Summer of the Burning Sky

by Susan May Warren

  Her gaze went to Rio. She supposed he could be called handsome. Short, wavy black hair, muscular, quiet. Rio sat with his back against a tree, one knee drawn up, holding a cup of coffee in his fingers. In the flames and glow of the night, he appeared tightly wired, watching everyone.

  Stevie noticed that the female smokejumper had offered him her power bar and even sat and talked with him. Whatever their exchange had been, she finally moved off to sit with the rest of their crew.

  Now, Stevie turned to Tucker. “March is my responsibility, so I won’t be sleeping. Go to sleep. You worked hard today—you must be exhausted.”

  “It’s the buzz of the fire. It’s still under my skin. I won’t sleep for hours.”

  She gestured to the emergency ice pack tied to his knee. “How is it?”

  “I’ll be fine. It’s just an old snowboarding injury. Acts up sometimes.”

  “Snowboarding?”

  He nodded and pulled his pack over, opened a side pocket, and pulled out a Snickers bar. He opened it and broke it in half. Held out one to her.

  “Really? That’s sort of like giving me your last sip of water.”

  He grinned. Nice teeth. “Sorta. But we’ll be out of here tomorrow, and I’m hoping you’ll make it right and agree to have dinner with me.”

  Oh, Tucker. “I’d…love to. But I’ll be headed back to Anchorage with…” She nodded toward Eugene, who lay on his back, his arms folded over his chest as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Right.” Tucker continued to hold out the candy bar. “Then I guess this is it. Our one and only date.”

  She looked at him, the way his mouth hitched up on one side. “This is a date?”

  “Scenery. Good food, a little campfire…”

  She laughed and took the candy bar. She nearly moaned with a stupid kind of joy as the chocolate hit her taste buds. She hadn’t eaten all day, having left her mother’s place on the bike, fueled only by panic.

  Panic that had choked off clear thought because it wasn’t like she could put Eugene on the back of the bike and whiz them back to Copper Mountain. She’d have to call in a chopper in the morning.

  Tucker finished his half of the candy bar and took a swig from his canteen before handing it to her. Their hands brushed, his work worn. She could admit to having enjoyed watching Tucker fight the fire this evening, the way he’d stomped out spot fires, yelled instructions to his crew, directed the water dumps. Too bad their hard work had created such a mushroom cloud of steam, or she might have been able to get a chopper in to extract her and March tonight.

  She’d just have to keep a weather eye on March and the rest of the prisoners. She noticed that her dad was doing the same thing. Once a cop, always a cop.

  She could feel her father’s gaze on her as she took a drink and handed the canteen back to Tucker.

  She and Tucker sat close, his leg against hers. Strong, powerful, and again, like last night, she fought the craziest urge to tuck herself against him. Maybe just lean her head on his shoulder, close her gritty, tired eyes.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake, she must really be exhausted because she didn’t do dependency. Or leaning.

  “What made you go into firefighting?” she asked, resting her head against the boulder instead.

  “A guy named Jed Ransom. He was a hotshot boss for the Jude County Hotshots and he recruited at my college. I joined right after my freshman year. Fighting fire sort of got into my bones, and I applied to the smokejumper team three years later. Made it my first year.”

  “My dad was a firefighter back in the early Alaskan firefighting days. He told me stories about smokejumpers.” She didn’t look in her father’s direction but wondered if he could hear her. “Said they were the special ops of firefighting.”

  Tucker drew up his good knee and leaned back against the rock, staring at the sky. “I dunno. It’s more like three minutes of crazy adrenaline and three days of backbreaking work. Usually around night three of eating ash, crying our eyes out from the smoke, and popping blisters from our cracked hands, we all sit around and wonder who hit us in the heads.”

  She laughed.

  “But other times…yeah, it’s probably a lot like the military. A team, working together. We get pretty tight.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “A few years ago, the team lost seven of their men. It was pretty rough. They had to practically start over. Only Riley and I are left from that year of rookies.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Well, accidents happen. But not if I can help it.”

