The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (154 page)

She walked outside. The shudder that went through her as she glanced toward the trees only stiffened her spine. She couldn’t live her life worried she had a target on her back. She put on the sunglasses—the ones Cards found where Gull had tackled her—and started the walk toward the track.

She could run on the road, she considered, but she was on the jump list, first load. The clouds over the mountains confirmed the forecast from the morning briefing.
Cumulus overtimus
, she thought, knowing the buildup could hurl lightning. She’d likely jump fire today, and get plenty of that overtime.

Better to stay on base in case.

“Hey.” Gull caught up with her at a light jog. “We running?”

“I thought you had things to do.”

“I said I wanted coffee, maybe some calories. And that was mostly to give you time to talk to Marg and Lynn. A straight three miles?”

“I . . .” Behind him, she saw Matt, Cards and Trigger come out of the cookhouse and head in her direction. Her eyes narrowed. “Did Lynn go in and tell the dining hall I was heading to the track?”

“What do you think?”

Now Dobie, Stovic and Gibbons herded out.

“Did she call up the Marines while she was at it? I don’t need a bunch of bodyguards.”

“What you’ve got is people who care about you. Are you really going to carp about that?”

“No, but I don’t see why . . .” Yangtree, Libby and Janis headed out from the direction of the gym. “For Christ’s sake, in another minute the whole unit’s going to be out here.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Half of you aren’t even in running gear,” she called out.

Trigger, in jeans and boots, reached her first. “We don’t wear running gear on a fire.”

She considered him. “Nice save.”

“When you run, we all run,” Cards told her. “At least everybody who’s not on duty with something else. We voted on it.”

“I didn’t get a vote.” She jabbed a finger at Gull. “Did you get a vote?”

“I got to add mine to the unanimous results this morning, so your vote is moot.”

“Fine. Dandy. We run.”

She took off for the track, then geared up to a sprint the minute she hit its surface. Just to see who’d keep up, besides Gull, who matched her stride for stride. She heard the scramble and pounding of feet behind her, then the hoots and catcalls as Libby zipped up to pass.

“Have a heart, Ro,” she shouted. “We’ve got old men like Yangtree out here.”

“Who’re you calling old!” He kicked it up a notch, edged out of the pack on the turn.

“Gimps like Cards hobbling back there in his boots.”

Amused, Ro glanced over her shoulder to see Cards shoot up his middle finger. And Dobie begin to run backward to taunt him.

She cut her pace back a bit because he was hobbling just a little, then laughed herself nearly breathless when Gibbons jogged by with Janis riding on his shoulders pumping her arms in the air.

“Bunch of lunatics,” Rowan decided.

“Yeah. The best bunch of lunatics I know.” Gull’s grin widened as Southern puffed by with Dobie on board. “Want a ride?”

“I’ll spare you the buck and a half on your back. Show them how it’s done, Fast Feet. You know you wanna.”

He gave her a pat on the ass and took off like a bullet to a chorus of cheers, insults and whistles.

By the time she made her three, Gull was sprawled on the grass, braced on his elbows to watch the show. Highly entertained, she stood, hands on hips, doing the same. Until she saw her father drive up.

“It’s a good thing he didn’t get here sooner,” she commented, “or he’d have been out on the track, too.”

“I’m betting he can hold his own.”

“Yeah, he can.” She started toward him, trying for an easy smile. But the expression on his face told her easy wouldn’t work.

He grabbed her, pulled her hard against him.

“I’m okay. I told you I was A-OK.”

“I didn’t come to see for myself last night because you asked me not to, because you said you had to talk to the cops, and needed to get some sleep afterward.” He drew her back, took a long study of her face. “But I needed to see for myself.”

“Then you can stop worrying. The cops have Brakeman. I texted you they found his gun and were going to get him. And they got him.”

“I want to see him. I want to look him in the eye when I ask him if he thinks hurting my daughter will bring his back. I want to ask him that before I bloody him.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. But he didn’t hurt me, and he’s not going to hurt me. Look at that bunch.” She gestured toward the track. “I came out here for my run, and every one of them came out of their various holes.”

