Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers)

by Anne Marsh

  So he’d go out with a bang and make sure he had his fun first.

  Hell, Strong was an all-you-can-eat-buffet, full of targets, and the only question was where he kicked off his swan song. The old firehouse called his name, so he headed that way; the cars parked in the side lot would make it an easy place to start. Hit the gas tank on one of those, and he’d have his boom, too.

  The Corvette was up first. Shame to torch a car that fine, but a red Corvette on fire was definitely make-you-look. A quick swing of the Pulaski, and the driver-side window smashed. He reached in, opened the door, and popped the hood. Then it was around to the front of the car, pouring his diesel oil and kerosene cocktail into the engine compartment. He’d gone heavy on the kerosene because he wanted to light this bitch up fast with the drip torch he’d lifted from the hotshot supplies earlier. Really, it was simple. Two quick turns of the breather valve and a dip of his wrist so the kerosene soaked the igniter, a flick of the switch, and he had flame.

  No one came running out, so, moving quickly, he did a rinse-and-repeat on the other two cars lined up next to the Corvette. The Toyota and the minivan probably would have caught when the Corvette really got going, but he was aiming for certainty tonight.

  Burn, burn, burn. He paused. Turned. The world was his oyster tonight, and all he had to do was choose what went up next. What pissed him off most in this town? He rocked a mental soundtrack of tunes as he considered his options.

  Bingo.

  Next up was that goddamn historic firehouse itself that everyone was so gaga over. Burning that would be a pleasure, all right. Climbing the porch steps, he got busy with the drip torch.

  “Choose. How hard can it be?” Too bad there was no one there to answer her. Instead, Faye was alone, hanging over the laptop she’d set up on the card table in her borrowed bunkroom. Two sets of images. Two different choices. She’d done the Photoshop thing, and the images were looking good. All she had to do was hit SEND and make her editor a happy man.

  Two different stories.

  Two different endings.

  The first story was the obvious one. The arsonist stood there, back to her lens, with flames licking up around his legs. She’d pieced together what had happened next, adding the images she’d shot during the investigation. Black char covering the mountainside afterward, the investigators combing the area and finding the match, Ben and Evan’s concerned faces, and that intent, focused look of two men hunting their perp. Finally she had the empty blackness with its hint of green. The mountain hadn’t stayed the same. The mountain was already changing. She liked that promise. In one week, nature had started her own repair job.

  The second set of images belonged to her boys of summer who manned the firehouse. The focused, determined team diving out of the plane’s belly and into the flames—and the sexy, playful men who took advantage of their downtime. Evan starred front and center, but she’d shot all of them together, too. These guys were a team, a single unit with one purpose, and yet all she saw was Evan. Evan barreling toward the ground, chute out behind him. Evan manning a hose that Saturday, wet T-shirt plastered to his rock-hard stomach. Evan, peeling off the soaked cotton, then laughing as he wrestled with Mack and Rio and Joey. Jack watching from the sidelines, picking up the hose when Evan dropped it. Though bandaged and banged up, Jack wasn’t down for the count. No, Jack had gotten right back up, and there he stood in the background, big and tough and watching over the others, laughter tugging at his mouth.

  Evan was even bigger and tougher, a man who could and would fight for you. He wasn’t polished or GQ handsome, just so very there. Until he wasn’t. She scrolled through images. In the last shot, Evan looked at her, over his shoulder. Why couldn’t he have cared about her? Just her? But, no. Mike had phoned him. Faye had been a favor from one firefighter to another, and Evan had his boy’s back—this was about Mike and the team and that unspoken fucking code they shared. This week and change hadn’t really been about her at all.

  Choose. She straightened up, rubbing the small of her back. Which story did she tell?

  She wrapped her arms around her middle. She’d snagged one of Evan’s T-shirts, a gray cotton number sporting the jump team name. No logo or fancy branding, his shirt was as simple and uncomplicated as the bunkroom. Go out there and get the job done—end of story. The shirt was too big and slid from her shoulder, but today was a sweatpants-and-bare-feet kind of day, and she liked the sensation of being wrapped up in all that fabric. Comfortable instead of sexy, Evan’s scent doing a number on her senses with each breath she took.

