Page 5

FIVE

And that was clearly that.

Jade leaned over the fire map in the command center of the fire station, trying, oh, trying to listen to Miles outline the latest fires spotted during this morning’s drone flight.

“The Rainbow Lake fire jumped the Flatiron River here, twenty miles north of where you culled the front line, at the river’s narrowest spot. It’s now chewing its way north and west, to Canada, and down toward the main fire, still simmering its way south. These two heads meet and we’ll have a real flare-up.”

Flare-up. Like the crazy flash of emotions last night when she’d practically thrown herself into Crispin’s arms?

Or maybe in the wee hours of this morning—he’d slept way, blissfully, past her one-hour terms—when he’d gulped down the plate of eggs she’d scrambled for him and drained a pot of coffee. Then he’d looked at her with those hazel-green eyes, his countenance, despite the fading bruises, seeming almost revived and said, “I think you might have saved my life.”

“Me and every other short-order cook across America, saving lives every morning.” But his words had still done a number on her, finding footing in her heart.

He’d smiled then, and shoot, every time he did, it was only more lethal. Probably a good thing that he’d gotten up then, grabbed his charged phone, and walked to the door.

And probably not a good thing that she’d followed him and stood there, holding the door open, not sure what to say as he, too, stood there, looking down at her.

One step. That’s all she’d needed to close the gap and really ignite something. She could almost feel his arms around her, almost taste his mouth on hers, and maybe he’d sensed it too, because he’d swallowed, cleared his throat, and said, “Take care of yourself,” right before he’d practically fled out the door.

You too.

“So I think if you bring your team in here, Jade, you can use Pipe Creek as a break.” He ran his finger along a creek spur, toward Tom Mountain. “There are a few homes in there, so make sure people have evacuated too.”

She nodded, stifled a yawn.

“You good to go?” This from Conner.

“Yes,” she said. “No one dies today.” She gave him a thumbs-up, then headed out of the office, back to the gear area.

She then grabbed her chute pack, pulled out her chute and, on the long folding table, repacked it. No more tangles, thank you.

Booth came walking in, holding a cup of coffee. “Morning, Chief.”

She glanced at him and looked away, and oh, she hated holding secrets in her head, because in the forefront of her brain sat Crispin’s story of Booth’s secret identity, and now she wondered whether Nova knew, and maybe she should tell him that Crispin had visited her last night, and?—

“Boss says the wind is all kinds of crazy today.” He was packing his gear from the supplies in bins around the room.

“Mm-hmm.”

Finn and Vince came in and opened their lockers. “Anytime you want to pay me,” Finn said, probably to Vince.

Aria came in and set a duffel on the bench. “Hey, Jade,” she said. “You didn’t stick around last night.”

“Sorry. Tired.” And she stifled another yawn.

Booth glanced at her, frowned. “Something keep you up late?”

“I watched a reality show about singer Oaken Fox joining a SAR team in Alaska.”

“I saw that,” JoJo said. Jade hadn’t seen her come in. “Did you get to the part where they have to search for the lost bridesmaids in a blizzard?”

Jade shook her head. Frankly, if she had, she might not even remember, because she’d dozed off in her brother’s leather recliner, her earbuds still playing the show on her phone. But she hadn’t wanted to take the chance of Crispin sneaking out on her again.

Take care of yourself. The words felt so…well, like he might be saying goodbye.

As in, not coming back.

Stop pining. Clearly, being around the man had her acting all sorts of crazy. She didn’t like tough guys, didn’t have room for romance, not with her short-term schedule in Montana. And moreover, well…she couldn’t get in over her head, could she?

So she had no business flirting with the guy. Or standing at the door, hoping he’d kiss her.

She picked up her chute pack, her jump bag, and went to her locker. Grabbed her jumpsuit and stepped into it.

Layers. They protected her. Made her stronger. And maybe that’s what had made Crispin both alluring and dangerous. She’d let him in, just a little.

But even a little could get her burned.

So yes, take care of yourself .

Putting on her boots and grabbing her helmet, she headed out to the plane. Aria walked around it, working her preflight check. Inside, Duncan had loaded the gear box and now checked the safety lines as the team loaded in and clipped them on. She got in, clipped her line to her carabiner, and took her spot on the first stick, alongside JoJo. Logan would jump last with Rico.

“Stay alert. Stay safe. No mistakes,” she said as Duncan closed the door.

Then she sat back, her eyes closed, and absorbed the rumble of the Twin Otter as it took off and soared over Ember, toward their jump site.

Mind on the jump. On the fire. On the team.

