Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9) Page 9

  They’d disowned Francine years before that.

  If she had any friends, they hadn’t surfaced.

  The evning was a minute-to-minute battle; constant vigilance that he didn’t let it overwhelm him again. The merry teasing of the girls made it easier. Mallory was joining in as well and Meaghan was staying close by her side.

  But for that, Francine. If you’d had even one friend so staunch, maybe…

  He shrugged it off for the hundredth time today.

  Sorry, sis, he thought for perhaps the thousandth.

  He’d been her only friend, her only shield. And he’d left.

  “Are we really gonna eat these things?” Callie was holding up the plastic pouch of an MRE like it was a dead fish.

  The sun had passed beyond the treetops and behind the massive peak of Mt. Hood. So even though it was still early in the evening, the clearing was heavily shadowed and the crackling fire offered more comfort than light.

  “I was kinda hungry, but now…”

  “Wimp!” Evan chided her. “What flavor did you get?”

  “Damn straight I’m a wimp,” she replied with a spunk that was easy to admire. “I got Southwest Beef and Black Beans. Why don’t you go hunt us up some raw elk with your bare hands?”

  “Hey, that’s one of the better menus: spiced apple pieces, turkey nuggets. Yum!”

  “You’re weird,” she wasn’t buying it.

  “Would you like some powdered hot chocolate with that?”

  “Some what?” Callie looked at him cross-eyed.

  “The Rook,” Krista said as she poked at the fire a bit, “has this thing for hot chocolate mix, with the marshmallows.”

  More cries of “Wimp!” and “Aww, what a cute little boy!” sounded around the fire. It was music to his ears, because it meant he hadn’t scared off the girls or slipped once again into some dark place without being aware of it.

  Then he thought about it and got Mallory in his peripheral vision but kept talking to the effervescent Callie.

  “No candy in that MRE menu, so you’re safe.”

  Callie looked at him like he was completely brain dead.

  “Seriously. Girls,” he raised his voice and put on his command voice. “Do not eat the candy if your MRE has one. Seriously bad luck.”

  His tease got the expected round of disbelief and scoffing, then Evan lowered his voice.

  “Superstition or not, there isn’t a Special Forces soldier out in the field will eat the candy out of an MRE. They used to be in most of the twenty-four menus, but the Army figured it out eventually, only eight of them still have any.”

  He didn’t often talk about what he’d been before. Like never.

  Then he let his gaze focus on Mallory on the other side of the crackling fire. And he spoke to her while not appearing to stay focused on her.

  “I spent six years in Afghanistan as a Special Forces Green Beret. I never ate a candy nor did any of the men in the ODA I commanded when they ultimately made me a captain. Five more years as a smokejumper, I still don’t eat it.”

  They were all looking at him in some form of surprise. A soft buzz circled the fire quickly.

  Krista was looking at him wide-eyed, whether at his past or that he’d revealed it, he couldn’t tell.

  At the moment he only cared about one girl’s response. I know things. I can help, he’d practically shouted at Mallory.

  Of the entire circle, she was the only one looking at him dead seriously. Slowly, as if it hurt her, she nodded once.

  He returned the nod just enough for her alone to see, then turned back to the group.

  “So seriously, don’t be eating the candy. Though I can really recommend the powdered hot chocolate if you got a Mexican menu.”

  That got the laugh he was looking for.

  # # #

  Evan had his knife and his own MRE out, Pork Sausage with Cream Gravy. Crap! He thought they’d discontinued that one. Then he saw that it had last year’s date on it. Well within the three-year shelf life, but ick! Powdered chocolate wasn’t going to be any help here. Even doing a half swap with someone else for ingredients to add wouldn’t make it more than barely palatable.

  “Hang on a minute on those MREs,” Krista called out.

  He could see that Krista was listening for something. He knew her every movement well enough now that the slightest tilt of her head was a major giveaway.

  He heard it before she did, but not by much; Krista was just that damned good in the woods.

  Horse. Horses. Four or five by the sound of them. Coming toward the opposite side of the clearing from their own approach.

  A string of horses wandered into camp. The first, a big tan gelding, was ridden by a long brunette in jeans and Western style shirt. She had a cowboy hat propped on her head. Behind her she led a string of horses.

  “Hi, Laura,” Krista called out. “Hey there, Mister Ed,” she addressed the horse.

  Evan waited half a moment to see if the horse answered and then shook his head to clear it.

  Several of the girls scrambled to their feet and headed over to greet the horses.

  Laura? This had to be Akbar’s wife. The wilderness guide.

  Damn, but they’d be an odd-looking couple. She was definitely taller and as slender as the lead smokejumper was broad shouldered. No way to see into anyone else’s relationship.

  Whatever she was like, he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt if she’d brought real food.

  “C’mon, Rook,” Krista’s voice called from somewhere among the milling women and horses. “Time to lend a hand. Last horse is yours.”

  Laura, astride the lead horse, warned him in a smooth voice, “Careful, Mister Ed isn’t real partial to men.”

