Burnin' For You: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 3)

by Susan May Warren

  “Shut up! I’ve got this!”

  Reuben’s jaw hardened.

  But yeah, she looked at the altimeter. “Okay, change of plan. We’ll put down there, in that creek bed.” After a season without rain, the bed was cracked and rutted, only in use in the spring when the mountains filled it with glacial runoff. Flat and wide, maybe forty feet across, it was littered with gravel and rock, but still, a wide path.

  The wind shrilled, whistling as the plane descended, gliding.

  She would make it. She had to. The team was her responsibility.

  More math, and she realized they were coming in too hot. She’d have to do a forward slip, try to slow them down, get them lower.

  “I have to bank into the wind, try and slow us down. I’ll apply the opposite rudder to keep us flying straight.”

  “You need help with the yoke?”

  Gilly’s arms burned with the effort of holding it straight, the wind wanting to jostle it from her hands. But she shook her head.

  “You got this,” Reuben said, and it wasn’t a question. Maybe an indictment—she couldn’t read his tone.

  She banked hard, fought for control with the foot pedals.

  They’d hit a crosswind, the air gusting across the nose, pushing them east.

  “I see the creek,” Reuben said.

  She noticed then his hand on the yoke. It might have been there for a while.

  They were still coming in too fast. She angled her flaps up, hoping to slow them more.

  The air thundered, shook the plane as they dropped below tree level.

  Fifty feet, twenty.

  Oh, God, please let them live through this.

  She fought to maneuver them into the center of the creek.

  Or not a creek—more like a dry riverbed filled with boulders and rocks. And not too far ahead, a drop-off—who knew how far—into a gorge below.

  A terrible crunch shook the plane as she landed, bounced hard, and hurtled back in the air.

  “Hold on!”

  And then the plane hit the ground again. She slammed the brakes, fighting as the wheels shuddered over rocks, the rutted creek bed. It ricocheted against a boulder, slamming the plane around. It skidded backwards, then jerked up again, and crashed over onto its side, the wing splintering off.

  Metal screamed—or maybe that was Gilly—as the plane rolled over and over, like a ball.

  Down the riverbed, toward the gorge.

  And then her stomach ripped up through her as the plane dropped over the edge, falling… falling…

  Chapter 4

  If Reuben never stepped foot in an airplane again, it would be too soon. At least that was his second thought after waking up, still strapped in his seat, hanging upside down in the cockpit.

  The first had something to do with the fact that he was alive amidst a tangle of sheered metal. The air reeked of oil, hydraulic fluid hissed out of broken hoses, the avionics panel sizzled with sparks.

  They needed to get out of the plane before it went up in flames.

  Except, no, they’d crashed because they’d run out of fuel.

  And just because his father had pulled him from a flaming airplane once didn’t mean that rescue would happen again.

  Again. What kind of rotten luck was it for a guy to crash-land in an airplane twice in his life?

  His head throbbed. He reached up and touched his forehead. It came back wet and slick.

  His helmet had flown off in the crash—he must have forgotten to click his chin strap. He’d been too busy trying to figure out how to help Gilly.

  He applied pressure to his wound and fought for his bearings.

  The plane had landed not just upside down but with the nose up. He looked straight out at the creek bed some ten feet below.

  “Gilly?” He looked for her, but her seat was empty, the buckle undone.

  “I’m out here.”

  He strained to follow her voice and spotted her through a massive tear in the hull behind him. Sitting on one side of the aircraft, the seats running parallel to the hull, Jed and Kate had stayed buckled in. But the impact had knocked CJ, sitting in the opposite seats, through the gaping tear of the plane.

  Reuben didn’t see Hannah or Cliff.

  He unbuckled, bracing himself on the ceiling, let himself fall, and crawled back to Kate, who was working her buckle, her hands shaking.

  The gear had mostly been thrown from the plane, but dislodged seats lay crumbled, tumbled on top of each other, equipment spilled—Pulaskis, the saws—and parachute gear tangled through the opening.

  “Shh, I got ya,” Reuben said to Kate. “Your buckle is caught on your jumpsuit.” He was shaking too, deep inside, maybe from relief, but he caught her in one arm, held her up, and with the other hand, released the buckle.

