Chapter 1
If they started running now, they just might make the lake before the fire consumed them.
At least that’s what Reuben Marshall’s gut said when the wind shifted and rustled the seared hairs on the back of his neck, strained and tight from three days of cutting line through a stand of black spruce as thick as night.
After a week, the fire in the Kootenai National Forest had consumed nearly twelve hundred acres. And as of breakfast this morning, his team of smokejumpers, as well as hotshot and wildland firefighter teams from all over Montana and Idaho, had only nicked it down to sixty percent contained.
Now the fire turned from a low crackle to a growl behind him, hungry for the forest on the other side of the twenty-foot line that his crew—Pete, CJ, and Hannah—had scratched out of the forest, widening an already cleared service road. CJ and Hannah were swamping for Reuben as he mowed down trees, clearing brush. Between the two of them, they worked like an entire crew, still determined to prove themselves. Pete worked cleanup, digging the line down to the mineral soil.
Reuben’s eyes watered, his throat charred from eating fire as he angled his saw into the towering spruce—one more tree felled and it would keep the fire from jumping the line or candling from treetop to treetop.
Chips hit his safety glasses, pinged against his yellow Nomex shirt, his canvas pants. His shoulders burned, his arms one constant vibration.
In another hour they’d hook up with the other half of their crew—Jed, Conner, Ned, Riley, and Tucker—dragging a line along the lip of forest road that served as their burnout line. They would light a fire of their own to consume all the fuel between the line and the active fire and drive the blaze to Fountain Lake.
The dragon would lie down and die.
At least that seemed the ambitious but attainable plan that his crew boss, Jed, had outlined this morning over a breakfast of MRE eggs and protein bars. While listening, Reuben had poured three instant coffee packs into one cup of water and tossed the sludge down in one gulp.
Deep in his gut, Reuben had expected trouble when the wind quietly kicked up early this morning, rousing the team tucked in their coyote camp—a pocket of preburned space, their safety zone on the bottom of the canyon near a trickle of river. Already blackened, the zone shouldn’t reignite, but it left ashy debris on Reuben, the soot probably turning his dark-brown hair to gray under his orange hard hat. His entire team resembled extras on the Walking Dead.
He felt like it too—a zombie, barely alive, fatigue a lining under his skin. Ash, sawdust, and the fibers of the forest coated his lips despite his efforts to keep his handkerchief over his mouth.
They’d worked in the furnace all day, the flame lengths twenty to thirty feet behind them, climbing up aspen and white pine, settling down into the crackling loam of the forest, consuming bushes in a flare of heat. But with the bombers overhead dropping slurry, the fire sizzled and roared, dying slowly.
He’d watched them—the Russian biplane AN2, which scooped water from the lake, and the Airtractor AT, dropping red slurry from its white belly. And, way overhead the C-130 circled for another pass, a loaner from the National Guard.
Reuben wondered which one Gilly piloted—a random thought that he shoved away. But not before imagining her, dark auburn hair tied back and cascading out of her baseball cap, aviator glasses over her freckled nose. Petite at just over five feet, the woman had don’t quit written all over her when she climbed into a cockpit.
But it did him no good to let his thoughts anchor upon a woman he could barely manage to speak to. Not that he had any chance with her anyway.
Keep his head down, keep working—wasn’t that what his father had always said?
They all had expected the Fountain Lake fire to fizzle out with their efforts.
Until the wind shifted. Again.
And that’s when the fine hairs of Reuben’s neck stood on end, his gut began to roil.
He finished the cut, released his blade from the trunk of the tree, hollered “Clear!,” then stepped back as the massive tree lurched, crashed into the blazing forest.
The fire roared, a locomotive heading their direction.
It seemed Pete, twenty feet behind, hadn’t yet alerted to the shift. Reuben couldn’t account for why his gut always seemed to clench with a second sense that scented danger. The last time he’d felt it, he’d known in his bones that teammates were going to die.
