Page 1 of Burning Hearts (Chasing Fire: Alaska #1)

ONE

Logan Crawford only slept well in two places. On the ground on the side of a mountain, with his pack for a pillow, or in a short takeoff and landing fixed-wing aircraft.

Smoke in the air.

Logan leaned back against his seat, the vibration so familiar now that he hardly rested when he couldn’t hear the rumble of an airplane engine or feel the hard ground of the backcountry.

This was what he’d been born to do.

He’d discovered in the last few years that he could fight fire anywhere, but he needed the rush of jumping. The flap of the parachute above him. There was nothing like the feel of falling through the air. Couldn’t find that in a town like Last Chance County, fighting residential fires as part of a rescue squad with his twin, Bryce. Being back home had been great, but there was nothing like smokejumping.

“I see the header!” their spotter, Mark, called out down the plane. Then he trained his binoculars on the copilot window, his attention on their target while his long gray hair hung down his back.

Logan glanced at the cockpit, also occupied by the pilot, who was a retiree who’d flown for JPATS for years. According to Neil, flying a bunch of rowdy smokejumpers wasn’t so different from flying transports between judicial districts and correctional institutions for the US Marshals. Thankfully, Neil didn’t have to fear for his life if something went wrong.

At least, not beyond the normal perils of being a wildland pilot.

The smokejumper boss, Jade Ransom, hefted herself out of her seat and went to speak with Neil and Mark. She’d been Logan’s jump boss at the end of last season in Montana and had moved back up here with her boyfriend Crispin in the offseason.

They weren’t the only ones who’d come north.

“Almost there, right?”

Logan glanced at the smokejumper in the seat next to him. Orion Price was another one of the people he knew from Ember, Montana. A rookie smokejumper this year, and with his brown hair and blue eyes, the kid looked like a college student. Young, but not as young as one of their hotshots, Mack. “Nervous?”

Orion said, “You ever look out the window of the plane and wonder why you thought this was a good idea?”

No way. Nervous, but trying to hide it. “You trained plenty for this and passed the qualifiers,” Logan said over the drone of the plane engine. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t earned it by proving you can do the job.”

Orion nodded sharply.

Across the plane, on the other side of the aisle, Cadee and Tori chatted to each other—which involved a lot of close talking, trying to whisper but also hear each other over the airplane engine, and the occasional glance at Vince.

JoJo sat with her head back against his seat in the row in front of Cadee and Tori. Another Montana transplant up here to see what Alaska had to offer.

Skye sat in the row in front of Logan, with Vince next to her. Skye was Alaska born and raised, same as Cadee. Vince had been on the smokejumper team in Montana last summer.

Jade turned from the cockpit and her conversation with the pilot and spotter. “Okay, rookies. Give me streamers.”

Jade led the group down the aisle to the back of the plane and rotated the lever to open the door.

Wind rushed in, bringing a stronger scent of smoke with it.

Tori and Orion tossed streamers out the door—weighted crepe paper that told them which way the wind blew and how fast they would descend before they hit the ground. Vince wasn’t a rookie, but he sent his own flying out. It was in all their natures to be a bit of a control freak.

Enough. Logan levered out of his seat with his gear and went to the other side of the plane to get a look out the window. If he was gonna fight this fire, he needed to see where it was first.

Skye did the same at the window of the row in front. “I told you that storm last night was gonna kick it off. Lightning strikes.” She let out a whistle and shook her head. “Fifteen acres at least.” She pointed. “See the ridge line? It’s starting to wake up.”

Logan smirked. “Yeah, I wonder why I didn’t take your bet and risk doing kitchen cleanup in the mess hall for two weeks.”

She shoved his shoulder over the seat back, the same way his sister did to him and his twin brother Bryce.

Logan spotted the header. The plume of smoke that snaked up into the wide Alaskan sky was their destination. The jump spot would land them two miles southeast of it. Northwest of the base, in the shadow of Denali Mountain.

He said, “We need to put this fire out before it spreads all the way to town.” Not to mention the homesteads in its path.

Over the last few years, he had fought wildfires in a lot of places across Australia, Montana, and even parts of Canada. There was nowhere like Alaska. The whole landscape was like the proverbial black widow woman—beautiful and alluring, but underneath the surface, it was trying to kill you.

And not just the fires.

This one might be fifteen acres now, but by tonight it would spread to a whole lot more. So they’d parachute down and cut a line. Starve it of fuel. Make the world a little bit safer. One battle at a time. One jump at a time.

