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ONE

Frankly, Crispin was just tired of being dead.

Dead, and in his pajamas.

Wow, he needed pants, because the flimsy hospital gown was getting a little breezy.

“Thanks, Kelly,” he said to the night nurse as she brought in his dinner. The ever-so-delicious red Jell-O and chicken broth. Sheesh, he still had teeth, thank you, even if his insides had been a little ground up over the past week.

That’s what being kidnapped and tortured did to a guy—reduced him to slurping his food.

“Eat up. I’ll be back to get your blood pressure,” said Kelly. Mid-thirties, no nonsense, and in a different time, different place, he’d listen to her.

But, well, he had things to do.

He pulled the tray to himself, the IV line tugging a little on the top of his hand where it connected. “Hey. Is that cop still sitting outside my door?”

“Duane? I think he went to the cafeteria for coffee. Why? You need me to call him?” She’d stopped, her hand on the door. “Do you feel unsafe? They said he was here for your protection.”

Always, but, “No. I just wanted to check on the fire and the search for my attacker.”

She was pretty enough. Dark hair pulled back into a low bun, wearing teal pants and a patterned shirt, the look of a mother in her expression. She wore a ring, so probably. Now she gave him a look of pity. “No. I’m sorry. Do you want me to call the sheriff and see if he’s heard anything?”

“No. That’s okay.” He picked up his spoon. “Thanks.”

He pushed away his food, leaned his head back. Closed his eyes. So close. He’d been so, so painfully, pitifully close to wrapping up this eternal, never-ending, doggone mission.

And then a biker-gangbanger slash paid assassin named Tank had to get the drop on him and rearrange his insides, looking for answers to the question Crispin still hadn’t answered— where was the nuke?

Good question, and really, get in line, pal. Because Crispin hadn’t a clue if Two-fisted Tank was an independent world-ending terrorist or if he worked with The Brothers, a.k.a. a semiorganized Russian wannabe-terrorist group conveniently working inside the American borders—also hunting for the nuke. At this point, it was a free-for-all race to find said stolen nuclear missile, and who knew how many rogue groups might be hunting down the thief, Henry Snow?

Ex-CIA agent Henry Snow, who had rescued the nuke from the grip of a rogue CIA faction and hidden it like an easter egg in the woods of Montana. The same Henry Snow who’d reached out to Crispin three-plus months ago telling him to come to Ember, Montana.

And then promptly ghosted him.

The stupid watery broth actually smelled good. Crispin reached out to pull the tray close. Heat sheered through him up his side, where at least one rib had folded under Tank’s close and personal attention.

Crispin’s head still hammered too, a throb that might be more like a pellet gun against his brain thanks to the go-round he’d had with kidnapper number dos . This time, he’d been snatched right out of the hospital, dragged to a cabin in the woods and, from his sketchy memory, might have turned to toast in a house fire if former CIA agent, and his once-upon-a-time partner, Booth Wilder hadn’t rescued him.

He remembered his floppy-meat self being dragged out of danger by Booth.

But sadly, not much more until he’d woken two days ago bandaged, IVs in one arm, on oxygen, and his entire body needing a mainline of ibuprofen.

And wearing pajamas.

Agenda item numero uno: find pants.

Then he’d have to sneak past Duane and out the door of the hospital.

Lift some wheels.

Maybe connect with Booth.

And then, finally, find Henry Snow.

Not even a clue how he’d do that.

He tasted the soup. Not terrible. He finished it, slowly, letting the heat find his bruised bones. Maybe he’d live, but he’d stopped thinking past the next five minutes.

Kelly came back in. “Oh, good. I was hoping you’d eaten.” She looked like she might hold up her hand for a fist bump.

He pushed the empty bowl and tray away but palmed the spoon and tucked it beside him. “Maybe next time add some real chicken?”

“Sorry. Not until the doc okays it. You had some pretty significant internal bleeding.” As if to emphasize her words, she pulled down his blanket?—

“Hey!” He put his hands on his flimsy gown. “I’m not sure what happened to my clothes, but?—”

“Calm down, Mr. Lamb. I’ve seen it before. Besides, I’m just checking on your bruising.”