  She fell into his embrace with a gasp.

  “How badly are you hurt?”

  She rolled over to her knees, shook her head. She’d been wearing her helmet, good girl, and now worked it off. “I’m fine.”

  But next to her, Jed hung, his arms dangling, blood running down one arm, pooling.

  “Jed—”

  “Let’s get him down,” Reuben said, his voice steady.

  Outside, he could hear wailing—maybe some wildlife creature. He braced Jed in his arms as Kate unbuckled him, and Jed fell into the cradle of Reuben’s embrace. Kate grabbed Jed’s legs and she and Reuben maneuvered him out of the body of the plane.

  Reuben was about to set Jed on the ground when Kate stopped him. “He’s got a piece of metal sticking out right below his ribs. It might have hit a kidney. Lay him on his side.”

  He set Jed down while Kate surveyed the damage—took his pulse, checked his breathing. Jed wasn’t moving, his pallor dusky, and the sight of him shook Reuben.

  Jed, the one who knew how to stay alive—and keep them alive.

  Kate took a deep breath, started to probe around the wounds. “It went deep and sharp for it to saturate his jumpsuit.”

  “We should take off the suit,” he said.

  “No. He’ll go into shock if we don’t keep him warm. We’ll try and stop the bleeding. Do you have a knife?”

  Reuben reached into his pant leg, found his camp knife there, and handed it to Kate. “I’ll check the others.”

  She nodded as she began to attack the layers of padding, running her arm over her eyes, taking another deep breath.

  If anyone knew how to stay calm in disaster, it was Kate.

  He got up, searching for Gilly, Hannah, CJ, and Cliff.

  He spotted Hannah sitting at the edge of the forest, her knees drawn up, staring at him. She appeared white, shaken, her lip fattened. “Hannah?”

  She didn’t move, and he was about to go to her when—“Rube, I need you!”

  He found the voice—Gilly—and she was leaning over CJ. He lay with his arm under him, his legs at odd angles, unconscious. Reuben knelt beside CJ, took his pulse.

  Alive. And his breathing seemed okay—but what did he know?

  “His arm looks broken, his shoulder might be dislocated. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a hip fracture along with broken legs. But I’m most worried about his neck—” She pointed to a hematoma on his forehead. “I don’t know how hard he hit, and I’m afraid to move him.”

  Gilly looked over at him, and he startled at the expression on her face. She, too, had hit something because she sported her own hematoma. But the set of her jaw, the darkness in her eyes…

  She was angry.

  “Maybe we can find a piece of airplane to stabilize him—”

  “We need help,” she said, rising. Only then did he see her sway, just a little. “I’m going to check on the radio.”

  He didn’t want to tell her that the entire avionics board looked destroyed.

  Instead, he stood up, watching her take a step, one eye closing in a wince. “Are you okay?” He reached out his hand to steady her.

  Gilly pushed it away. “I’m fine. Find Cliff.”

>   Cliff. But Reuben watched as she picked her way back to the plane, the slightest hesitation on one side.

  She was hurt.

  But yeah, not as bad as CJ or Jed. Reuben shot a glance at Hannah, who had gotten up now, still just staring at him. “Are you okay?”

  Overhead, the sky looked unblemished by their disaster, blue and bright, just the finest cloud of smoke past the ridge of mountains. On either side of their crash site, scrub brush gave way to forest, towering spruce, pine. Along the edges of the creek, downed, stripped trees and massive boulders suggested a once-abundant flow.

  Looking back at the plane, Reuben realized they’d fallen on a boulder the size of a Fiat, almost like an albatross landing on its back, the front end propped up, tail section splintered in two.

  He guesstimated they’d fallen maybe twenty feet off the side of the dry waterfall into the ravine. Bounced into the shallow pool below, skidded, and landed on the boulder.

  A flight overhead should be able to spot them, if Gilly could raise HQ on the radio.

  “Cliff?” He raised his voice, heard it echo, but no voice answered. He started for the far edge of the plane, scrambling over rocks, trying not to turn his foot in pockets of rock and debris.

