Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9) Page 5

  “You aren’t gone scary yet, Evan. But you gotta ease back. You keep driving like you are and you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  If he hurt himself, that would take others off the fire to assist him. If he hurt someone else in the process…

  Unacceptable, soldier!

  “I’ll…” what? “Fix it, Akbar. Sorry to spook you.”

  “Long way from spooking me, Rookie,” Akbar slapped his shoulder cheerfully. “Just consider this my early warning system. For spooky you gotta meet my wife,” his laugh was always easy and twice his size. He went back to rolling hose.

  “Unpredictable?” Evan struggled to catch his breath, to focus on something other than his one fear.

  “Duh! Woman married me of all damn fool things to do.” Akbar picked up the sixty-pound Mark III water pump as if it weighed nothing. He carried it to the stack of gear they’d been mounding near the helispot where an MHA helicopter would land to clear all of their equipment off the hillside. “She got me to stop dead in my tracks and never look back. If that ain’t some kinda spooky magic, nothing is.”

  That wasn’t the kind of problem Evan was having. He wasn’t fighting his attraction to Krista. He was in pitched battle against bringing his shit into her world. That first taste of her had turned an idle curiosity into a heap of need that was fast burning up his insides.

  Well, hiding sure as hell wasn’t working. It was like he’d forgotten his training. Green Berets don’t hide from problems, they fix ‘em.

  Time to fix this, Ev.

  # # #

  Krista sat on the floor, slouching against the rear bulkhead of the DC-3, and tried to let her body unwind. The return flight from the Deerness Fire to MHA’s base up at Mount Hood was only about three hours. Most of the smokies had crashed into sleep the minute they were aboard, some stretched out on the floor, others atop lumpy piles of gear. That opened up enough of the sideways facing seats down one side of the hull for others to stretch out there.

  Krista had landed sitting beside the jump door, and Evan against the back of the pilot’s seat at the far end of the plane.

  She’d considered being hurt, the way Evan had backed away from her. Considered it seriously even though she was so used to it. School dances, county fairs, boys never approaching her.

  But then she’d watched how Evan Greene attacked the fire. This was a big, powerful man battling some serious issues. And she could only respect the way he did it, by working so damn hard that he was forcing other MHA crew to struggle to keep up.

  It was kind of funny that maybe she’d so messed with a man’s head that he was turning from a good firefighter into a great one. She didn’t have that kind of effect on guys. They jumped her or she jumped them, they had a good time for as long as it lasted, and they were done.

  But Evan had something else happening and she could tell it wasn’t just about her, so she’d let it run a while.

  He read fire as well as the next five-year smokie, but he fought it like only she and Akbar could—with a tireless efficiency that pushed right past physical limits as if they weren’t even there. Probably his soldier training. Even Ox didn’t have that level of discipline, he simply had such a deep capacity that he could keep up.

  But whatever drove Evan, she was starting to be ticked that it seemed to be driving him away from her rather than towards.

  Whatever demons were biting his ass didn’t scare her, they were his demons after all, not hers. And, she had to admit to herself that she liked that about him. Johnny Q. Boring, Mr. Enlightened and well-rounded, “I know who I am,” never did anything for her. Oh, they could be fun for a tumble; but the dark-and-broody soldier guy? That made Evan…interesting.

  “He doesn’t do something about it soon, I will,” she muttered to herself.

  “Ha!” Akbar had been slouched against the rear bulkhead close beside her, but she’d thought he was asleep. “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?” she knew her attempt to sound innocent was lame. She’d never gotten away with it before. She’d tried, like after gluing the school quarterback’s locker shut with industrial adhesive from the auto shop, with the quarterback inside—in payment for how he was treating the cheerleaders. Rather than being thankful, they had all flocked to the jerk’s defense. Then when they’d found out she’d been the one—real tough, she was the only person bigger than he was in the school and she’d been lousy at protesting her innocence—they’d ostracized her even more than she already was.

  “No way,” Akbar sounded totally pleased with himself. “I’m not copping on a bro, but now I get what’s going on.”

  “Careful or I’ll rename you Johnny the Dweeb and I’ll make it stick.” Her failed attempts to look away from the sleeping rookie wasn’t helping her claims of innocence any.

  “You can’t,” Akbar didn’t sound the least worried. “It’s my name.”

  “Soon to be Johnny the Dweeb,” she threatened. But he was right. Johnny Akbar Jepps’ middle name actually meant “great,” so Akbar the Great was technically redundant. And he was a great firefighter even if he now owed her three beers for better parachute landings and she only owed him one.

  “I can tell you this though,” Akbar shifted into a more comfortable position and shut his eyes. “Only one way you’re gonna find out what’s driving him. Gotta get up close and personal for that, just like I did with Laura.”

  “You went after her like a lovesick bull calf.”

  “Yep,” he agreed sleepily. “And look where it got me.”

  Krista considered the advice and decided it was one of the smarter things Akbar had ever said. She wasn’t interested in anything permanent, but Evan Greene was one of those guys that was permanently interesting. She considered thanking Akbar, but his breathing had shifted into a soft snore.

  He was smiling in his sleep.

