Stevie stood, dazed for a second, not sure—
But Rio wasn’t a murderer. She turned to March just as he clocked Tucker with a piece of firewood he’d gotten his grip around. Tucker must have dislodged his gun.
With the hit, Tucker flew off him, clearly stunned because he lay on the ground, unmoving.
“Tucker!” She needed her gun.
March rolled over on him, raised his arm to clock him again, and she didn’t have time to locate her weapon. She took two steps and leaped on March, wrenching his arm away.
With a roar, March jerked back, rolling and body slamming, landing on top of her. Her breath huffed out, the weight of his body crushing her. Her brain told her to wrap her legs around his, to pull him down into a choke hold, but everything turned into a black whir as she gulped air.
He bounced off her, and she sucked in a full breath.
Then he turned and pounced on her, his legs pinning her arms, his hands on her throat.
Squeezing.
She’d fallen on a root or a rock in her spine, and as he leaned on her, the pain spiked through her back. It shunted her kicks, kept her from rounding up and wrapping her legs around his neck. She worked her hands between his arms, tried to force his hands away, but even as she writhed, her world turned gray. Splotchy.
“Let her go, March! You don’t want to kill a fed!”
The voice—Dad!
“March!”
She spotted him in her periphery, her father’s hands on March’s shoulders, wrenching him away. “Let her go!”
And then, glorious air as March abruptly released his hold, jerking to his feet and rounding on her father. She didn’t catch much as she sucked in wind through her burning throat.
“We should kill them both and let the fire burn them,” March said. He turned back and leaned over her.
She threw a punch, hoping to catch him in the jaw, but he pushed her away and picked up a gun. Her gun—the one she’d been lying on.
She heard it cock, the muzzle near her ear.
“March—don’t.” Her father’s voice sounded remarkably calm given the moment. But he’d always been that way. Calm. Even. Not prone to emotion and crazy bursts of impulse. “Let’s get out of here.”
The smoke had turned her vision hazy, but she could still make out her father standing a few feet away. Not looking at her as if he knew her, but angry, as if March was messing up his plans.
Maybe March didn’t know she was his daughter. Maybe—no, Tucker couldn’t be right.
“Fine,” March said and moved away from her.
She sat up just as March took off into the woods. Her father paused, just a moment, met her eyes.
“Sorry, Punk.” Then he fled after March.
Stevie stared after him, the smoke burning her eyes. Behind her, the fire crackled, hissing at her as she rolled over.
Tucker had gathered himself to his knees, groaning, and she crawled over to him. A hematoma rose on the side of his forehead. He touched his head to the ground. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
And then he was, retching right there, dry heaves, and she winced for him.
Turned away to give him privacy.
After a moment, he came up for air, wiped his mouth and collapsed on the ground.
She touched his back. “You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
Thank you.
Stevie spotted the gun Tucker had knocked out of March’s hand and scrambled over to it. Opened the chamber. “There’s one round left.” She stuck it into her belt. “We need to go.”
Tucker pushed to his feet, put a hand to his head. “We need to put this fire out before it grows.”
Already it had eaten up a ten-foot swath. She glanced into the forest. “But—”
“I know!” He rounded on her, his eyes thick with what looked like frustration and fire, reddened, tearing. “I know. I heard Skye scream as Rio grabbed her.” He leaned over, grabbed his knees. “I got her into this mess. If she hadn’t been doing my job, sitting watch—”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Stevie said.
He looked up at her. “Jed left me in charge. I’m the one who okayed the hand crew from the correctional facility.”
“Actually, the BLM made that call.”
“No. Don asked me specifically, and I thought—I’ll lick this and prove to Jed that I…” He shook his head, stood up straight. “Let’s get this fire out.” He gave her a look, something she interpreted as the end of the conversation, and she let it go.
“I spotted a couple shovels earlier in the shed,” he said and jogged over to retrieve them. “See if you can find a water source.”
“The McGintys have a pump,” she said and followed him, grabbing a tall bucket. She dumped out the debris inside and headed to the hand pump.
Tucker ran over to his pack and pulled out his bandanna, tying it over his nose and mouth. Then he cut a perimeter into the loam so fast that by the time the bucket had finished filling, he’d created a one-foot-wide line across the leading edge of the fire.
“Douse the flank with water, half in, half out of the fire. Starve it of fuel.”
Stevie’s eyes watered as she dumped the water. It sloshed on her legs, but the flames sizzled, white smoke rising from the blaze. She emptied the bucket, nearly to the far edge, then ran back for more.
Meanwhile, the fire had burned up to Tucker’s line and simply died, the black a fine line along the edge of the turned earth. He continued scraping along the forest line, halting the fire there, also.
She was just finishing filling the bucket when he came up behind her, picked it up, and ran it back to the line, dousing the fire that wanted to escape the far edges.
“Fill it again!” he said, tossing it to her.
Then he walked right into the burned area and began to turn over the earth. Great swaths of smoke rose and with it, ash and cinders as he buried the fire into the ground.
The fusee was still lit, and he used the shovel to bang it out.
