2

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, BROKE?”

Dex had chased him back to the ranch, the expansive ten-thousand-square-foot lodge home that sported a separate wing for Dex, along with guest quarters. Ian hit the showers before the inquisition could start.

Dex saved it for the moment after the hostess sat them in Dex’s favorite alcove at the Hondo, San Antonio’s most popular steakhouse and Dex’s flagship restaurant.

Steak sizzled on an open barbecue pit at the far end of the restaurant, a great stone fireplace hosted a flickering fire, and the French doors opened to a patio on which a local country singer crooned covers. The Hondo boasted decorations made from cattle country—from the cowhide barstools to a mounted longhorn over the bar—and smelled of hickory, the craft beer made on-site, and not a little Texas swagger.

“Define broke,” Dex said as Ian opened the menu.

“Are the mussels fresh?” Ian asked.

“Handpicked, every day, right out of Galveston. Again, how broke?”

Ian closed the menu, put it down, pressed his hand on the leather exterior. “Okay, how about all my liquid funds, bank accounts, a few stocks, money market accounts and mutual funds, drained as of today. I’m even selling my plane.”

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t pay the electric bill, but until next quarter’s dividends, he was a man without ready cash. More, the feds had frozen his funds, lest he try and move them to some untouchable offshore account before they finished totaling up all his fines.

“And I’m not done. I need to raise more cash.”

Dex held up his hand to the waiter who stopped at the table. The man backed away.

“I could use some water,” Ian said.

“What happened? Start at the beginning. I mean, I saw the news, the fires, but how did it happen?”

Ian took a breath and grinned at the woman at the door just approaching the hostess stand. Long blonde hair, shapely, smart, and dressed like the gorgeous businesswoman she was, Noelly Crawford knew how to enter a room.

She turned as many eyes as Dex had, walking in with his easy Texas saunter. Dex, with his tousled golden blond hair and athlete’s build, dressed tonight in a sleek pair of black dress pants, a light blue shirt open at the neck, and shiny black boots, reminded Ian afresh of the difference between being born into money and eking it out of your sweat and blood.

Ian still had to do a double take in the mirror at the man he’d become.

Dex had stopped looking a long time ago.

“You invited your sister,” Ian said now, his voice low.

“Of course. She’d kill me if she didn’t get to see you.” Dex winked.

Ian hadn’t seen Noelly since the charity ball in New York City, where he’d been auctioned off as an eligible bachelor—to Sierra, a move he’d engineered, hoping to take her to a romantic dinner.

Confess his feelings.

But before that, well . . . those memories of Noelly rushed back. Oh boy.

“So,” Dex said, “make it snappy. How did you manage to set half of eastern Montana on fire?”

Right. He looked at Dex. “An oil drill blew up in the eastern Montana fields this summer, causing massive fires in the oil fields there. The fire took out an entire town. The government needed someone to blame, so . . .” Ian raised a shoulder. “They started with thirty million dollars, but if I know the government, they’re just getting started.”

Dex’s mouth opened. “Ouch.”

“I don’t care about the fines. But the money needs to go to actually help these people rebuild their lives, their homes. I need to liquidate, raise more money. You wouldn’t be interested in buying the Montana Rose, would you? Hey, Noelly!”

He slid out of the booth and gave her a smile. “You look fantastic, as usual.”

Noelly wore a simple black dress that hugged her slender curves so sinfully that Ian popped her a kiss on her cheek but averted his eyes.

Mostly because after spending the year watching Sierra avoid him, his emotions were stretched thin. And it felt too good to have a beautiful woman look at him with a gleam in her eye.

Noelly curled her manicured fingers around his arm, caught his gaze with her pretty blue eyes. “You can’t just pop into town without warning like this. I was nearly in Paris.” She pursed her lips, shook her head. “If Dex hadn’t called me this morning, I’d be having crepes under the Eiffel Tower right now.” She touched his neck where his collar opened. “Of course, we could still go. Have crepes by morning.”

He caught her hand, glanced at Dex. Back at Noelly. Stop. Please.

“I’m only in town for a day. I’m headed to Galveston tomorrow.”

He slid into the booth, and she scooted in beside him. Her husky, dark scent stirred around him. And for a second, the crazy, forbidden urge to simply wrap an arm around her, pull her against himself—no.

Except, why not? Because even though the thought of taking Noelly in his arms felt like a fist in his gut, he should probably figure out how to get over Sierra. Date.

Start living again.

“I’m selling the Montana Rose,” he said, reaching for the water the waiter had dropped off.

“What? But I’ve never even seen her,” Noelly said.

