Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (12 page)

“Time to shake and bake?” she asked
calmly, crawling over the ridge’s crest.

He shook his head. “There’s too
much fuel here. The fire won’t pass right over us. Do you trust me?”

That was the million dollar
question right there.

She eyed him, calm and composed.
Like they weren’t minutes from dying because the fire shelters were designed to
hold off the heat and flames for brief periods of time only. After that, the
glue melted and… he so wasn’t thinking about that right now. The only small
mercy was that a lungful of superheated air would probably kill them before the
flames did.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

“I’m going to set a backfire.” He
could burn out the fuel. In the few minutes they had before the fire overran
them. Gia couldn’t run, not on that
ankle.

“Do it. Do you need me for that?”

He shook his head, getting out his
lighter and turning his attention to the ridge’s unburned expanse. He only got
one chance to get this right. “See if you can tape up your ankle in case we
have to run.”

She didn’t reach for the portable
first aid kit. Instead, she got on the radio, calling in to the DC-3 circling
overhead. “Unsafe conditions on the ground. Repeat: do not jump.”

The fire was a thousand yards and
closing fast.

He set the lighter to the dry
grass. A fusee would have been better, but Spotted Dick hadn’t dropped the
supplies. That would have come after the jump team landed—and then the
entire team would have been in jeopardy. His flames licked through the dry
grass, happily chewing up the fuel. She fell in behind him, using her Pulaski
to move the dirt and build a safety zone. When the downslope fire reached
them—nine hundred yards away now—the bigger fire would suck the
flames of their smaller one towards it. Everything in its path would scorch and
leave nothing else to burn. That was their new safety zone.

“Are you sure about this?” She eyed
his lighter doubtfully. The burnt-out area was awfully small, the wall of
flames racing towards them impossibly high.

“Trust me,” he repeated. “I’m not
going to steer you wrong, Gia.”

He stepped through the flames and
onto the blackened ground. She didn’t look happy about it, but she followed.

“I should have brought my bikini.
This is swimsuit weather.”

He grinned. “You’ve got to warn me,
because I hear Facebook calling.”

She made a face.

Embers and debris started raining
down around them. Four hundred yards and less than a minute to show time. He
could hear the branches creaking and hissing now, the air around them thick
with smoke.

“Deploy,” he ordered because he was
the senior jumper and that put him in charge. “We’re going to count ten and
then cover.”

Hands icy cold despite the searing
outside temps, he watched as she yanked the shelter from her pack and cracked
open the packaging. She stepped in, feet pointing at the flame sweeping toward
them. Cover her head too soon, and the heat could rapidly become unbearable
inside the protective cocoon. Wait too long and—fuck, he didn’t really
want to imagine becoming a crispy fry right now.

Jack had waited out a firestorm,
sharing a single shelter with Lily. Ben Cortez, Lily’s uncle and Strong’s fire
chief, had always said that the shelters were a last resort. The older man was
right. Rio could see the fire coming, could feel the heat rolling towards them.
He and Gia were out of options.

“Get down,” he ordered and she promptly
did, hitting the ground like a gigantic silver inchworm. He ran his eyes over
her shelter, checking for gaps or problems, but she’d deployed textbook
perfect. Thank God. Resting his hand on her where her shoulder should be, he
squeezed gently. There would be no one to check him but she was the one who
mattered here.

He eyeballed her one last time
before dropping to the ground between her and the oncoming fire. She could kick
his ass later. He was bigger. Hopefully, his body would give her one more
buttress against the heat. His heart gave an unexpected leap. She’d be okay. He
refused to imagine any other ending to this jump.

The fire roared towards them now
like an out-of-control semi. Less than a hundred yards, he guessed, but now he
was running blind, unable to see what was coming. Pulling his shelter into place, he
tamped the edges down under his gloved fingers. If the fire didn’t blow over,
if his escape fire hadn’t done its job and chewed up the available fuel… well,
what happened next wouldn’t be pretty. And it might not even be fast. The
shelter’s glue would melt and then he’d be next. Working fast, he followed out
the ground beneath his face and turned his nose and mouth into the shallow
space because in seconds he’d want that cooler air. Badly.

