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Cadee Moore had never run from a fight, and running today might well cost her life.

“Thirty seconds to jump!” Neil, their pilot, called back from the cockpit of the Midnight Sun smokejumping plane.

In all her years of being a hotshot, and now a smokejumper, Cadee Moore had never run from gunmen on ATVs to a plane, been shot at as the plane took off…or known for certain their plane was going to crash.

She gripped the armrests.

In the front row next to Vince Ramos, she could see past him out the window to where smoke billowed from each engine. The plane shook hard, bucked side to side. Her stomach swished around with it.

God!

She reached down and pulled out her parachute and her fire pack from under her seat.

Jumping from a plane streaming smoke was not a thing she’d ever expected as a smokejumper. She twisted the tracker ring Jade had given all the Midnight Sun SJs.

They’d barely made it off the ground before guns had begun shooting at the plane.

They had parachutes, and they had a pilot still doing his best to get them as high as possible and as far as possible from the militiamen.

But the crash was going to happen.

Vince adjusted the straps of his fire pack on his lap and shot her the hard glance she’d lately grown accustomed to, frowning, his dark eyebrows meeting in the middle. Because he thought she was scared?

He called out, “Hey, Jade, I’ll just go down by myself, all right?”

“We’re both going down. We’re supposed to pair off. What is your problem?” Okay, she sounded just as antagonistic as he had.

Jade leaned into their space, her brown eyes blazing. Her voice was scarily steady and quiet. “The two of you and your constant bickering is why I assigned you as partners.” She sighed. “You jump first. Together.” She stood straight. “You’re grownups. Work. It. Out. Have each other’s backs.” Her dark-blonde braid swung as she turned to help Logan adjust his chute.

Cadee and Vince looked at each other. He dipped his head to her, and she returned it. She would have his back. It seemed like he’d have hers. She focused her attention on her own chute.

What is his problem anyway?

No matter how hard he pushed, she couldn’t back down until she knew why he treated her like this.

The rest of the Midnight Sun crew was, well…neutral toward her.

Vince…not so much. He was never anything but angry at her. Never did anything but dig into her.

At one time, she and Vince had dated. They’d been in love, and she’d thought it would last forever. Until he’d broken it off. For no reason she understood.

These days she didn’t understand Vince at all.

The plane tilted nose first, and they screamed toward the earth…for a second or two. But Neil was a top-notch pilot.

She quickly patted over her fire pack, even though she’d already triple-checked it.

“Now! Go now!” Saxon, the spotter, called over his shoulder from the cockpit.

Cadee jumped up, stepped into her fire pack, and popped into the aisle. She adjusted her bright orange Nomex fire jacket and put on her helmet. Well, she called it a head cage.

Behind her, Vince tugged at her parachute.

She turned and tugged at his straps. They fist-bumped. Trusting Vince was not the issue. This was the man she’d dated while they were in the Ember training program together. The man for whom her feelings were still alive. Even if she would never admit it.

Jade opened the hatch, and Cadee stood in the opening.

Thump, thump. Jade tapped her shoulders, and Cadee jumped out of the plane.

The noise of the wind filled her ears as she fell through the air. The chute opened, popped her up. Now she was floating, not falling, and there was peaceful quiet.

Or at least, there soon would be.

She teared up at the whine of the plane falling. Other smokejumpers fell out, and she prayed their chutes caught them. The red-and-white aircraft dipped toward the ground in front of her. It streamed with smoke, flipped, then hit the ground.

Flames exploded into the air.

Fighting the toggles, she twisted her head and counted parachutes. The wind seemed to be separating them all over the place, but she spotted everyone. Thank God . “God, protect the SJs. Please. Please.” The mossy forest below was a beautiful soft green dotted by fireweed and other wildflowers, but she couldn’t enjoy the view. She was squinting, looking for ATVs.

Vince was close, floating down with her.

Since Vince had been brought onto Midnight Sun this season, they hadn’t even had short conversations. Just fights. She was so tired of it. When Jade had made them partners, it’d gotten even worse. She didn’t even know Vince anymore. Worse, when he was around, she didn’t know herself anymore either.

But they were supposed to work together. Jade was right. Bickering would get them both killed—and maybe everyone else on the team as well.

She wrestled the toggles. Cadee looked down at the spruce trees reaching up to them, swaying. This was a crazy wind.

And who knew what was going to happen? The militia wanted them all dead. Those guys with guns were probably down there waiting for them.

God!

She scanned the ridgeline. The valley floor. And a jolt of recognition shook through her.

Cadee knew about where she and Vince were. She’d grown up around here.

Ingriq Village was at least fifteen miles to the southeast. She could already see the ribbon of the river where she and her sister, Emma, had spent countless hours. The paved road from the village to Copper Mountain cut through the beauty of the land.

And at the end of that road…safety.