She returned, the water sloshing on her jeans. He took it from her again and reinforced the edges, then poured the water over the surface.
The fire died, white smoke dissolving into the flames of the meager twilight.
He dropped the bucket and headed over to Stevie, tugging down the bandanna. “You okay?”
She nodded. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and he wiped it with his arm.
Then he picked up the shovel, walked over into the unburned clearing.
He launched the shovel like a javelin into the forest with a roar so guttural that it found her bones and shook her to the core.
Then he fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands.
She stayed away as she watched his shoulders shake.
Six
Stevie shouldn’t have let Tucker come along. Shouldn’t have given in to the fierce look he’d given her back at camp.
Shouldn’t have let her heart be wooed by the idea that she might, for however briefly, have a partner.
Because Vic had been right—she was trouble, every single time—and she couldn’t help the gut-deep sense that she’d dragged Tucker in with her.
Her throat felt swollen, bruised from March’s grip. She kept swallowing, as if that might help dissolve the scratch inside, but she felt like a burr had lodged.
The hour was late, the sun now faded beyond Denali, the sky a bruised, purple haze that had turned the mountains black. Tucker had spent the last hour turning over the dirt around the edge of the fire. Mopping up, he called it. The patch had stopped steaming, mostly.
Stevie sat on the front steps of the cabin and held March’s revolver in her grip, running her thumb over it.
She should have just shot him instead of giving him the chance to surrender. But she’d wanted…maybe to prove that she could do this job.
Like when she arrested her father. When she swore a statement that indicted him. When she testified to the events that put him away.
Sorry, Punk.
No. She was sorry.
Tucker came over. He looked rough—a bruise across his temple where March had clocked him. Reddened eyes, which probably had just as much to do with what happened, quietly, in the shadows of the yard as the fire he’d fought. “Now what, boss?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You said you were in charge.”
She shook her head. “Now I think we wait for reinforcements.” She tucked the gun back in her belt. Looked up at him. He was staring down at her with so much intensity, she had to look away. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“Huh?” He sat next to her and took off his gloves. “I would have gone without you, so you can just stop blaming yourself. Besides, the fusee was my brilliant, stupid idea.”
“He could have killed you.”
He clasped his hands together between his knees. “Yeah, well, he is going to kill Skye if we don’t do something.” He looked over at her, his jaw tight. “We can’t just sit here and wait for help.”
Stevie shook her head. “It’ll be dark soon. And it might not look like dark, but in the woods, it can get pretty hard to see. My guess is that they’ll have a hard time finding their way, too, so I’m calling an audible, and I’m going to sleep for a couple hours.”
He stared at her, a muscle pulling in his jaw. Then he got up and opened the door to the cabin.
She knew what he’d find inside. She’d visited the McGintys a few times over the years. A simple couple, they had homesteaded here for years before they tired of the backcountry life. Jim got a job in Homer, fishing, and now they only visited on occasion.
He’d find a two-room cabin with a double bed in the tiny bedroom, a simple kitchen with a wood-burning stove, a sink with a refillable water tank above it, a small trestle table and chairs, and a sitting area with a willow rocker and a padded bench. Simple living for simple folks who kept to themselves and relied on no one.
The way she was raised.
She got up and followed Tucker inside.
He had set his PG pack on the table and was now rooting through it. Pulled out a couple protein bars and handed one to her. “I have a stash for emergencies.”
“Thanks.” She took the offering and tore it open.
He pulled out a chair, scooted up another, and set his leg on it. Blew out a breath that contained a shard of pain. Clearly, his knee was still an issue.
He opened his dinner. Sat in silence as he ate it, as if thinking.
Then, “I wanted to prove to Jed that I was worth the chance he took on me.”
Stevie glanced at him. Oh. She sank down into a chair.
He met her eyes. Dark and intense, his casual tone was clearly a front for the deep well of emotions roiling inside.
“I told you I hurt my knee snowboarding. That was…well, the Cliff’s Notes version. The detailed part included years of training to be on the Olympic snowboard cross team. I wiped out during the final tryouts.”
She made a face. “Oh, that’s rough.”
“The worst of it was that my mom…” He folded the wrapper between two fingers. Creased it. “My mom was dying of cancer and I chose to go to tryouts instead of be with her.” He didn’t look at Stevie. “I really wanted to come home and tell her I had made the team. But…I didn’t make either. She died before I could get back to Minnesota.”
“Oh, Tucker, I’m sorry.” She wanted to reach out to him, but something about his posture held her back. Maybe the way he stared at the wrapper, his jaw tight.
“I felt pretty alone. My brother died when I was fourteen—a snowboarding accident in Colorado. He was buried in an avalanche. And then my parents got divorced. I dated this girl named Colleen for a couple years, but she broke up with me during college.” He made a wry face. “That was fun. I drove all the way from Bozeman to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to see her play a big volleyball game, only to discover her new boyfriend was there.”
Stevie winced.
“So, I admit, losing my mom was sort of…well, I didn’t handle it well. I dropped out of school—it was my senior year of college, too—and started getting into trouble. Lots of trouble.”