Mr. Lamb. So, Booth had given the sheriff his sister’s alias name. Felt right. He hadn’t had a real name for years. Even Crispin was a nickname his sister had given him once upon a time.

He let Nurse Kelly check out his torso and caught a glimpse himself. Mostly black and purple, some green bruising. “That doesn’t look too bad,” he said.

She gaped at him. “You look like you’ve been hit by a buffalo, then trampled by the herd.”

“Maybe just a couple of the calves?—”

“And let’s not forget you’ve been shot.” She lifted the bandage that covered his shoulder. “Stitches are healing. Good thing it was a through and through.”

Right. Good thing. He would have preferred not getting shot.

She examined his face. “At least your eye is open now. Better than when you came in three days ago. You’re a fast healer.”

Not fast enough. If he hadn’t ached so much, he’d have sneaked out on day one.

“You know where my pants went?”

She reached for the blood pressure cuff. “Your clothes were handed over to the police for evidence.”

Aw.

She finished, then took his pulse. “You’re definitely on the mend. Although, you haven’t had any visitors.”

Yes, he had—a.k.a. his buddy Booth, who’d slipped in after visiting hours and given him the lowdown on Henry.

“Okay, so Floyd is still on the run. Still hunting Henry,” Booth had said, his face illuminated by the moonlight cutting through the window. “And the nuke is still missing.”

Crispin had been in too much pain to do anything but groan.

“But I think I have a lead on Henry. My uh…our team leader got tangled in a chute accident and went down in a cave. She said that Henry Snow rescued her.”

That lit a fire inside him. “Where?”

“I have a rough map.” Booth slipped a burner phone into his hand. “I’d given this to the sheriff, but after he told me today that Floyd was still out there…”

“I get it,” Crispin said.

“I put the coordinates of where Nova met Henry in the phone. It’s a cave north of here, in the Kootenai forest. The fire is still burning, though, so I need to go back out with the team.”

“I got this,” Crispin said. His voice sounded like he’d gargled with cement.

Booth raised an eyebrow. “We need help?—”

“The minute we call anyone in is the minute the entire gang arrives, and suddenly we have the Lincoln County war in Ember, Montana.” He shifted and buried a groan. “I’ll get out of here ASAP and find him.”

Booth sighed. “You track down Henry. Then call me. Don’t do this alone. I don’t want to have to start a fire to save your sorry backside again.” But he’d smiled. “Good to have you back, Crisp.” He’d lifted a fist.

Crispin had met it. “Thanks for saving my hide.”

“Twice,” Booth had said. “Don’t be a hero.”

Right. He’d left hero behind long ago, frankly.

Now, Kelly pressed the cold face of the stethoscope to his chest. “Good news, you still have a heartbeat.”

He smiled. She winked and put the scope around her neck. “Maybe another few days, and the doc will discharge you.” She’d pulled out a tablet from her massive hip pocket. “I don’t think the doc will let you leave without having a place to go, however.”

“I have a place to go.” Although, probably she meant a home, with family, so nope. Yes, his sister lived here, but he wasn’t letting Tank or anyone else show up on her doorstep again, so…

“Really?” Kelly looked up from taking notes on her tablet.

“Yep. Friends in town”—sort of—“and family”—again, nope—“and I have a place north of town, well stocked.” Truth. With ammo and survival supplies and everything he needed for a standoff, should the Brotherhood find him.

Again.

“My shift changes in twenty minutes, so I’ll hand you off. Duane is back, but his shift is changing too.” She patted Crispin’s shoulder as she slipped the tablet back into her pocket. “Good thing the fire has died down in the mountains, or our bench would be leaner. Some of our nurses serve as emergency personnel on the fire line. And we’re hoping for rain at the end of the week. Put an end to all this tragedy.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Kelly.”

She gave him a smile and picked up his tray. “See you tomorrow.”

Yeah, not so much. The door closed softly behind her, and he sat up, reached for a cotton ball, and slowly pulled out his IV.

Pressed the cotton ball over the wound.

So, first thing—pants. He slipped out of bed. Then he grabbed his spoon.