And they had.
Not again.
Reuben did a quick calculation. They’d completed about twenty-four chain lengths in the last six hours, about a quarter mile from the safety zone. They could run back to their strike camp in the burned-out section—a theoretical safe zone.
However, he’d known forests to reignite, especially loam that had flashed over quickly, hadn’t scorched the land down to the soil. There was plenty of fuel to burn in the so-called safe zone if the fire got serious. Not to mention the air, searing hot in their lungs as it cycloned through the area.
If they turned and ran another hundred yards along the uncleared forest service road, they’d be over halfway to the lake, less than a half mile away.
But they’d be running into unburned forest with nowhere to hunker down if the fire overtook them.
Reuben listened for, but couldn’t hear, the other team’s saws.
Through the charred trees, the sun backdropped the hazy gray of the late afternoon, a thin, blood-red line along the far horizon.
Jed’s voice crackled over their radios. “Ransom, Brooks. We’re battling some flare-ups here, and the fire just kicked up. How’s your position?”
Reuben watched Pete toggle his radio, gauging the wind.
“Must be the lake effect. She’s still sitting down here,” Pete said.
Reuben frowned, nearly reaching for his own radio. But, despite his instincts, Pete was right. Except for a few flare-ups, the fire behind them seemed to be slow moving.
Maybe—
“Right,” Jed said, confirming Pete’s unspoken conclusion that they were safe. “Just don’t turn into heroes. Remember your escape route. To the fire, you’re just more fuel. We’re going to start bugging out to the lake.”
Which, probably, was what they should be doing, too.
As if reading his mind, Pete glanced up at Reuben. For a second, memory played in Pete’s eyes.
Only he, Pete, and Conner had survived being overrun nearly a year ago in a blaze that killed seven of their team, including their jump boss, Jock Burns.
That had been a case of confusion, conflicting orders, and hotshots and smokejumpers running out of time. Fingers had been pointed, blame assigned.
The what-ifs still simmered in low conversations through their small town of Ember, Montana. Thankfully, this summer had been—well, mostly—injury free.
Reuben wanted to keep it that way. But if their safety zone wasn’t completely burned to the ground, it could reignite around them, trap them.
If they left now, they could probably make the lake. But what if the fire jumped the road, caught them in the middle of a flare-up?
If Reuben should mutter his suggestion, he could end up getting them all killed. And if he was wrong, God wouldn’t exactly show up to rescue him.
Reuben couldn’t help shooting a look back at Hannah and CJ, still working, unaware of the radio communication.
Sparks lifted, spurted out of the forest, across the line, lighting spot fires near the edge of the road. Reuben ran over, stomped one out, threw water from his pack on another.
Pete joined him. “We’ll head back to the black.”
Reuben glanced at the route. Clear, for now.
“Roger,” he said.
Pete yelled to CJ and Hannah as Reuben shouldered his saw, started jogging along the road to their safety zone. The air swam with billowing dust and smoke. His eyes watered, his nose thick with mucus.
Why is being a smokejumper so important to you? His brother’s words of disbelief after their father’s funeral smarted in his brain.
Why indeed? Reuben coughed as he ran, a blast of superheated air sideswiping him, peeling a layer of sweat down his face. Sane people had normal jobs—like ranching or even coaching football. They didn’t bed down in ash, drink coffee as thick as battery acid, smell like gas and oil and soot, and run toward a fire, hoping to find refuge.
If Reuben lived through this, he’d take a serious look at the answer.
Behind him, he heard Pete yelling to CJ and Hannah. “We’re not on a scenic hike! Move it!”
Around them, sparks lit the air, the roar of the fire rumbling in the distance.
We should be running the other direction. The thought had claws around his throat.
As if in confirmation, a coal-black cloud rolled down the road, directly from their safety zone, a billow of heat and gas.
Reuben stopped cold.
