Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) (16 page)

Jed just couldn’t be right. Kate wouldn’t let him.

Hang out with these cubbies all you want, but don’t think for a second you can really be their friend.

Except, the longer she worked with Hannah on her landings, the more she watched her roll awkwardly off to hit her shoulder or be dragged away by her chute, the more Jed’s words turned into claws, sank in, and burned.

Kate should have cut her three days ago instead of letting the agony continue until today, Hannah’s last qualifying jump. She jumped like a pro, her positioning perfect, reacting in the tower to every kind of mishap.

She simply couldn’t land.

Hooked into the pigtail that secured her to the plane, Kate kneeled down, her head in the slipstream, watching the jump streamer. The wind took it about three hundred fifty feet, drifting to the east.

“Take us to jump altitude, Gilly,” she said through the coms and felt the plane bank and turn, climbing from fifteen hundred feet to three thousand. She turned to Ned, who would be jumping first, and raised her voice above the roar of the air. “Hook up!”

Ned wobbled toward the front of the plane, holding onto his reserve to keep it from deploying accidentally. Fully loaded with sixty pounds of gear—chute pack, reserve, dangling front pack of personal gear, and letdown rope in his pants pockets—he weighed close to two hundred fifty pounds. Suited up, with the harness strapped tight, Ned could barely stand up, let alone walk. He clipped his static release line to the overhead cable, and crouched next to her. Behind him, the eleven recruits who still survived lined up, fighting for their footing.

“I’ve got three thousand,” Gilly said in her ear.

“Get in the door.”

Ned sat on the edge, his feet in the slipstream. She pointed out the drop zone—easily seen by the orange flags. She could barely make out what she suspected was a very stressed Jed Ransom armed with a clipboard and a video camera.

Sweat trickled down her back.
Please, let them get this right.

She tapped Ned’s shoulder, and he launched himself out of the plane. The static cord flapped, tensed, then fluttered back as his chute deployed. She checked—no tangles, and he’d grabbed his toggles.

“Next!”

CJ clipped in, sat down, and seconds later, vanished. Again, the chute deployed. Two down, ten to go.

She worked up the line—Tucker, then one of the Chicago boys who’d miraculously made it this far, then one of the other female recruits, and on down the line. Each one clipping in, sitting in the door, a tap, and they disappeared.

Hannah stepped up last. She clipped on her line, gave Kate a thumbs up. “Remember to roll!” Kate said, but her words were unnecessary. No one understood the stakes better than Hannah.

She tapped her shoulder, and Hannah flung herself out.

The line fluttered, tensed, snapped free, and the chute popped out, filled hard. Hannah soared upward.

Kate leaned back, gave Gilly the all-clear to land. Gilly banked, and for a second, Kate rolled back into the belly of the plane. She grabbed at her line to catch herself.

“Sorry!” Gilly said.

Kate righted herself then rolled over to survey the landings, when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the malfunction. Apparently Hannah’s chute
hadn’t
fully deployed, a suspension line twisted around one side, causing the canopy to flatten.

Hannah began falling again at terminal velocity.

Kate lay flat on deck, screaming into the wind. “Cut away! Pull your reserve!” But Hannah was wrestling with the line, tugging to free the knot.

Kate slammed her hand on the floor of the plane, her breathing hard. “Cut away!”

But now Hannah was spinning, both toggles loose, her vision probably blurring.

In a second, she’d be completely disoriented and unable to pull her reserve.

Kate didn’t have a parachute. But she was doing the math—if she dove now, she might be able to catch her, although falling at ninety miles an hour meant a very small window of success. Still, maybe it could work—she could grab onto Hannah, cut the chute away, pull the reserve—

Angry tears washed her eyes as her breaths tumbled out, one over another— “Cut! Away! Cut—!”

Then, suddenly the knot broke free. With a snap, the canopy filled, and in a second, Hannah’s plummet arrested and she floated, soft, quiet, ethereal. She found her toggles and began steering into the wind, toward the drop site.

Kate rolled onto her back, breathing hard, her heart in her ribs. Stupid, angry tears streamed down her cheeks—panic tears, really, because she felt nothing but the adrenaline drain.