Three days. Three days Floyd and his ilk had been free to hunt down Henry.

Three days. Maybe The Brothers already had the nuke.

Three days. Long enough for the Russian Bratva to set up a meet, exchange rubles for a weapon of mass destruction, and then—then it would all go down. World War Three, or at least a catastrophic terror event inside the borders of the US.

He blamed his years in the CIA for the doomsday attitude, but frankly, wasn’t that what his team had given their lives to prevent? What he’d sacrificed three years of his life for?

Pants.

He poked his head out the door. Duane—big guy, clearly a Montanan with his grizzly bear girth—stood at the nurses’ desk, drinking a cup of joe, chatting up the nurses: two women and a guy. Crispin remembered him—about his size, a nice guy named Nick.

Nick with pants that might fit him, stashed in the locker room down the hall.

Crispin waited until the nurses had all turned away, Duane’s back still to him, and he slipped out the door, hugged the opposite wall, and stole down the hallway to the locker room door.

He’d spotted it earlier, during the obligatory get-out-of-bed-and-stroll portion of his recovery.

Now, he slipped inside. A clean room with a carpeted floor, showers, and wide lockers all with doors. Locked doors.

Aw.

But hanging on a hook on the wall was a pair of overalls, maybe from the maintenance crew. Bingo. He pulled them on, found a baseball hat in a cubby by the door, and added that over his bed-head hair.

No shoes, but he didn’t have time to search.

He stuck his head back out into the hallway. No sign of Duane, so he just strolled out and headed toward the stairs. He took the steps down two flights to the emergency room.

Then he walked past a kid with a bloody nose, his arm pressed to his body, a woman holding a sleeping toddler, and right out under the canopy to the parking lot.

Darkness pressed against the arch of night, the last of the sunlight rimming the mountains to the north. Deep shadows draped the parking lot.

One unlocked car. He just needed one.

He walked around the lot, trying doors, ducking between cars, and— jackpot . Found a dinged-up orange Kia Rio and slid into the driver’s seat.

Clearly the driver loved McDonald’s. The car reeked of French fries and the odor of sour milkshakes.

But Kias could be hotwired, and in moments, he’d used the spoon to take off the steering column. Then he found the ignition cylinder and shoved the end of the spoon in.

The car fired up.

Never mind that his bare foot stuck to the floor, something sticky on the gas pedal. He pulled out and headed into the night.

* * *

The firestorm was going to kill them all.

Jade stared out the open door of the Twin Otter at the fire that tipped the trees and chewed through the Kootenai forest below. Smoke billowed up, blackened and lethal, but Aria, the pilot, cleared a wide path around it just to give Jade and their spotter, a man named Duncan, a chance to test the wind, figure out how to deploy from the plane safely.

With the winds gusting in the thirty-mile-an-hour range, just getting her seven-person team—they were one firefighter short with Nova and another jumper named Rico out injured—out the door and onto the ground might be tricky.

But it didn’t have to be pretty. Just safe.

Duncan sent out another check ribbon, and she watched it flutter out, then fall, then spiral, the storm of the fire grabbing it and turning it into a knot as it whisked it away.

It fell into the distant flames and vanished.

So, that didn’t bode well.

“Take us higher, Aria,” Duncan said and leaned away from the open door, holding on to his safety line.

Aria ascended, and Duncan closed the door. He spoke into his mic, and she heard it through her headphones. “Maybe we try to get west of it?”

It being the fire wall, headed south, toward civilization, chewing up downed lodgepole pine and the thick, dry loam of the tinder-dry forest. According to emergency response leader Miles Dafoe, the Jude County firefighters had waged war with the fire all summer since an explosion in the woods had first set off the blaze.

She’d read the fire reports on her tablet during her flight from Anchorage last night. Which meant she’d nabbed little sleep, although frankly, she’d learned to nap like a combat soldier after so many years fighting fires.

Her first real look at the blaze had come this morning as she’d walked into the makeshift Jude County fire center, located in a Quonset hut just off the runway.

