Chapter 10

TEN

Oh goody, now she got to watch the man she loved get shot—okay, that might be overstated, but she could see herself falling hard and fast and maybe she was already halfway there for Crispin Lamb.

Brave, intense, addicting Crispin Lamb, who called her beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Focus.

She’d leaned out of the open door of the Otter, along with Duncan, watching as below, on the road, Crispin crouched behind an overturned truck. His Ford sat in the ditch, the trailer overturned in the woods, and somewhere, no doubt, lay Fanny.

But her eyes had stayed on the man with the AK-47 peppering the road with bullets.

She leaned back, breathing hard.

Just survive today, Crispin. Because she had a fire to fight and…

Oh God, please help him!

“Is that Crispin down there?” Booth had come over, also leaning out the open door, one hand on his safety line.

“Yeah.”

“And Floyd,” said Booth. He sat back. “He’s going to get killed.”

She looked at him. “Nice.”

“I’m just saying—we need to help him.”

“There’s a fire barreling down on Snowhaven?—”

“Yeah. And it’s too fast. It’s going to jump the road long before we get there.” He pointed west to the crowning blaze shooting off the trees, running south. The flame lengths had grown, the fire picking up speed, the breadth of it like a tidal wave, cresting lethal orange and red across the canopy of forest.

Racing south.

Too fast to stop it with her brilliant plan. And if they deployed, she’d only cost lives.

Above the fire, the aerial assault planes dropped water and slurry on the flames, trying to slow the front. Steam rose as single-engine air tankers deployed slurry and rose out of the clutter.

A couple Bombardiers followed with water loads.

Now, she raised her radio, then paused and looked at Booth. “I’m going anyway.”

“To do what ?”

“I don’t know—help Crispin?”

“Have you lost your mind?” He was shouting now. “The last thing he wants is for you to get in the middle of this?—”

“Yeah, well, the last thing I want is for him to die alone!”

This shook her, and maybe Booth too, because he drew in a sharp breath. “Okay, fine—we both go.”

“I’m sending the rest of the team back!” She directed her shout to Logan. “Booth and I are deploying!”

Logan’s mouth opened, but she turned away and spoke into the mic of her helmet. “Aria, get us over the drop zone. Booth and I are going out.”

She spotted the field ahead. The fire blazed to the west, the smoke coughing up, black and deep gray, but the campground remained clear.

Aria circled, and Duncan deployed the ribbons.

They fluttered down easily, barely a wind.

She unhooked the safety line, turned back to Logan. “Get the team back! We’ll be right behind you!”

He shook his head, but she ignored him, glanced at Booth. “Ready?”

He nodded, also unhooking.

Then she went out the door. Brisk air, freedom, the sense of flying. Only, this time it felt so very long to deploy her chute, grab the toggles, and get down, even though it took less than five minutes.

She had her chute in hand, rolling it up as Booth landed near her in the crispy grass.

Overhead, the plane banked and headed back toward Snowhaven.

Unhooking her chute, she shoved it into her pack, then stepped out of her jumpsuit.

“Leave the packs!” She did, however, pick up her Pulaski and helmet.

Behind her, Booth did the same. She noticed the bear gun on his hip in a small secured holster too.

“He’s only a quarter mile down the road,” she said and took off running, clearly out of her mind.

She’d never done something so impulsive in her life. But…

But, well, she’d never live with herself if she didn’t do something.

Booth passed her, running hard as the road curved westward. Ahead and to her west, she spotted flames spiking out of the forest, burning hard—already past the service road. So, good call to send the team home. She coughed, the smoke thickening here, and pulled her bandanna down over her nose.

Now twenty feet ahead, Booth had pulled out his gun at shots barking ahead.

At the top of the hill, Booth pulled up, darted into the woods. She veered off the road, following him, crashing through the brush behind him. She hadn’t realized that sparks dripped from the sky, but they broke from the ashy smoke and dropped on the loam around her, sizzling, dying out.

The fire seemed still a half mile away…still?—

Nuclear missile in the woods. Probably a fire wouldn’t detonate it, but?—

She swiped up her radio, slowed a little to talk. “Team Alpha to Command, this is Ransom.”

“Command, come back, Ransom. Did you deploy?”

“No. The head is crowning too fast. Booth and I are on the ground—we need a drop of slurry on the Shelly Mountain Trail, a half mile from our drop site. Right now .”

A moment of static.

“Jade—the fire hasn’t reached Shelly Road?—”

“It’s on the way. Which is why we need the slurry—trust me!”

Ahead of her, Booth hunkered down behind a tree, breathing hard. He held up his hand to stop her.

“Confirmed,” Miles said as she skidded to a crouch beside Booth. Her breaths raked in, and he put a finger to his lips and pointed.

Her heart nearly buckled at the sight of Crispin, weaponless, picking up one end of the heavy nuke along with another man, a third holding a gun on him.