  Laura had definitely done something strange to him.

  Chapter 5

  They’d left the Deerness Fire shortly after dawn. From fire to airport by helo then DC-3 back to base.

  Evan had brooded on Akbar’s advice for the entire flight back and come to only one conclusion—he’d been a total chicken shit. No wonder he was feeling so pissed at the world; he wasn’t being honest.

  Fix that now, soldier. But circumstance didn’t lend him any opportunity.

  After landing on the grass-strip runway at the MHA base, they unloaded several tons of crap. Then everyone pitched in to clean, organize, repack chutes, and reset all of their gear into the speed racks. The base might be set up in an old, rundown boys’ camp with a grass runway down the middle, but the gear was top flight and was always maintained in perfect condition first, no matter how tired they were.

  Evan passed Krista half a hundred times, but she was always going the other way, or one of them was loaded down.

  His frustration was climbing with each passage. The only way he was going to be able to fix the problem as he’d promised Akbar was to get Krista alone and apologize properly. And that just wasn’t happening.

  Then everyone hit the showers.

  It was coming up noon by the time he was clean.

  The guys got him to go back in to scrub off a missed spot on his back several times before he caught on that they were just messing with him. Damn it! He was even reacting like a rookie.

  They got a good laugh and he felt even stupider than he already did.

  In the Green Berets, SFG was supposed to stand for Special Forces Group, not for being such a Stupid Fucking Goon that you fell for every stupid ass…

  He took a deep breath. Green Berets were the guys they sent to build peace in the villages and to build relationships to support the counter-insurgency; he’d been one of the very best at it. His ODA had ferreted out more terrorists than anyone except maybe Delta Force because of how smoothly they worked with the Afghan civilians.


  And here he was wound up like an idiot…rookie!

  He deserved the goddamn name.

  Mark Henderson, the MHA Incident Commander, declared the rest of the day off. No fire calls until tomorrow. After fourteen days on fire, it wasn’t very generous, but based on the cheers, the crews were psyched anyway. Everyone except for him. And he knew that was only because his mood sucked at the moment.

  They stampeded to the parking lot and headed down into the town of Hood River perched on the edge of the Columbia Gorge. They were going to hit the Doghouse Inn, the smokejumper bar they’d introduced him to during training and try to pick up some windsurfers. It was a great dive, one of the best he’d ever been in, but he totally wasn’t in the mood.

  So he stood there and watched the gravel fly as battered pickups and over-powered muscle cars ripped out of the parking lot. He didn’t know what Krista drove, but he stood there until the parking lot quieted and the first birds were daring to call out tentatively, testing the abrupt silence after the noontime mayhem.

  He’d missed her again. Well, following her to the Doghouse was just going to place him in the same unmanageable crowd.

  “Shit!” he muttered softly to himself, the calling bird, and anyone else who was listening.

  He spun on his heel and walked smack into her. Krista had come up not two feet behind him wearing running shoes, worn jeans, and a stretched t-shirt that proclaimed, “Wildland firefighters do it in the wild.”

  “Goddamn it!” he stumbled back a step, then another. “How in the hell do you keep sneaking up on me?” And why was he yelling at the woman he’d just spent the entire flight trying to figure out how to talk rationally to.

  “Hello yourself.” She was smiling at him. “Pretty day, isn’t it? How are you? Pissed at the universe? Really? What a shocker.”

  He growled. It was all he was capable of.

  “So, why are you looking for me?”

  “How did you…” Because he was that obvious. Evan closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then to twenty. He considered going for thirty but it wasn’t helping.

  He opened his eyes and she hadn’t moved. Still had that smile that made her look so damn good, and like she knew shit that the rest of the universe didn’t.

  “Look, I’m sorry about—”

  “Yeah, you said that before. Dumb thing to say. Try again.”

  He clenched his fists to try and keep still. To hold his focus. Clenched them until his fingers throbbed. Bore down as if he was lifting a heavy weight and…it wasn’t doing any more good than the counting had.

  Evan turned and walked off across the gravel parking lot. Maybe he’d just crawl into his Toyota pickup and drive back to Montana, see if he could still get a slot with the Zulies.

  This time he heard her, trotting lightly over the gravel behind him, but making far less noise than she should in the process.

  “Hey, Evan. Slow down there.”

  He walked past his truck. Maybe he’d just walk back to Montana. But when he hit the turn in the dirt road that led down the mountain, he walked straight across it into the trees. He’d always felt at home in the trees; something he’d missed desperately in Afghanistan. Even when they had forests there, they made no sense—thick holly and oak atop the ridges, and thinning down or gone in the desert-dry valleys.

  A couple hundred yards downslope past the road he found a log. A big tree, a Doug fir that was a good four feet in diameter. It had toppled to the forest floor and buried itself halfway into the duff. Too weary to go further he sat and faced outward farther into the shadowy woods.

  A small stream, probably glacier cold, ran nearby splashing brightly over stones and ducking under fallen tree limbs. It rested a brief time in a pool a dozen feet across, then continued on its way. Surrounding it were mature spruce and pin oak, no alder, a lot of detritus carpeting the ground; it had been a long time since there was a fire here.

