Page 30 of Burning Escape (Chasing Fire: Alaska #3)

JoJo held her breath, didn’t move as the grizzly, his feral scent souring the air, snuffled through the thick bushes, hunting for lunch.

He’d come up on her like smoke, as if from nowhere, just the redolence of him a hint of trouble as she’d trained her binoculars some forty yards ahead to a secluded burrow near the river.

Please, let the pups still be alive.

The river—just a meandering tributary off the main channel of the Copper River that ran from the lumbering Denali massif—carved out caves and indentations as it cut south through tundra and alpine woods and splashed over rocky cliffs.

She would never have located Cleo and her mate, Brutus, if it weren’t for the tracking collars the ADF&G had placed on the wolves two years ago.

And she owed wolf researcher and her mentor, Peyton Samson, the thanks for allowing her to observe the mating pair and their pups for her research paper.

Finally put her master’s degree to bed.

More snuffing, and the mnemonic from her mother trickled through her head. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lay down.

As in play dead.

She glanced over, spotted the grizzly scruff of its neck in her peripheral vision, maybe twenty yards away, and slowly lowered herself to the stony earth, pulling her hood up, her body in the fetal position.

Her heartbeat rushed in her ears, nearly deafening.

Breathe. Don’t move.

And for some reason, Jade Ransom, her jump boss, entered her head. Where do you go on your days off? You’re always disappearing.

Yeah, maybe she shouldn’t be quite so private. It wasn’t like she was breaking any laws. She just preferred the quiet, the aloneness. No one to get in her way.

No one to break her heart. The breath of the Alaska air, just her and the wilderness.

Maybe she was like her father in that way. She hoped so.

Sticks broke, more rustling. Snuffing.

Her hand trekked down her leg to her bear spray in her thigh holster. Who knew if it might actually repel the grizzly? Better to hide. But should the animal?—

Barking. Then a growl and more barking, and she wanted to push herself up, to see if?—

Yes, it sounded like Brutus. Maybe protecting his den.

Weird that Cleo wasn’t with him, but JoJo hadn’t seen the pups, so maybe Cleo was out hunting. Still, alone? That didn’t feel right.

Although, recently, a lot didn’t feel right. Like her team’s recent run-in with some crazy Alaskan militia group who’d tried to kill them.

And never mind the plane crash that they’d narrowly escaped. Then, while they’d hiked back to civilization, her other team members had been chased down, met a rogue cult, found dead salmon in a river, found a homesteader lady in the woods who’d been drugged, and one of the team had been kidnapped .

She hadn’t been sad they’d left without her on that spur-of-the-moment trip. Still, it felt like the entire world had gone crazy up here in the land of the never-ending sun.

The grizzly growled, turning, breaking branches, trampling the bushes.

She pushed herself up. All around her on the hillside, blueberry bushes poked up around boulders. The hill pitched down to a ten-foot drop into a rocky riverbed and its glistening river in the valley below.

Brutus paced on a large flat-topped rock, his fur ruffed, barking, foam at his mouth. The grizzly lumbered nearby, nearly ignoring him as he foraged.

Where was his pack? She lifted her glasses, scanned the area. Brutus and Cleo had returned to the den they’d used last year. The pack usually congregated in and around the craggy shoreline. This year, however, they seemed more scattered, the pack thinner.

He wouldn’t take on a bear without the pack. Not unless…

He hadn’t gotten ousted as alpha, had he? She searched his body for wounds, evidence of a fight.

Brutus rushed at the bear, who turned, swatted. Brutus jerked away, snarling, barking.

The bear landed on all fours, growled, and then shook his head side to side. Agitated. Nervous.

Watch out, Brutus. The grizzly huffed, stomped, but Brutus stood his ground, snapping, growling, barking.

She tucked away her bear spray, picked up her phone. Snapped a picture.

And then, just like that, the bear moved off, turning, lumbering away.

Brutus climbed the flat stone, barking after it. Still growling.

She stood, took another picture of the wolf, deep-gray hair along its body, white tufted hair between his legs and along his snout, dark black eyes, a bushy light-gray tail, a ring of black at the end.

A beautiful alpha male. And maybe he’d just saved her life.

And this, right here, was why she’d come to Alaska.

Sure, she’d joined the Midnight Sun fire crew, but that had simply landed her on the map in the right place.

Given her a reason to show up at the Forest Service office in search of Professor Samson, who’d guest taught for a week at Montana State University in Bozeman.

Right then, JoJo had known what she wanted to do with her life.

Study these animals, discover what made them fierce and brave and enabled them to thrive in the harsh Alaskan frontier.