“That thing is six hundred pounds,” Booth said. “There’s no way?—”

Indeed. Crispin dropped his end, bent over, breathing hard.

The man with the gun cuffed him, and he went down on his knees, catching himself on his hands.

She bit back a shout. Booth drew in a breath. “I can’t get a shot.”

“You’d better get a shot, because they’ll kill him,” she snapped.

Overhead, an airplane engine droned—thank you, Miles.

Crispin struggled to his feet. Straddled the end of the missile. The big guy at the other end bent and strained with the load.

Booth stood up. “I think I can get the other guy.”

She looked up. Above, a single-engine tanker emerged from the smoke.

“Duck!”

Booth pulled the trigger.

Slurry dumped from the heavens, eight hundred gallons of a mix of water, ammonium sulfate, and red food coloring. Like blood, it splattered the forest, the road, and coated her helmet and body.

Booth dove against the tree, protecting himself.

Shouting erupted, and she lifted her head to see Crispin grappling with a man, both of them slippery with retardant.

Booth must have spotted them also, because he took off running, his feet slippery in the slurry.

She followed, fighting for grip as she ran. Ahead, the man fighting Crispin lost his gun but rolled and kicked Crispin away as he scrambled to his feet.

Crispin dove for the gun. Lifted it.

It dripped with goo.

The man reached the road, dove into his truck, and plowed into the ditch, past the overturned vehicle, and down the road.

Crispin took off, running hard after him.

Like he might catch him?

“Crisp!” Booth shouted, and he turned. Stared, his gaze ferocious on Booth.

On her.

The fury on his face shook her.

Booth checked on the man lying in the woods, bending over, his fingers to his pulse. “Dead.”

Crispin had turned, staring down the road as his assailant left in a wake of dust and smoke.

Then he rounded and ran back to them, breathing hard. “What did you do?” He directed the question at Booth, then her.

She opened her mouth. “Saved your life!”

“He got away!” He pointed down the road. Bloody retardant sat in his hair, saturated his shirt, his pants. “That was Floyd, the head of The Brothers, and he just got. Away .”

She stared at him, her breaths hard. “We stopped the fire from reaching the nuke—hello. Isn’t that?—”

“It wasn’t going to go off. The fire would have burned the electronics, but it wouldn’t have started a nuclear reaction!” He shook his head.

“Crispin, calm down?—”

“No. Three years of?—”

“He had you under his gun!” Jade stepped forward. “He was going to kill you.”

He rounded on her now, his mouth tight, his jaw pulling. “You shouldn’t believe everything you see.”

He then lifted his soggy, slurry-drenched shirt.

A gun, taped to his stomach.

Oh.

He let the shirt drop.

“I thought he was going to kill you.”

“This is why I work alone.” He shook his head. “Now Floyd’s in the wind.” He walked over to the nuke. “I can’t just leave this in the woods. And it’s too heavy for us to lift.”

“Problem is, we need a ride back to town,” Booth said. “The fire is headed to Snowhaven.”

“Perfect. Just for once, I’d like to have only one problem at a time.” He pulled out his phone from his pocket. “It’s dead.” He headed back to the truck.

Jade stood in the sopping forest, a spear in her heart.

Booth scrambled behind him, but when she didn’t move, he turned. “Let’s go. We need to beat that fire back to Snowhaven.”

Right. She swallowed the tightness in her throat and caught up.

“Give the truck a nudge, Booth,” Crispin said and got inside. He fired up the truck, and Booth pushed it from the back. Jade added her efforts, and the F-150 dug its way out of the ditch.

Booth hopped in the back. Held out his hand to her.

She met Crispin’s gaze through the rearview mirror. His mouth tightened, and he looked away.

Fine. She took Booth’s hand and climbed onto the bed of the truck. As soon as she sat, Crispin pulled out and tore down the road, the fire closing in behind them.

But Jade already felt burnt clear through to her soul.

* * *

Even his pants stuck to his legs. Crispin was a giant slushy, caked in goo, a chill burning through him to his bones.

No, he was a giant slushy jerk. Because Jade’s flinch as his words had emerged kept rounding in his brain.

She might have saved his life. Probably not—one more knock to the ground and he’d have come up armed, would have dispatched Floyd first, then his Russian pal. But it only went down like that in his head.

In real life, he could have had a cracked skull, been left for dead in the woods while a wildfire bore down on him. Crispy, just like she’d called him.

Right behind that came the memory of her helping him to his cabin, doctoring him out of shock, cooking him a steak. The memory of her tracking down Henry’s cabin and then The Brothers, of her manhandling the semiautomatic—or maybe letting it manhandle her—as they escaped. Her covered in blood as she fought to save Henry’s life.

The kiss in the bathroom, where she’d lit aflame a future he’d never believed in, never seen coming.