She must have dozed off, because Duncan nudged her knee when they reached the jump site. Crawling over to the open door, she followed the trail of the spotter ribbon down to the ground. Below them, the fire had just started to crown the trees, and she identified the creek where they could cut the line and start a backfire.

“Your jump site is over there, in that clearing!” Duncan shouted, and she guesstimated it might be a good two miles from the creek. But, with the dense forest, the safest place to land.

Aria descended, then circled, and Duncan pushed out the gear box.

Jade signaled to JoJo, who gave her a thumbs-up. They went out the door.

Wind, brisk and holding just a nip of chill from the morning. She counted her thousands, then pulled, and her toggles came out unhindered. JoJo’s chute deployed without a hitch, and by the time Jade had landed—a perfect land, roll, and look—the rest of the team were floating down.

No mistakes.

She gathered up her chute, packed it away, then shed her jumpsuit and replaced the gear in the box—saws and shovels and water bottles—with the packed chutes and suits.

The smoke rose from the fire line, billowing into the clear blue sky, some two klicks away, around the mountain and through the woods.

She’d spotted an old forest road on her descent, so she aimed for that, leading the team through the rocky terrain toward the scrape in the earth.

As they walked, the air grew denser, although still clear of the smoke, just a hint of odor burning the air. Behind her, Vince, Rico, and Finn barely grunted with their gear, and JoJo and Logan took up the rear.

“Hey,” Booth said. “Anyone want to hear a story?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “What?”

“He does this,” JoJo shouted. “He loves his tall tales.”

“Not a tall tale,” he said. “This one is about this guy I know?—”

“Wait! Is his name Henry?” Vince said.

Laughter. She frowned, looked again at Booth. He shrugged. “It’s a thing.”

Some guys sang songs, others told stories, a few others simply kept quiet, the stories of fire in their eyes. So she got it.

“Save it for tonight,” she said, stopping and pulling out her topo map from her pants pocket. “There should be a homestead around here. Let’s make sure it’s evacuated, and then we’ll hit the creek, due south.”

Booth looked over her shoulder along with Logan. They nodded.

She shouldered her Pulaski and headed toward the drive to the homestead. An indentation in the woods, really, about as wide as a pickup, but recent tire tracks had churned up dirt, so maybe the inhabitants had left. The forest had thickened, shaggy blue spruce and tall white pine crowding against willow and poplar scrub on either side of the narrow road.

Sweat trickled down the back of her shirt, and her ankle had started to protest, but not enough to slow down.

They did this right, she’d end the night with a basket of fries at the Hotline?—

A gunshot. It exploded into the air and she froze.

“Was that?—”

“Get down!” The voice came from the woods, unseen, but?—

Her knees buckled, and she landed on all fours. What?—

She looked back to check out her team. Logan had pushed JoJo down, his hand over her pack, his other arm above his head. Vince and Finn both dropped their saws, and Rico dove for the ditch.

Booth, next to her, crouched, his pack shed and?—

“You have a gun?”

“It’s a bear gun, and yes.”

“Bears?”

“Reasons—”

Another shot, and this time a tree shook nearby.

“Is someone shooting at us?” This from JoJo, who started crawling for the ditch, her hands over her head. Logan followed her.

“Get off the road!” The voice echoed from the brush.

Jade searched for the voice, her heart a fist in her ribs. What?—

And then, just like that, he burst out of the woods. He wore black camo pants, a black jacket, his face grimy, and she’d recognize him anywhere.

Tough Guy.

He held a shotgun in one hand.

Crispin’s gaze landed on Booth, then on Jade right before he grabbed her pack and hauled her up. “To the woods!”

She scrambled with him, nearly falling as he hauled her off the road, practically threw her into the trees. “Hide!”

Hide?

JoJo and Logan dove into the woods, Rico still in the ditch, along with Finn now.

Vince and Booth, however, simply made themselves small and headed for trees on the opposite side.

Another shot, and this one stripped off bark over Vince’s head.

That’s when she spotted a gun in Vince’s hand too. What, was her whole team armed?

But—“Crispin. What are you?—”

“Just stay down, Jade.” He pressed on her shoulder and didn’t look at her, just studied the road.

Her heart stopped cold as a truck appeared, motoring down the narrow path, two men standing in the back like real-life terrorists, their semiautomatics sweeping the road.

“Don’t. Move,” Crispin whispered.

She couldn’t breathe, so no problem.

But—“What is going on? Are you following me?”

He shot her a look, a fierceness in it, and then, “No, I’m not following you. Are you following me? Because you just managed to walk right into a Brothers camp.”

And then, as if she might be an extra in an episode of Seal Team , she crouched in the ditch and watched as Crispin, Booth, and even Vince jumped up, secured behind the trees, and fired back.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing? Stay down!” He glanced at her.