  Another glance at Hannah, and this time she was pointing. He followed her gaze.

  His heart about stopped.

  Cliff had clearly fallen out of the plane mid-tumble, because his body lay cast from the plane half-way down the falls, his bones broken by a bed of jagged granite. Even from here, Reuben couldn’t make out how he might have lived. And as he grew closer, he saw the man’s ribs protruding from his jacket—no smokejumper padding for him.

  He worked his way up to Cliff, where he lay on the rocks, a pool of blood under his skull, his eyes still open. “Aw, Cliff, I’m sorry.” Reuben checked Cliff’s pulse, then gently closed his eyes.

  He paused, not sure what to do. Then he took off his bandanna and placed it over the man’s face.

  He climbed down, shot a look at Hannah, but she’d turned her back to him, pacing now at the edge of the forest.

  Reuben spotted Gilly in the plane, seated on the floor, working the radio. His fleeting hope disintegrated when she threw off the headset with an accompanying epitaph of disgust.

  Reuben scrambled back to CJ, knelt beside him. He still hadn’t moved, but his breathing seemed steady.

  Reuben needed to find a cold pack for CJ’s head. And a blanket—yes. He stumbled back to the plane, feeling strangely woozy, as if—yep, he was going to lose it.

  He held it together long enough to get to the edge of the forest, lean against a tree as he lost the muffin from Hot Cakes.

  Nice.

  He drew a hand across his mouth, though, feeling better, and guessed he might have a concussion.

  “Here.”

  He turned, found Hannah holding out her water bottle and a bandanna.

  He cleaned out his mouth. Then he tied the bandanna around his wound.

  He glanced at Hannah.

  Hannah was one of the tough ones. Feisty, determined to finish the summer despite already living through a flashover, landing in the hospital with second-degree burns, and now surviving a plane crash. Or maybe not quite so feisty, because her expression seemed close to unraveling. She bit her lip. Swallowed.

  “Is he dead?”

  Reuben glanced at Cliff, back to Hannah.

  “No—I meant CJ.”

  Reuben shook his head. “I don’t think so—”

  And as if in answer, he heard a yell, something feral, that rent the air.

  He whirled around and saw Gilly racing over to CJ, who had woken up and begun to thrash around.

  “He’s in pain!” This from Hannah, who stood rooted as Reuben ran to CJ.

  Indeed. His face white, CJ clutched his waist with one arm, groaning, breathing hard. He let out another wail.

  Gilly gripped his arms, trying to keep him from moving. “What hurts?”

  CJ let out a growl, something of a curse in it, and Reuben didn’t blame him. “My shoulder—ah, crap—and my hip—” He tried to move his leg and let out a scream.

  And when he looked at Reuben, so much pain in his eyes, Reuben wanted to glance away.

  “Just breathe, CJ,” Gilly said.

  “It’s hard—I can’t—” He reached up with his good hand, pressed on his chest. “I can’t breathe!”

  “You’re hyperventilating,” Gilly said. “I know it hurts. Just breathe with me.” She leaned up, put her hand on his belly. “In through the nose, out through the mouth, breathe from your belly. Slowly.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Do it,” Reuben said, nothing of a bedside manner in his tone.

  CJ’s eyes widened, but he glanced back at Gilly, began to mimic her.

  Hannah had come closer, though still standing ten feet away.

  Reuben headed back to Jed and Kate.

  Jed lay on his side. Kate had gotten his jumpsuit opened up, cut it apart, and wrapped the material around the protruding metal.

  “If we remove it, he might bleed out—I just don’t know.” She checked Jed’s pulse again. Then she kissed his cheek, pressed her forehead to his. “Hang in there, we’ll get you some help. Don’t die on me, Jed.”

  Then Kate sat down, her hand on Jed’s body, as if assessing his breathing, in and out.

  She held up her radio, fished out of her jump pants. “I can’t get hold of anyone—my guess is the mountain is causing interference.”

  Reuben took out his radio, confirmed the static reception.

  “We’re in trouble here, Rube. Jed’s too hurt to move and CJ—who knows how injured he is. Gilly said something about the radio being out and the transponder down before we crashed… They don’t know we’re down.” Kate looked up at him. “You gotta go for help.”