“He’s never taken her out,” Dex added.

Dex had ordered a bottle of Cabernet, something from his private reserve, and now the waiter returned, uncorked it.

“Why not?” Noelly asked.

Ian shrugged. “No time.” But he saw Dex raise an eyebrow. His friend knew him too well.

“He needs the cash,” Dex said. “Got a government fine. I found him on the corner with a cardboard sign.”

Noelly grinned at Dex, then turned back to Ian. “Really?”

“No. I was in the area.” He shot a look at Dex. That joke felt a little too close to home.

“You should take the yacht out at least once before you sell it,” Noelly said. “Maybe I should go to Galveston with you.”

Dex again, raising an eyebrow. Ian ignored him. “That would be, uh, fun, Noelly. But I need to get back to Montana. My foreman is working on cleanup from the fire, and I’m selling off some cattle and my breeding bull.”

Noelly pressed her hand over his. “What about that assistant you had—Savannah? Can’t she hold down the fort? She always seemed so capable.”

“Sierra? She doesn’t work for me anymore. But yes, she was fantastic.”

More than fantastic—she’d kept his world from flying apart after Esme vanished.

No, kept him from flying apart.

He’d been at loose ends for nearly a year now, since she walked out of his life.

“I think you should sell the ranch and come back here. We miss you.” She glanced at Dex. “Right?”

Dex had approved the wine and now lifted his glass. “To old friends.”

“And Ian, no longer destitute,” Noelly said. She leaned close, whispered in his ear. “You belong here, in Texas, Ian. You always have.”

He lifted his glass.

Maybe it was time. He’d wanted to move a year ago, and then they’d found Dante’s body and reignited the search for Esme.

But if Esme didn’t want to come home . . .

And Sierra . . . she wouldn’t talk to him if he were the only other human on a desert island.

“You’re probably right. Maybe it is time to move back.”

Noelly gave him a soft smile, a twinkle in her eyes that he didn’t entirely hate.

Ian was raising his glass when his phone buzzed. He lifted it out of his pocket and read the text from Sam.

Oh no.

“What now?” Dex said.

“The PEAK chopper has gone down. And one of our EMTs is missing. I gotta go.”

“Your chopper?”

“Not anymore, but—yeah. My team. Or, they were. Now . . .”

No, not even PEAK Rescue belonged to him anymore.

Okay, maybe he really was destitute.

“To starting over. In Texas,” Noelly said. Then she took his face in her soft hands and kissed him square on the lips.

Jess Tagg had turned into a ghost.

Or at least a member of the walking dead. Her body was covered head to toe in ash; it was ground into her skin, turning her blue PEAK uniform to gray. Even her lips tasted of the chalky debris of the massive Ranger Creek fire that had so far decimated over four thousand acres of pristine mountain forest on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park.

Acreage that she’d spent the past six hours hiking around and through as she followed Ranger Creek, hopefully back to Going-to-the-Sun Road.

At least she hoped she was following the right swath of land, because the creek had long ago disappeared in the canyon below, and she might simply be wandering, lost amid the blackened snags and desolate landscape of Goat Mountain.

And then she might really turn into a ghost, haunting the Rocky Mountains with the moan of the wind . . .

Oh, for crying out loud, now she was freaking herself out. Just because her stomach ached with hunger, her throat had turned into the Gobi Desert, and her hip had really started to hurt didn’t mean the PEAK team wouldn’t find her.

She approached a boulder, checking it for residual heat before she slid onto it and turned on her radio. She’d lost reception not long after the crash and blamed it on the helicopter’s inability to relay her signal. Now she couldn’t find the sun because the smoke had turned the sky hazy. She could be walking straight for the flames for all she knew.

“PEAK HQ, Jess Tagg, come in. PEAK HQ, this is Jess.”

She closed her eyes, listening to the static, her heartbeat in her ears.

Shoot.

Not for the first time, she wished she’d played out the last year differently. Because then, maybe she’d be on the mountain with . . . well, with Pete.

And he’d have come up with some brilliant idea on how to get them home.

“Jess, this is Sierra! Come in.”

Her walkie crackled to life, and Jess nearly dropped it. “I’m here.”

“What’s your position? I’ve been calling you for hours.”

“I’m sorry—I think I was out of range.”

“Ty and Gage were searching Ranger Creek for you.”

“No go. I couldn’t make it down to the creek. I had to climb up.”

More like once she realized her severed rope would only get her halfway to the bottom, she didn’t want to chance it.

She’d never been good at going down, looking back over her shoulder, anyway. Forward and up—her dad’s motto, and she’d really had no other choice.

