through.”
Mason laughed and clapped a meaty hand to Eli’s shoulder, hard enough to make him stumble. “Not the way I hear it.”
Eli blinked, startled. Evidently Google had nothing on Devil’s Kettle’s grapevine. You hold a girl’s hand at one gallery opening and the entire town knows your relationship status? Did he mind that? He considered it, and a grin bloomed up out of his very soul. No. No, he didn’t mind one bit. “No, you’re right. Sorry. Force of habit.”
“A girl will turn your world upside down, kid.”
“Turned mine right side up.”
“Yeah? I always said Willa was good people.” A smile lifted his ‘stache. “You’d be a fool to leave, then. Good woman’s tough to come by.” He delivered another three-ton shoulder clap then dug an elbow into Jax, who’d appeared on his other side. “What’s going on there?” he asked, nodding toward the center of the room.
Jax said, “Bayfield’s taken over as Incident Commander, which demotes O’Malley to Public Safety Supervisor.” Mason winced. Jax shrugged. “Boise wants the fire, Boise gets the fire.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mason waved that off. “So what’s the beef?”
“IC Bayfield wants to put out an evacuation order that covers Devil’s Kettle proper.”
Mason’s eyes went round. “What, the town? Jesus, the fire’s fifteen miles off! And it’s Devil Days!”
“Yeah, that’s O’Malley’s position.” He tucked his fingers into his pockets and frowned at the massive weather monitor splattered with slow-moving color. “Forecast’s for dry, dry and more dry, and the wind can’t make up its mind. Puffs a little from the east, then the north, then the east again. Edges around to the south every now and then.”
“It’s the lake,” Eli murmured. “Body of water that massive is one big question mark when it comes to weather. Keeps you warmer than you ought to be in the winter, colder than you ought to be in the summer. Puts storms on the spin cycle.” He shook his head. “Any damn thing could happen.”
“Which is what Bayfield’s saying.” Jax leaned forward to eye him around Mason’s bulk. “O’Malley’s of the mindset that the hotshots Bayfield called up should have the fire well in hand by nightfall without causing undue alarm.”
“Or disrupting the inflow of tourist dollars?”
Jax shrugged. “It’s a concern.”
Eli dragged a hand down his face. “Yeah, I know.”
“They here yet?” Mason asked while O’Malley drew a finger across the swirling map between the fire and the town, and Ben rolled his eyes. “The hotshots?”
“Yeah,” Jax murmured. “There’s two crews cutting a line north of the fire right now.”
“North?” Mason frowned. “Why north? The fire’s only a problem for us if it moves west.”
“But the Devil River’s already sitting there to the fire’s west, and it’s doubtful the fire could jump a couple million gallons of water.”
Eli wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t say so. He wasn’t a firefighter anymore and didn’t want anybody to think he was interested in changing that.
Jax went on. “Between the river, a Forest Service road to the fire’s east, and Lake Superior to the south, she’s pretty much contained by geography. O’Malley figures the hotshots and their fire line will put the lid on that box. If he’s right, it should stop that thing in its tracks.”
Eli wasn’t sure about that, either, not with a fuel load this heavy and this dry. Ben — now drawing his own imaginary line on the map, significantly closer to town than O’Malley’s — didn’t look convinced, either.
“How much of the forest is involved?” Eli asked.
“About a hundred acres at this point, and uncertain which direction to grow with the wind all indecisive. But when the wind picks up—”
“If the wind picks up,” Mason said placidly.
“According to Bayfield, it’s a when.” Jax shrugged. “And when it does—”
“—it’s going to make eating up a hundred acres look like popping a breath mint,” Eli finished for him. “Fuck.” He glanced at his uncle, at the veins starting to show in his forehead, at the muscle ticking in his jaw. None of these were good signs. He was going to punch O’Malley any minute, and while Eli wouldn’t lose any sleep over that, it probably wasn’t the most productive start to negotiations.
Jax rocked back on his heels. “Think you can get between those two without getting bit? I already went. Have about eight fingers left.”
Eli sighed. “I doubt it. O’Malley hates me and Ben—”
—was a tough guy to convince, Eli was going to say. Unfortunately, Ben was also a tough guy to hide from. Especially when you were family.
“Eli!” Ben stopped excoriating O’Malley’s character and intellect long enough to grab Eli in a fierce, back-pounding hug. Average in height, wiry of build, with endurance for days, Ben was Eli thirty years down the road. It was both comforting and a little eerie, Eli had always thought, to be hugged by your future self. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, boy.” He pulled back for a critical up-and-down. “Goddamn, don’t they feed you up here in the north woods?”
“I’ve had some fine pie,” he returned, glancing at O’Malley. The guy looked like he could tear a bite out of either one of them at any time. “O’Malley’s cousin Gerte down at the Wooden Spoon does a crust that would make Mom weep envious tears.”
“That so?” Ben eyed O’Malley with straight-up dislike. “Good enough to risk the lives of hundreds of tourists?”