A bullet chipped the tree near his shoulder.

“I’m down, I’m down!” She made herself very, very small and prayed no one died today.

* * *

Hours later, the image of Jade crouching in the woods, bullets shredding the trees around her, could still shake Crispin through to his bones.

If he hadn’t been there?—

He stood now, outside the ring of firelight from the team’s strike camp, watching—yes, turning into a voyeur, maybe—as Jade and the rest of the team set up tents, the darkness settling around them.

They’d left a trail as wide as a bulldozer through the woods, so he’d tracked them down easily after canvassing the small cabin where the three Brothers gang members had holed up.

Maybe he shouldn’t be here, but he needed to update Booth on what he’d found. The picture sat folded in the pocket of his cargo pants. A bit of providence he’d found inside the house, tacked to a wall, along with a topo map, locations circled.

He recognized the locations as other Brothers camps he’d found. Floyd Blackwell’s various hideouts.

Providence had been on his side this time, given the fact he’d spotted the smokejumper team just as they’d strolled into Brothers territory. What if?—

No. This time, he’d been there. And with Booth. He didn’t know the other jumpers, but between the three of them—himself, Booth and the other armed jumper—they’d managed to wound one of the targets before the truck had driven down the road, screaming up dust.

He’d searched the cabin while the team had deployed to the site, and maybe for the best, because in his head, he rounded back to Jade and?—

What? Pulled her into his arms to try and still the shaking inside? Demand she not do her job? Smokejumpers walked into trouble all the time…

He blew out a breath, watching her now. She seemed tired—sooty, grimy, a day of working on the line showing in her movements. But they wouldn’t have hiked out and set up a strike camp if the fire still threatened.

His foot cracked a branch, and he stilled as Booth looked up, toward the shadows. Reached for his weapon—and no wonder. Poor man lived in two worlds now that Crispin had made the mistake of coming back from the dead.

Putting out his hands, he stepped out of hiding. “Booth. It’s me.”

Booth wore the day’s exertion on his sooty face, his yellow Nomex jacket blackened, his hair matted from his helmet. He lowered the gun. “Crisp. What are you doing here?”

Others on the team had looked up. Vince, a guy who clearly had some military or law enforcement past, the way he’d instinctively taken cover, then aligned with them to protect the team. And another woman who crouched in front of the stove, boiling water, probably for dinner. The team had circled the tents with clotheslines strung between them, a few washed bandannas hanging from the lines, along with socks. Jackets also hung from the lines, a few of the team having shed their outer layer.

He glanced at Jade, who’d stilled, lowering the radio. He’d heard her checking in with HQ as he stood in the shadows. No pickup until morning.

Now, “I just, um…wanted to see if you’d had any more trouble.”

“Just a fire trying to kill us,” Jade said. “Hungry?”

“I don’t want to?—”

“Booth, you have room for him in your tent?” Jade asked.

Booth shrugged. “I’ll have to kick Logan out, but he snores, so?—”

“Seriously, it’s the smoke. I don’t snore?—”

Booth smiled and Logan shook his head.

“Gimme your MREs,” the woman at the fire said. “Water’s boiling.”

“Here you go, Jo,” said Booth, walking over to his pack. He glanced at Crispin. “Chicken à la King.”

“Yum.”

“I have an extra,” Jade said and set two metallic packets beside the others. Jo filled them with water.

Booth motioned him over with a gesture of his head. Lowered his voice. “How was it that you happened to be right there to save our hides?” He bent in front of his tent, opened it, then grabbed a nearby sleeping bag and tossed it inside.

“The short of it is that I stopped by the sheriff’s office today.”

“Bold move, since you ditched his deputy.”

“He had some choice words but seemed more concerned with the dead guys they found at my house—one had my picture on his body, so Sheriff Hutchinson thinks they might be the assassins you mentioned.”

“I’d really love to stop looking over my shoulder.”

“Soon, bro. But I still need to find Henry. Remember that pickup you stole to spring me from Floyd’s cabin? The back glass was shot out?”

“You remember that?”

“I remember you dragging my sorry backside out of a burning cabin, yes. Anyway, when I was in town, I spotted the truck and followed it into the woods. I was staking out the place when you guys came trotting down the road.”

“Floyd?”

“Nope. Not there.”

Booth’s mouth made a tight line as he nodded. “Did you find anything when you searched the place?”

“Yep. A picture.”

“Yours?”

“Nope.”

“Please don’t tell me it’s mine.”

“Nope.” He pulled the photograph from his pocket. “Look familiar?”