Looking back would only make her loosen her hold on everything she’d fought for. Make her question her sacrifices.

“I climbed up along Goat Mountain. I’m following the canyon.”

“You’re in the black? They put up radar of Goat Mountain—the entire thing is under smoke. They say the fire could reignite.”

She knew that better than any eyes in the sky, or radar. She’d already stepped on a few hot spots, and with the sun falling, the mountain had started to glow like the eyes of Hades.

And she was walking right through the furnace.

How everything went south so quickly still turned Jess cold, but she took apart the events over and over, looking for a sign of trouble.

The rope attaching the litter to the chopper whipping up as Jess and Gage loaded the second firefighter into the chopper.

The explosion as the rope, tossed by the fractious winds, wound around one of the rotors.

The jerk as the rotor tore, shearing the rope and yanking Jess off her feet as the tail swept just over her head.

Had she not ended up on her backside, she might have been decapitated.

Instead, she landed hard on her hip, the pain eclipsing her vision just long enough for her to miss Kacey’s amazing save, the way she muscled the chopper away from the edge, even as Gage pulled the litter to safety inside the chopper.

And then, Kacey had no choice but to abandon Jess to the mountain as she fought to save her bird, her passengers.

By some sheer divine intervention, they hadn’t crashed, but instead put down at a nearby campsite. Jess had heard that much before the mountains had cut out their coms.

According to Sierra, Ben and Sam had taken the four-wheelers up the creek, through the burned area, to retrieve them. Now Ty and Gage searched the Ranger Creek area for Jess.

“I know,” Jess said now. “I’m staying away from the fire. I’m following the creek along the western edge.”

“That’s not Ranger Creek—that’s . . . wait a second, I’ll find you.”

Jess could nearly see Sierra tucking her dark hair behind her ears, running her finger along the map.

“I can see a mountain directly west of me.”

“I think that’s Matahpi Peak. Which means you’re following Banning Creek. There’s a cabin at the mouth of the creek. Can you get there?”

“Are you saying that you can’t get the guys in to me?”

“We’re doing the best we can, Jess. But the chopper is out of commission and they’ve closed Going-to-the-Sun Road. We need to get you someplace safe to spend the night. That’s the best we can come up with.”

Spend the night? She tried not to respond to those words with anything but courage, but the thought of spending the night on the mountain alone, with the wind whipping up and the temperatures dropping . . . “I’ll find the cabin.”

Thankfully, she had her rescue pack with her. It included an emergency blanket and water.

“Just keep heading south, along the creek. There’s a hiking trail—you shouldn’t be too far from it. It has switchbacks down to the creek. It’ll lead you right to the cabin. The guys will be there as soon as they can.”

The guys. Ty Remington, their former pilot, and EMT and former snowboard champion Gage Watson.

But not Pete Brooks. Because Pete had left eight months ago with hardly a good-bye to join the Red Cross Disaster Relief team.

And she could only blame herself.

Probably.

Or maybe she was giving their former, short-lived romance too much credit—if you could call two scorching kisses and a day calling herself Pete’s girl a romance.

Most likely, knowing Pete, she’d simply been one of the many in his long list. Like Tallie Kennedy, the local reporter. Or who knew how many other girls in the one-stoplight town of Mercy Falls.

Really, she didn’t want to know.

“We don’t leave team members behind. I promise we’ll find you.” Sierra’s urgent voice eked a smile out of Jess.

“I’ll be there.”

She got up, searched for the sun, saw fire in the sky, and thought she might be heading south.

But for all she knew, she could be heading to Canada.

Right now, that didn’t sound like such a terrible idea.

Start over, again. Find another new name, new friends, maybe get a job as a real doctor.

After all, no one in Canada would care about the legend of Selene Jessica Taggert. Just another ghost from the past.

Gone. Buried.

Never to be resurrected.

She stepped over a log onto the soft, blackened soil, embers sizzling beneath her boots as the sparks shot up and caught in the wind.

“I hope I didn’t just send one of my best friends right into the fire.”

With those words by Sierra Rose, Pete Brooks nearly lost it. Because he’d heard Jess’s voice on the dispatch, and she sounded scared.

And Jess Tagg didn’t scare easily.

“Yeah, me too,” he snapped.

Sierra turned, her hazel-green eyes widening. “Pete. I didn’t think anyone was here.”

“I’m here.”

“You . . . yes, you are.”

He closed the door to the PEAK office behind him and quickly got the lay of the land. Red pins pressed into the topo map hanging on the wall, weather reports playing on the flat-screen. And Sierra, their office administrator, at dispatch?