Jed’s voice burst through the radio, choppy, as if he might be running hard. “Pete. The fire’s jumped the road. Head to the black right now.”
Except the black—their safety zone—was engulfed in smoke, embers, and enough trapped poisonous gases to suffocate them.
Reuben whirled around and Hannah nearly ran him over. He caught her arm. “Not that way!”
Pete ran up to him. He still held his Pulaski, his face blackened behind his handkerchief, eyes wide, breathing too hard. “We’re trapped.”
Reuben stifled a word of frustration.
He knew it—he should have said something. But again, he’d kept his mouth shut, and people—his people—would die.
He glanced at Pete who was staring down the road, at the flames behind him. Pete shot a look at Reuben and nodded.
The past would not repeat itself today.
Reuben toggled his radio, searched the sky. “Gilly? You up there?”
Please. He might not be able to talk to her face-to-face in the open room of the Ember Hotline Saloon and Grill, but that wasn’t a matter of life and death.
“Priest, Marshall. I’m here. Starting my last run right now—”
“Belay that. We’re making a dash for the lake and we need you to lay down retardant along the forest road. We’re about one click out, but the fire jumped the road a quarter mile in.”
Static. Then, “Roger that, Rube. I’ll find you. Start running.”
Pete had taken off with CJ, running along the still-green fire road toward the lake, some five hundred yards away.
“You miss this, we’re trapped, Gilly.” Reuben started running, still holding his saw.
More static, and probably he shouldn’t have said that because Hannah, jogging beside him, looked at him, her eyes wide.
He didn’t want to scare her, but they couldn’t exactly run through a forest engulfed in flame. If Gilly could drop water or retardant on the road, it might settle the fire down enough for them to break through, all the way to the lake.
The fire chased them, crowning through the trees, sending limbs airborne, felling trees. Sparks swirled in the air, so hot he thought his lungs might burst.
A black spruce exploded just to his right and with it, a tree arched, thundered to the ground, blocking the road.
Flames ran up the trunk, out to the shaggy arms, igniting the forest on the other side.
Hannah screamed, jerked back just in time.
Pete and CJ had cleared the tree. The flames rippled across it onto the other side of the road, into the forest, a river of fire.
“We’re trapped!” Hannah screamed.
Reuben grabbed his backpack of water and began to douse the fire, working his way to the trunk. “C’mon Hannah—let’s kill this thing!”
She unhooked her line, added water to the flames. The fire died around the middle, the rest of the tree still burning.
Reuben grabbed his saw, dove into the trunk.
Sweat beaded down his back, his body straining as he bore down—faster! He could do this—he’d once won a chainsaw competition by sawing through a log the size of a tire in less than a minute.
The saw chewed through the wood, cleared the bottom.
He started another cut, a shoulder-width away, from the bottom. “More water, Hannah!” The flames flashed up toward him.
He turned his face away, let out a yell against the heat. Then hot, blessed water sprinkled his skin as Hannah used the rest of her water to bank the flames.
The saw churned against a branch. “Use my water!”
She grabbed his hose, leveled it on the fire biting at the branches, the bark.
The fire had doubled back along the top, relit the branches around him. He gritted his teeth, standing in the furnace, fighting the saw.
Don’t get stuck.
He broke free, the wood parting like butter.
The stump fell to the ground, an escape through the trunk. Reuben grabbed Hannah and pushed her through, commandeering the hose and dousing the flames with the last of his water.
Pete and CJ, on the other side, had banked the flames with the last of the water in their canisters.
Ahead of them, the fire edged the road—beyond, a wall of flame barred their escape.
Reuben dropped his saw. “We can’t deploy here. We’ll die.”
He looked up into the sky, saw nothing but gray, hazy smoke.
He scooped his radio from his belt. “Gilly, where are you?”
Nothing. He looked at Pete with eyes blurry from smoke and ash. Hannah was working out her shake-and-bake fire shelter—he didn’t have the heart to repeat himself. CJ had run ahead, as if looking for a way out.