If they could outrun the guys with the guns.

The last thing Vince Ramos wanted was his life in Cadee Moore’s hands.

He held his steering lines tight, but the air shifted so hard they were nearly useless.

If he’d believed God was in control, he might’ve thanked Him for the parachute. But the wind might still kill him. Was God going to take care of that? He hadn’t taken care of the Midnight Sun crew’s plane. Or the adrenaline of surviving the crash.

It was parachutes that had taken care of the team—he hoped.

They’d at least taken care of himself and Cadee.

So far.

But it was the parachutes, not God.

And he and Cadee would have to somehow deal with the partnership Jade had forced them into, as well as with their conflict. And they’d have to do it themselves .

Vince looked over at her. Her creamy skin had turned ruddy, and her dark-brown ponytail with blonde highlights was chaos. She was battling the wind too, and handling it well. But as soon as they reached the ground, there would be no more peaceful quiet.

The training at the extra-tough Ember, Montana, smokejumping program had been a test of his skills. Cadee’s too. They had both pursued that training because they knew Alaska would be a tough place to serve, and they’d both been gunning for the Midnight Sun SJ crew. But Ember was where the training program was run by those legendary smokejumpers that people wrote books about. Jed Ransom. Tucker Newman—now their commander.

Still, his only goal had been coming to Alaska.

Vince had been in college when Dad had become the Midnight Sun smokejumper boss, and he’d wanted to learn from that man. And get away from his DEA job.

Cadee had grown up in Alaska, and her heart was here. They’d both finished the training course, but she’d completed it slightly ahead of him—and Midnight Sun had only had one slot.

The bosses had given it to Cadee, and she’d gone home. He’d stayed in Montana and worked last year’s fire season as a smokejumper in Ember while she’d been in Alaska, working under his father.

Nine months ago, his dad had died at the Aktuvik fire.

He stopped that thought process to focus on steering through the harsh wind.

He finally saw a very small meadow surrounded by Sitka spruce up ahead. The wind was thankfully sending them that direction. He pointed at it, shouted over to Cadee.

When the ground finally showed up, he rolled to his knees. He stood up, gathered his chute fast, and ran to the edge of the meadow to make room for her to land.

Wait.

Where was Cadee?

He turned a three sixty, seeing only moss, grass, trees. “Cadee!” he shouted.

“Stupid wind blew me into this spruce, Vince,” she called.

He looked up, shrugged out of his parachute straps, and ran over as fast as he could.

“You didn’t land a perfect jump, did you?” He shook his head to clear his stupidity. He hadn’t meant for it to come out that way. He didn’t know why every word that issued from his mouth around her was antagonistic. Why did he always act like this near her?

Right.

He knew why. This was the woman who had cost him his father.

He stood under the tree and looked up to see the mess the wind had made for her. He saw how to get her down. “Just a minute. I’ve got you.”

“Are you serious?” Cadee twisted around gently, looking up and examining how the parachute cord had trapped her in the tree. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

He opened his mouth to respond. Closed it. He’d probably deserved that, the way he’d been laying into her lately.

She reached up and took hold of the thick limb she was hanging from with both hands, swung her legs once, twice. The third time, her legs grabbed the limb, and she pulled herself up.

Okay, he had some abs, but this reminded him to level up his core exercises. A couple levels.

“Great job. I’ll help…”

She glared down at him and stood on the limb.

Fine. He closed his mouth again and just stood and watched.

Cadee pulled out her pocketknife from her flight pack and cut the parachute cords, taking her time to untangle them from the branches where needed. She gathered the parachute, then, sitting on the limb like it was a chair, she stuffed the chute into her pack.

She stepped down the broken moss-covered branches like the spruce was nothing more than a ladder.

Of course.

Almost to the ground, she pushed away from the trunk and landed next to him. “So, I saw that everyone got out of the plane. About where did any of them land?”

He shook his head. “No idea.”

“Really? You stood there watching me instead of assessing our situation?”

“I was watching your back in case something bad happened.”

Her jaw jutted out. “Like I’m incapable? Untrained? Just a ‘guurrl,’ like you said the other day when I couldn’t lift the huge boulder by myself at the fire? Jade and Skye and I got it out of the way. All of us ‘guurrls.’”

He closed one eye, staring at her with the other. Her bright blue eyes were blazing right back at him. That spirit was what he’d always loved about her. Until his anger at her. “Part of being a team is watching your teammate’s back. I was trying to watch your back.”

She huffed.

It did sound awful, the things he’d said, hearing them from her voice. “I didn’t mean you are an incapable woman.” It wasn’t what he thought of her anyway. “I knew I couldn’t have lifted it myself, and that’s just a way my dad made Mom laugh when she asked him to lift something around the house.”

“Fine. I could see that from him.”