Stupid girl. Why hadn’t she cut away? In a spin like that, the force could cause disorientation, delay reaction times. Maybe she hadn’t been able to get her hands on her cutaway cord.

Kate pressed her hands to her chest, willing herself not to hyperventilate. Whatever the case, she needed to get on the ground, now, and throttle the girl.

By the grace of—well, God—Hannah hadn’t simply arrowed into the ground, leaving another training casualty on the psyche of the base and community.

Kate sat up and strapped in as Gilly landed the DC-3, then piled out, running across the tarmac. Hannah had already landed, was conferring with Jed, going through her landing, her grid up, her chute wrapped over her arm.

She looked up at Kate, beaming. “I landed it! Or—nearly, landed it. Jed’s giving me a satisfactory on the PLF—”

“Are you kidding me? You nearly
died
. Did you not think to cut away? Why?
Why
?” She could feel herself unraveling, but she couldn’t seem to pull back. “Hannah, you have to keep your head. React faster than that—”

Her voice fell, turned hard, still shaking. Jumpers were eyeing her, turning away. “You nearly bought it today. You should have cut away and pulled your reserve at the first sign of a malfunction. You took a terrible risk trying to untangle—you don’t have time for that. If you can’t learn to make split-second—and safe—decisions, then smokejumping is no place for you.”

Hannah had gone white, her breath coming in long and deep, her expression tight. She stared at Kate, then back at Jed, who looked at Kate with raised eyebrows.

“What—?”

“That
was
her reserve chute,” he said. “The first ripped right after deployment.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “I looked up to check and saw it flapping. So I cut the chute and deployed the reserve. But it got tangled. I knew I had no other choice but to fight the knot out, so I just kept working with it.”

Even as she fell. Keeping her head in the game.

Kate bent over, grabbing her knees, breathing hard. “Okay...okay.”

Jed’s hand touched her shoulder. “Kate, just calm down, she’s fine—”

She stood up, rounding on him. “Are you serious? Just
calm down
? And what would you have said to Ray Butcher if his daughter had done a swan dive out of the plane? Calm down?”

Except, Jed
was
calm. Standing there with his clipboard, his mouth a grim line, evaluating Hannah’s jump, her landing. “It’s over, and there’s nothing you could have done about it anyway. You just have to trust that you’ve trained her well.”

Kate stared at him, raking through her reaction on the plane, the way she’d nearly—yes, seriously contemplated—leaping out without a chute after the recruit.

He frowned, then, as if he could see it, the churning of possibilities in her mind. “Kate—you weren’t thinking—”

“I need a minute.” She straightened up, glanced at Hannah. “Good job.”

But she didn’t feel her kudos. What she wanted to do was rip the chute off Hannah, march her to her car, and drive the kid home. Except, no, not kid—woman. Full grown, twenty-one-year-old woman who’d spent three years as a hotshot, worked her backside off, and who deserved the chance to jump.

Kate climbed into her Jeep, bracing herself on her steering wheel, leaning forward to just breathe, hold herself together.

And then it settled into her bones. No
wonder
Jed had freaked out when he’d seen her break away her main chute, fly after Pete.

Or even before, when he’d followed her off course so many years ago.

She reached out, her hands shaking, and started her Jeep.

Jed had gathered the recruits, probably giving them final instructions about tomorrow, when he’d let them know if they’d passed their final test.

She’d let him make the decisions. She couldn’t bear trying to decide who lived—or didn’t.

Putting the Jeep into gear, she turned around and took the back road through the base, up the hill to the Airstream.

The generator hummed as she pulled up, which meant the AC would be on and the water pump working. She banged inside, shut the door, pulled off her sweaty jump clothes, and climbed into the shower.

Bracing her hands on the small cubicle, she let her legs give way, slid down into a crouch, and cried.

Just excess stress, at first, but then it became something else. Tears for the men who’d watched friends fall from the sky and others who sat on Eureka Ridge and heard the screams of their dying comrades over the radio in the canyon below. She cried for Conner and Pete and Reuben and the scars they carried and for the families who couldn’t sleep, fighting their overactive imaginations and grieving the loved ones who would never walk through the door.