They had a minute—or less—to live.
“Gilly,” he said into the walkie, not sure if she could hear him. His voice emerged strangely distant, vacant.
Void of the screaming going on inside his head.
“If you don’t drop right now, we die.”
Her first day officially flying bomber planes just might be her last.
“Tanker Five-Three, and I’m talking to you, Gilly, abort. I say again, abort. Alter course northward and climb. The wind gusts are too strong.”
The voice came through the radio—their lead plane pilot, Neil “Beck” Beckett—and he sounded just on the edge of furious.
If she could, Gilly would shut the radio off. Having their lead plane pilot Beck bellowing in her headphones did nothing for her focus as she held her course into the canyon, her flaps extended, aiming directly for the road.
Nobody died today. Not if she could rescue them.
Best case scenario, air command grounded her. But if her smokejumpers survived, she’d gladly spend the rest of the summer turning a wrench and gassing tankers at the Ember Fire Base, home of the Jude County Wildland Firefighters.
Gilly toggled the radio switch. “No go, Lead Four. I’m already in the neighborhood.”
“You’re going to kill us,” Jared, her copilot, snapped. “Just because you’ve been flying smokejumpers around for years doesn’t mean you can handle a bomber.”
“No, I’m not.”
Except during the last pass she’d taken, searching for the road Reuben had frantically described, the super-heated wind roiling out of the canyon had nearly flipped the plane. She’d barely missed trees as she pitched the plane up, fighting the washboard turbulence that seemed strong enough to rattle the teeth from her mouth.
When they hit the blue sky, her heart restarted.
Now, as she banked, headed around for another run, Jared used a word her pastor father wouldn’t approve of and actually made a grab for the controls. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Those are my jumpers down there.”
“You know these wings could rip right off—I’ve seen it happen. This old Russian Annie is a tin can of rivets and patches. If we go down there again, we die.”
“If we don’t, our friends die,” she said, her voice tight. “We’ve already had too many close calls this summer.” She didn’t bring up the tragedy from last fall, the one that killed seven smokejumpers.
The price of living in a wildland firefighting town—you grew up with and knew the people who put their lives on the line. Friends who died gruesome, horrific deaths when the flames trapped them.
She might not be a smokejumper, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t down there with her team. She’d dropped them off—and she planned on getting them all back in one piece.
“Stop and think for a second before you get us killed!” Jared snarled, finally fighting on her team to control the plane as it bucked and kicked its way into the canyon. “What are you trying to prove?”
That was a question for a different day. But even if she hadn’t made it as a jumper, she did possess one talent that might keep her friends alive.
She wasn’t afraid to fly into what felt like hell to save the people she loved.
“I’m going to bring us along the edge, then bank right, use the left rudder and slide slip down into the canyon. That way we’ll avoid the gusts coming from the center of the fire. Then I’ll bank hard again and release the load, roll right, and we’ll fly out back over the ridge. Okay?”
She didn’t look at Jared, her gaze instead on the fifty-plus-foot trees near the summit of the ridge. They crowned with brilliant red flame, the fire most definitely having jumped the service road.
Heat enveloped the plane, the smoke black, blinding. The controls of the old Russian tanker shimmied in her grip as she forced the plane through the ridgeline updrafts. Jared’s words flashed in her brain. She’d seen bombers—especially the old DC-6s—come apart under the violent gusts of a fire, and Jared was right. The forty-year-old plane had seen better years.
The world’s largest single-engine biplane, the Annie was made to survive in the Siberian wilderness. But it was all they had, and frankly, she would have flapped her arms carrying a bucket of water if it meant saving lives.
“Gilly, clearly you’re not listening.” Beck snapped over the radio. “But you’re flying blind up there. Let me help you—I’ll tell you when to release.”
She found his little lead plane, an OV-10 Bronco, off her right side. She could nearly make him out in the observation canopy, probably glaring at her.