  She glanced over at him, and Tucker was serious, given the way he met her eyes.

  She didn’t know why, but the words just bubbled out, soft and low. “My father is here.”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  Oh, why had she said that? But it was too late now, so she cut her voice even lower. “My father, the cop, is Archer Mills.” She glanced in his direction.

  Tucker followed her gaze. Then cut his back to her. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t expect that question, out of all that he could ask, and it found unguarded soil. “Yeah. I think so. I don’t want anyone to know.”

  “But you want me to make sure he gets home in one piece.”

  Her jaw tightened against a wash of heat in her eyes. She thought she’d gotten over the worry. Apparently not. So she nodded.

  Tucker touched her hand, wrapping his fingers through hers. Met her eyes. “I got this.”

  She caught her lip between her teeth, painfully aware that Tucker Newman stirred in her a wash of forbidden desires.

  “Hey, boss, can I talk to you?”

  Stevie looked up just as Tucker released her hand. The female smokejumper stood over them.

  “Hey, Skye,” Tucker said, trying to get up.

  Instead, she crouched in front of them, her eyes flickering briefly to Stevie before returning to Tucker. “I was thinking… I just sat up on that hill all day. I’m not tired at all. Not like you guys. I’ll stand watch tonight, let you get some sleep.”

  “Skye—”

  “Tucker, listen. I want to do my part here. And if you don’t want me on the line, then let me at least keep watch. Firefighting rule number five, right?”

  Tucker sighed. “Post lookouts when there is possible danger. Fine.”

  “I’m going to hike up to the ridge, get a view of the fire, and I’ll radio you should anything change.” She stood and glanced again at Stevie. At their hands, still touching back-to-back.

  A tiny smile tweaked her face. Then she turned and headed off into the semidarkness of the Alaskan midnight.

  Stevie watched Tucker as he followed Skye’s steps. “She’s right. Let her do something.”

  “I know. It’s just that she reminds me of someone I once knew.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.”

  Oh. Which meant—what? Did he have feelings for Skye?

  It didn’t matter, really. “You always follow the rules?”

  He glanced at her. “Yep.”

  That’s right. She remembered his words at the Midnight Sun. Life is a little easier when you follow the rules.

  She drew her hand away from his, zipped up her jacket. “I forgot how cold it gets at night here.”

  He was looking at her, frowning. Then, “I have a sleeping bag and a tarp. I don’t need both—”

  “No, Tucker. Besides, I won’t be sleeping.”

  “Then at least you should be warm.” He pushed himself to his feet, and she winced a little as he limped over to a metal container from which they’d retrieved their dinners, more water, and other supplies. He dug out a sleeping bag and a reflective blanket.

  He returned, dropping the bag in her lap before he hunkered down beside her. And shoot, but she liked his warmth next to her, acutely aware of the chill that shuddered through her when he had left to fetch the bag.

  Oh, Stevie, what are you doing?

  Tucker wrapped the blanket ar
ound his shoulders, grabbed his pack, and rolled over onto his side, his head on the pack. He stared at her with those dark, seeing eyes. “You going to sit up all night?”

  And keep an eye on Eugene? You bet. She just nodded. But she unzipped the bag and pulled it over her legs and chest, to her shoulders.

  After all, Eugene seemed dead to the world just six feet away.

  But she still sat up, her back to the rock. She met her father’s gaze across the darkness, and he offered the smallest of smiles. It washed tears into her eyes, and she tightened her jaw. This would have to be enough.

  She leaned her head back, staring at the beauty of the aurora borealis against the fire light.

  Tucker’s hand snaked out from his blanket and touched hers. Squeezed.

  And for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why, but she squeezed back.

  4

  The dream came most often in strike camp, with the scent of fire in his nose and his aching bones dissolving into the piney loam of the forest, his skin salty with grime, his tongue thick and dry. Tucker blamed the exhaustion, the drop of adrenaline that came from the aftermath of the fight.

