Page 7 of Burning Justice (Chasing Fire: Alaska #6)

Four

Soon as the hotshots showed up back at the base camp, Tucker pulled them all into a briefing about the chopper and the cabin. The smokejumpers, Tristan, and Jamie were there, along with Dani and Crispin.

Seemed like everyone on the Midnight Sun crew—along with their significant others—was invested in the outcome of this one.

After Maria took a shower, most everyone had already gone over to the mess hall to eat. She found an Adirondack in front of the firepit and sat, staring at the charred wood under the grate.

The base dog wandered over and curled up by her leg, his chin on her tennis shoe. She reached down and scratched his head. “Hi, Jubal.”

His tail wagged, but he didn’t move otherwise.

She sat back and looked at the sky. How many times had she done this with her parents? Laid out bedrolls under the stars. Now she had an app that told her what all the constellations were. As if she needed someone to tell her. But she used it anyway to find their favorites.

Even if it meant sitting out here the rest of the night, until dark fell. Or what passed for dark up here in the summer.

“Not hungry?” Raine slumped into the chair beside her, eyeing the dog. Eating a protein bar. The girl thought wings were gourmet, and going out for pizza was the highlight of her monthly budget. But Raine was all backcountry, and there was no other hotshot female Maria wanted to fight a fire with.

“I’ll get something later. When the line dies down.”

Raine snorted. “Right. Anyone that thinks Kane is the broody one isn’t paying enough attention.”

“No one needs to pay me attention. That’s the point.”

“Is that what you use your super-secret spy skills for?”

Maria looked around. “You’re not supposed to say that word out loud. I told you in confidence.”

“Relax. No one is out here with us.”

Raine had no concept of surveillance technology, but that was probably a good thing. She had no need to hide her thoughts or her feelings either, usually.

Still, despite being able to read her, Maria was convinced Raine was hiding something. Probably just paranoia, but she hadn’t been able to let go of the fact this woman had a secret. Maybe a dark one.

It just didn’t have anything to do with international security, terrorism, or people trying to destroy the US and start a war. Likely, it was a lot closer to home.

Kind of like everything else right now.

“So, your father was in that cabin?” Raine chomped down a huge bite of her protein bar.

“At some point. Might’ve been last week, and it might’ve been months ago.”

“But you’re close.”

Maria said, “Not close enough that I know he’s safe. He might as well be on the other side of the world.”

“Why is it that the people we don’t want anything to do with seem like they’re always around and the people we want in our lives are out of reach?”

Maria glanced over. Raine watched the sky where a tiny plane disappeared into the clouds, a wistful look on her face.

“Want to talk about it?” Maria asked.

Raine scrunched up her nose. “JoJo told me to pray about it. Give my fears and my dreams to God. I don’t know if it did anything.”

“It’s been fifteen years since I saw my father. Maybe I’m kidding myself that he hasn’t gone over to work for these people.”

Just thinking about those books in the cabin made her remember all the times they’d talked about stories. Or read old Jules Verne classics together. They’d talked about codes embedded in verse, and it had sparked her learning how to decode messages.

The CIA had found her on an online forum where she’d cracked a code they’d created just to see if anyone could break it.

She’d been recruited before she even finished college.

All of her skills were things her father had taught her growing up. So much of who he was, the man who had raised her, was embedded in this operation. The canisters. The tests. The numbers Jamie had copied onto the mess-hall map at the beginning of the season.

How could he not have turned? He was obviously helping them.

“Maybe I’m just trying to find my father because he’s the one who masterminded this whole thing and I need to be the one that saves the world from him.” Maria didn’t like saying it out loud, but if she couldn’t be completely honest with Raine, then who could she talk to?

The guys had been great, but she would always be one step removed from them. Just the woman their team protected. The asset.

Raine considered her a friend. A sister, of sorts.

“Dani said she saw your dad on his knees with a gun to his head. You think he turned after that?”

Maria shrugged.

“You want me to tell you to keep the faith? To never give up hope that he’s a good guy, or that in fifteen years he’s never wavered? Never done anything but fight the people who have been trading him around like a commodity?”

“Of course he’s wavered,” Maria said. “Anyone would have.”