Until her.

He slammed his hand on the steering wheel as he slowed, then turned to cross the bridge. Trucks lined the road on the north side of the river, firefighters in yellow jackets and helmets deploying, armed with saws and shovels. Two bulldozers carved a wider path beyond the paved road, shoving down trees and bramble and overturning grass.

A glance in the rearview mirror, past the two sodden smokejumpers in the back, showed a mushroom cloud of advancing fire.

He needed to fix this. Yes, grab the nuke and find Floyd, but…aw, he’d been frustrated and angry and hurt and—he’d taken it all out on her.

Survive today . What he really wanted was to see beyond this moment to tomorrow. But his vision had always been cluttered, smoky, cloudy?—

No eye has seen…what God has planned for those who love Him.

Yes. Maybe he needed to stop relying on his own vision. Start trusting God’s.

Crispin pulled up to the fire department in Snowhaven. A small, two-garage-stall building attached to a main area. He spotted the Otter on the tarmac across the street. In front of the fire station, a few smokejumpers peeled out of their gear. It clicked then, that only Jade and Booth had jumped.

Probably after seeing him on the road, pinned down.

Which meant she’d chosen to help him, walk right into a gunfight instead of stopping the fire. And that only tightened his gut, because now she was making choices that could cost lives. Because of him.

Because of him.

He wasn’t a man of deep emotion, but this had him all clogged up as he put the truck into Park and barreled out of the cab.

She was hopping down from the back, Booth behind her.

“Jade!”

His voice stopped her, and she turned. Her helmet had protected her eyes from the slurry, so he saw clearly the hurt, even anger in them. “I gotta go, Crispin.”

“Listen—I was angry?—”

“No duh. I get that.” She held up her hand. “I get that you’re a solo act. You kept telling me that, and I should have believed you, so that’s on me.”

Oh. “No—I?—”

“You’re right. If I hadn’t gotten involved, jumped out of that plane, sent the slurry, maybe you’d have the nuke in your truck right now, Floyd in handcuffs. Batman saving the world.”

He didn’t have handcuffs, so probably there would be a different end to Floyd, but now he was just caught up in the details. “Or not?—”

“Doesn’t matter. I have a job to do, and so do you, and this is where I get off the carnival ride. One less problem for you.”

“Jade—”

“Go, Tough Guy. Be super. Save the world. It’s been…” She swallowed, and for the first time, he saw her waver, take a breath.

He reached out to her, but she stepped away. “Don’t die.” Then she whirled and strode away, breaking into a run as she headed toward her team.

“That was epic.”

Booth stood there, and only now did Crispin notice him.

“I’m a jerk.”

“Yep. Always sort of known that, pal. She was trying to save your life. We both were.”

He glanced then at Booth, covered in slime. “Thanks.”

Booth pursed his lips, nodded. Sighed. “But now there’s a nuke in the woods.”

“Yeah.”

“And Floyd’s in the wind.”

“Yeah.” He turned. “But guys like Floyd will always be in the wind, cooking up something. One problem at a time.”

His gaze landed on Jade, talking now with one of her teammates, gesturing to the fire line. “Jade does not like to be a burden. She’s a doer.”

“Probably one of the few people on earth who can keep up with you.” Booth had taken out a handkerchief, started to wipe his face and neck. “This stuff’s like glue.”

As he watched, she headed inside the station. “She not only kept up, she was ahead of me, so many times.”

“I don’t know her well,” Booth said, “but she seems pretty tough. She’ll be okay.”

“She’s not fireproof, Booth. I hurt her, and…” He made a fist, let out a word.

“Okay then,” Booth said. “Fix it. But let’s get the nuke secured first. Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

He took off, jogging toward the group of firefighters. Crispin headed to his glove compartment, where he’d stashed the duct tape and sunglasses and a couple cloths. He took one out and wiped his neck, his face. Booth was right—glue.

Footsteps slapped on pavement, and he turned to see Booth returning with a couple smokejumpers. “This is Logan—you met him at The Brothers’ encampment. He’s a career firefighter, but he can handle a weapon. And this is Vince.” Booth left out any designators, but Crispin had seen him handle a gun, so maybe military in his background. “Think we can carry the package?”

“Let’s grab some packing straps.” Crispin pointed to a couple crates stacked next to the fire station, black webbing in a pile near them. “I think we can carry her.”

“Her?” Booth asked as Vince ran over to retrieve the straps.

“Fanny.”

He shook his head. “Pile in guys.” He headed for the front passenger door. “The brass is still trying to figure out what to do with us, so let’s make it quick.”

A quick dash up the road into the headwall of a forest fire. Sounded about right. “Hold on tight.” Crispin got in, and the two smokejumpers landed in the back.

Then he backed out of the drive. When he turned the truck around and glanced into the rearview, Jade wasn’t standing on the pavement, watching him go.