  He knew that kind of fatigue—the kind that made him collapse in a corner, breathing hard, wrung out and dizzy. And in his dreams, it brought him back to the beginning.

  Every time, he started as it should be—on top of the mountain. Pristine white snow frosting the slope below him, a biting wind chapping his lips, the heat of his blood pumping through his veins as he stared down the marked racecourse. Beside him, three other racers were lining up, shaking out, keeping loose. And in backdrop, the crowd pressed along the perimeter, all the way to the bottom, some two miles long, their cheers a low hum in the back of his mind.

  Stay low. Out fast. Tuck in the jumps, not too much air, tight in the curves, jockey for the inside position. The first thirty seconds mattered the most in the snowboard cross, a free-for-all derby that resembled a hot-rod race on snowboards. The fastest one down the slope won. No points, no tricks, just an all-out fight to the finish line.

  His breath formed in the air. Silence in his ears, waiting for the whistle.

  Every muscle strained, poised—

  They pushed off.

  Every time, he rode the course with perfection. Tight air off the first three steps, a hug in the first curve, and he pulled away from the pack, just one racer in front of him. Jordi Wescott from Maine—they were buddies off the course. Hot behind him raced a guy from Montana University, and a newcomer out of Washington state.

  Two slots left to fill on the Olympic team.

  Tucker owned one of them. His thighs burned, but he stayed low, right on Jordi’s line around every curve, searching for a hole, a cut to the inside.

  He found his chance as he came off a jump just a hair faster than Jordi, staying so low he felt himself burn through the air. He landed beside Jordi and edged him out, taking the inside cut, pulling ahead.

  Three more turns—nearly to the end. The crowd thundered. He found air off another jump—

  He’d wanted it too much, maybe, but he leaned too far over, trying to stay tight, and in that moment, the ground rushed up. Too fast, too hard. He hit, jerked, and his knee turned to fire.

  The board whipped around, his edge snagged on the snow. The momentum threw him onto his back. He skidded into the sideboards as the other racers whizzed past him.

  Usually, right then, he woke himself up, the cry of frustration razing through his subconscious into the milky night. Other times, he just lay shivering, his knee on fire, his future burning down around him.

  But every single time, whether he awakened into the soot-strewn dawn or simply wept in his dreams, he heard her voice. My son, Tucker. The Olympic champion.

  Mom—

  “Tucker!” Hands shook him, and for a split second, he was back at home in Deep Haven, tangled into his comforter, the dawn barely hinting through the louvered window shades in his tiny bedroom, his mother waking him for early practice. He half expected to see her—her tired-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing her uniform, on her way to the morning shift at the Blue Moose café.

  It took a second to realize that no, he was lying on the soft tundra of some remote Alaskan mountain, a woman shaking him—not blonde, her hair sable and waterfalling down upon him.

  “Tucker!”

  Her panic had him bolting upright, the blanket sliding off him. “What?”

  And instinctively, he shot a look at the fire line, his pulse in his throat. Watch Out Rule number eighteen—never nap close to a fire line. But they’d killed it, and Skye—

  “They’re gone, Tuck! They’re gone!”

  Stevie. The girl from the bar. No—the US marshal.

  He’d held her hand last night. Had wanted to pull her into his arms, stop her shivering.

  Now, he stared at her, trying to untangle her words— “What—who…what?”

  “The prisoners. They’ve escaped.”

  Stevie stood up and strode away as he scrubbed a hand through his sooty hair, feeling yesterday’s battle in his stiff body. Prisoners—

  Wait. The morning sun rose high—he guessed it was nearly five, but he’d been a bad judge of time since coming north. Riley was up and on his feet, his golden brown hair nearly blackened with soot and matted from sleep. Viking Seth had risen also, staring at Tucker with not a little confusion in his expression.

  Tucker did a quick scan of the camp. Where Eugene had lain remained only his blanket, tangled on the ground.

