Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers)

by Anne Marsh

  “Last one in buys the beer.” Mack, another former platoon mate, winked and then charged for the plane. Bastard redefined early bird and was all over that worm.

  “I had shit to wrap up.” Which was true. “I can’t always drop and run.”

  Beside him, Jack zipped his Nomex jacket closed, grabbed his chute, and strapped it on. “What the hell did you have to do?”

  Evan ignored the jibe, concentrating for a long moment on yanking on his own Nomex and gearing up.

  “That’s our boy.” Evan’s younger brother, Rio, chortled and finished his suit-up, turning to check Jack’s gear. “Silent as the grave. He gives us a heart attack because his ass isn’t the first one in the hangar, and now he’s holding out on the details. Was she that good, Evan?”

  Shit. All of Strong probably knew he’d brought a woman home with him last night. He loved his town, but sometimes he wished like hell folks knew when to keep their mouths shut. “She needed a place to sleep.” Yanking the zipper closed, he reached for his pack, fingers flying on the buckles. Outside, Mack climbed on board, high-fiving the spotter.

  Jack whistled. “Chivalrous. He rescued a damsel in distress. There’s a lesson in that for us, Rio.”

  Rio stepped away from Jack, turning so his brother could check his gear. “Lily would kick your ass,” he said cheerfully. “Then she’d come after us for letting you get so ass-deep in trouble rescuing other women.”

  Jack laughed. “True enough.”

  “Nothing happened,” Evan gritted out. “Swear to God, that’s all it was. A bed for the night.”

  Jack nodded knowingly. “You slept on your side of the bed with this mystery woman, and she was all hands-off on her side. Right. Maybe you should think about investing in a sofa, because when Nonna hears about this, you’re going to have a whole lot of explaining to do.”

  “Next time,” Rio added mock helpfully, “take sleeping beauty over to Nonna’s. Hell, bring her out to Lily and Jack’s, and dump her on their couch.”

  “Fuck you.” Evan should have done one of those things, but Faye Duncan’s head had hit his chest, and his brain had turned right off. “You want to hear the interesting part?” Two more jumpers were already sprinting across the tarmac, Mack and the spotter reaching down to haul them up into the DC-3.

  “He’s sharing details, Jack.” Rio raised an eyebrow. “He must have mistaken us for a bunch of girls.”

  “Don’t tell me about your sex life,” Jack ordered. “Or lack thereof. Leave me out of it.”

  “Spill,” Rio ordered. “Now, Evan.”

  “You remember Mike Thomas, from our CFR team?” No way Jack had forgotten a fellow Marine. Mike had been right there whenever things had heated up for Crash, Fire, and Rescue. When his brother grunted an acknowledgment, Evan continued. “He up and got married when he went back to L.A.”

  “Wouldn’t have thought he was the marrying kind.” Jack sounded thoughtful.

  “It didn’t last. He got a divorce. Apparently . . .” Evan hesitated, because he still couldn’t believe the next part. “. . . his ex-wife was headed up here, to Strong. He was worried about her, so he called yesterday. Asked me to look her up and make sure things were okay.”

  Rio whistled. “They get a divorce, and he wants to check up on her? Maybe the divorce was a bit premature.”

  Rio hadn’t heard the regret in the other man’s voice. “Mike said the whole thing was his fault.”

  “This doesn’t explain why the woman is in your cabin.”

  No. It didn’t. Hell, there was no explaining his behavior, was there? “I went to Ma’s, and, sure enough, Faye was there.”

  “Faye being Mike’s ex,” Rio observed cheerfully.

  “Yeah.” Faye had looked up at him and fallen asleep against him. As if he was a nice guy. Safe. Someone she could count on. “She needed a place to stay, so I took her home with me.”

  “She pretty?”

  “She’s Mike’s ex.” She was more than pretty. She glowed with an excitement for living.

  “She’s Mike’s ex,” Rio emphasized. “That means she’s not off-limits. Spill, Evan. If she was in Ma’s, you know I’ll go ask Mimi, because she knows everything that goes on in that bar of hers. If I were you, I’d be wanting to get my own version out there first.” He smiled evilly.

