Chapter 3

THREE

How had The Brothers found him already? He’d checked the monitors?—

Aw, it didn’t matter. Because trouble had a homing beacon on him, and of course they’d found him. And now Jade too.

“Get down!” he shouted again as she peeked her head over the sofa.

“I’m down, for Pete’s sake. Who is shooting at us?”

He crouched in front of the window, staring out at the front line of woods. What he needed was his infrared thermal scope. But he couldn’t leave the window.

“I see them!” Jade’s voice came from the office. Stubborn woman!

“What are you doing? I told you to stay down!”

“There’s one behind that trio of birch, one o’clock.”

He scanned the forest through his viewfinder, spotted the birch trees. “Gotcha.” A man dressed in fatigues, bearded, holding an AK-47, of course. Probably supplied by their Russian cohorts. Crispin pulled the trigger.

“You got him.”

He took a breath. “See anyone else?”

A beat. His neck ached with the whiplash of standing in the doorway and trying to get his brain around the sight of a pretty smokejumper sitting in his cabin, then hunkering down in a firefight, the same pretty smokejumper feeding him intel.

Who was this girl?

“Yes. Another shooter. He might be out of eyesight. He’s at your nine o’clock, way over by the garage.”

He shifted and then ducked as another shot brought down the rest of the glass in the window. Hey! Windows were expensive. He let out a breath, ran his sight slowly from the garage to the woods.

There. Wearing a bandanna over his mouth and nose, a grimy gimme hat, jeans, and a vest. Crispin dropped him.

Silence.

“Did I?—”

“Yep,” she said, her voice closer, and he looked up to see her standing at the doorway, her expression stripped. “You killed him.”

He nodded, lowered the gun. A beat passed between them, and his brain ran over the hopefully tongue-in-cheek accusation from earlier—murderer in the woods.

Whoops.

“Who were those guys? And who are you? And no lying this time.” She stood with her hands on her hips.

And he hadn’t really realized how pretty she was, not until this moment—with her brown eyes sparking and her blonde hair yanked from its braid, falling around her shoulders. She stood a little over a half foot shorter than him, especially without her boots on, and had curves under that forest service uniform.

A little spitfire, clearly.

He nearly smiled at the fire reference in his head.

She, however, cocked her head and raised an eyebrow.

He glanced out the window. “You’re sure they’re gone?”

“Not even a little, but your Batcave setup in there doesn’t register any more heat sources on the screen, so spill there, Batman.”

He sorta, weirdly, preferred Crispy.

And maybe he could skirt around the edges of truth. At the least, it might keep her safe to know the danger that lurked in the woods. “For the past few years, I’ve been hunting down a rogue militia in our country called The Brothers. They’re aligned with a particularly dangerous faction of the Russian Bratva?—”

“The mob?”

“Yes, although according to chatter on the dark web, they’re affiliated with a Russian general who wants nothing more than to draw America into another war with Russia.”

“Why?”

“Money. Power. Politics. Anyway, about four months ago, one of my old contacts reached out and told me to come to Montana. I discovered that this area is a hotbed of Brothers activity led by a guy named Floyd Blackwell. His brother, Earl, was killed earlier this summer, and since then, it’s gotten personal.”

She tightened her arms around her waist, and he didn’t miss the glance at her Pulaski, still leaned up to the table. “Did you kill him? Earl?”

He met her eyes. “No, I did not. He died in the fire.”

She swallowed, nodded.

“I’m telling the truth. Not that it matters to Floyd. He put out a hit on me and…” And oops, he’d nearly blown Booth’s cover. “And then got the jump on me.”

“He shot you.”

“No, that was…that was a guy named Tank, but Floyd tried to finish the job.”

“He did all that.” She pointed to his torso. “Boot prints.”

He nodded. “That was three days ago. He’s been out here ever since, maybe waiting for me. I should go out in the yard and identify?—”

“Have you lost your mind?” She advanced toward him. “You’re not going out there!”

“Um—”

“I’m calling Conner, and I’m going to send the sheriff up here?—”

“No.” He stood up. “That’s a bad?—”

The world spun, hit him hard at an angle. He put out a hand to the wall, braced himself.

“Are you shot again?”

He winced, then braced his hand on a chair and sank into it. “Concussion. A couple days ago, but my headache won’t go away.” He leaned his head back, and it only made it worse.

In fact…

He pushed himself up from the chair, reached for the sofa, and then she was there, holding on to him as he fought his way to the bathroom.

“Leave me—” he said at the door and then closed it on her before he lost it.

Aw, there went what was left of the chicken broth. Afterwards, he leaned against the cool tile wall, sweating. Shoot, clearly all this exertion had him going into shock, maybe.

“All done?” she said. “Because I’m coming in.”

He tried to brace his foot to the door, but she jammed it open. Looked down at him. Shook her head. “Tough guys drive me crazy.”

Huh?

She grabbed a towel, wetted it, and crouched in front of him, pressing it to his face. Her hand against his forehead followed it. “You’re hot. Like you have a fever.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re so far from fine you can’t even see it in the rearview mirror.” She braced her legs on either side of his hips, then reached down and grabbed his armpits. “Up we go, big guy. Let’s get you on the sofa, get your feet up. Nobody dies on my watch.”

He scrabbled up and somehow managed not to rip the towel bar from the wall. But he didn’t fight her as she helped him to the sofa. Crashing down onto it, he grunted, bracing himself for the heat that seemed to consume him. The cloth centered him, the coolness of it pulling fire from his brain.

Or maybe that was just her hand on his cheek.

“Don’t sleep,” she said.

“Mm-hmm.” But his eyes closed.