“There’s no risk to Devil’s Kettle proper,” O’Malley snarled. “And while sacrificing a year’s worth of income for an abundance of caution might make you look like a real hero to the national press and to the feds you answer to, the folks around here won’t thank you for it. We’re real familiar with risk, and this is one we don’t mind taking if it means we can keep our doors open one more year.”
“You speak for every citizen, do you?” Ben’s smile was more a baring of teeth than anything friendly. “You’ve got it on good authority that they’ll just sit whistling in their homes while this fire burns to the fucking harbor?”
“It’s going nowhere near the harbor,” O’Malley said, stabbing a finger at the map again, this time at a line of blue between the town and the fire fifteen miles u
p the shore. “See that? That’s the Devil River right there. That’s a couple million gallons of water running between us and that fire every minute. You’ve got two crews of the nation’s finest wild land firefighters cutting line to its north, and a nice, wide Forest Service road on the east. There’s nothing to the south but water, so assuming your hotshots know what they’re about, this fire’s in a fence already!”
“A fence it could jump in a heartbeat if that wind picks up,” Ben said grimly. “Which is why we need to get all these goddamn people out of its way!”
“They’re not in its way, Bayfield!”
And they’d circled back to the beginning. From the expressions on the faces watching the match, Eli figured it wasn’t anywhere close to the first time they’d covered this ground.
“What’s the forecasted run for today’s fire?” Eli asked, suddenly beyond weary.
They both turned to him with glares that were near-identical. Eli didn’t think either man would thank him for pointing it out.
“Why? Are you offering to get out there with the hotshots and cut line?” Ben snapped. He sent a poisonous look O’Malley’s way. “Because I could use a set of eyes I trust on this fire.”
“I’m done hotshotting,” Eli said. “And you know it.”
“Are you?” O’Malley sneered. “Because this feels like a picture perfect opportunity for you to get back in the game.” He glanced toward the door, on the other side of which the press had assembled. “And I do mean picture perfect.”
Ben’s jaw tightened ominously but Eli said, “Hey, Ben.” He waited until Ben had reluctantly brought his attention back to him and away from thoughts of punching. “Seriously, what are you forecasting for the fire’s run today?”
Ben scowled. “We were just discussing that.”
“No, we weren’t,” O’Malley said tightly. “Nothing in the data suggests the fire could run more than four to five miles, dead west.”
“Unless the wind picks up,” Ben added just as tightly. “Then you could see a run of fifteen miles or better.”
“Which is not only unlikely, it’s unprecedented,” O’Malley snapped. “I already have teams of forest rangers clearing the Superior Hiking Trail, along with the state and national forest campgrounds inside the reasonable and predicted four-to-five mile clearance radius. We’ve put out a reverse 911 to every cell phone attached to a camping permit, or to a registered through-hiker on the Superior Hiking Trail inside that same zone, along with another four to five miles beyond that, just to be safe,” O’Malley said. “I see no earthly reason to clear a city five miles beyond that of all its residents plus the hundreds of tourists happily and safely spending money there.”
“No, I’d guess you don’t,” Ben said almost pleasantly. Eli’s gut clenched. Ben didn’t do pleasant. “Otherwise you’d have done something about the forty-plus years worth of dry-as-shit forest you’re sitting in the middle of, you incompetent ass-scratcher.”
“Excuse me?” O’Malley growled.
“No. I won’t excuse you. There’s no excuse for you. Because you had one job, O’Malley.” He held up a single, furious finger. “One fucking job! All you had to do was manage the fucking forest. Strike a balance between burn, suppress and protect. But for some godforsaken reason, you decided to let go of the wheel and pile up enough fuel for this place to go up like a Roman fucking candle the instant God dropped a match.” Ben leaned in, drove that finger into O’Malley’s pectoral. “So frankly, I give exactly zero fucks about what you see or don’t see. All I want to hear from you is yes, sir, then I want to see your ass get busy clearing civilians.”
O’Malley gave him an ugly smile. “With whom, IC Bayfield? My state forest rangers are the only staff we have with both deep backcountry knowledge of the area and fire training, but it’ll take them all day just to clear the forecasted run zone. I could start them on the next five-mile radius tomorrow but that still wouldn’t get anybody to work clearing the town until Sunday, at which point Devil Days will be wrapping up anyway.” He spread his hands helplessly. “So unless Boise can rustle us up some extra resources with fire training and north woods experience, you can want whatever the hell you like. You’re not going to get it.”
“I’ll go,” Willa said, and stepped from the crowd that had concealed her.
“Willa?” Shock had his head snapping around to stare at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Offering to clear tourists out of the danger zone.” She didn’t look at him but kept her gaze level on O’Malley and Ben.
“Who the hell are you?” Ben asked.
“Willa Zinc,” she said. “Zinc Pest Control. I grew up in these woods, and I spend a lot of my professional life dealing with the animals that live in and around them.” She stepped up to the map O’Malley and Ben had been snarling over like feral dogs. Eli watched her, still stunned into silence. He’d left her at home, safe and sound and asleep, obeying Bianca’s very prescient suggestion to lay low. What was she doing volunteering to walk into a forest fire?