“All for one,” he murmured. “I need to talk to your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my . . . Dad, I’m not sixteen.”

“Boyfriend’s the easiest term for me. Have you had breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

“Go on in, and I’ll sweet-talk Marg into feeding me with you—when I’m done talking to your boyfriend.”

“Just use his name. That should be easy.”

Lucas merely smiled, kissed her forehead. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

He crossed over to Gull, slapped hands with Gibbons, gave Yangtree a pat on the back as the man bent over to catch his breath.

“I want to talk to you a minute,” he said to Gull.

“Sure.” Gull pushed to his feet. His eyebrows lifted when Lucas walked away from the group, but he followed.

“I heard what you did for Rowan. You took care of her.”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say that to her.”

“I know better, but I’m saying it to you. I’m saying I’m grateful. She’s the world to me. She’s the goddamn universe to me. If you ever need anything—”

“Mr. Tripp—”

“Lucas.”

“Lucas, first, I figure mostly anyone would’ve done what I did, which wasn’t that big a deal. If Rowan’s instincts had kicked in first, she’d have knocked me down, and I’d’ve been under her. And second, I didn’t do it so you’d owe me a favor.”

“You scraped a lot of bark off those arms.”

“They’ll heal up, and they’re not keeping me off the jump list. So. No big.”

Lucas nodded, looked off toward the trees. “Am I supposed to ask what your intentions are regarding my daughter?”

“God, I hope not.”

“Because to my way of thinking, if you were just in it for the fun, me saying I owed you wouldn’t put your back up. So I’m going to give you that favor whether you want it or not. And here it is.” He looked back into Gull’s eyes. “If you’re serious about her, don’t let her push you back. You’ll have to hold on until she believes you. She’s a hard sell, but once she believes, she sticks.

“So.” Lucas held out a hand, shook Gull’s. “I’m going to go have breakfast with my girl. Are you coming?”

“Yeah. Shortly,” Gull decided.

He stood alone a moment, absorbing the fact that Iron Man Tripp had just given his blessing. And thinking over just what he wanted to do with it.

He mulled it over, taking his time walking toward the cookhouse. The siren sounded just before he reached it. Cursing the missed chance of breakfast, Gull turned on his heel and ran for the ready room.

A
fter forty-eight hours battling a two-hundred-acre wildfire in the Beaverhead National Forest, getting shot at a few times added up to small change. Once she’d bolted down the last of a sandwich she’d ratted away, Rowan worked with her team, lighting fusees in a bitter attempt to kick the angry fire back before it rode west toward the national battlefield.

The head changed direction three times in two days, snarling at the rain of retardant and spitting it out.

The initial attack, a miserable failure, moved into a protracted, vicious extended one.

“Gull, Matt, Libby, you’re on spots. Cards, Dobie, we’re going to move west, take down any snags. Dig and cut and smother. We stop her here.”

Nobody spoke as they pushed, shoved, lashed the backfire east. The world was smoke and heat and noise with every inch forward a victory. About time, Rowan thought, about damn time their luck changed.

The snag she cut fell with a crack. She positioned to slice it into smaller, less appetizing logs. They’d shovel and drag limbs and coals away from the green, into the black, into a bone pile.

Starve her, Rowan thought. Just keep starving her.

She straightened a moment to stretch her back.

She saw it happen, so fast she couldn’t shout out much less leap forward. A knife-point of wood blew out of the cut Cards was carving and shot straight into his face.

She dropped her saw, rushing toward him even as he yelped in shock and pain and lost his footing.

“How bad? How bad?” she shouted, grabbing him as he staggered. She saw for herself the point embedded in his cheek, half an inch below his right eye. Blood spilled down to his jaw.

“For fuck’s sake,” he managed. “Get it out.”

“Hold on. Just hold on.”

Dobie trotted up. “What’re you two . . . Jesus, Cards, how the hell did you do that?”

“Hold his hands,” Rowan ordered as she dug into her pack.

“What?”