  The window called her name, and she let her feet take her toward the glass, as if staring out at Strong and the mountains would somehow provide the answers she didn’t have. There wasn’t an easy call here, and the universe hadn’t left clues outside the window.

  Just one hell of a stink.

  She sniffed. Smoke. Not a wood fire or how-rare-do-you-want-your-steak kind of smoke, but an ugly, acrid smoke, full of burning plastic and metal. That wasn’t right. The smoke detector stuck to the ceiling agreed with that call and started to ping, a loud, strident, get-out-of-Dodge warning.

  For a moment, fear froze her. This was a firehouse. Fire alarms weren’t unusual, right? And yet there was that smell of smoke and the detector wailing its unhappy song. Her feet moved, closing the final yards to the window, where little wisps came in and the smell got worse.

  Oh, God. Strong was on fire. The parking lot was on fire. And, when she looked down, it was horribly clear that the firehouse itself was on fire. Despite the heat raging outside, she turned cold. Her skin prickled with horrible awareness. Fire. Smoke. Either or both could kill her.

  Get out. Get help. That’s what she needed to do, but she couldn’t force herself away from the window. Down below, flames swallowed up two cars, sheets of black smoke billowing up as the frames popped and cracked. Next to the first two, there was a third car, sparking and smoking. Her Corvette. That was her life going up in flames.

  Adrenaline punched through her system. Do something. Backing up, she ran to the table where she’d been working, rummaged in her purse for her cell, flipped it open, and dialed 911. Dispatch answered right away.

  “I’m calling to report a fire—yeah, in Strong. We’re up in the mountains on Route 49. Yes, a fire. Actually, two fires. Three cars and the historic firehouse. Yes, I’m inside the firehouse. Yes, I’m getting out.” Cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder—why the hell had she purchased the smallest phone out there?—she shoveled her laptop into her bag, then grabbed the camera and her purse.

  As the dispatcher promised to send help and finished playing twenty questions, she hung up and ran for the door. She was a hundred yards from the newer firehouse and Ben Cortez. He’d help. Grabbing a fire extinguisher from the wall, she took the stairs at a run.

  She’d help, too. However and wherever she could, she’d help.

  With the borrowed fire truck finally pointed back toward Strong, Evan kept his foot on the gas, taking the highway’s curves as quickly as he could without running off the road. As soon as today’s fire was ninety percent contained, the jump team had hiked out to the pickup point after a mere ten hours. Now the loaner wheels ate up the miles while Evan tried to figure out how he could fix things with Faye. The closer he got to Strong, however, the less certain he was that he’d find the words. Christ, he wanted to. Wanted to say all the things he felt, wanted to make her understand that hurting her wasn’t what he’d intended. Yeah, well, he could probably take those good intentions and shove them. She’d made that perfectly clear.

  “You lost in thought there?” Mack’s voice jolted him out of his unfortunate reverie. Mack had called shotgun, so Rio was jammed in the narrow backseat. Both jumpers were staring at him.

  “There something you want to talk about?” Rio cradled a Styrofoam cup of coffee. It smelled bitter and strong as hell. His brother obviously wasn’t worried about falling asleep that night. Doubtless he had better plans in mind.


  “You think Faye can be convinced to stick around?” He put the question out there. Rio was good with women. He was never at a loss for words, so whatever secrets he had, Evan wanted in on them. He wasn’t ashamed to ask. Not when it was for Faye. His hands tightened on the wheel. He couldn’t lose her, couldn’t imagine watching her drive away from Strong.

  There had to be a way to fix this.

  Rio looked at him. “Faye? Yeah. I do.”

  Mack rolled the window down, while Evan considered his options. With the ponderosa crowding the road, it was pure black outside the open window, but the tease of cooler air coming in was a relief after the day’s heat.

  “Good.” Evan cleared his throat. “Tell me how.”

  Mack snorted, but Rio looked as serious as Rio ever did. “It’s not that complex, my man. You lay it out there, tell her how you feel. You’ve done that, right?”