  He sat…and waited.

  As silent as a deer, Krista moved up beside him and sat just a hand’s breadth away.

  He’d run dry. Had no idea what to say.

  So he just sat.

  # # #

  Krista was puzzled by Evan. He wasn’t just avoiding her. He was hurting, but not in any way she recognized.

  So she sat on the log beside him and tried to puzzle it out.

  When a rookie—a true rookie, not someone as massively skilled as Evan—couldn’t break through on a new skill, they’d internalize it until it became a canker sore. If she couldn’t find a way to dig it out or break through, the rookie was just gonna get stuck, maybe permanently.

  Krista had also watched candidates make it through the entire training and then freeze at the door on their first fire jump after dozens of practice ones. Never get past it.

  Or stand in front of their first big fire and get so hypnotized by the flames that they would have stood there gaping until the fire burned right over them.

  But Evan wasn’t like any of those, so Krista didn’t even know where to begin to help. And she really did want to help. Maybe, for a change, she could stop teasing him and actually answer some of his questions.

  “I grew up here,” Krista finally spoke and it was hard.

  There were memories she didn’t want to relive because she couldn’t get them back. Pop was gone and had taken all of the good memories with him.

  “Not here, but in the forest. North of here. Pop built fine furniture using wood off the land. My first and best memories were tramping through the woods looking for just the right piece. Could take us days. Then when we found it, I’d run home and fetch Charlie, a big roan gelding. We’d drag the log back to this milling saw we had. Pop cut his own lumber, shaped and formed it. I was never much at woodworking, but I loved the forest and I could track down a good fall like nobody’s business.”

  “That doesn’t explain how you’re so quiet in the woods?” His voice was rough when he finally spoke.

  “We were pretty broke, so most of our food came from the forest. Pop was a felon, grand theft auto as a kid. Just some joy ride that crossed four state lines before he totaled the car. Law says felon equals no guns. We did bow hunting: deer, elk, got a bear once. Rabbit, even duck. I learned how to be silent there,” that silence was something they shared.

  And Krista loved the forest, could never get out in it enough. Didn’t matter if they’d just spent a week or a month on a fire, she was always happiest walking beneath the trees.

  “Where did you learn to be so damn quiet?” she asked him.

  “Fort Bragg, North Carolina,” his voice was still dull. Monotone. “And three consecutive tours overseas, long ones.”

  “Knew you were military, didn’t know you drew that card.”

  “Volunteered. Special Forces. Green Beret.”

  Krista didn’t know what to say. A number of boys from her high school had gone military to get out of Concrete. They’d all come back. A few in a box, most of the others just…changed and not all of those in a good way.

  She inspected Evan’s profile, but there was no clue there.

  He continued to stare steadfastedly straight ahead.

  “Well, at least that explains why you’re so damn good at what you do. You’ve definitely got the skills.”

  “Even if I don’t have a name.” There was a small spark of humor; the first she’d heard since the Mt. Rainier fire. She’d take that as a good sign.

  “Haven’t pinned you down yet, Rook.”

  His smile was perfunctory, his nod small, his gaze distant.

  “But that’s not what’s eating at you. So what is?”

  He just shook his head.

  She hit him. She bunched her fist and drove it into his arm. Krista had leveled assholes in a bar with that blow, had taught the auto shop teacher exactly what you didn’t do to high school girls. Taught him so well he’d
left Concrete that night and never come back.

  Evan had kissed her then avoided her. Fine. But he didn’t get to ignore her when she was sitting right here.

  Even as she fired off the blow, Evan snapped out a hand so fast that she couldn’t see the move though she was looking right at him.

  One moment she was millimeters from punching him hard enough to send him tumbling off the log.

  The next, his massive hand was wrapped around her wrist. He didn’t knock her blow aside, he simply absorbed the full force of it with that grab. Then he didn’t lever her wrist to take her down, though she could feel just how effortlessly he could do that. She was strong, but he was in a whole other category.

  “Sorry, reflexes.” He held her wrist a second, maybe two, then let go.

  “You’ve got a problem, Rook.” She massaged her wrist, not that he’d hurt it, but rather to feel the impossible power and speed Evan had exhibited. She’d never seen anything like it. Of course she’d never met a six-year Special Forces vet before either.

  “I got problems?” He nodded. “Yeah, I knew that much.”

  “If Akbar’s right, the problem is me.”

  That got his attention.

  He spun to look at her for the first time. His dark eyes had often tracked her from a distance. She could feel the heat of his look even when she was close against a fire. Now it was high noon and despite them sitting a hundred yards into thickly shadowed woods, his dark eyes were clear and bright as crystal. A shade of brown as beautiful as a hundred-year oak.

  “Not you. God, Krista, not you. That’s what I’m sorry for. The problem is all me.”

  Krista cricked her neck. Not her? Some part of her had known it was the too-tall, too-broad, too-strong girl. And a part of her that she’d thought had accepted that truth back in high school, still wallowed in humiliation deep down inside.

  Not her?

  Evan was sitting still once more, so still he almost disappeared into the forest right before her eyes. Except for those eyes. They might be the color of the forest, but they were so brilliant and so alive.