  “How did he take to Akbar?” Evan patted the horse’s nose and only received a baleful look in return.

  “Not well,” she offered a merry giggle that didn’t sound as silly on her as it should have.

  He moved on down the line.

  The second horse was carrying several large coolers. The one behind it had a heavy set of saddlebags filled with, he squeezed one, and guessed apples and oranges and other treats. The last horse, a beautiful gray mare who nuzzled his pocket—causing him to double back and steal an apple for her from the proceeding horse—was burdened with chainsaws, fuel, and rappelling equipment.

  He laughed to himself. Krista was really running these girls through their paces. He unburdened the poor mare as fast as he could.

  # # #

  Krista woke the next morning to the bright roar of a chainsaw muffled by the surrounding trees.

  She was terribly disoriented for a moment.

  No matter where she turned, she couldn’t see fire or smell smoke.

  Nor could she see her lover. She’d been having this dream, of a handsome and naked Evan sleeping alongside her, his head on her shoulder, somehow convincing her she was beautiful and special. But the dream was fading rapidly and even the reality of Evan sleeping in just the next sleeping bag over was gone.

  He wasn’t there.

  Two dozen empty sleeping bags were ranged around her.

  Smokejumper camp. Right.

  She’d really been enjoying that dream, which must be the reason she hadn’t heard Evan and the girls getting up.

  Now she was blinking like an idiot in the post-dawn brightness.

  Barely post-dawn.

  Laura was gone, too.

  But her horses were still tethered at the edge of the clearing.

  Where were…her brain finally snapped to.

  After feasting on hotdogs and hamburgers, potato chips and S’mores, their campfire had gone long into the night. They’d burned up the stock of wood except for one lone log, both ends rough-cut by high school girls wielding Pulaskis, that sat lonely by the
blackened fire pit.

  Her man was off with a chainsaw so that they could cook breakfast. It made her feel all warm and—

  Then she heard the shift in tone. No longer just sawing away, it was the rapid shift back and forth of someone guiding a tree fall with the final angle of cut.

  Krista scrabbled into her boots, stuffed the laces into the boot tops and sprinted off toward the sounds.

  Just as she reached them, she saw it go.

  The tree was a foot across, fifty feet high, gray and barkless with death. None of its branches bore the least sign of green, most of the small branches were gone. A long-dead snag that hadn’t fallen.

  It crackled and smashed through the higher branches of its neighbors and then, inexorably, accelerated until it crashed into the duff with a heavy boom that she could feel as much through her boot heels as her ears.

  She’d arrived behind Evan, Laura had the girls standing well to the side of a fallen tree, at the safest angle and outside the possible fall zone. Each wore their hardhat and safety glasses.

  And Evan stood close beside the trunk, holding the idling saw as it ticked over slowly. His pants were covered in sawdust, but in a tight t-shirt, he made an amazing picture. Manly man doing manly things; she could practically see the girls swooning.

  Hell, she was practically swooning herself. How could the real man fully clothed be even more stunning than the naked one in her dream?

  “Don’t try this at home.” He finally choked off the saw and the silence was deafening. “It takes a lot of practice to drop a simple tree like this one safely. One like that,” he pointed with the blade of the saw up at a multiple snag—two leaners against a third, very old tree—“is called a widowmaker for a reason. I’d leave something like that piece of nasty to someone really skilled…like Krista.” And he turned around to aim that radiant smile at her.

  There was no way he could have heard her approach, but he knew she would be there. Had probably known that’s where she’d end up before he even yanked the saw’s starter cord.

  The girls all looked at her in awe. The ones who’d been standing back at a safe distance moved closer, and the rest of them who’d rushed in from the campsite joined them.

  Krista walked up beside Evan and barely resisted kissing the living daylights out of him right then and there. Instead she punched his arm hard enough to make him stagger—teach him to scare the crap out of her.

  “Actually,” she eyed the snag while the girls laughed, “on a fire, that snag is the kind of mess we hope burns up before we have to deal with it. That one is seriously dangerous. As a matter of fact, I don’t want anyone walking over there. It may have been that way for weeks or years and it could stand another decade—or another minute. There’s no way to tell.”

  “Well, we need some firewood if we want breakfast,” Evan called out. “So, who wants to learn how to run a saw?”

  Every hand in the group shot up.

  He pointed his blade at Meaghan…rather than Mallory. Not what Krista had expected, but she was guessing that Evan probably knew best.

  Some instinct had made Krista grab her hardhat and glasses, so she laced her boots and picked up the second saw that Evan had set off to the side. She waved Mallory forward and began using her as a live model for how to start and safely operate a saw.

  Laura soon organized another group to split the cut sections into firewood with their Pulaskis—not the best log splitting tools, but they did the job easily enough on this old wood. It wasn’t long before they had enough wood for a dozen campfires and it took multiple trips back to camp for everyone to transport the logs. As the last group headed off with heavy armloads, she snagged Evan.

  She planned on kissing him for being so wonderful.