“Roger, but we need it right in the pocket, Beck.”
She glanced at her airspeed—one hundred forty-five knots. Slow enough to spread out her drop, make it effective enough for Reuben and the team to escape, but hopefully fast enough for the kinetic energy to affect her lift and bank.
But it wouldn’t work at all, however, if she lost a wing.
Please, God.
She wasn’t ashamed to pray for help, especially when it meant saving others.
“Ready, Jared?” He’d better have his hand on the red release button.
She spotted the road, downslope three hundred yards ahead. Flames engulfed it, and a fist hit her gut as she nudged the rudder left. The plane slid down the ridgeline—too fast, perhaps—but she suddenly leveled out and aimed for the road.
A washboard of air currents jolted hard, ramming them against their restraints, tightened down so hard she might have the seat folds imprinted in her bones.
Her stomach rose to her throat, filled it with bile. C’mon, Annie, hold together. The air inside the cockpit reeked of campfire, burning resin, and oils.
From the air, the breadth of the fire could turn her weak. As she flew along the edge of the ridge, flame and ash, gray and black smoke billowed into the blue sky now bruised with the fading sun. Below in the canyon, a pit of ashes glowed red, as if the land had been raked by the breath of a dragon. It cast an eerie aura into the twilight.
And into that furnace ran her people.
Gilly glanced at her instruments.
“You’re nearly there, Five-Three—” Beck’s voice, steady in her ear.
“Ten seconds, Jared,” she said, her eyes on the road, the finest parting of forest before smoke obscured it.
Please, God, let me hit this right.
She counted down, then, “Now!”
Her words echoed Beck’s, and Jared thumbed the drop switch.
The AN-2 released her load onto the forest. A plume of white smoke rose, engulfing them, and the windscreen turned white.
Jared let out a word, that yes, put a fine point on the fact they could be aiming straight for a mountain ridge and not know it.
“Help me with the yoke!” Gilly pulsed it back as she goosed the throttle.
The heated air shuddered the plane, the updrafts throwing it into a roll. The airplane shook with such violence, she couldn’t make out the instruments. She banked hard, flying blind while her plane rattled apart around her.
“Five-Three, I’ve lost you!” Beck’s voice.
Gilly fought to hold her bank into the blue, but the wind currents raked the plane, the airframe whining.
“She’s coming apart!”
With a shriek, the metal twisted. The aircraft recoiled in the air, as if jolted.
“We hit something!”
Maybe. Whatever happened, they’d lost lift on the right side, the plane pitching over. She rolled the yoke to counter, her brain fighting through checklists to keep them airborne. “Check the wing!”
Jared stared out the window. “It’s the lower right wing—it’s partially sheared off and dangling!”
Which meant, with the weight and drag, the entire wing might detach.
“METO power on—all the way, Jared! We need to get out of this chop.” Probably he’d already turned the “maximum except takeoff” setting on full.
Her arms ached with the tension of holding the plane out of the roll. They burst out into a patch of blue, and for a second she got a good look at their tragedy. The lower right wing of the biplane lay in shreds, probably caught on one of the flaming lodgepole pines at the top of the ridge.
They didn’t have enough lift to keep climbing out of the canyon.
But they might make the lake. Over the ridge and back into the canyon, she could practically cut the engine and glide them in.
With the plane on floats, she could save the plane.
“We’re setting her down in Fountain Lake.”
“What? You’re crazy, Gilly Priest. On a bright sunny day, maybe, with the wind at our back. But you’re already fighting to stay at altitude. We’ll never make it over the ridge.”
“We’re going down the other side, through the—”
“Don’t say fire.”
She looked at him. A three-year veteran, Jared was used to flying bigger planes, like the Lockheed Hercules 130, the kind that dropped slurry from higher altitudes with double engines and multiple loads, so if they didn’t get it right the first time...