“You know what it’s like to be a captive. So maybe just hang on until you can hear the truth from his lips. None of us does the right thing every single time, and he’s been living under extreme stress for years.”

Maria couldn’t catch what Raine wasn’t saying, but she could hear it in her tone. There was more. Raine’s own hang-ups, maybe. “It feels like he’s still as far away as he always was. Even if everyone keeps saying we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”

She’d even tried to convince herself that was true.

“Just don’t go off on your own, okay?”

Maria glanced over.

“Tell someone first. If you’re gonna leave the team for him.”

“I’ll tell you. Okay?”

Raine said, “I’ll hold you to that.”

“If you answer a question.”

“Here it comes. The super spy and her interrogation tactics trying to get me to spill.”

Maria laughed. “If that was going to work, I’d already know everything there was to know about you by now.”

Raine grinned. “Go ahead, then. Do your worst.”

As if that’s what this was. “Why don’t I just ask, and you can decide if you trust me enough to answer?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Maria said, “I’ll call Tristan. Have him come over and ask.”

Raine gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

But there was more to it. This wasn’t a woman with a crush and no other cares in the world to speak of. The undercurrent was far darker, but Maria didn’t know what could have possibly happened between Tristan and Raine.

It wasn’t like they’d spent much time together, even if Tristan had been around the last couple of weeks—since he and Crew had both burned their association with the Sons of Revolution militia group. The ones who had been running around the backcountry, shooting at wildland firefighters.

Maria could ask her friend plenty of questions. But bringing up Tristan shut everything down. She stared at Raine, deciding to give the other woman a break from talking about Tristan. “Why did you become a hotshot?”

“So I could escape them.”

“Who?”

“All of them.”

Maria shifted in the seat, dislodging Jubal. “Sorry, dog.” She petted his head, and he found another place to lie down. “Talk to me, Raine.”

The other woman scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter now. I’m a hotshot. I don’t have a family. I only have this.” She motioned at the jump base around them. “I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me. It is what it is.”

Her friend, this strong woman forged by the savagery of the Alaska landscape, had become a hotshot to escape.

Maria said, “I only became a spy to be privy to any intel on my father. The government considered him a threat for years until they realized he was being trafficked for his scientific skills. Sold to the highest bidder for what he could do. And they only know that because I dropped proof they couldn’t ignore on their desks. I’ve been trying to get him back.”

“They didn’t help you?”

Maria snorted. “The CIA tried a couple of times to ‘buy’ him like a sting operation. It never worked, and I’m half convinced they’d have locked him away in some kind of facility where he’d be no better off than he is now.”

“So you’ve gotta bust him out!” Raine sat forward on the chair, tossing her wrapper in the firepit. “Like Tristan did with Crew.”

Maria frowned. “Turns out I have to find him first. Remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Raine sat back in the chair with a sigh.

“Our shot at getting inside intel dried up when Crew and Tristan were discovered.”

Raine winced. “I, uh…actually might have a way to find out what you need.”

“That one.” Kane put an X on the map on the wall in the mess hall. The one Jamie had listed numbers in the corner of months ago, back when they’d had no idea what it all meant.

No idea what was going on in this part of Alaska.

They’d been through kidnappings, a plane crash, met up with dirty federal agents, backwoods thugs, revolutionaries. They’d destroyed a whole facility, kept these militia guys on the run for weeks, and now finally had a shot at exposing the entire operation—taking down Senator Deville.

And yet this thing was far from over.

Rio, an FBI Special Agent out of Anchorage who had a personal connection to the smokejumper team, came over, scratching his jaw. “You’re sure?”

Kane said, “Ask Mitch. We were all there.”

“We’re sure.” Grizz settled on the edge of the table.

Rio looked at the clock. “When are the smokejumpers due back?”

“Probably tomorrow,” Grizz said. “They’re fighting the south fork, and the wind is too strong for the chopper to pick them up tonight.”

Mitch sat across a table from Mack, eating chili. The rest of them had finished already. Kane’s mouth was still on fire from the spices, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He was just going to keep drinking water.

A table over, Logan and Jamie sat close.

Logan had been grounded after passing out during a jump a couple of days ago, so his team had deployed without him.

Jamie’s brother Tristan was across the table from them, beside Crew.

The two men were confidential informants for the Feds, as far as Kane could tell.