Wildfire at Larch Creek Read online

  Macy took it and could feel almost feel her brother’s hands on it. Frisbee was the big summer sport in Larch Creek. Arable land was too precious in the valley to waste any of it on a football or soccer field. There was the softball field, with the outside wall of the school’s gym filling in as a vertical outfield. Above the faded white line painted at ten feet high was a triple, above the line at twenty feet up the wall was a home run.

  Frisbee, they could play it anywhere. It bounced off windows without damage and if it went into the river, there was always a dog willing to swim for it. Snowshoe Ultimate had been a serious winter workout game.

  But this one had been Stephen’s. Stephen and Tim’s.

  Most of the anger drained out of her. She flicked it lightly up to Tim who momentarily disappeared from view as he tucked it back under the butter churn.

  “How about breakfast?” he asked when he reappeared. “My treat.”

  “Firefighting must pay well.”

  “Well enough,” he aimed that lethal smile down at her and then began working his way across the porch as she climbed the steps. They reached the front door at the same time.

  Tim held the door for her like she was a lady, something Brett had missed at every opportunity. She scoffed at Tim which seemed the appropriate response.

  # # #

  Tim smiled and waited for Macy to enter first. Her eye roll was so familiar that he almost reached out to “beep” her nose, but she was gone inside before he had the chance.

  At five a.m. in mid-July, French Pete’s was about a quarter full. There was no factory or anything in town, it was simply summer near the Arctic Circle and a lot of folks were up. They sat in groups of two and three and were mostly quiet over coffee. Carl had never been a big believer in music and the local radio station wouldn’t be on the air for a couple of hours, assuming Janice was still running it.

  Tim breathed in deep. The air was thick with deer sausage, warm syrup, and toad-in-a-hole—a single egg fried in a hole torn in the middle of a slice of toast. Carl made it with the good dark bread. Herb Maxwell came in after closing and worked through the night to bake it when Carl didn’t need the ovens for anything else. It was a whole world of good that Tim had forgotten even existed.

  Tim headed for their old booth, dropped into it, and only then realized what he’d done.

  “Damn! Sorry, Mace. You pick where,” he started to get up, but she dropped in across from him.

  “This is fine.”

  Tim struggled back into place and tried not to feel too weird about knocking knees with Macy. He shifted to the inside on his side to get some clear foot space; which was Stephen’s usual spot. Tim typically sat to the outside so that he could stretch out his legs, but the dog was already curled up there.

  Macy was watching him fidget with that strangely blank expression, making it so that he barely recognized her.

  “Stop it,” she told him softly.

  “Stop what?” Tim froze.

  “He’s been dead for five years, just stop being so twitchy.”

  Tim tried. He put his hands flat on the table and simply stopped. Akbar was always the one busy about something and Tim the quiet and steady one of the pair, or at least by comparison. He and Stephen had been the same way.

  “Sorry. I’m—”

  “An idiot,” Macy finished for him. “But we know that about you already. He’s been dead a long time and I’ve had to let him go. Stop jumping at every goddamn ghost.”

  “Sorry,” he held up a hand as she opened her mouth. “I know. Apologizing too much. I just—” Tim looked at the ceiling where his old model airplane with the tiny gas engine presently hung upside down, which was the poor thing’s usual position in flight—Tim had been an expert at crashing. He’d wondered what happened to the thing after he’d stopped fooling around with it in favor of girls.

  He looked across at Macy. Sometimes the straight line was the best one at bars, maybe he should try it here when it mattered.

  “I really am sorry I haven’t been around. I feel like I’ve let down both you and Stephen by not being here for you more often.”

  “Are you really that dumb?”

  He looked down at Baxter who was also wondering the same thing, but Tim suspected him of food-based bias. It still didn’t give him a clue why he was being dumb. He turned back to Macy.

  “Apparently, yes.”

  She rolled her eyes in that way of hers that always made him feel particularly stupid. “I’m a big girl, Harada. Don’t need six feet plus of gawk to protect me from anything.”

  “Maybe not. But I still think of you as the kid sister and my natural, in-born notion of decency says that if you need anything, I want to be the one that’s there for you. I feel like crap for how I’ve treated you since Stephen died.”

  Macy closed her eyes and thudded her forehead on the table as Carl came up with two mugs of hot chocolate, one with marshmallows, one without. Tim had long since switched over to coffee in the mornings, but didn’t see any point in making a fuss.

  “Problem?” Carl asked Tim as Macy continued thunking her head.

  “No. Seems about normal. I’ll take two toad-in-a-holes with a side of bacon and another of the deer sausage.”

  Macy looked up at him.

  “What? I’m a growing boy doing a man’s job. Firefighting is hungry work.”

  Macy sighed, “Give me what he’s having, but half as much.”

  Carl patted Macy’s shoulder as if telling her to be strong before he moved off.

  Tim wondered what that was about.

  # # #

  Macy checked in with herself. Weak spot in her brain for Tim Harada still installed? Yep! There for everyone to see plain as day except for Tim? Check. Even Carl, the least sympathetic guy on the planet, could see it and was trying to console her?

  Shit!