But Gilly preferred the smaller, more aerodynamic planes like her Otter, which she used for dropping off her jumpers.
“We can do this,” she said.
“Have you lost your mind? Even if we survive another run into the canyon without busting apart, the sun is nearly down—there’s no way you’ll be able to judge the distance to land on the water. Please stop trying to kill us!” Jared unstrapped himself.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m jumping. There’s a reason we have chutes—”
“We’re not jumping.” She said it quietly, her decision made years ago. Besides, she wasn’t ditching her plane—not when she’d worked so hard to finally be more than a glorified taxi driver. Sure, the Jude County Smokejumpers considered her a part of the smokejumping team, but they all knew—even if they didn’t say it—that she wasn’t one of them. Not brave enough, not strong enough, and certainly not risking her life with them.
But now that she had her rating as a bomber pilot, she could support them from the sky. Be a real teammate, finally.
And she certainly wasn’t going to crash on day one.
Jared had found the chutes. “C’mon. We’re going.” He stormed back up to the cockpit. “Now.”
“No!” Her arms burned, her eyes watering from the smoke that wheedled its way into the cockpit. “I’m not jumping.” Better to say, she couldn’t jump, but she didn’t have time for that now. “If you want to jump you can, but I’m staying here.”
The ridge approached, flames licking along the top. “But you’d better do it now, before we’re over the fire again.”
“Bomber Five-Three, suggest you bail.” Beck’s voice came through the line. “You’re losing altitude; you’re drifting back over the fire.”
Silence as she fought the wind currents.
“Now or never!” Jared snapped. “Let’s go!”
Frankly, she could use Jared’s help on the yoke to keep the plane from rolling, or worse, stalling and pancaking them right onto the side of the ridge.
But she wasn’t going to beg for help. That’s the last thing she needed—if they survived—a reputation for not being able to handle the plane on her own.
Jared threw down the chutes with another dark word and slid into the copilot seat. “Fine. This better work.”
She angled them back over the ridge, into the smoke, but she had a bead on the lake, rippling crimson and burnt orange under the setting sun and the glow of the flames. “I can get us there.”
“I’m never flying with you again.” Jared had strapped himself in again, his voice tight.
She didn’t want to cheer, but...
Their airspeed barely held at one forty-five, the canyon floor rising, a bed of embers. Flares shot into the sky, igniting the smoky horizon.
Please, God—let the jumpers have gotten to the lake.
She knew Reuben—at least what he let them all know of him—and the panic in his voice over the radio just before she dropped her tank shook her.
Not prone to emotion, Reuben, if anyone, could get the team to safety. Something about him exuded strength. Power. And it wasn’t just his size. Yes, as sawyer for the team, he had the girth of one of those bulls he rode off-season, was probably six foot two, had ropy, wide shoulders, and a solid pack of muscles from carrying his chainsaw around the forest. But he also had a quiet, get-’er-done spirit about him.
If only she didn’t have the kind of baggage that kept her at arm’s length from men, especially big ones like Rube, they might be friends.
She knew better than to get tangled up with a smokejumper. Not only that, but aside from the occasional thank you when she let him sit in the copilot seat, she barely registered on his radar.
What did she expect? She certainly wasn’t the kind of girl who attracted male attention.
Anymore.
They were close enough to the falling edge of the ridge to watch the candling effect—flames climbing up eighty-foot lodgepole pines only to burst into flame at the crown, the fire leaping from treetop to treetop.
“You’d better call in the emergency, tell them we’re putting down into the lake.”
“Roger.” Jared snapped.
The plane sank lower as she throttled forward, listening to him call in their sit rep. She dropped them toward the lake, the plane washboarding over the air currents, her arm aching with the jarring.
The fire had now consumed any remnant of the road, a storm of flame below.
Jared finished calling in their position.
Beck came on the line. “Your entire lower wing is hanging by a thread. You lose that, you lose the plane.”