  Yeah. He was royally fucked here. There was no explaining behavior so out of character. “So she’s pretty. And she was more than a little drunk. Hell, Rio. There’s no motel here in Strong. You know that as well as I do. What was I supposed to do? Stick her on Mimi’s office couch and walk away? Mike wanted to know she was doing okay, and waking up on a couch in a strange bar isn’t okay.” He knew that much about women.

  “Let’s revisit, because I’m missing key details here. You put her in your bed,” Jack said wryly. “And then you left her there, and you slept on the floor? Or did you crawl right into bed beside her?”

  His brothers looked back in the direction of the cabins tucked away on the far side of the airstrip, as if they expected to see an irate woman come flying right on out the door.

  “I’m not sleeping on my own floor, especially not after yesterday’s fire.” That wasn’t right either. He ran a hand over his hair defensively. “I didn’t touch her.” Except to put her in my T-shirt. No way he could shake his memories of those sexy little panties. That black lace had been almost as pretty as the gentle curve of her stomach. God, he was a bastard, because now he wanted more memories, wanted to see more of Faye Duncan.

  “And?” Rio stared at him expectantly. Yeah, he knew there was more to this story.

  “And she’s still there right now, okay?”

  “You told her about Mike’s call, right?” Jack had gotten himself engaged last month, and his Lily had taught him a few things about women, all right. No way would that man have asked that question six months ago. He’d have laughed, nudged Evan in the ribs, and gotten on with the day. “You want me to send Lily over there?”

  “I didn’t tell Faye about Mike’s call.” He cleared his throat. “The opportunity didn’t come up.”

  “You’d better.” Laughter filled Jack’s voice. “Woman might not like hearing that her ex hired her a babysitter.”

  Rio whistled. “She’ll probably kick your ass.”

  “Or cry.” Jack looked as if he’d take the ass-kicking any day.

  Evan should have told Faye about Mike’s call. He knew that. He also knew he didn’t like the mental picture he had of Faye driving through a brush fire in that too-expensive car of hers.

  He snapped the final buckle closed. Jack nodded, fingers flying as he checked out Evan’s work. He had Evan’s back. No one jumped with bad gear, not on this team. Not ever.

  “I told you, she’s a favor. Mike Thomas asked me to look her up, make sure she was doing fine.”

  “And is she, Evan?” Rio tossed him a gear bag. A quick check said all was in order there. Water and gloves. Fire shelter. All the necessities. “Is she fine?”

  He’d stick with the facts. Like how she could have gotten hurt, badly, or even died. “She drove into Strong yesterday afternoon, right through that brush fire we got called out on. She said something that got me thinking, though. I didn’t see her—and she didn’t see me, but she claims she saw a first responder.”

  When the call had come in, he’d thrown his truck into gear and raced down the road. Ground crew had spotted the first smoke, just a lick of a fire eating up the side of the highway right outside Strong. Not too big. Not yet. There was always the possibility of the wind shifting, though, of the fire finding itself a good supply of fuel and eating its way into something much bigger. While he loved to jump, he wasn’t an idiot. If he could put a fire out while it was still small, that’s what he’d do.

  He didn’t have to put a plane up and parachute out into the middle of hell simply because that was when he really felt alive. As if he was doing something important. Sometimes the small stuff was important, too.

  Jack�
��s hands tugged on the straps and buckles. “I’ll confirm with Ben that you were the first on the scene. Make sure someone else didn’t jump in and not say anything. We’ve had a lot of those little fires lately.”

  “Yeah. Not like earlier this summer”—when a crazy stalker had done his best to burn up half the mountain to get at Jack’s woman—“but too many fires all the same.”

  Rio looked over at him. “You want me to do a little investigating? Analyze the patterns?” Rio was their computer expert. There wasn’t too much he couldn’t make their software do.

  Evan didn’t need software, however, to tell him what his gut was shrieking. Even if another firefighter had been first on the scene, the man should have stuck around—not hightailed it out of there.

  Jack cursed. “We don’t need another arsonist out here.”