Yes, he’d royally screwed that up.

The smoke thickened as he crossed the bridge again, then peeled back up the Shelly Mountain Road. He knew it better now and hoped the guys had a good grip on the side of the truck, because he chewed up the dirt, the truck nearly planing out.

He slowed before he reached the slurry drop, not wanting to slide into the forest going eighty. As it was, he nearly skidded into the overturned truck. The boys jumped out, and he turned the truck around, backing halfway into the woods.

Sparks littered the air, falling like droplets around them, the fire loud now, roaring as it lit the horizon. He guessed it may be five hundred yards away. The tops of the trees exploded, casting branches and leaves into the air, debris cycloning around them.

The slurry acted as a fire shield on his body. Huh—hadn’t seen that coming.

But hadn’t she said that? God going before him in circumstances he saw as suffering. Intended for his good. Yeah, yeah, he got it now.

Vince and Logan laid the straps down on the ground, and together they rolled Fanny onto them. Then they each took a side and lifted. A hundred and fifty pounds each, and even that turned his body to fire, but they muscled her onto his truck bed. Then the guys jumped in, along with Booth in the back, held it down, and Crispin scrambled back into the front seat.

No one mentioned the dead man, covered in slurry and blood, about to be consumed by the fire.

Sparks lit the road in front of him, and he put the truck into Drive. Glanced up.

The fire had crowned right above him, turning the trees to pyres, burning detritus swirling in the firestorm.

Behind him, the guys were swatting fire as it landed on them. Logan and Vince wore their jackets and helmets, but it wouldn’t protect them from?—

A tree fell along the ditch, fire popping from the branches. He swerved, and the guys ducked?—

They were going to be consumed.

Except—the lake. Where was that lake, their safety point?

Even as he thought it, he spotted the sign to the trailhead. “Hold on!” He slammed the brakes, skidded, and took the trailhead. Tearing through branches, he took off his mirrors, but the fire hadn’t caught up yet.

He burst out into an overlook, then a riverbed, a trail leading down it, toward—if he remembered correctly—a lake, still out of view.

But he hoped, oh, he hoped.

Gunning it past the overlook, he bumped down across the riverbed, then took it south, his truck tires crushing the rocks, the river having dried with the summer’s heat, leaving only smaller gravel and debris on the shoreline.

The fire spiked through the trees, but he’d managed distance between them. Still, the guys struggled, Fanny rolling around in the back, the guys bracing her with their feet.

He slowed, just a little.

Too much. The fire shot skyward, his entire rearview mirror ablaze.

He kicked it down, turned with the riverbed, and there—ahead, the river opened to a lake. A beautiful, gray-blue lake that just might save their hides.

He pulled up along the shore and piled out, and the guys hopped over the edge. “What about the nuke!” Vince shouted.

“It’ll be fine!” Booth shouted back. “But we’re about to get crispy!”

He plowed into the water and Crispin followed him. Cool and clean, and it found the grime and slush and washed it away, and then he dove headfirst.

The water rushed over him, into his hair, his pores, through his T-shirt, and only after he’d gone in did he realize he still wore his gun duct-taped to his chest. But it was a Glock, so it should be fine.

And maybe he wouldn’t need it. Maybe this was the end—he could let someone else find Floyd. Let it go and start over and…

Hope.

He didn’t know why he stayed under. Maybe for the chill to calm his racing heart. Or maybe he simply spotted the flames rimming the shoreline and wanted, just for a moment, to stay out of the heat. But as he did, he seemed to hear a voice. Something solid inside him. Though you were dead in your sins, God made you alive, with Christ.

Words, spoken at his parents’ funeral, somehow lodged deep inside.

Only to unearth today. Now.

Yes, God. He wanted a new life. A life free of the darkness and sin and doubt and anger and?—

Please. Forgive me. Save me.

And then, as if the words themselves had power, something seemed to unlatch from his soul, the abruptness jarring, breathtaking.

He burst out of the water, gulping breath.

The front wall had swept past them, the woods still burning, but his truck had survived, parked on the gravel. A little singed, but still functioning.

And in the bed, Fanny. Sleeping.

Booth let out a laugh, something nervous in it. Logan hung his hands behind his neck, as if stunned, water dripping off him.

Vince just seemed to breathe, glancing at Crispin, shaking his head.

And Crispin…yes. Something had changed. His entire body seemed lighter, healed even.

Something big and glorious and freeing swept through him and took hold.

He wanted to name it…hope.

Hope is how we survive. How we say “It is well with my soul.”

That’s what he wanted—to be well in his soul, come what may.

“There’s a bridge across the river down there,” said Logan. “And a road south. Probably back to Snowhaven.”

“Let’s get back to town,” Booth said. “Before the fire takes it out.”

And this time when he said it, Crispin lifted his eyes to heaven. Please, God, keep Jade safe.