  “No.” Hell. He’d screwed this up long before yesterday.

  Rio nodded. “Then you’ve got your work cut out for you. You have to tell her. Better yet, you find some way to show her.”

  “That doesn’t involve a bed,” Mack added. “Anything you say in bed is suspect.”

  Rio smiled slowly, some clearly happy memories lighting up his eyes. “You have to say it right. You mean it, you can say anything you need to say in bed.”

  “Says you,” Mack grumbled. “I try that shit, and my ass isn’t in that bed anymore.”

  “Then you didn’t mean what you said.” Rio dropped the Styrofoam into the cup holder. “Or you said the kind of stuff that any self-respecting woman is gonna invite you to hit the door for saying.”

  “So there are some things you can’t say.” Mack stretched his feet out. “I rest my case.”

  “Give me an example.” Better yet, Evan needed a list.

  “You can say the nice stuff.” Mack ticked items off on his fingers. “How fine she looks. How great the night was. What you like about her and what you want to do with her. That’s stuff you can say in bed, but that’s about it. The rest you save for when you’re dressed and back in your right mind.”

  The hail on the radio interrupted Mack’s explanations and put Evan’s internal radar on high alert. No one should be pinging them. The three of them were off-roster for the rest of the night unless the entire lower forty-eight went up. The last two hours on this frequency had been general updates and chitchat—so a direct call-out wasn’t good. This wasn’t going to be a social call—this was going to be shit hitting the fan, and they were in the blowback’s line of fire.

  Rio got a finger on the volume and punched it higher.

  Sure enough, Joey, the day’s drafted dispatcher, was knocking. “Jump One, this is base.”

  “Base, Jump One.” Rio acknowledged the incoming and adjusted the radio’s frequency, trying for a better signal.

  “How far out are you?” Distance couldn’t disguise the urgency in Joey’s voice. “And what’s your ride?”

  Evan didn’t have to check the GPS to know. “Ten miles. We’ll be with you in fifteen to twenty. We’re riding a borrowed truck.”

  “Copy.” Joey paused. “We’ve got a problem here.”

  Evan gave the truck a little more gas, and the speedometer crept up. “Give me deets.”

  “Three cars on fire and the old station house is smoking.”

  “Roger that. You got responders en route.” Rio muted the receiver for a moment. “Fuck. That’s bad. Ben lost Hollis—how much you want to bet this is his work?”

  “Point fingers later,” Evan growled. He shared Rio’s reaction, so he’d save his breath. All that mattered now was speed—and his boys were about to find out how fast this truck could fly. His boot went down, and the speedometer shot up. Fuck careful. Any second he shaved was one more he had to give to Strong.

  He guided the truck around a tight turn. Mack was busy rolling up the window because they were gaining speed now and the wind threatened to drown out the radio. He didn’t say anything, though—just got real quiet. Whatever needed to happen back in Strong, Mack was all over it.

  “Copy that.” Rio spoke into the handheld, bracing himself on the radio console with a hand as the truck picked up more speed.

  “Yeah, but most of the guys are out on the wildland fire call. I got the two reserves and not much more. Faster you get here, the better.”

  Rio eyed the speedometer. “Not a problem. We’re there as quick as we can. Jump One signing out.”

  The truck ate up the highway. Heavy with gear and not designed for speed, though, the rear end skipped roughly when Evan took the next curve. Sixty miles per hour was usually the maximum recommended speed.

  And Evan was already ten miles over that.

  Rio cracked first. “You think you should slow down there, Evan? We’re not running the Indy 500 here.”

  “I know how to drive.” Which didn’t exactly answer Rio’s question.

  Evan downshifted on the next curve to make his point, pushing the truck, smooth and easy, into the straight stretch. He forced his fingers to relax on the wheel, but he wasn’t backing off. No way. Instead, he hit the gas and started praying as the road bent again. “You don’t have your seat belts on, you’d better put ’em on now.”

  “Not SOP, Evan. You know that.” Rio pointed out that little truth calmly.

  “Then you might want to shut up so as not to distract me.”

  Mack snorted, reclining in his seat. “You make it back in half the time, you can explain the moving traffic violations.