“I can’t speak to how the fire’s going to behave, but if you’re concerned with the general public outside the five-mile evac zone O’Malley’s already set up, you’ll want to focus right here.” She leaned forward and tapped the map just west of the river.
“Devil’s Kettle Trail and Monument,” O’Malley said and nodded stiffly. “Yes, it’s very popular.”
“It’s a disappearing river,” Willa told Ben, “and one of Diego Davis’s favorite subjects.”
“I don’t know who Diego Davis is, and I don’t give a fuck.” He paused. “But there’s a disappearing river?”
“Yep. It’s kind of awesome, too. Which is why I’d lay good money that ninety percent of the people in the woods around the town of Devil’s Kettle this weekend are on a day-hike to the Kettle it was named for. Let O’Malley’s rangers focus on clearing the country between the fire and the river. I can clear the Kettle trail between the river and town.”
“By yourself?” Ben asked, his brows crunched together in a way that suggested he was thinking hard. Diplomacy had never been Ben’s strong suit but he was making a mighty effort, Eli knew. He was clearly turning Willa’s suggestion over in his head, looking for flaws. Dread filled Eli’s gut but he was turning her plan over in his head as well, and couldn’t find much to object to, other than the fact that the woman he loved had just volunteered to walk toward a fire he desperately wanted her to walk away from.
Jax stepped forward. “I’m in.”
Willa grinned at him. “There you go,” she said. “I have a partner.”
“I’ll go, too,” Eli heard himself say. “I have a per diem guy I’ve been using, covers tough ground at speed. If he’s in, the four of us can cover the ground twice as fast.” And get Willa back to the cabin twice as quickly.
“I know it’s not ideal,” Willa told Ben, “but it doubles the ground O’Malley’s people can cover, which means we can at least get the people closest to the fire out of the way. So?”
A long moment of tense silence passed. Finally Ben said, “Fuck it. Go.”
“Don’t forget the radios,” O’Malley said, and spread his lips in a stiff smile. “If you’re clearing the trails, you’re on Public Safety. Which means—” He caught Eli’s eye, gave him a good, hard stare. “—you report to me.”
CHAPTER 33
“GIRL,” JAX SAID from the passenger seat of Willa’s truck, “you have people skills I never guessed at.”
Eli sat in the middle, directly to Willa’s right, her gearshift between his knees, his silence thick and unhappy. Willa shifted uneasy shoulders. She wasn’t sure what to do with a silent Eli.
“It wasn’t people skills,” she told Jax. “Two grown men were going after each other like angry raccoons. I’m not great at people, but I know raccoons.”
“Well, you defused that situation, slick as snot,” Jax said as Willa pulled into the gravel drive of her cabin. “It was impressive.” He nudged Eli wi
th his shoulder. “Wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Eli muttered. “Impressive.”
Jax got out and strolled over to the porch steps where Brett sat tying his boots. He pulled a map from his back pocket and spread it on the porch where he and Brett began pointing and debating the way men did whenever a map made an appearance. Willa sat clutching the steering wheel, confused and uncertain. Eli didn’t say a word, nor did he make eye contact. He just slid across the bench seat and got out the door Jax had left hanging open for him.
By the time Willa reached the porch, the men were already negotiating for territory. “I figure we’ll park in the Kettle Loop lot,” Jax said. “Brett and I can take the south trail, Willa and Eli can take the north trail and we’ll meet at the Kettle. That way we can catch hikers coming and going.” He looked up. “Okay with you all?”
“Okay by me,” Brett said.
“Fine,” Eli said shortly.
“Sure,” Willa said, but her stomach wasn’t so sure. Eli’s fury — because he was definitely furious with her — wasn’t settling well. She watched him stride to her truck and pull four DNR-issued backpacks from the bed. He came back and dropped two on the gravel at her feet. He tossed the other two to Jax and her father.
“Water, first aid, some protein bars and a fire shelter,” he said while they all slid into their packs and adjusted the straps. He handed Jax a radio. “Public Safety is channel three, Incident Command is channel five. Air Support is channel seven. Report to Public Safety with your location every half hour.”
Jax hooked the radio to his belt. “Got it.”
“Don’t take any chances. You hear or see anything resembling fire, you hear radio chatter about the wind picking up, you smell so much as a goddamn campfire, you haul ass back to the parking lot, no questions asked.” Eli pressed his lips together, and Willa’s gut clenched yet tighter. Eli wasn’t happy about this. He really, really wasn’t happy. Why would he be? He’d given up hotshotting. He’d given up on fires. The prospect of walking into the one simmering in the woods north of town clearly had him digging deep for a steely courage that hung in the air around him with a metallic tang. And he was taking a mostly untrained crew of civilian hikers with him? Guilt surged inside her like a storm-whipped lake.