She didn’t want to ask, but yeah, he looked like a guy who could find trouble if he wanted it. The way he’d handled himself at the bar with Nate. And today, jumping on March. Never mind the look in his eyes that said he wasn’t afraid to light a fire—and bear the consequences.
“The funny part was…I was never really that guy. Colleen, my old girlfriend, dated me because she thought I was into drugs and partying. And maybe I was for a while, but once I started snowboarding, I quit all that. I wanted to be someone I respected. Someone who could someday have the life I saw Colleen and her family having.”
He set the wrapper on the table.
“But after Mom died, I sort of let life bulldoze me. I stopped listening to my training, all the rules I’d made for myself, and just…lived without boundaries.”
He looked at his palm, ran his thumb over it. “I was already a member of Jed’s hotshot team, and I don’t know how, but he got wind of some of the trouble I’d gotten into. Nothing serious, but I knew the inside of the county jail.”
He drew his hand across his face. “I got it in my head that I wanted to be a smokejumper, and Jed was putting together this new team, so I showed up to apply.”
He said nothing more, so she finally filled in for him. “He gave you a chance.”
“He gave me an ultimatum. One screw up, and I was out.”
“Which is why you follow the rules.”
He nodded.
“Clearly you haven’t screwed up.”
He moved his leg off the chair and massaged his knee. “He put me in charge of the team, Stevie. And I screwed up.”
“Tucker—”
“The thing is…I changed my life, Stevie. I started going to church and started thinking that maybe I could put my life back on track. That if I just…well, if I did things right…”
“No one would get hurt.”
“But they did.”
“Tucker—”
“I know this wasn’t my fault!” His change in voice shook her. “But it’s still my responsibility to get Skye back. She’s terrified and alone, and I’m not going to leave her behind.”
His eyes filmed then, and so much wrecked emotion from him undid her.
And shoot, she knew it was wrong, but she wanted a guy to feel about her the way Tucker did about Skye. Because she didn’t have to use her investigator skills to hear the affection in his voice.
The guy was probably in love with Skye. Of course, he couldn’t do anything about it—they worked together.
Stevie nodded and got up. “We’ll find her, Tucker.”
“Not sitting here, we won’t.”
She sighed. “Listen. There’s a bed on the other side of this curtain. Your knee is in bad shape. Go lie down, just a couple hours. We’ll leave as soon as it’s light enough.”
He stared at her. Then finally gave a tight nod and got up.
He pulled back the curtain and yes, the bed was made with a flannel blanket and a couple pillows. He untied his boots, worked them off, then eased down on top of it, leaned back on the pillows.
“What about you?”
She frowned.
He scooted over. “I promise to keep my hands to myself.”
Oh. Well, yes. Good. Because she had no room in her life for a man who was in love with someone else.
She sank down next to him, the bed giving under her weight. He lay on his back, his arms folded over his body. His breaths deepened, the darkness cottony, alluring.
She settled back next to him, shoulder to shoulder, his body warm alongside hers.
Figures that she’d finally find a decent guy…who was already taken.
The minute Stevie settled down beside him, all the fatigue swished out of Tucker’s body. What had been a scum of exhaustion and hurt lifted, every cell suddenly, acutely aware of Stevie�
��s warmth, from her shoulder to her legs snugged up along his. Not that she was trying to lean into him, but the very nature of the saggy mattress tilted her against him, and he struggled to keep his breathing even, to ignore the smell of her, earthy, yes, but feminine too, enough to rouse a keen awareness that maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
Apparently, he hadn’t thought it all the way through when he’d scooted over and suggested she rest alongside him. Then again, he wasn’t thinking a lot of things through lately.
Like his stupid plan to take down March. He still couldn’t believe that the man had nearly killed Stevie while Tucker lay dazed, trying to stop the world from spinning. He’d seen her struggle, and by the time he got his head put back together, Archer had pulled the murderer away from his daughter, and they’d sprinted into the woods.
She’d nearly died as he lay like a dazed trout. The image of her trying to find her breath, the bruises on her neck made his own breathing snag in his chest.
He’d nearly gotten Stevie killed.
Not to mention he could have ignited another out-of-control fire.
So yeah, maybe he should keep his mouth closed, try and silence the buzz that consumed his body, and actually get some sleep.
Except, now his brain wouldn’t shut off because—why?—why had he told her all those things about Colleen? Frustration, maybe. Or exhaustion.
Or just the desire for her to understand why sitting here, even for an hour of rest, felt like he was abandoning Skye.
He might be a screwup, but he didn’t abandon his team.
He lay quiet, listening to Stevie’s breathing, the minutes turning the simmer inside to a burn.
Then he felt her shift. Ever so slightly, she eased away, rolling as if trying not to disturb him. She slipped off the bed, her feet shuffling across the floor.
A creak, and she caught her breath.
He heard the front door latch click, then ease open.
He sat up as it closed.
The so-called midnight hour seeped an eerie gray light into the room. He swung his legs over, ground his jaw as he put weight on his leg, slid into his boots and hobbled over to the door.
Light My Fire: Christian romantic suspense (Summer of the Burning Sky Book 1) Page 9