Christ
.

Had he done enough?

Had he missed something?

The fire hit and he stopped
thinking and just reacted. Held on and held on…

When Rio tapped Gia’s shoulder in
the all clear sign—and it had to be Rio’s hand on her shoulder, because
who else was out here?—relief hit her hard. She’d never deployed before,
although the procedure had been covered heavily in training and the jump team
practiced the maneuver at least once a week. Jack Donovan was a big believer in
muscle memory and apparently he was right. She’d known exactly what to do.

Three and a half minutes of hell.
Of not knowing whether the shelter would hold or if the backfire had worked and
burned up enough fuel to prevent the main fire from seeking her out. Hot and
almost airless, the sweat running down her neck and back as she pressed her
face into the small hollow she’d carved out in the dirt. Amazing what a
difference a few degrees made. She prayed and held on, helpless to do anything
but wait and see what happened next, reliving Rio’s touch on her shoulder and
wondering if that would be the last time he ever touched. Until, finally, the
heat had started decreasing and the noise had fallen away.

The fire had moved on.

No sirree. She’d really rather
never do that again. She rolled and sat up, shoving the shelter down her legs
and looking around. Holy. Shit. The entire ridge was nothing but smoking
charcoal.

Rio’s escape fire had worked.

Obviously.

She was here. He was here.

She’d always loved the adrenaline
rush of fighting fire, but this hadn’t been a fight. This had been a
lay-down-and-pray moment.

She looked up. She wouldn’t cry,
she told herself fiercely. Those tears were just a physical reaction to the
adrenaline and stress. They had nothing to do with seeing Rio up and on his
feet. He was okay. He grinned down at her, relief and something else on his
face. His sweaty, dirt-streaked face had never looked so beautiful. Knocking
his helmet back, he scrubbed at his face with his gloved hand.

“You okay?” he asked, his eyes
running over her.

She did a quick mental inventory as
she stood up. “A-okay.”

There was a whole world of relief
in that one word. Her ankle throbbed, trying to remind her that it was still
there, but after those minutes in the fire shelter? She. Didn’t. Care. She was
alive. Rio was alive. Everything else could take a number and get in line.

“Good.” He looked at her like he
wanted to say something else, but then he moved away from her, his head tipped
back as he eyeballed the sky. The DC-3 banked overhead, moving away from the
jump site. No chutes hung in the sky, so she did the math. They were still on
their own here, although being alone with Rio Donovan wasn’t hardship. Nope. He
was exactly the man she wanted to have at her back on a forced wilderness stay.

He followed the departing plane
with his eyes. “They have to bug out. They’ve only got so much fuel. Plus,
we’re getting close to cut off and then the Park Service won’t let them fly
anyhow.”

Something in the pit of her stomach
lurched at the mere thought of the DC-3 running out of gas and taking a
nosedive toward the ground.

“We need to hike out,” he continued.

And… there he went. Taking control
of the situation.Rio was the
senior jumper and she had no issue with that. Some things came down to
experience and he’d jumped longer than she had. That was a fact. But she also
had a brain in her head, which meant she had thoughts and opinions on their
best next steps. She wouldn’t let him run roughshod over her.

So she pushed back. “That’s your
plan?”

He folded his arms over his chest.
“That’s
our
plan.”

“We could stay here,” she
suggested. “Dig line until the rest of the team comes back.”

He looked down the slope and shook
his head. “The fire’s jumped the ridge. There’s no controlling it from this
side.”

“You don’t think digging line here
would help?”

He didn’t bother with explanations.
“No.”

Instead he squatted and started
rolling up the Mylar cocoon that had probably just saved his life. The shelter
wasn’t intended for multiple deploys, but it wasn’t like they could pop into
Walmart right now and pick up a replacement. If they encountered another worse
case scenario, they’d be glad enough for used goods.