One breath at a time.

His firefighting mentor’s voice echoed in his ears.

Skye said, “What did the sheriff tell you?”

Logan turned from the window and sat, weighed down by more than his gear. “Hasn’t seen Tristan, hasn’t spoken to Jamie. If she really is looking for her brother, Jamie could be who-knows-where right now.”

“But someone saw her at the Midnight Sun Saloon a week ago.”

He shrugged. “Maybe they were mistaken.”

Or he’d missed her.

Skye patted his shoulder. “Want me to talk to Rio?”

Her husband, the FBI agent? “Pretty sure he has better things to do than look for a woman who doesn’t want me to find her.”

Jade made her way down the aisle of the plane, cutting off whatever Skye was about to say. “Turning final, sixteen hundred feet!”

Every smokejumper on the plane yelled back, “Copy that.”

Logan glanced at Skye, who grinned at him. He wanted to roll his eyes, but she knew he loved this as much as she did. Lived for it.

They lined up at the door.

Vince and Tori. Cadee and Orion. Logan and Skye lined up behind them. Then JoJo and Jade. Partners. Teammates.

Who knew what this summer season would bring? If he found Jamie, great. He’d do what he’d come to Alaska to do and tell her how he felt—how he’d always felt. If not, he still planned to jump headlong into every fire that came at them with the reassurance this was what God had put him on this earth to do.

Their spotter, Mark, came to the door, where hot wind rushed in to beat at their jumpsuits. He pushed out two crates. Supply drops. Tools. Gear. Medical supplies just in case. Not much, but enough it might be the difference between life and death if something happened out here in this forbidding landscape.

Logan adjusted his straps and checked the rest of his gear. “‘The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you.’”

Skye said, “‘He will never leave you nor forsake you.’”

Vince grunted, but the rest of them knew the drill by now. This was who Logan was these days.

Orion was the one who said, “‘Do not be afraid.’”

Logan finished the words from Deuteronomy by saying, “‘Do not be discouraged.’” Voicing it sent an unwelcome note ringing in his heart. He hadn’t found Jamie yet. I don’t want to be discouraged.

But the fact was, he’d come to Alaska for a very particular reason—and it wasn’t to get up close and personal with the local wildlife. Or to face any of the fights they had in Montana, running from bad guys who wanted a war between the US and Russia. Searching for the truth hidden in the Kootenai National Forest.

This was about a girl, of course.

The one that got away—because he’d left her. Broken it off. Walked away.

One in a line of mistakes where Jamie was concerned. He was here to get her back. Or to keep her safe, if she really was traipsing all over Copper Mountain trying to find her brother.

Logan pushed all those frustrating thoughts away. If he didn’t focus up, he was going to hit the ground and become a permanent part of Alaska.

Jade said, “Ready?”

Logan nodded.

The spotter yelled, “Your static line is clear.”

He held on. Felt the tap.

Jumped.

Logan peered through the grate of his helmet while wind whipped the high collar on the back of his jumpsuit.

Above him, the rectangular chute that had been pulled open by the static line fluttered. The thing that saved him every time he jumped—by the grace of God.

How sweet the sound …of a parachute in the wind.

He looked from his chute to the plume of smoke where the fire ate up vegetation, then to the snowcapped peak of Denali and adjusted to land on course. Green hills rose up beneath him. The river, with its ice-cold snow-runoff water. Crags and cliffs where the earth tumbled down into the drink. Clusters of Alaska spruce trees broken up by red roofs and blue-capped barns. Dirt roads that would be their exit—once they hiked far enough that they found one.

The wind current changed.

He fought with the toggles, but a particularly hot gust whipped him over and sent him west toward the densely packed trees of the forest on that side. The area the fire was not supposed to reach.

Logan gritted his teeth and struggled against the fierceness of nature. The last thing he wanted was to get hung up on a tree.

Everyone else headed for the jump spot, apparently not needing to battle this gust that’d caught him. He wasn’t a rookie! He expelled a shout of frustration.

Apparently nothing was going to go right for him up in Alaska.

* * *

Jamie Winters gripped the satellite phone against her cheek, backpack on, trudging through the Alaska backwoods like this was any other hike with her best friend Kelsey in Last Chance County. Not a last-ditch effort to save her brother’s sorry hide.

She said, “I took a look at the early projections last night. I sent over some thoughts. Overall, I think the concept for the tracker ring is a good one, and it seems like a solid investment for us.”