She leaned her head back under the spray and cried for Jock Burns, for the man she’d known and the one she didn’t, for the hero and the legend. And finally for the daddy who had loomed larger than life when he donned his smokejumping gear, then came home and told her stories while they traced the stars.

Wow, she missed him. With a burn, right through the marrow of her chest. She pressed her hands there, moaning, and cried for their last good-bye, the one in Alaska, when he’d asked her to stop jumping, please.

She’d walked out of his life without a backward look.

She cried for herself, for the stranglehold death had on her regrets, her vacant tomorrows, and the fact that she finally understood.

Please, Kitty, don’t jump fire. It will consume you, if you aren’t careful. And it’s not if you get hurt—it’s when. God isn’t a parachute, and someday you’re going to find yourself in over your head.

She could wail at her retort, still branded in her brain.

I don’t need God—I have my own reserve.

Yeah, she’d proved that, hadn’t she? Knew exactly how it felt to be on her own in the middle of a fire.

She pressed her hands to her face.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dad.

She finally lifted her face to the spray as the undulating emotions shook out of her, turning her hollow, breakable.

And, so keenly aware of exactly why Jed had pushed her away.

No one wanted to watch someone they care about—even a friend—die.

She stood up, lathered her hair, washed, then turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around her.

Movement at the front of the Airstream, through the windows, caught her attention. She slipped into her bedroom, peering behind the door

Jed. On her deck, holding a clipboard, pacing.

What—? She dried off her hair, not bothering to comb it, then got dressed, pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of loose jeans. Padding out barefoot, she closed the door behind her, carrying a couple bottles of lemonade.

He’d changed clothes, and by the look of it, showered also. His hair curled in dark, dampened ringlets around his temples. He’d pulled on a heather-gray T-shirt that outlined his still-wet body and a pair of black cargo shorts, wore his signature off-duty flip-flops. “We need to talk.”

She handed him a bottle of lemonade then slid onto the bench, her back to the table. “I don’t care what you do, Jed. Pass them or not.” She shook her head. “I can’t be responsible for what happens.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Um, that’s
exactly
what you are. You trained them, and we’re doing this together. You and me. Figuring out if they get what they worked so hard for or go home, destroyed.”

“Nice, Jed. Thank you for that.” She shook her head. “I hate this.”

He opened the lemonade, took a drink, then set it on the table. “Yeah, well, guess what. Only two didn’t pass with flying colors. Our Chicago boy and—”

“Hannah.”

“Yep.”

He sat down next to her—and oh, he smelled good. Not just soap, but a rich, woodsy cologne, all topped off with that Jed Ransom aura of power. As if nothing ever ruffled him.

Except it had, it did. At least once.

She looked at him. “But that’s not what you want to talk about, is it?”

One side of his mouth tugged up, his eyes growing soft. He shook his head.

“Jed—I...can’t. I’ve put it behind me, and you should too.”

“Our...fire... is actually not what I was referring to either.”

Huh?

“I wanted to talk to you about this.” He handed her a piece of paper from his clipboard. She took it, her chest tightening as she read the e-mail from her former boss in Boise to Jed. “Why is your boss—or ex-boss—asking me how you’re doing?”

She swallowed, trying to find her voice. Nothing.

“He said he read about the fire in an agency report and said he didn’t know you were back on the fire line. What does he mean...
back on the fire line
?”

Oh. She handed the e-mail back to Jed, who got up now, standing in front of her. She scrubbed her hands down her face. Sighed. “I was trapped a couple of years ago, over in Idaho, on a fire.”

He just stood there.

“I was alone, and...” She shook her head. Looked into the horizon where the sun hovered, as if waiting, too, for her explanation. “It was a low-burning fire, but I was caught uphill, and—it was everything you taught me to look out for, and I was stupid.”

“You deployed your shelter,” he said quietly.

“I was in for two hours. The fire wasn’t that hot—just wouldn’t die down.”

“Were you hurt?”

Hurt. She tightened her jaw, shook her head.

Silence, and she finally glanced up at him. She couldn’t unravel the look on his face, in his beautiful smoky blue eyes, part concern, part confusion, and it moved her to an answer. “I had...a rough time afterwards.”