“That’s a helpful bit of advice,” she said into her headset. “Jared, run the before-landing checklist.”
They’d fallen to fifty feet above the tops of the trees, the flames shooting sparks against their windshield. The rutting of the plane could jackhammer her teeth from her skull.
No wonder her sisters had cornered her at the beginning of the summer, offered her—yet again—a position at their bakery.
She might choose making cupcakes over flying a rattletrap Russian Annie over a sea of flames.
Or not.
Because as the plane cleared the edge of the forest, dropping toward the platinum-and-orange-lit waters of Fountain Lake, she couldn’t escape it—this feeling of triumph sluicing through her.
“Flaps thirty,” Jared said, his tone biting.
“Flaps coming to thirty.”
Gilly used all her remaining strength to keep the plane steady as they broke free of the fire’s windstorm. The sudden change in pressure dropped them ten feet, and if she hadn’t been strapped in, she might have hit the roof of the cockpit.
“Geez—flaps forty!” Jared yelled.
“Roger, forty.”
Landing a plane on water required just a bit more finesse, the attitude of the plane sharper, the speeds lower, so as not to nose into the water. She throttled back to one-thirty, slowing as they drifted down.
In the encroaching darkness, she fought to gauge the distance to the surface. Choppy and white-capped, it would be a bumpy put-down.
Please, Lord, don’t let the wing catch before we hit the water.
She nosed the aircraft up, fighting the drag of the plane, searching for something that might give her a reliable distance check.
“We’re going to cartwheel!” Jared said. “I swear, if we live through this—”
“Shut up, Jared.”
There—a streak of orange from the flames lit the dark water. She did a rough estimate, throttled back, nosed up.
She glanced at Jared. He sat in white-knuckled silence.
They hit the water with a jolt. Water sprayed against the window, off the floats of the plane. They bounced hard, skipped, and landed again. She kept forward pressure on the controls to stop the plane from bouncing along on the back of the floats.
The lower wing nicked the water, jerked the plane, and nearly nosed them down. Gilly kept the attitude up and righted them.
Still, as they settled into the water, the wing caught, whipping them around.
A wave pitched them up, threatened to flip them.
“Retract flaps!”
Jared braced his hand on the ceiling but somehow retracted the flaps. The plane slammed back onto the water.
Gilly cut the power, not wanting to encourage another near flip, her heart in the back of her throat.
“Lower water rudders.”
The addition of the rudders stabilized them, and for a second they rode the waves, rocking in the water.
Then she simply tasted her adrenaline pooling in her chest, felt the hammering of her heartbeat in the purple light of the cabin.
Silence fell like a rock between them.
Only then did she realize she couldn’t move her hands—stiff and hard, affixed to the yoke.
Finally, “I don’t know whether to hate you or kiss you,” Jared said.
Kiss her? Hardly, even if she couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d been kissed.
Oh, wait...yes she did.
“Keep your lips to yourself.” She unwound her hands from the yoke, eased the burning from them, and looked over to shore.
Only then did she spot the group of smokejumpers silhouetted against the bright flame of the forest. A forest service boat had pulled up to shore, clearly on site to pluck them off the beach.
She did a quick count, then her gaze landed on a form standing slightly apart from the group. Tall, broad shouldered, he stood as a darkened, soot-covered sentry against the maelstrom of the fire. Even without his saw, and thirty feet away, she knew him, could feel the intensity of his gaze, the way he stared out over the waters at her.
Reuben Marshall.
And for the barest of seconds, everything dropped away—the fear roiling in her gut, the tension lining her shoulders, the deep, rooted ache of failure, desperation, and longing.
Leaving only a queer breath of peace, the slightest sense of right.
The unexpected stir of warmth in her chest.
Then Jared let out a long sigh, jarring her free. “Now what? Swim to shore?”
“No,” she said, unstrapping herself. She opened the window, waved to the boat now turning its light to them. “We join our team and catch our ride home.”