  He took in her words. Yes, of course. He was the least hurt—

  “Rube!”

  He turned to Gilly’s voice and spied her beckoning him over.

  CJ seemed to be calmer, breathing in rhythm now. Gilly got up, walked away from him.

  Reuben met her.

  And for the first time since the crash, he took a good look at her. A goose egg lifted right above her brow line. She’d scraped her arm—a thin line of blood traced her skin. And she’d ripped her pants, her knee bloody and a little swollen. He guessed that might be why she was limping.

  But he saw none of that on her face, her jaw tight, her mouth a bud of frustration.

  “CJ’s still in a lot of pain. He might have internal bleeding. How’s Jed?”

  “He’s got a piece of metal in his back. Kate’s wrapped something around it to keep it from moving, but...I don’t know.”

  “Hannah seems okay—in shock, maybe. And Kate—well, we know Kate.” Gilly’s glance landed on her best friend, and for a second—only a second—weariness flashed across her face. Then she looked back at Reuben. “I saw you found Cliff.”

  “Yeah. He’s—”

  “I know.” She put her hands on her hips, closed her eyes, her jaw tightening even more. Then she sighed and looked up at him. “I guess I’d better get going.”

  “Huh?”

  He knew he sounded a little like an oaf, but, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean somebody needs to hike out, and since I’m the pilot, that means me.”

  “In what world? Listen—yeah, you’re right. Someone needs to hike out. But you’re in no shape—”

  “What are you talking about? I’m fine?”

  “You’re limping.”

  If looks could kill, he’d be a pile of ash in the creek bed floor. “I’m fine. I just banged my knee a little.”

  “You’ll never make a hike out. Yaak is thirty miles from here!”

  “I can get to the road—it’s probably—”

  “About nine miles is my guess. And between here and the road, there’s a river and at least one ridge of mountains, and you’ll never make it on that knee.”


  “Watch me!”

  He held up his hand. “Stop. Someone needs to stay here and take care of everyone—”

  “They have Kate—”

  “Kate has her hands full with Jed!”

  “How about me?”

  The voice jerked him out of the flood of frustration that threatened to drown him. He turned, saw Hannah standing there, nodding.

  “I’m fine. I’ll stay. I can monitor CJ and make sure everyone has water—really. I can do this.” She looked at Gilly, back to Reuben. “We’ll be okay until you get back with help.”

  Reuben’s mouth tightened. He looked at Gilly. “You sure the radio’s out?”

  She gave him a look.

  “Okay.” He looked up at the sky, checked his watch. “I’d say we have about eight hours of daylight. If we get moving, we can reach the road in about four or five hours. It’s due east…” He took a second, then pointed. “That way.”

  “For crying out loud—how do you know that?”

  “The same way I know that I can do this alone. You’re just going to slow me down—”

  “I’m going with you, okay? I told everyone I’d get them home safely, and I will.” Then her voice dropped, and she swallowed, her eyes bright. “Especially since it’s my fault.”

  “It’s not—”

  She held up her hand. Shook her head, her eyes wet.

  Her wretched expression silenced him. He knew what it felt like to feel to blame—whether justified or not—and the excruciating need to find a way to fix it.

  “Fine. But once we hit the road, I’m headed to the Grover fire lookout, not Yaak. It’s only a few miles from here, and yeah, it’s a climb, but they’ll have radio equipment. If we push hard, we can make it before dark.”

  She hesitated only a moment before walking back to the plane. She climbed in, then emerged with one of their equipment packs. He recognized it as his and reached for it, but she slung it around her shoulder.

  Ho-kay. He’d just let that ride for a minute or two. It weighed nearly a hundred pounds, so probably she’d let it drop sooner than later.

  He retrieved the equipment box, undamaged in the crash, opened it, and found water, MREs, and a first aid kit. He brought the supplies over to Kate. Looked at Hannah. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” And indeed, she looked better, less white and, despite the fattened lip, her eyes had cleared, brightened with determination. She grabbed a bottle of water from the box and headed back to CJ.