Page 18 of Hemlock Firestorm (Black Timber Peak Hotshots #3)

FOURTEEN

COLE

I stood motionless, my gaze fixed on the makeshift Command Center's back wall as the Chief’s voice thunders across it.

His words hit like the strike of an axe, sharp and relentless, hacking away at any defenses I might have left.

I feel pretty raw at the moment. Next to him is the Spotter, Jerry with a hard look in his eyes.

He stands tall with his hands clasped behind his back waiting for his turn.

I’m not totally sure how pissed he is but he will be Jo’s problem.

Jo stands nearby, freshly showered and her hair done up in a delicate braid over her shoulder.

Something has changed within her, and I wonder if her brother and she had spoken.

The purple bruising around her tired eyes lessened drastically.

I spot fresh bandages on her arm moments before she pulls her sleeve down over them, covering her wounds.

"Unacceptable!" The Chief’s clipboard crashes against the metal table, the sound sharp as a thunderclap. His face goes that dangerous shade of red that makes the veins in his neck stand out like rope. "I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this job, Whitlock.

You know better. You know what’s at stake. "

My throat tightens, but I stay silent. The memory of Jo's body tangled in that massive Hemlock, her form barely visible through the thickening smoke.

The fire had been too close. Hell, it had practically been breathing down our necks.

The math was simple: either I jumped, or we lost her.

Some equations don't need solving twice. And now, here we were.

"You’re not even certified to jump anymore!" the Super snapped, rounding on me with a glare that could’ve melted steel. "What the hell were you thinking? You’re supposed to set an example for this team; not break every protocol we’ve got."

"With respect, sir," I said, keeping my voice steady, "Jo needed immediate backup. I made the call."

"The wrong call," he shot back, his eyes narrowing. "You put yourself and the team at risk. This isn’t about bravery. Or have you forgotten what happens when things go wrong?"

The accusation lands hard, but I don’t flinch. I can’t afford to. Jo may be the one who jumped first, but I am the one who will deal with the fallout. And the Chief is right about one thing— things could’ve gone very, very wrong. But they hadn’t. Thank God. Not this time.

I force myself to meet the Chief's gaze. "Sir, with respect, I calculated?—"

"Calculated?" His laugh is harsh. "You calculated while watching that fire crown through the canopy?

" He slams both palms on the table, making the coffee cups jump.

"You were grounded for a reason, Whitlock.

Your shoulder's shot. You put two people at risk of death over one and for what. How’s that for calculations? "

My shoulder. Fuck. My shoulder was nowhere near as bad as I'd made it seem that day. I’d used it as an excuse to ground myself, it still aches but was not an impairment. The Chief had no idea though. Despite that, he was missing the bigger picture here.

"You want everyone to come home alive?" Chief's voice rises like a gathering storm.

"Tell me what happens when you can't make the moves you need to because you're carrying old injuries?

When your team has to split their focus between the fire and wondering if their Assistant Super is about to become another statistic? "

I saw Jo out of the corner of my eye bristle. She looked close to bursting. I knew firsthand it takes a lot for Jo to keep her lips shut against authority. My jaw tightened, but I held his gaze. There was no point arguing. He’d already made up his mind. "Understood, sir."

The Chief’s glare didn’t waver. "Effective immediately, you’re suspended as Assistant Superintendent pending a formal investigation."

I clench my teeth, nostrils flaring. I give a curt nod. "Understood."

The Chief dismissed me with a sharp wave of his hand, but I didn’t move right away. The Chief’s gaze turns to Jo as if to say, "And as for you."

My gaze flicked to Jo, who stands a few feet away, her face pale, irritation simmering in her eyes, and that stubborn determination etched into her features.

I wanted to shake my head, to signal her not to say anything, but there was no way to do so without drawing attention.

My suspension wasn’t her fight, but I could see she was seconds away from making it hers.

The Chief opened his mouth to deliver another reprimand, but before he could, Jo stepped forward, her eyes blazing.

"With all due respect, sir," her voice trembles with restrained fury, like a pressure gauge about to burst, "You're talking about safety while you’ve got boots on ground away from the fire but let me remind you what safety looks like from inside a firestorm."

The world seemed to fall silent. Even the Chief seemed momentarily stunned by her audacity.