  “What if our burn boy is internal?” Evan didn’t want to say the words out loud, but the pattern fit. Hell, the pattern was staring him in the face, giving him the fucking bird. “Lots of little fires, all called in. Plenty of action for every man based in Strong, plus enough overtime to put some cash in a man’s pocket.”

  “Who would do that?” Rio asked. “If the arsonist is one of ours, who is he?”

  Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. “Someone who doesn’t give a damn that I’ve only got half a fire department here. Word gets out that we can’t shut down an arsonist, finding funding isn’t going to get any easier. I’ve got a photographer coming on board.” Jack swore. “She’s taking pictures for a magazine piece about the firehouse and my plans for it. That article is supposed to be our calling card—a little hey-look-at-me when I go out and hit up potential donors.”

  Sure wasn’t going to look good if the article mentioned unsolved arson. Plus, the truth was, none of them wanted Strong burning up. Slow, hot anger blew through Evan, mean and strong. He had Jack’s back on this. That went without saying. This fire department was Jack’s baby, his dream. He’d hunt down the son of a bitch setting fires. That also went without saying.

  Rio looked over at Jack. “When’s that photographer due?”

  Jack tossed him his gear bag. “Yesterday. Today. Whenever she gets around to coming. She’s freelance, so she’s not punching a clock.” He looked up at Evan. “Even you can’t shanghai her, Evan. She comes when she comes, and she does her thing. That’s non-negotiable.”

  “Yeah. About that photographer . . .”

  His brothers must have seen something on his face, because they stopped talking.

  “Hell.” Rio whistled. “He’s already done something, Jack.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow, and Evan could feel a dull flush heating up his face. “Yeah. I’d say he has. You lock the photographer up in your cabin with Mike’s ex?”

  “Mike’s ex is the photographer.”

  “Fuck.” Jack’s palm hit the closest locker. “We’d better have been joking about locking her in, Evan.”

  “She can leave anytime she wants.” She simply wasn’t getting far on foot.

  Rio pointed toward the door. “Our ride is about to leave, ladies. Argue later, and get your asses out there.”

  “I took her car keys,” Evan admitted right before they cleared the door and their boots hit the tarmac.

  Jack and Rio looked at each other, and then Jack groaned. “She’s going to kill you, Evan. You know that, right? You’d better hope you’re not coming back from this jump, because she’ll be waiting for you.”

  Tucking his helmet under his arm, Evan ran flat-out for the plane, his brothers whooping and hollering beside him. Last man in bought the night’s beer, and it sure looked as if it was going to be Evan’s night to pony up. That was fine, too, because as soon as he was on board, the plane would hit the runway and then the air. The ground and his problems would all fall away.

  If only it was that simple to leave Faye Duncan behind.

  Jesus. This fire business was better than porn. Yesterday, Hollis had waited until the flames really got going, eating up the side of the hill where he’d set his latest fire. He’d wanted to get a little excitement going on a slow Friday night, and the brush fire had been good stuff, although the lady in the red Corvette had given him a scare when she popped up out of nowhere. She’d forced him to put a temporary restraining order on his fire until she’d pulled out and he could fan the flames some more before he left and called it in.

  Today’s fire call, however, was the real deal. He had to set his fires in accessible spots, so he could get in and out quickly, but this new blaze was way out in the wildlands. Probably a summer lightning hit that had started a sleeper fire in some deadwood. Left alone long enough, that little spark had eventually lit up the side of the mountain. Now the jump team was headed up to check it out.

  The DC-3 rumbled, making its taxi down the runway. There was a cheer from the men on the ground when she cleared the tarmac and got air beneath her. Jump team was en route, off to save the day. God, he wanted to be up there, one of the team headed out to the jump site.

  Instead, he was here, parked on the fifty-five-gallon drums of fuel lined up beside the hangar. Nothing fancy here, no underground tanks or bulk fuel storage. When Spotted Dick bellowed orders, everyone lent a hand to roll those heavy motherfuckers out to the plane. Being hand crew and therefore a temporary firefighter meant he had a ringside seat for the start of the party—but no invite to what came next.