  “I don’t care.” It was all black night outside the windows, and the truck’s headlights barely carved up the road in front. Slowing down was a no-brainer. One deer out for a late night stroll, and he’d roll the truck.

  And he didn’t care. That was the truth. “The sooner I get back, the sooner I slow down.”

  “You think Faye’s in trouble.” Rio fiddled with the channels, hunting for the local airwaves. That was smart. They’d get more details that way.

  Evan did think that. “I hope she’s not,” he said grimly.

  “But she could be,” Rio pointed out, all Mr. Logic. “It’s late, and she’s bunking in the firehouse.”

  “I know.” Christ. He needed to be in Strong. He needed to see Faye and make sure she was okay. The next curve came up, fast and tight, and he pushed the truck through it.

  Mack closed his eyes. “Then you drive this thing as fast as she’ll go, okay? No one here wants to hang back.”

  “No worries.” His foot was permanently down, the gas pedal sandwiched between his boot and the plastic floor mat. Before too many hours it would be dawn, the first pink and orange fingers of light spearing up from the dark horizon. He’d be home long before then. Or in a ditch. “We’re going to fly.”

  His head ran a dozen different scenarios. Faye in the firehouse. Faye trapped in her car as fire shot up around her. Before he took the next bend in the road, he’d imagined a dozen hideous endings to the night.

  “Evan?” Rio stared out the windshield at the road. “When you get back, when you see her face and know that she’s safe, you just tell her what you feel, okay? That’s what you tell her.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The beer was real cold, a Budweiser pick-me-up while Hollis waited for the show to get started outside. Mimi hadn’t asked questions when he’d come in, so he’d ordered up the Bud and waited. Nothing unusual about banging one back at Ma’s. Still, Mimi was watching him. He’d ditched the drip torch outside her door, but he definitely smelled like kerosene and smoke. That happy little stink could be on the up and up, though, so she was hanging back right now. She’d put two and two together in the next five to ten, however.

  Right on cue, fire alarms blared to life outside the bar’s front doors. Showtime. He started pulling money from his pocket, because he might set fires, but he paid his bar tab.

  “On the house,” Mimi growled, and she ran for the door. She’d definitely gotten the 411 on fire safety, because sh
e felt the knob before she decided the metal was cool enough, and she flung the door open. Yeah, he’d lit up the firehouse parking lot good.

  A car horn went off, singing a swan song, accompanied by small pops like bullets firing. Two of the three cars were fully engulfed now, and smoke shot up in black streams that faded to gray as they became airborne. The stink was bad now, because something plastic had caught, and there was plenty of orange. The added bonus was the wind lending a helping hand, spreading fire from A to B with each hot breath of air.

  Yeah. He’d set a real good one here.

  Mimi cursed, whirled around, and came right back inside, grabbing the land line beneath the bar. As she punched buttons and placed a call, he grabbed a bowl of peanuts and another beer. Popping the top, he headed for the still-open door. Shutting it on her return trip would have been a smart move for Mimi, because now his fires were pouring smoke into the bar, and she’d have one hell of a Febreze job on her hands.

  Behind him, Mimi slammed down the phone. “What do you think you’re doing, Hollis Anderson?”

  He gave her the truth. “I’m getting me a ringside seat.”

  She grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and a handful of dishtowels. “You’re a fucking firefighter!” she yelled over her shoulder as she ran for the door. “Fight that fire, Hollis!”

  “Right behind you,” he agreed, to shut her up. Taking a sip of the beer, he followed her outside. It was that Coors Light shit but in a bottle, so that was one step up from a can. Plus, it was real cold and free. On the house was a definite bonus.

  The parking lot between Mimi’s and the old firehouse was ringside, all right, and he had a good view, despite the sheets of smoke plugging up the sky now. Mimi was giving it the old college try, dancing in and out with that nouse fire extinguisher of hers. That much flame needed a fire hose. His professional assessment as he parked his ass on the smokers’ bench outside the bar was that she should forget the cars and worry about her bar. A little wind and the fire would hop from those cars to her building in no time at all.