The picture, taken from a distance, portrayed a man knee-deep in water, holding a throw-back fish on a fly rod. Narrow face, short white beard, his equally white hair framing a furrowed brow, pensive blue eyes.

“Crazy Henry.”

“Living his best clandestine life in a River Runs Through It set, here in the backwoods of Montana.”

“Did you get to those coordinates I gave you yet?”

“Yes. Early this morning before I hit up the sheriff. It’s an abandoned cave.” He shook his head. “So we’re back at nothing.”

Booth pointed at the picture. “Not nothing. He rescued my girlfriend, Nova?—”

“Girlfriend?”

A wry grin crested across Booth’s face. “Yeah, I’m trying that word out. I think I like it.” Booth shrugged. “It’s about time we escaped this nightmare.” He stood up and headed to the stove, where his dinner waited.

The others sat, spoons in the bags of food, eating their rehydrated dinners. Jade picked up her MREs. “You have a choice of chili mac or beef stew.”

“Stew,” he said. “Are you sure?”

“Sure that you saved my life today, so yeah.” She met his eyes as she handed him the pouch. Her voice fell. “I don’t know what you were doing there—probably I don’t want to, but…thanks.”

He nodded. “You okay?” She’d washed her face and donned a clean black T-shirt, combed back her blonde hair, beauty from the ashes.

“Yeah. I think.” She handed him a spoon, then sat down on a nearby rock and dug into her chili mac.

“You get the fire out?” He sat down next to her.

“We cut a line, set a burn, and yes, routed it back onto itself. HQ sent a drone over today, and it looks like it’s dying, at least this spur. The ’shots are still fighting the blaze on the western side of the river.”

“Headed for Snowhaven.”

“Hopefully not.” She blew on a spoonful of mac, ate it, then downed it with water. “Sorry I don’t have another jug. But you can have some of mine.”

He accepted it, handed it back. “Thanks.”

They sat shoulder to shoulder on the rock, his leg against hers, the sense of it oddly intimate, like they might be partners.

Girlfriend. The word sneaked through him, attached.

What. Ever.

But then his memory flashed with her in his arms, the feel of her body against his, the smell of her and?—

He got up. “Um. I?—”

“That’s it. You pop in, save my life, eat my food, and leave?”

His eyes widened.

“Sit back down, Tough Guy. I know you’re still on a ‘mission.’” She one-hand quoted the last word. “But frankly, I need answers. Like…how’d you know we were there?”

Oh. “Uh?—”

“Wait. If you tell me, will you have to kill me?”

He gave her a look. She grinned, then patted the seat next to her.

He sat back down. Not enough room to scoot away, but…

Aw, shoot, why had he come here? Booth had the ability to protect her.

“Hey—you dropped something.” She bent down and picked up the folded picture. Must have dropped from his pocket.

Her gaze stayed on the open picture, longer than a casual look. “I know this guy. This is Henry Snow.” She looked at him. “Older, for sure. But this is near his cabin, up by Blue Mountain. He’s looking very Ian McKellen with that white beard.”

“What?”

She handed him the picture. “You know—Gandalf, and Magneto. Oh, wait, you don’t know the X-Men.” A sort of tongue-in-cheek disgust edged her tone.

“No—I mean, you know Henry?”

He glanced at Booth, who looked over, frowned. Then back to Jade.

“Sure. Sweet old guy, lives in the woods? He had a cabin maybe a mile or so from Wildlands Academy. We used to see him occasionally out with his dog, Bond. I don’t know if he’s still around.”

“We’re hoping he is,” Crispin said, his heart thundering. He took a breath. “Can you…do you know how to find the cabin?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s not on any road on the map, but I spotted it a couple times during the summer when we were out hiking. I think I could find it again.”

He must have made a face.

“Wait…is this your mission ?”

He sighed. “I need to find him. Talk to him.”

She dropped her spoon into the pouch. “Done. I have a couple days off. When I get back to town, we can head up there.”

Oh.

“You’re wearing that look again, Tough Guy.” She shook her head. “Listen. You’re not going to find him without me. And frankly, you need a partner.”

He glanced at Booth, who could clearly hear their conversation, one eyebrow up.

Partner.

“I don’t need?—”

“Yes, you do. Finish your stew. There’s pudding where that came from.” She got up.

Okay, he’d find Henry, secure the missile—would probably have to call in the big guns for that—and then bring her back to civilization before he tracked down Floyd and finished this.

And then what?

His gaze wandered back to Jade, to her adding water to a couple small packets of chocolate pudding, and her words from earlier today found him. Are you following me?

No. Yes. Maybe.

But weirdly, Crispin had stopped shaking.

And maybe providence was on his side after all.