The board of directors on the other end of the line, with her on speaker on the phone in the middle of their conference room table where she usually sat with them, was her board of directors. Friends. Colleagues. Mentors. People she kept around to be a sanity check in her company.

Samuel, her chief operations officer, said, “Solid is what we were thinking too.”

Jamie stopped to catch her breath. While the sun lit the sky, it wasn’t all that warm. She’d opted for a long-sleeved sweat-wicking shirt, cargo pants, and hiking boots that were now giving her blisters. Wearing new shoes was a bad idea. She was so far out of her element it was throwing her off.

This definitely wasn’t a city-outskirts hike up some leisurely hill in the foothills around Last Chance County.

No, this was Alaska.

She was climbing a mountain , of all things.

Samuel continued, “It’s new, but testing has been promising. If they’re gonna get it off the ground, they need solid backing. Which is where you come in.”

We was more like it . Even if she was the one who’d started the company, it was theirs now. She hadn’t worked alone in finance and investments for nearly a decade. Still, she was too out of breath from hiking to say more than, “I agree.”

They weren’t going to accept altruism as a reason to funnel millions of their capital into brand-new tech. But Jamie liked that it allowed firefighters, both ones who worked within city limits and those who fought wildfires, to be located if anything ever happened to them.

The fact she’d been in longing—she refused to call it love—with a firefighter for years was beside the point.

The tracker ring technology had far broader applications than only aiding those who fought against the destruction of flames for a living.

This wasn’t about Logan.

She’d read enough memoirs of smokejumpers, hotshots, and firefighters to have decided to “cut a line” around those feelings—or so they called it. She’d starved that part of her heart of fuel so the fire that had at one point burned hot and heavy for Logan Crawford had since exhausted itself and gone out.

These days it was barely a smolder.

“That’s great news, Ms. Winters,” Samuel said. “I’ll send the memo that we have decided to fund the project, and inform the woman who created it that we’re giving it the green light.” He paused. “Unless that’s the reason you’ve been up in Alaska these past weeks? You’re close to where I believe her base is. At least, according to the GPS on the tracker ring you have on your person.”

Jamie reached the top of the ridge and stopped at the apex of the deer trail she’d been walking up, refusing to get distracted by the amazing view. Or the hint of smoke on the breeze and the cloud cover that might be more the haze of wildfire smoke than an indication that precipitation was in the forecast.

Of course they knew where she was.

“Not that I meant to locate you. I just happened to log in to the system to take a look and saw you’d signed one out.”

“It’s fine, Samuel. Probably a good thing, actually.”

She didn’t keep much of her personal life from her board. She just didn’t work that way. No one else in her life whom she would consider a friend or acquaintance knew what she did—not really. It was either boring to them or too complex to fully understand when no one wanted to know that much about niche investing anyway.

But the people she worked with? Jamie trusted Samuel implicitly.

The rest of the board could find her whenever, wherever, if they needed something. She was always available, because she’d learned the hard way what happened when she took her hands off the reins. Too often they found out much too late that they’d hired someone who couldn’t be trusted.

Samuel said, “I believe the wildland smokejumper who created the tech, Jade Ransom, is a team leader with the Midnight Sun smokejumpers. Their base isn’t too far from your current location—at least, according to Alaska standards.”

Jamie wasn’t going to pay them a visit, even for the purpose of shaking the hand of her newest client. She much preferred to be the anonymous CEO behind the curtain. “Anything else on the schedule?”

Her CFO cleared his throat and went over the effect of a server going down the month before. A problem their tech people had solved quickly, but the ramifications were still being unpacked. At times ad nauseum.

Jamie half listened to him talking and took in the vista in front of her. Sprawling hills on the other side of the valley stretched up as if they were trying to compete with Denali for superiority but came up far short.

On the valley floor, there seemed to be some kind of fenced compound. Multiple buildings, huge metal structures, Quonset huts. Mobile homes and cabins, vehicles everywhere—ATVs, UTVs that looked like hyped-up off-road golf carts, and trucks. So many trucks. She spotted a couple of loose dogs roaming around. Almost every person down there seemed to be male, though she did see a couple of women.

“Uh…that’s everything, Ms. Winters.”

She focused back on her call. “Thank you, Mr. Penning.”

Samuel adjourned the meeting and told her not to hang up. She held the phone to her ear, the bulky satellite unit warm against her cheek. Jamie watched the movement below, trying to figure out their organizational pattern. Like watching ants in a terrarium.