“Get behind him and hold his hands down. I think it’s going to hurt when I pull it out.” She set a boot on either side of Cards’s legs, pulled off her right glove. She clamped her fingers on the inch of jagged wood protruding from his cheek. “On three now. Get ready. One. Two—”

She yanked on two, watched the blood slop out, watched his eyes go a little glassy. Quickly, she pressed the pad of gauze she’d taken out of her pack to the wound.

“You’ve got a hell of a hole in your face,” she told him.

“You said on three.”

“Yeah, well, I lost count. Dobie, hold the pad, keep the pressure on. I have to clean that out.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Cards objected. “Just tape it over. We’ll worry about it later.”

“Two minutes. Lean back against Dobie.”

She tossed the bloody pad aside, poured water over the wound, hoping to flush out tiny splinters. “And try not to scream like a girl,” she added, following up the water with a hefty dose of peroxide.

“Goddamn it, Ro! Goddamn, fucking shit!”

Ruthless, she waited while the peroxide bubbled out dirt and wood, then doused it with more water. She coated another pad with antibiotic cream, added another, then taped it over what she noted was a hole in his cheek the size of a marble.

“We can get you out to the west.”

“Screw that. I’m not packing out. It was just a damn splinter.”

“Yeah.” Dobie held up the three-inch spear of wood. “If you’re fifty feet tall. I saved it for you.”

“Holy shit, that’s a fucking missile. I got hit with a wood missile. In the face. My luck,” he said in disgust, “has been for shit all season.” He waved off Rowan’s extended hand. “I can stand on my own.”

He wobbled a moment, then steadied.

“Take some of the ibuprofen in your PG bag. If you’re sure you’re fit, I want you to go switch off to scout spots. You’re not running a saw, Cards. You know better. Switch off, or I’ll have to report the injury to Ops.”

“I’m not leaving this here until she’s dead.”

“Then switch off. If that hole in your ugly face bleeds through those pads, have one of your team change it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He touched his fingers to the pad. “You’d think I cut off a leg,” he muttered, but headed down the line. When he’d gone far enough, she pulled out her radio, contacted Gull. “Cards is headed to you. He had a minor injury. I want one of you to head up to me, and he’ll take your place down there.”

“Copy that.”

“Okay, Dobie, get that saw working. And watch out for flying wood missiles. I don’t want any more drama.”

The backfire held. It took another ten hours, but reports from head to tail called the fire contained.

The sunset ignited the sky as she hiked back to camp. It reminded her of watching the sun set with Gull. Of bullets and blind hate. She dropped down to eat, wishing she could find that euphoria that always rose in her once a fire surrendered.

Yangtree sat down beside her. “We’re going to get some food in our bellies before we start mop-up. Ops has eight on tap for that. It’s up to you since he was on your team, but I think Cards should demob, get that wound looked at proper.”

“Agreed. I’m going to pack out with him. If they can send eight, let’s spring eight from camp.”

“My thinking, too. I tell you, Ro, I say I’m too old for this, but I’m starting to mean it. I might just ask your daddy for a job come the end of the season.”

“Hell. Cards is the one with the hole in his face.”

He looked toward the west, the setting sun, the black mountain. “I’m thinking I may want to see what it’s like to sit on my own porch on a summer night, drink a beer, with some female company if I can get it, and not have to think about fire.”

“You’ll always think about fire, and sitting on a porch, you’d wish you were here.”

He gave her a pat on the knee as he rose. “It might be time to find out.”

She had to browbeat Cards into packing out. Smoke jumpers, she thought, treated injuries like points of pride, or challenges.

He sulked on the flight home.

“I get why he’s in a mood.” Gull settled down beside her. “Why are you?”

“Sixty hours on fire might have something to do with it.”

“No. That’s why you’re whipped and more vulnerable to the mood, but not the reason for the mood.”

“Here’s what I don’t get, hotshot: why, after a handful of months, you think you know me so damn well. And another is why you spend so much time psychoanalyzing people.”

“Those are both pretty easy to get. The first is it may be a handful of months, but people who live and work together, particularly under intense conditions, tend to know and understand each other quicker than those who don’t. Add sleeping together, and it increases the learning curve. Second.”