"I was up there, tangled in that Hemlock like a damn Christmas ornament, watching that crown fire roll in.

You want to talk statistics? I'll give you numbers.

" Her voice carries the weight of someone who's watched fire steal everything they love.

"Hundred-foot flame lengths. Sixty-mile-per-hour winds.

Ambient temperature pushing two thousand degrees.

And a three-minute window before that entire sector went up like gasoline. "

The Chief’s expression darkened, but Jo didn’t give him a chance to interrupt.

"You're right about one thing, Cole took a risk that wasn’t protocol.

But you know what he's got? Nearly twenty years of experience reading fire behavior.

The kind of knowledge that tells you exactly how many seconds you have before a situation goes from survivable to fatal. "

The lights clipped to the tent walls cast harsh shadows across her face, highlighting the exhaustion and pain, the evidence of how close death had crept toward us.

"I've seen what happens when precious seconds are wasted rather than utilized.

Watched my own brother—" Her voice catches, and for a moment, I think I see the twelve-year-old girl who hesitated at a burning window.

But she pushes through, her words gaining strength like a backdraft finding oxygen.

"Cole didn't make that jump because he was chasing redemption or playing hero.

He made it because sometimes survival means choosing between bad options and worse ones.

That is leadership. And he's one of the few people on this team I trust to make that call." Her words hang in the air, heavy and unyielding. I watch as the Chief’s jaw tightens, his eyes narrowing as if he’s searching for a rebuttal.

Jo takes a shaky breath, her fists clenching at her sides. "I get it. You have to enforce the rules. But don’t stand there and pretend this was some reckless gamble. Cole made the hard call, and because of that, I’m still here. That’s the kind of teammate I’d follow into any fire."

She gestures to her injured shoulder, a testament to the near miss.

"If you want to talk about team focus and about statistics, here's one for you:" She jabs a finger at her chest, "hundred percent chance of death if he hadn't jumped for me.

That's the only number that mattered up there and Cole knew it, the same way he knows every wind pattern in these mountains, every quirk of thermodynamics in these valleys.

That kind of knowledge, it's not just in the books.

It's written in scars and experience and years of watching fire move like a living thing.

The wildlands are unpredictable." Jo’s gaze turns to me for a moment.

I feel my throat tighten as I hear my very words come from her.

The words I drill into all the Hotshots and Smokejumpers at the joint training.

What’s more miraculous is that despite her constant pushback, she actually listens to me.

All of us have the same goal in the end.

Jerry’s grimace transforms slightly, the edges of his lips tipping up.

"And because of that," she finishes strongly, " we have to be unpredictable too."

Damn. It was a mic drop moment if I’d ever heard one and she might have a career as a litigator if she so chose. No one could argue that Jo wasn’t sharp as a whip.

The silence that follows her words feels charged, like the air before lightning strikes.

Chief stares at her, his expression a battlefield of competing emotions.

And I realize something profound: Jo isn't just defending my actions.

She's defending every firefighter who's ever had to choose between what's safe and what's necessary, between protocol and the raw mathematics of survival.

I could see the effort it takes her to stop there, to hold back the rest of what she wanted to say. Her hands dropped to her sides, trembling slightly, but her gaze didn’t waver. She was mad, but she was trying to make him understand.

The Chief’s silence feels deafening as he stares her down. For a moment, I think he might explode, but instead, he just turns his glare back to me.

"Suspension stands," he says flatly, though his voice lacked some of its earlier bite. "But this conversation isn’t over."

With that, he turns on his heel and storms out, leaving the two of us in a tense, stunned silence.

"Jo," Jerry says. "We have to talk now."

I look at Jo and she gives me a determined little nod.

I see a bit of hesitation in her gorgeous eyes.

I tilt my head and head out of the room hoping the Chief has cleared out so I don’t get chewed out again.

I have my shit to pack up before I head home.

Fuck. Home. It was not where I wanted to go.

Despite everything with Jo, I wanted to be near her, now more than ever but she was going to need time .

A bunch of the Hotshot guys that are getting ready to deploy surround me and I know that I don’t have to tell them that I’ve been suspended.

Pretty sure the entire base heard the Chief.

They wordlessly smack me on the back one by one in support.

Their eyes tell me that they know I did the right thing even if the Chief doesn’t.