“Let’s do an assessment.” He pulled out his phone. “Seventy-one degrees, zero percent humidity.” He pointed to the right at the skinny plume of smoke. “Plane crash there.”

He ran his hand through his hair. Glanced at Cadee, who was studying the ground.

She slowly met his gaze, her eyes glistening. “If Neil didn’t make it…his wife…”

“Neil—he’s the best.” He swallowed hard.

She nodded. Then she took a deep breath. “Anyway, look,” she said. She pointed into the sky. “Heavy bird traffic coming our way. The smoke’s moving this direction, thanks to that wind. Fast. The plane crash has started a wildfire.”

He scanned the horizon above the soaring spruce trees. It wasn’t just smoke from a tiny campfire. It was fanning out through the sky. “You’re dead right.”

“It’s headed toward the village,” she said, her voice tight.

“What village?”

“I know it’s there.” She took off running toward the wildfire.

“Cadee!” he shouted. “We can’t fight the fire ourselves. Without tools. Without teammates.”

She stopped. Didn’t turn around.

“Listen. Like it or not, we are teammates. And right now, all we have is each other. We need to work together.”

She turned around. “You’re right. I’ll be the guide. Which means you need to keep up. ”

His jaw clenched. “Cadee. I’ve got a map. I’ve got a compass. We’ll get to the jump base, get the rest of the team together, get to the fire.”

Was her face red in anger? Or red from the coolish air of the Alaskan summer?

“We don’t have time to gather the team. We have to head to Ingriq Village.”

What? He stood his ground. “Why? No. We need to head to base, not wander around.”

“Ingriq needs us. Now. It’s close to the fire. We need to warn them, get them out of there.”

He shook his head. “Let’s get back to base, and we can send out a crew to warn them.”

“It won’t be soon enough! We’re going to run out of time!”

“And we have people on our tail trying to kill us! We need to get out of here—now!” His voice lowered. “Come on, Cadee. Work with me.”

“I can’t. I know this village. I have to warn them. Before it’s too late.”

Her tone made his heart squeeze in his chest. Her face had paled when she’d seen the smoke rising above the forest.

“I get that. I really do. But what if these guys find us and we bring trouble to the village? We need to get to the authorities right now. Listen, when we get into range, we can call it in.”

“No.” And her voice even shook a little. “That’s my village. Those are my people. Stay here if you want, but I’m going.”

He could kick himself. She hadn’t just grown up in Alaska, she’d grown up here . “You were raised in Ingriq Village?”

She nodded. “We have to get there, Vince. Fast.”

“Family there?”

“My sister. Niece.” She huffed. “My niece is four. She has asthma.”

Ah. A child with asthma and a wildfire. Not good. He could kick himself again. The fire’s expected behavior was obvious at the moment.

“Your dad taught us that people always come first.”

His mouth tightened. Really? She had to bring up his father? But that was why Vince had become a DEA agent—before he’d wised up and chosen to listen to God’s call to wildland firefighting.

Now he was a firefighter for the exact same reason.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll try to call Jade and Tucker. You text the rest.” Standard Firefighting Order.

She nodded, started punching at her phone.

He pulled out his phone and called Jade. The service only lasted one second, then cut off. Same thing happened the next two times he tried. Then he tried to call Tucker Newman, the base commander, but he didn’t answer either. Vince left a message. “No answer, phone call or text.”

Cadee punched hard at her phone, scowled at it, gave up, and stuck it in her pocket. “I’ll text them as soon as we get to coverage. God, please keep the crew safe.”

She really thought that? He scowled. “God isn’t going to help us. He doesn’t show up.”

Her jaw dropped open so far it practically fell to the ground. “Really? You were always such a strong believer. It was part of the reason I never lost hope the past year, because I knew you wouldn’t. God might not have shown up in the exact way I wanted Him to all the time, but I always knew He was there.”

He’d left that childish part of his life behind when his father died, thank you. “Whatever.”

“Ingriq is that way, Vince. Let’s go.” She pointed to the east.

“Yeah. What’s the fastest way? We need the map.”

She narrowed her eyes but stepped beside him, looked at the map. She poked her finger. “Here’s where we are.” Then another finger poke. “There’s the village.”

“So, a river between here and there.” His finger traced it.

“Yeah. Not far away, I’m guessing. I’ve been to that river a lot, and I visited the area between here and there.” She sighed. “But not often, and it was a long time ago.”

He folded the map and put it in his fire pack. Really? So she’d been here a lot. He swallowed, forcing the frustration out of his voice. “Hard to tell on the map exactly what we’ll see, but?—”

The pop of a gunshot sounded through the meadow.

A bullet skimmed over his left shoulder.

Vince slammed into Cadee as all his old DEA training rushed back. The heat of gunfire. A civilian in danger.

He lay over her, protecting her from bullets.

Had the militia found them?