  Instead, he grabbed her and shoved her back against a stout Doug fir on the side facing away from the girls. He drove against her: lips, hands, hips.

  In seconds he had her moaning with a desperate need for more. She had a leg, then two around his hips to keep him close, her arms locked around his neck.

  He kept her pinned against the rough bark, one hand scooped low to keep her from sliding downward, the other pressed so hard into her breast it would have hurt if it hadn’t felt so incredibly good.

  Some impossible eternity later, that was probably seconds but felt far longer, he backed off a half inch.

  His breath was as short and ragged as hers and her heart hammered louder than a full-on wildfire.

  “Good morning,” his voice was hoarse with need. He nuzzled her lips a moment longer and then nipped her ever so lightly on the nose.

  “Uh, hi!” she managed. “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Name it,” his dark eyes so close didn’t let her think before she spoke.

  “Can we arrange it so that you wake me up that way every morning?”

  “What? A chainsaw 101 class?” Another kiss deep enough to keep her body humming.

  “No,” a breathy whisper—what was happening to her? “I mean this.”

  “Sure. Always glad to do whatever the Master Sergeant commands.” Then he stroked his hands down her once, tracing every curve from neck to thigh and coaxing her to unlock her legs from around his waist.

  She felt disconnected from her limbs, lightheaded and dizzy.

  “Very glad to,” he made it a final murmur against her lips. “Now I better make sure they know how to start a fire without burning down the forest.” He headed back to camp whistling.

  Krista laid back against the tree’s bark—its roughness the only thing that kept her from sliding down onto the forest floor.

  # # #

  Evan knew nothing about the Oregon wilderness, except for the locales that had burned. The Zulies flew most of the West, covering Alaska to California from their Montana Base, but between the U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers in Redmond, Oregon and the elite contractor in the entire business—Mount Hood Aviation—there hadn’t been much call for him to come to the state. At least not until he’d gotten a job here.

  So, when Krista loaded them up with rappelling gear and bag lunches from Laura’s stash, he shrugged and went along with the ride.

  “When there’s a crisis,” Krista lectured as they trooped through the woods, “smokejumpers are first responders. On a wildfire, we’re what’s called a Type I Crew. In other words, the worse it is, the more likely they are to send us. But we can also be called out on flood relief, hurricanes, even oil spills.”

  “With my last outfit…” It still felt odd to refer to the Zulies in the past tense; he’d jumped with them for so long. “…I’ve done hiker search and rescue as well as jumping to downed aircraft that no one else can get to quickly.”

  “So, we need to know a lot about ropes and harnesses for safety work.”

  “Or if you get hung up in a tree while your jumping and need to lower yourself down.”

  That earned him a lot of surprised looks.

  “Sure, jumping near a fire, the winds are incredibly unpredictable.”

  “As the Rook found out on his first fire with me,” Krista teased him.

  “I didn’t land in a tree,” he protested.

  “No, he landed in the fire itself.”

  Which wasn’t entirely accurate about the jump but was dead on when it came to Krista. He’d definitely landed in something wonderful and intense…and potentially incendiary if he didn’t get her alone soon. So, he gave a “you caught me” shrug which had the girls laughing.

  “We’re going to teach you some basic rope work,” Krista stopped at a long grassy slope. It was steep enough that it would be hard work to walk on, but if you fell you wouldn’t roll very far.

  They spent the rest of the morning with one end of the ropes tied off to a line of stout trees and the other through the brake on their rappelling harnesses. They got to the point where they were quite comfortable movin
g up and down the slope. Standing perpendicular to the slope they were steeply tipped from normal gravity, but they learned how to trust the equipment and work from those positions.

  Thankfully it was a shadowed slope, because the rope practice was an intense workout and the sun was bright and warm. The girls would have cooked their brains if they did all this exercise in the sun.

  Then after a lunch of MREs—which elicited all of the surprise and complaints he’d expected—Krista led them to a steep wall. The cliff wasn’t vertical, but it would be a very hard wall to free climb and even harder to descend. It was less than a hundred feet, but to them it must have looked like a thousand.

  Much to his surprise, after some initial hesitation, they all made their way down walking slowly backwards down the wall, practically lying flat in relation to gravity.

  The excited cheering grew with each person who made it down until he was the only one left at the top of the ridge. He released and tossed each rope down except for one.

  Over the very steepest section of the cliff, he doubled the last rope around a tree trunk rather than tying it off to one. He ran the two lines through the rings on his harness and knotted both ends so that he didn’t rappel past the end of the ropes even though they were lying on the ground when he tossed them down.

  “Clear below,” he shouted down the cliff. They all backed away to the edges of the small clearing between the cliff base and the stream running down the valley; twenty faces staring up at him from beneath their hardhats.

  Once he was sure they were clear, he did a Special Forces rappel. Kick hard off the cliff; let the rope fly. Cinch it to slow down just before swinging back to the cliff face. Time the next two-footed kick so that he didn’t lose any momentum; let the rope fly again.