“Come on.” He grabbed his pack and
motioned to her, like she was a dog and he expected her to heel. He probably
liked leashes and chains as well.

When she didn’t move, he sighed. “You
don’t think leaving’s the right approach?”

She made a face. It wasn’t a
question of right or wrong. It was a question of being
consulted
.

“Talk to me,” he snapped.

“Stop giving me orders,” she
countered. “We’re jump partners.”

“I’m the senior jumper. I write your
paychecks. Take your pick, but I’m getting us both home and keeping you safe.”

And that was the problem right
there.

“Listen to you. It’s not your job
to
keep
me safe. I look out for me.”

They were partners, that was the
truth, but he was treating her like someone to be wrapped up in cotton wool and
babied. She didn’t want special treatment. She wanted him to look at her and
see another smoke jumper. An equal.

Which, apparently, would happen
when pigs flew.

He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“I don’t have time for this, Gia. The safest option is to hike out, so that’s
what we’re doing. The safest option for
both
of us,” he emphasized when she opened her mouth.

He made a good point.

When
he dropped on his haunches and reached for her ankle, she didn’t protest. Now
wasn’t the time to be stupid. His hands were gentle as he wrapped and taped.

“There,” he said finally, slipping
her foot back into her boot. “Good as new.”

“Promises,” she said softly
because, no matter how magic his touch felt to her, he couldn’t fix a sprained
ankle. “Do I get a lollipop?”

“You’ll have to raincheck on that
until we’re back at base camp.”

Waiting wasn’t something she did
any better than she took orders.

“We’ll take it slow,” he promised and
then got on the radio.

###

Jack was all over the call. Quite
possibly the bastard had been sitting there waiting. Rio checked his watch. It
had been forty minutes since he and Gia had landed. The longest forty minutes
of his life.

“I have a situation.” He calmly
relayed the chain of events to Jack, from Gia’s fall to sending the jump team
away.

Jack cursed. “Mack unloaded the
team about fifteen miles from your current drop site.”

Rio could work with that. “Give me
the coordinates. Is there a trail? An access road?”

Beside him, Gia took a test step on
her foot. One. Two. If she so much as winced, fuck it. They’d camp here as long
as it took for her ankle to heal.

She sucked it up though. Her face
didn’t show an ounce of the pain she had to be feeling.

He wasn’t surprised. She’d insist
she was fine even if she was missing the entire foot. He’d have done the same.

On the radio, Jack walked him
through the map. The fire road where the team was working was a good fifteen
miles away, all cross-country. It would be slow, rough going. Gia’s ankle
wouldn’t take kindly to that kind of stress.

“What about a lift from a chopper?”

“Not possible at the moment unless
you’re telling me the apocalypse has hit your hillside and you need an
immediate extract.” Jack sounded regretful. “We’ve already committed all of our
resources and we’re close to cut-off. If you want to wait, I’ll send a bird as
soon as I’ve got one.”

“How long?” He didn’t want to sit
out the firefight and he understood the Park Service put limits on flying when
it was dark, but Gia’s ankle was a concern. She turned and headed back toward
him. When she spotted him watching, she winked and switched to a high-fashion
model walk. Heel-toe-heel and all sashay.

“Three days.”

“Jack—”

“It’s the best I can do.”

Gia hit a runway pose beside him
and made a face. “We’ll hike it,” she said and he nodded.
Time to roll.

Rio spent the next forty minutes
trying to reconcile the hike out with the state of Gia’s ankle. And his head.
He hated the snail’s pace when his boys were out there fighting fire, down two
jumpers. He wanted to be there, digging line by their sides. And he wanted to
get Gia to a doctor because he was no trained medic. He had basic field
training and that was it.

Gia hiked along by his side
uncomplaining. She’d fought him—again—when he’d relieved her of her
pack. Judging by the way she leaned on the stick she’d snagged at the start of
their hike, however, he’d made the right call there. He wanted her to take it
as easy as possible.

He’d take the double weight any day
for her.

“I’m slowing you down,” she pointed
out. “You should go ahead. I’ll get there when I get there.”