Maybe figure out how to do the same.

Brutus turned and looked at her, straight on. The breeze picked up, rustled the brush, combed through his hair.

He didn’t seem displaced from leadership.

And then he growled. A low, lethal warning.

Oh. She pocketed her phone. Kept eye contact. “No need for that, Brute.” Get bigger. She spotted a rock, climbed on it. Raised her arms.

His growl deepened, and he lowered his head.

“I’m not the bad guy!” She clapped her hands. “Go away!” She grabbed her whistle, blew it, piercing, bright, shrill.

He raised his lips in a snarl.

What was his deal? She’d gotten too close once, and he’d emerged from the den, but she’d simply backed away, and he’d let her go.

“I’m not going to hurt your pups, Brute.” She clapped her hands, then unzipped her jacket and held it open. “Go away!”

He took a step toward her, and she reached for her bear spray. “Don’t make me use this?—”

The wolf launched at her.

She screamed, stumbled back, slipped and slammed into the bramble, bounced off, hit the rocky edge with her hip.

Pain exploded through her body, but she rolled, found the spray. Screamed.

Brutus appeared above her, snarling, barking, nipping.

She deployed the spray as Brutus leaped at her. The spray burned him in the face, and he yelped.

She scrambled for footing. Stood.

He shook off the chemicals and rounded on her, furious.

“Brutus—” She scrambled back. “Don’t?—”

She sprayed again—nothing. Empty. She took another step back, threw the can at him, and reached for her gun.

Shoulder holster, and she hated to go for the .44, but she didn’t want to be torn limb from limb either. She held it out, took off the safety. “Please, go!” She shouted it, hoping the noise might deter him.

He didn’t look right. Pacing, his eyes glossy, foam at his mouth—rabies?

She took another step back and rocks fell. She glanced back?—

Brutus launched at her.

She turned, squeezed off a shot, and the recoil jerked her back.

Yelping, she took her eyes off Brutus as she windmilled her arms for purchase, but the momentum yanked her back, and she stumbled into air, the cliff dropping from behind her?—

Falling.

She screamed and landed with a hard, brutal whuff , ten feet below, her breath jerking out of her body.

Writhing for air, her bones shuddering, everything inside her on fire.

A growl above her, and as she fought to breathe, Brutus appeared over her on the rock above.

She got her hands up just as he leaped.

Breathe! She rolled, waiting for him to land, but a shot broke the air.

Crisp and echoing across the mountainscape.

Brutus dropped next to her on the rocky ground, gone.

She lay breathing, over and over, shaking.

Brutus’s glassy eyes stared at her, the life winked out, blood puddling the ground under him.

And all she could do was curl into a ball, hands over her head, and weep.

* * *

Please, let him not have killed her.

Crew lowered his Winchester, his body shaking. Picked up his monocular. She lay on the ground, unmoving, the wolf next to her.

He wasn’t the best shot, and frankly, he’d end up back in jail if anyone found him in possession of a gun.

But from his vantage point, some four hundred yards away atop a nearby rise that overlooked the Copper River spring, it clearly looked like the wolf had intended on having the woman for dinner.

He’d had no choice—the story of his life, the conundrum driving every decision for the past few weeks since the sister of his cohort Tristan had stumbled onto the Sons of Revolution base camp.

And then the world had just exploded. Literally. The camp had gone up in a ball of fire while Tristan and Jamie had escaped. And then he’d watched a plane of smokejumpers go down, and that had sat in his gut like ash until he’d found out no one had died.

Still, he hated this job.

“Crew—you still there?” The voice crackled in his earpiece, and he jerked, tearing his gaze off the downed woman.

Rio, on the other end of the sketchy transmission. And who knew how much his handler had heard of his report?

“Was that a gunshot? You okay?”

“Not me. Long story—” The phone line cut out, crackled. “Rio?”

Sheesh, the call cut off. Perfect. He worked out his earbud and pocketed it as he strode toward the four-wheeler. Wouldn’t be long before Viper and Jer started asking about him, expecting him back from his perimeter sweep.

But he couldn’t leave her down there.

From here, the rise fell in a not-so-gentle slope down to the valley floor, but he’d trekked up a deer trail on the backside of the hill, so maybe he could find a way down.

He raced the four-wheeler back to the trail, ducking against bramble and low-hanging, shaggy arms of pine and aspen trees.

Emerging onto the valley floor, he turned and gunned the four-wheeler over mossy rocks, crushing magenta fireweed and tall blue lupine and violet wild irises, so much beauty in a brutal land.