  She looked Tim square in the eye, “I’m. Not. Your. Kid. Sister.”

  “Says you,” he offered one of those casual grins that he always thought were so charming. That it was, didn’t help matters in the slightest.

  He still saw her that way? She had no hope at all.

  “You’re stuck with me, Mace. Not a thing you can do about it.”

  “At least for this week,” and then you’ll be gone again.

  He had the decency to shift uncomfortably.

  “My job is in the Lower Forty-eight.”

  Hard to argue. And her life was here. She rubbed her forehead and sipped some cocoa. Tim was trying to be civil and she was the one being a total bitch.

  Another thing that was never going to change. Well, maybe she’d try.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “My job?”

  “Sure. Why do you jump fire? Adrenalin rush? Bragging rights? All of the hot women?” Why she’d said the last, she’d never know. So that she could flog herself with the image of Tim in another woman’s arms?

  “There’s that,” his happy smile almost had her leaving the table.

  Probably would have if Carl hadn’t returned at that moment with her plate, Tim’s platter, and a bowl for Baxter. She could leave her own meal, but she wouldn’t do that to her dog.

  “But the real reason is probably Akbar the Great.”

  “Who?”

  “My jump partner. He and I started as hotshots together. He got this hair up his behind to go for jump school. ‘Big bucks and hot women,’ he’d say. I ended up following him in.”

  “He actually calls himself ‘the Great’?”

  Tim nodded, “Everyone does. His first name actually means ‘the Great’ in some language or other. So really he’s actually ‘The Great the Great.’ He earns it though, he’s the best smokejumper you can imagine. Fires run and hide when Akbar is jumping them. Can’t be more than five-six, but with a pro-wrestler’s shoulders and a s
mile that really lights the ladies up.”

  “So you and he really cut a swath,” she kept her attention down on her breakfast. She had no idea how she could eat, her stomach hurt worse than it had during last night’s date with Brett.

  “Used to, yeah,” he hacked into his first toad-in-a-hole.

  “What happened?” her curiosity had her looking up; all the way up. There was a surprising mix of sadness and confusion on his features. She’d always been able to read Tim and these were real emotions, deep ones; the kind he didn’t let out very often.

  “He found a lady.”

  “Why is that a bad thing?”

  “What? No. Laura is amazing. Smart, beautiful, funny. She’s way too good for him.”

  “So? What happened?” she took a sip of her hot chocolate.

  “He married her.”

  She practically snorted the scalding liquid out her nose. Set herself to hacking and coughing until he solicitously handed her some water.

  Once she recovered, she managed to ask, “And…?”

  “Huh?”

  Tim really didn’t get it, “The look on your face.”

  “What look? Laura’s the best damn thing that could happen to the twerp.”

  “But…” It was like pulling teeth. Macy went for some bacon. That seemed to go down okay.

  Tim scratched at his chin. He hadn’t shaved that morning and it added to his slightly lost look.

  She could feel her brain going soft on him and even though she knew it was a path to a world of hurt, she couldn’t stop it.

  “I don’t know. He and I, when we had a break, we’d go down to the Doghouse,” he looked around, “which is only a little more respectable than this place, and we’d—” He finally caught himself and realized what he was saying. He blushed. Tim actually blushed as if she was still twelve and he’d said things he shouldn’t in front of a little girl.

  “You don’t get off that easy, Harada. Give.”

  He did that intimidating glare thing that he’d never understood only served to peak her curiosity.

  “Give.”

  “Fine!” he slapped down his knife and fork hard enough to earn a startled look from Baxter. “Yesterday, was it just yesterday? Yeah, maybe. We came off a hellacious fire. Ten days, eighty thousand acres, a hundred kinds of ugly.”

  “But you beat it?”

  “But we beat it. And when I cruise into the Doghouse, there’s the usual gang doing the usual thing with all the cute women in the bar.”

  Macy did her best not to imagine it, but didn’t succeed very well.

  “And over to one side there are Akbar and Laura being all…” he flapped his hands like when he was really perplexed.

  “What?”

  “Happy together!”

  “Still not getting why that’s a bad, Harada.” She was really having a problem following this, but then, apparently, so was Tim.

  “No. It’s good. Great! I’m really, honestly happy for him. They’re an amazing couple. Hell, I stood as best man for him.”

  An actual expletive from Timothy Harada, he must really be flummoxed. “And you took home a bridesmaid or two?”

  “That’s not the point.” His look said he had, but he didn’t elaborate and she didn’t want to know.

  “Then what is?”

  Tim dragged his hands through his hair and then looked at her. Really looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.

  “I wish I knew, Mace. I turned around and there’s this brunette eyeing me—the kind with legs that never stop, and I just walked out. Next thing I know I’m sitting here with you and I haven’t a clue why.”

  Macy couldn’t help herself. She reached out and brushed a hand over his cheek.

  The sweet boy was still there, sitting across from her. Lost, tucked away, hidden by the man he’d become, but he was still there. And it broke her heart, for that was the Tim she’d always been in love with.

  Against all odds he still existed, and in a week he’d be gone again.

  Chapter 5

  Tim felt strangely quiet through the rest of the meal, as if the chaos of his emotions had been burned away by Macy’s touch.