  “You think we’ll get called out?” The firefighter next to Hollis didn’t even bother looking over when he shoved off the drum he’d perched on. Small and wiry, the guy couldn’t have been a day over twenty. He was too wet behind the ears to recognize that Hollis, already on his third fire season, had the edge on him.

  Dumb-ass.

  Hollis kicked his way back over to the camp kitchen, trying to figure out how come he was always on the ground when what he wanted was to fly. Twenty-three, and he’d put in his time, right? He deserved a chance. He was always first on the truck, too. He pulled his weight.

  It wasn’t the money he was after, either, although the money was good. Real good. He liked knowing he had cash in the bank, waiting for him when the season let up some. More fires meant more hours worked. Still, he’d started out pretty small on the other crews he’d worked, careful not to set too many fires. He’d let himself have one, maybe two, each season.

  Now, after three seasons fighting fire, he had himself a break. The fire camp in Strong was his ticket to the big leagues. If he worked hard enough, the Donovan brothers would have to notice him. He’d finally get his chance to join the jump crew.

  Fighting fire was the first job he’d had where the work mattered. He got to be a goddamn hero. Not often enough, but sometimes. Even his father had had to admit that, maybe, Hollis was on to something important. Thirty years selling a laundry list of cheap-ass products no one really wanted or needed, and his dad still hit the road every week. He had quotas to make, he’d say, and that meant there wasn’t time to sit home and chat it up with family. Out there, on the road, he had business to take care of, and take care of it he would.

  His dad understood quotas and checks from the companies who hired him to shill and then paid out a miserly commission for each sale his dad had wrung from the folks he met and solicited on the road. His father hadn’t been able to sell the program to his mother for long, because Mommy Dearest had up and left when Hollis was a baby. After that, he had been raised by an uncle. Uncle Roy had done his best, but kids weren’t his strong point.

  None of them ever figured Hollis would amount to much of anything.

  He’d learned what a high firefighting was when he was still a kid. The old lady down the street had been inside her trailer when the place went up. Hollis had kicked in her door, thrown her over his shoulder, and gotten her out of there, exactly like it was a movie or something. The people watching him had shouted and cheered. For the first time, he’d been someone, someone good, someone who mattered. He wasn’t Roy’s screw-up nephew or the son his father could
n’t be bothered to call.

  You’re nothing, boy. Never have been, never will be.

  No. He didn’t need his father’s voice trumpeting in his head and he damned sure didn’t want those memories. Fighting fires mattered. He had made something of himself, so the old bastard could take his dire predictions and shove them right where the sun didn’t shine. Maybe Hollis hadn’t finished college, and maybe he didn’t sit a desk job, but he got out there every fire season with the best of them, and he made a difference. The rest of the year, after the crews shut down, he got by with part-time gigs or unemployment.

  He was smart, or so the test-your-brain exams the teachers had passed out claimed, but he still couldn’t seem to get the hang of bookwork. Taking tests, turning in papers—those things didn’t go so well for him. But that was okay. He was out here now, where the only grade that mattered was how fast and far you dug your line.

  Spotted Dick’s plane was only a silhouette now, disappearing over the horizon as it winged its way toward the dark plume of smoke punching up into the sky. God, he wanted to be on that plane. One of the team.

  He’d get there, too. Whatever it took, he’d make them see he was good enough. He might be a loaner from a volunteer fire department two towns over, but he could belong here in Strong. He knew it.

  All he needed was the chance.

  He hit the kitchen, and the camp cook looked up. It was so damned quiet up here that Hollis figured his stopping by had to be a highlight of the guy’s day. “You don’t get bored?” He lit the tip of his new cigarette from the smoldering end of his last one. “It’s real quiet here.”

  The camp cook eyed Hollis’s Marlboros, but Hollis wasn’t wasting a perfectly good cigarette by stubbing that bad boy out before it was done. Fifteen bucks an hour didn’t go that far. No way the Marlboro Man would have backed down on the issue, either. He liked the image of the Marlboro Man riding all over the range. That man was one tough son of a bitch. He’d probably have made a good smoke jumper if he’d been given the chance.