Of course, she probably had “overachiever” stamped on her forehead. Or at least on the breast pocket of her jumpsuit. That’s what happened when you dragged legacy everywhere you went.

But it didn’t matter. They’d asked her to fill in as crew boss, and yeah, she planned to bring the house down. Keep the family name intact.

Make her big brother, Jed, proud. Maybe.

Of course, the heads of the top brass rose, and two of the three people smiled, something of warmth in their eyes.

“Jade.” Conner Young, their supervisor, came over and held out his hand. “When did you get in?”

“Last night.”

“Now I know we’re in safe hands,” Nova Burns, another legacy said. She grabbed Jade up in a hug.

“Conner said you needed a team lead after yours was hurt?” She stepped away. “How bad is it?”

“Hairline crack, really. I’ll be fine. But it’s a big fire—we need all the help we can get.”

She looked over at the third man, tall, with dark hair, salty at the sides, wearing a green forest-service jumpsuit, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. “This is our incident commander, Miles Dafoe.”

He shook Jade’s hand. “I know your brother only by reputation.”

“That’s enough of a threat,” she said, and Miles smiled.

But she wasn’t exactly kidding, was she?

Miles then pointed to a screen where a drone flew over the acres and acres of burning forest. A man who seemed in his late twenties worked the controls like he might be in a video game.

“The fire started last night—one of our pilots called it in this morning,” Miles said. “We’re currently fighting a blaze that’s burned nearly all of central Kootenai, all the way over to County Road 518. It took out the campground and Wildlands Academy fire camp, and it even came close to a couple ranches, although we were able to save them.”

He ran his hand over a map of the massive Kootenai mountain area, spread out on a wall. Tiny yellow pushpins indicated firefighters still out in the field.

“We have the fire corralled, but it’s not over. And now, with this new fire pushing in from the east”—he ran a finger up South Fork Road—“if these two combine, we’ll have a conflagration we won’t be able to put down. It could reach Snowhaven.” He ran his hand down to a red pushpin about ten miles north of Ember.

“I’ve been there a few times,” Jade said. “Tourist town. Real population less than a thousand.”

“Yes. And if the blaze gets past Snowhaven, it heads right to Ember.”

“Looks like HQ already had a fire.” She glanced over at the half-burnt HQ building, the front section demolished, the back draped with tarps and temporary shelter.

“Arsonist. Long story,” said Conner. “But right now our focus is knocking down this fire before it joins forces with the main blaze.”

“My, or rather, your team is ready to go,” Nova said. She leaned a little on a crutch, her ankle wrapped. “They’ve been in for forty-eight hours—the hotshots are out with the blaze. But that area is inaccessible except by plane so?—”

“Yep,” Jade said. “So, we have Flattail Creek to the west, and generally, we just need to cut the fire off to the south.”

“Yes. There’s a small lake here—Rainbow Lake. And a creek that runs east-west. Get in, fortify a line along the creek, and use it to help slow down the blaze. We’ll attack the head, too, with slurry and water from the lake, and if we can knock it down, then it’s one less thing to worry about.”

“What’s the wind like?” Her gut tightened on the answer.

“Northwest.”

Right. “I’ll meet the team on the tarmac.”

Nova left, and Jade loaded up her jump pockets with a couple maps, a walkie, extra batteries, and then headed to the locker room to grab a gear bag—water, gloves, a fire shelter, space blanket, two days of MREs, a flare, and a knife. She’d already grabbed a helmet and a Pulaski and now climbed into her jumpsuit, a heavy canvas outer layer that would protect her from the heat and flames.

Should she land in the fire.

She blew out a breath. She hadn’t done that since…well, since she’d been a rookie .

The team waited for her at the plane, doing buddy checks on their equipment. She met the pilot—Aria, dark hair, no-nonsense—and the rest of the team. Orion and Vince, a couple sawyers, and Logan, her team lead, and JoJo, a woman who also had a bit of legacy on her tail.

They got in, and Nova stood on the tarmac and waved, her face a little twisted. Yeah, Jade got that. Her worst nightmare might be sending her team out without her.

And that sounded arrogant, but they were her responsibility. And a Ransom didn’t let their team down.