  “My PG bag is gone,” Seth said, holding his sleeping bag. “It was right by my head, but it’s gone.”

  “So’s mine,” said Hanes, one of the Zulies.

  “How long have they been gone?” Seth asked. “Anyone get up in the night, see anything?”

  Tucker couldn’t help but look at Stevie, who stared at Seth with a stricken expression. “I fell asleep,” she whispered, and Tucker winced.

  This wasn’t her fault. Not in the least. Tucker should have known better than to let his guard down. They should have posted guards over the prisoners as well as the fire.

  He rolled to his knees and nearly face planted, the stabbing pain in his swollen knee cutting off his breath. He grabbed onto the boulder and eased to his feet. Walk it off—

  He spotted Stevie rounding back to him, her voice cutting low. “They’re all gone—even my dad. Do you think…” Her eyes were wide, and she swallowed. “What if March figured it out?”

  It took Tucker just a second, but he did the quick math and added up her concern. “Do you think Eugene took him? As a hostage?”

  She tightened her mouth, did a quick nod.

  “I don’t know, Stevie. I didn’t figure out that Archer was your dad—I don’t know why March would.”

  She seemed to hang on his words. “I need a map of the area.” Her hair had come loose from her ponytail, wild around her face, her pale green eyes sparking. “I knew March would run—I knew it.”

  He couldn’t stop himself from putting his hands on her shoulders. “Take a breath. We’ll find them—”

  She shrugged away from him.

  His expression grim, Riley came over with a map and handed it to Stevie.

  “Riley, get on the horn to Skye, see if she has an update on the fire.”

  He nodded and headed toward the gear.

  Stevie rolled the map out on the boulder. A topo map of the area, it covered ten miles in each direction.

  “We’re here,” Tucker said, pointing to the ridge.

  Stevie tucked her hair behind her ears. “Okay, if I were on the run, I’d want to get to the highway. It’s about five miles due west of here, but it’s over rough country. They have to cross a river and a 1,400-foot peak. They’ll need to go around that…”

  “Unless they went south, along the mountainside. There’s a couple of homesteads marked on the map, although who knows if they’re inhabited.”

  “Some of them are—I know a few of these people. Not
to mention the resorts and dogsled training camps, and…campgrounds.” She looked up at him. “That’s where they’re headed. To the Troublesome Creek campground. It’s about four miles southwest of here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s where Eugene March was apprehended. He was camped out there and one of the campers reported him for cannabis use. The forest service called it in, and the Copper Mountain office sent up someone to check it out. He got mad, made some threats, and they arrested him. Once he got into the system, we found him. He’d been on the run for six weeks after breaking out of an Anchorage holding cell after a pretrial hearing.”

  She refolded the map. “He might have a weapons cache there. Or transportation, and if we don’t get there first…well, Alaska is a big state.”

  “Just how dangerous is this guy?” Riley asked. He and the other jumpers had shadowed in for the conversation.

  “Dangerous.” She drew in a breath. “I know he looks like he should be on this side of the law, a DA or something, but…well, his first crime was the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a girlfriend while he was attending the University of Chicago. We tracked him across the country to Seattle where another woman had gone missing. This time a co-worker from a bank where he worked. She was missing for three months, and every day, March went to work, processed loans, and acted like the boy next door. Her body was found in the basement of his apartment two weeks after he quit his job and moved away…to Anchorage.”

  She folded up the map. “Can I keep this?”

  Tucker nodded.

  She pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “The last victim was a cop. Only he didn’t know that when he started dating her. She swiped right and met him for dinner. He was handsome and charming, and she had no idea that three dates later she’d wind up his prisoner. She managed to escape one cold night, walking the streets barefoot in just a T-shirt and shorts, and ran into a local convenience store. The cops stormed his apartment, but he’d already cleared out.”

  She pulled a short-barreled bear gun out of her jacket pocket and opened the chamber. “They caught him on Highway 2, just before he hit the Canadian border.”