She was dressed in a pair of green forest service pants and a black T-shirt, like she’d been promoted. Printouts of fire and weather reports lay scattered across the counter.

He kept his voice tight. “Tell me what happened.”

Sure, he’d expected the PEAK team to be dispatched on some callout after half of Glacier National Park ignited. And yes, he’d come home from his last disaster event in Dawson, Montana, intending to pop in and hopefully figure out a way to get Jess alone for a long-overdue face-to-face.

What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was the news that Jess was alone on a smoky, still-ignitable mountain.

Yes, he knew that she still worked for PEAK, probably put herself in dangerous situations. It kept him up more nights than he wanted to admit.

But to arrive home and discover that maybe he’d waited too long to summon the courage to tell her that he didn’t care about her past. That if she wanted to keep her secrets . . .

Shoot. If she wanted to pretend her entire past didn’t exist, that her life began the day she met him, that was just fine, A-OK with him. As long as he didn’t have to wait one more day to tell Jess Tagg he couldn’t—didn’t want to—get her out of his system.

“We lost her after the chopper went down,” Sierra said now.

He didn’t even know where to start with that sentence. So he put his pack down on the floor. Focused on the most important part.

“You lost her?”

Sierra nodded. “We had a chopper accident earlier today—it went down near Ranger Creek.” She gave him a quick rundown of the rescue efforts, then, “Jess got separated from the team during the fall.”

“So you left her there?”

“We’re doing the best we can!”

Pete schooled his voice. “Okay, okay.” He glanced over at the radar.

Sierra swallowed. “According to predictions, the fire is heading east. I sent her to the ranger cabin at Banning Falls. She should be fine there, west of the fire.”

“And what about the tail end? It could ignite and run over Goat Mountain, trapping Jess. I’ve spent years fighting fires, Sierra. You can try to predict them, but they’ll surprise you every time.”

Sierra was still holding the radio, now looked at it. “I have to call Gage.”

He nodded. Which was probably better than screaming.

Especially when he listened to Sierra call in to Gage. Apparently, Gage and Ty had returned to McDonald Lodge and were regrouping as the rest of the team brought in the two firefighters to the hospital.

“Regrouping, as in eating burgers and malts while Jess—”

Sierra batted his words away, kept talking to Gage. “Can you get to the cabin?”

Gage’s voice came over the line. “They closed Going-to-the-Sun Road right after we evac-ed the team.”

Pete swiped the walkie out of Sierra’s grip. “Stay put. I’m coming to you. I know how to find her.” He shoved it back into her hands. “You tell me if you hear from her.”

Sierra just nodded, her mouth in a tight line. “Thanks, Pete.” Her voice softened. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Sierra.”

“I hope you’re back to stay.”

He said nothing as he headed out the door toward the PEAK barn. He found his former boss, Chet King, on his cell phone and standing on the helipad. Chet glanced up at him with a frown as Pete walked in. Pete nodded to him and headed straight back for the last four-wheeler.

He was astride and turning over the engine when Chet walked up, no cane, just a hitch to his gait. Apparently, some terrible injuries could heal.

If he were honest, Pete had returned home with just that hope.

“Pete,” Chet said, his hand extended. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the area, heard about Jess.”

Chet nodded. “I just got off the phone with Miles. He’s working with your old outfit—the Jude County Hotshot crew—trying to contain the fire on the east end, near Saint Mary. Kacey and the team rescued a couple of their firefighters this afternoon.”

“I heard. Crashed the chopper, left Jess behind.”

“Hey.” Chet backed up as Pete turned the engine on. “We’re all worried about her. But Jess knows how to take care of herself. Ty and Gage will bring her home.”

“No. I’ll bring her home,” Pete said.

Chet raised an eyebrow. “Take a breath there, Pete. It does no one any good for you to go off half-cocked—”

“I’m not.” Pete blew out a breath. “Fine. Jess and I have some unfinished business, and I don’t . . . I should have . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’m loading the four-wheeler into my truck and meeting Gage and Ty in the park. Sierra told her to go to the Banning ranger cabin, but they’ve shut down Going-to-the-Sun Road and I’m going to take us in on Gunsight Pass Trail.”

Pete watched Chet do the mental mapping. Then, a nod of his head. “That’s a good idea. Come in from the south. That will hook up with the Continental Divide Trail, right to Banning Falls.”

He was about to push off when Chet clamped him on the shoulder. “It’s about time you came back.”

A terrible tightness squeezed Pete’s chest.

Please let him not be too late.