  The problem was that he now stood in the “black.” It was the area that a forest fire had already been through, stripped of color by heat and flame until there was only the black of char, the gray of ash, and the blue of sky shining between leafless black branches. Flare-ups of spot fires might occur, and there were often surreal patches of green that the fire had swept all around but not burned. It was a quiet, almost serene space.

  It was also a place where you stood after a fire, wrung out and half wondering what you were supposed to do next. Smokejumpers stayed ahead of the fire to cut it off. They only crossed into the black when they had to escape, or when the job was done.

  Tim oddly felt as if he’d only just managed to escape, but he didn’t know from what.

  When Macy announced that she had a flight to make, he’d asked if he could ride along. It would be a good chance to see the surrounding area.

  She’d looked surprised, even wary, but finally said he could come.

  “No jumping out of my helicopter though. I don’t carry parachutes.”

  Baxter had looked chagrined when he’d been relegated to the truck bed for the trip down to the hangars. They were tucked among the trees close beside the one straight stretch of the main road north of town. Power lines had been rerouted upslope and the shoulders to either side were all Heinrich’s barley, so no trees stuck up to clip wings or rotor blades.

  He helped Macy roll the Bell 206 LongRanger out of the hangar and onto the small paved space between the hangars and the road. MHA only flew the converted Black Hawks and the tiny MD500s. The LongRanger fell halfway between the two in size.

  “Pretty,” Tim couldn’t help but whistle. The 206 was a long and sleek helicopter. A single, two-bladed rotor. The cockpit up front offered a great side-by-side view for pilot and copilot. Room for five in the back in facing seats. Luggage compartment. Cargo hook. It was easy to see why this craft was the first choice of news and police agencies.

  “She’s my baby. Mom and Dad gave me the loan to buy her and I expect to have it paid off before the end of the century,” Macy patted the helo’s nose and dropped the tow cradle down so that she was resting on her skids. “Glass avionics, high-altitude rotor, the whole bit.”

  “How high?” Tim hesitated.

  Macy simply pointed at the mountain looming beyond the south end of the valley. It looked as if she was pointing at the top.

  “You don’t!” Part of his Type I Incident training had included a week-long mountain rescue course that had put the fear of god in him. That was fine when you had to rappel down a cliff face or fetch someone off the side of Mount Hood. But Denali was a whole different matter. He was the monster, the tallest peak in North America. The death toll on his flanks was three to five a year, except when he was in a bad mood which was most years.

  Macy stood up from where she’d been inspecting the underside of the tail rotor as part of her pre-flight.

  “I don’t what?”

  “You don’t take tourists up—” He couldn’t even choke out the words as he pictured her dead on the ice fields of Denali wrapped up in a snarl of sheet metal that had once been a helicopter.

  She walked right up to him, fisted her hands on her hips, and stared up at him, “What if I do?”

  “Are you an idiot?” It exploded out of him. Tim never lost his temper, but imagining Macy doing something stupid— “Do you know how many people die trying to fly up—” Then he saw that smile of hers. She’d never been able to quite lock it down when teasing him, which had saved him from looking the fool not a single time in their entire history together. He still fell for it. “Crap!”

  She burst out laughing, finally layin
g a hand on his shoulder and shaking him a bit.

  “Oh,” she gasped out. “You should see your face.”

  “Double crap!”

  “You never could swear worth a damn, Harada.”

  “Triple crap!” he grinned down at her.

  “Shee-it!” she said in a way that would have made Akbar proud. “Tourists pay plenty for the scenic tour, but even I’m not crazy enough to fly them to the top. I have the high altitude rig for when mountain rescue places a call-out. I only go that high to save lives, not for dumb-ass joy rides.”

  “Still…” Tim could feel the nerves creep back up his spine.

  Macy cursed, grabbed his arm, and dragged him around to the right hand pilot’s door. She swung it open and fished out something from an inside pocket on the door and shoved it into his hands.

  He opened the thin leather book as she returned to inspecting the helo. It was a logbook, but on the first page were her certifications from the Mountain Rescue Association—she had a lot of them, her Denali Park Service on-call information, and the contact numbers for the National Incident Management System—the same one that called out MHA on fires. She was even drop-certified on forest fires.

  Tim flipped through the pages of the log as she continued her way around the helicopter. Mail run, mail run, tourist flight, tourist flight, rescue at Denali camp at seventeen thousand feet (wind forty knots / temp minus thirty), mail run, mail run, hunting party to Lake…

  Again, when she came back around the nose of the aircraft, it was as if he was seeing her for the first time. She kept changing on him so fast he was having trouble keeping up. Last night she’d been the little girl he’d missed. This morning a grown-up he could make no sense of. And now…

  For a moment, he saw the tall, slim woman with light skin and dark hair that floated off her shoulders. She wore dark sunglasses, but he knew her honey-brown eyes would be watching him even now because Macy never missed anything.

  He wasn’t comfortable seeing Macy Tyler as a beautiful woman, but now that he had, it was hard to stop. A flash of dragging her off into Heinrich’s barley field left him supremely uncomfortable.