How was she going to find her brother in there, short of marching in the front gate and demanding to see him?

“Can you hear me?” Samuel’s voice was a lot closer now, like he’d taken her off speaker and held the handset to his ear.

Jamie looked at the dusty toes of her hiking boots. “Yes. And before you ask, I’m fine.”

“At least you didn’t try to tell me that you know what you’re doing.”

They both knew she was in over her head. “Thank you for keeping things going while I’m out of town.”

She worked from home a lot, in the converted basement of her upper-middle-class house. Because no one needed to come over to a mansion to watch a movie and eat pizza. Jamie had always wanted to be normal. To be treated like everyone else. If that meant she had to hide some parts of who she was…

What was the problem? It was her business, not theirs.

Samuel said, “Are you really sure your brother warrants this much effort?”

“You already know the answer to that.”

“I wish you’d taken my advice about a security team.”

Because she wanted to be a lone woman in Alaska surrounded by a team of expensive bodyguards? Talk about obvious. There was no way to slip in and out without many people noticing, or keep a low profile in general, if she had a team of people on her twenty-four seven.

Samuel sighed because she wasn’t going to argue. She also wasn’t going to tell him she would be all right no matter what. Jamie just didn’t want to drag anyone else into her family mess.

Her relationship with Logan had proven to her that people outside her family didn’t understand their dynamic. He hadn’t liked the fact she was all in to help her mother and her brother. She cared about them too much to let them throw their lives away, and if that meant getting messy trying to pull either her addict mother or her wayward brother out of whatever jam they were in, she would do it.

“Please, be careful. We don’t want to lose you,” Samuel said. “After all, if you disappear, it will affect the bottom line.”

Jamie grinned. He cared. He just knew getting soft wasn’t what their company needed. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to affect next quarter’s projections.”

Then again, if she did die, all her money would go to kids’ programs and the women’s shelter in Last Chance County. So it wasn’t as if she would be a loss to the world. More like a net gain.

“See you soon.”

“Bye, Samuel.” Jamie ended the call and stowed the phone in her backpack. She was settling it back on her shoulders when a twig snapped behind her. Jamie spun to the sound.

Three men emerged from the trees. Two hung back and one strode in front, his expression dark and menacing. They all wore what seemed to be the uniform in Alaska. Jeans and boots, heavy shirt—probably insulated. The scent of sweat and hot, clammy skin hung around them along with the distinct smell of tobacco.

The man in front towered over her, dark hair smashed to his forehead and damp with sweat. “Lookie what we have here, boys.”

One of the men who’d hung back snickered.

Jamie wasn’t without ways to protect herself but had to wonder if acting helpless would get her into the compound where she could find her brother. She didn’t want to know what might happen to her inside that fence. “I’m not here to tangle with you guys.”

“Shame,” the leader said. “I like to tangle with a woman. Especially one as good-looking as you.”

He scanned her face, probably as sweaty as his. She always got red cheeks when she exerted herself—a product of her fair skin. Her dark hair was braided so that the twin braids hung behind her ears and down over her shoulders. She’d always thought her eyes were too big for her face.

He reached out and tugged on one braid. “What are you doin’ out here, girl?”

She should slap his hand away, but everything in her said that would only escalate things. She should pray but couldn’t find the words. Now wasn’t the time to wonder how long it had been since she’d asked God for help. Not just the rote prayers that came with Sunday services but actual conversation with God.

A note of grief washed over her.

Jamie lifted her chin. “I’m looking for my brother.”

“You don’t need him.” The guy shifted closer, his hand still around the hair tie on her braid. Far too near. “I can show you a good time. You’ll forget all about him.”

Jamie swallowed.

One of the guys behind him said, “Uh, Snatch? We’re supposed to be back already.”

Snatch—which had to be a nickname, and Jamie didn’t want to know what it meant—spun around to his buddy. “Shut up, Crew. I’m workin’ on somethin’.”

“Just bring her with us.” Crew strode past them, his expression impassive as if he didn’t care either way. “I’m not gonna be any later than we already are.”

The third guy followed him.

Neither one of them was her brother.

Snatch tugged on her braid. “Let’s go, girlie. I gotta check in with the boss, and then you and me can see what happens next.”

Jamie shivered. “I don’t think that’s?—”

He grabbed her wrist, squeezing hard enough the bones hurt. “Get walkin’.”