Thank you, big bro, for that rep.

But Jade was all in, even now, an hour later, as she stared out at the fire consuming Flatiron Mountain. It had burned around the base, approximately three miles from Rainbow Lake, and was heading southwest fast.

“Okay,” she said to Duncan. “We’re going to drop closer to the lake and set up along the creek. I know it’s a farther hike, but there’s a nice bald spot just north, and it’s away from the fire.” She looked at her crew, kitted up, strapped into their safety lines. “Nobody dies today.”

Logan, her second-in-command, gave her a thumbs-up.

The plane banked, and Aria brought them around. Logan scooted up to Jade. “I can be first stick out with JoJo.”

Not a bad idea, given the wind. If someone got blown off course, she could track them. Although, rules were, at least on her team in Alaska, crew chief went out the door first.

And she hated breaking the rules.

Still, safety first. She nodded, and as Aria descended and Duncan opened the door, Logan and JoJo lined up, first stick.

Duncan sent out a ribbon, and she watched it, her jaw tight as it fell. He looked at her and shot her a thumbs-up.

She nodded, and Logan and JoJo went out the door as she leaned over, a gloved hand on her safety line, watching.

Two chutes, deployed.

Orion and Vince jumped next. Two more chutes.

She stepped up to the door, watching.

The wind grabbed at them, but both Orion and Vince maneuvered with their toggles.

Duncan unhooked her safety line. “Be safe!”

She nodded—and jumped.

Air, brisk and full, and this— this was the moment that caught her up every time. The freedom, the expanse of the moment swept through her, stole her breath, told her that she might be invincible, and right now, she believed it.

Jump thousand.

Below, the flames reached for her, snapping, the wind kicking up. Logan and JoJo had already landed, a nice touchdown maybe a half mile from the blaze.

Look thousand.

She got the lay of the land—the mountain to the north, rising tall and bald, although it had nothing on the jagged beauty of the Alaska Range. A service road to the east, running northwest, cutting through the forest, a brown ribbon.

Reach thousand.

To the west, the glistening blue of the Flattail River, some twenty feet wide in areas, narrower in others. Enough, maybe, to stop the blaze.

As she drifted down, she made out a few landmarks. Wildlands Academy to the west, burnt. There went a summer full of memories.

Wait thousand.

Smoke hurtled up toward her—she’d drifted a little over the fire, the furnace tugging at her. Vince and Orion had touched earth, also in the bald spot. She glanced at the fire and pulled her rip cord.

Pull thousand.

Maybe a little soon, but the chute billowed out and caught with a jerk and a shot of pain she’d come to expect.

Then she settled into her harness and reached for the toggles.

Nothing.

She looked up. The toggles had wrapped around the risers, caught on the links. Reaching up, she caught one, tried to untangle it.

Focus. Breathe.

But the storm grabbed her, tossed her away from her trajectory.

Don’t look down.

Nope. Not a chance. Below her, the fire snapped, roared, still some thousand feet below, but?—

She got the toggle free. Looped it through her arm and reached for the other. No good—it was knotted around the link, not a hope of release.

The fire below her roared.

She reefed down hard on her right toggle, and the chute arched to the right, over the fire. C’mon, c’mon. She kept reefing, and the rig kept turning, heading east now.

She let off on the reef, and the chute straightened out, flying away from the bald spot, falling, the fire beneath her.

Still hungry.

But wind—maybe the breath of God—caught her, and she sailed over the exploding treetops, the smoke coughing up around her. Her eyes burned, but she spotted the road?—

Wait. As she crossed over it, headed for the trees, she made out a car—an orange car in the ditch, the front end crushed against an electrical pole. Broken at the impact, the pole had flattened the top of the little car and fallen into the forest on the opposite side, the forest burnt and crispy.

Source of fire solved.

And then—trees. She braced herself and curled her legs up to protect them as she fell into the tangle of trees, hitting branches and crashing through leaves until she jerked, hard. Her breath shook out, her harness burned against her thighs.

She hung, swinging in the tree, some thirty feet from the forest floor.

So much for a glorious, epic first day on the job.