“Oh, this is going to be fun.” She got up and headed to the kitchen. More running water, the sound of ice dropping into a bowl, and she returned, cold, wet rag swimming in frigid water.

He groaned, something of wretched pleasure, when she wrung it out and put it on his head. Then she picked up his wrist and took his pulse.

“Well, that’ll win the Kentucky Derby. You need to breathe, slow everything down.”

“I don’t do slow,” he mumbled.

“Today you do.” She moved his bare feet to the arm of the sofa, raised them. “Wanna tell me how you lost your shoes?”

Shoes? Oh, right. “I broke out of the hospital. They took my clothes. And my shoes.” He opened one eye to see her shaking her head. “Listen, I’m not sure how everything got so out of hand, but I’m not…I’m not normally?—”

“Such a disaster?” She pulled up a chair, took the rag, got it cold again, and returned it—thank you, sweet heaven—to his head. “I hope not. How did you live this long without me?”

She was kidding. Of course she was kidding. But right now, any answer had been stripped from his head. He made a sound—could be agreement, could be laughter, he didn’t know. Definitely not argument, especially as she got up and went to the fridge again. “You have eggs.”

“I like eggs,” he mumbled.

“Just eggs.”

“There’s a ribeye in the freezer.”

The door opened, closed, and something smacked the counter.

“Okay, Tough Guy. Stay alive and I’ll cook for you.”

“No promises,” he mumbled.

“You’d better be kidding.”

He said nothing, and clearly that ignited something, because she appeared over the edge of the sofa.

“I’m serious. I have a zero-casualty rate as a crew chief, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled. And weirdly, it seemed to reach down inside him, jump-start something dormant and even forgotten inside.

Something that might just keep him alive.

“Good. Now, tell me. Have you always been this much trouble?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m going to need words.” She disappeared to the kitchen again.

“Always. Trouble.” Probably further back than he wanted to admit.

She came back, this time with a glass of water. Sat on the sofa beside him and held up his head. “Drink.”

“What is this, whiskey?”

“Do you want whiskey? I looked, but I didn’t see anything.”

He took a sip, then another, and leaned away before he started coughing. “I don’t drink.”

“Good. There’s only so much trouble a girl can handle.” She put his head down, back on the arm.

“So, start at the beginning, Tough Guy, and tell me how you became a DC hero.”

He looked at her, sitting there beside him, a smile trying to mask the concern on her face, and the last thing he wanted was to tell her about his miserable three years of darkness, and maybe even the tragedy before that, so, “Nope.”

She cocked her head.

“You should leave me. Get away from here.” He looked away from her.

She sighed. “Probably. But for now, I’m in it to win it. And I don’t leave a teammate behind.”

“Teammate?”

“Should I say pardner ?” She added a twang. “Besides, if there are any more gunslinging brothers in the woods, I think I’ll sit tight.”

He sighed, so deep his ribs burned. “Why are you making this so hard?”

“What? Letting you die here, alone in the woods? I don’t know, maybe you’re cute.”

“I am not cute.”

She laughed. “It is hard to tell under all those bruises.”

“Still not an answer.”

Her smile dimmed. “Because I left someone once, and I’m not doing it again.”

* * *

The last—very last—thing she should do was let Crispin inside. Except, too late, because the man had this way of looking at her like she might hold his belay line, and frankly…

Frankly, she liked it.

In fact, it seemed he almost liked her.

As in, liked her.

Crazy. She’d simply shut down all her flirting receptors for so long she didn’t know how to read a guy. Especially a guy who had been knocked upside the head one too many times. So clearly, he couldn’t be trusted to be in his right mind.

Still, when he’d met her gaze, not smiling, with his not-an-answer reply, so much intensity in those hazel-green eyes…she’d found her mouth speaking, maybe her heart speaking, before her brain could engage.

“You did it once?” he said now, his voice soft, his eyes open. “Left someone to die?”

She drew in a breath. “Never mind. It’s not?—”

“Listen. You want me to stay awake? You have to do the heavy lifting, Jade the Smokejumper.”

Oh. Fine. “A couple years ago, one of my teammates was hurt on a jump. He was on my stick, so I was responsible for him. He landed wrong, and I saw it. He said he was fine—even got up with his gear and followed us out to the line. But in my gut, I knew something wasn’t right.”

She removed his cloth, sank it into the cold water. He seemed less feverish, but it could be the residue of the cold water. He was breathing better, so maybe she’d forestalled the shock.

Still, he shouldn’t sleep.

“We were working on the side of a mountain, cutting a line at the base, getting ready for an indirect attack and a backfire.”

“Which is?”

“We start a fire along the line and let it burn out the area before the front wall of the main fire arrives, thus depleting the fire’s fuel. We dig the line, control the smaller fire, and it kills the bigger fire.” She put the cloth back on his head. Sat back.

“We were at the bottom of a hill, with a forest service road behind us. We’d spread out, digging, and then our chief called for the drip torches to start the spot fires. It was only after we’d started the fire and were ready to head to safety that I realized Griffin hadn’t caught up. The firestorm had caught the flames, and smoke clouded the mountain, and we couldn’t see anything. I ran up the cut line and eventually spotted him. He had collapsed just outside the cut line, clearly in pain. And the fire had jumped his line. I called it in, but by then the fire had cut us off from the team, so we tried to get to the road. That’s when the fire blew up.”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, and they widened now.

“We had to deploy our fire shelters. But we weren’t in the clear, so we had to dig out holes—anyway, it could have been worse. Our team found us and doused the fire, but only after it had torched the ground around us.”

She swallowed then, caught in the vortex of memory, the heat, and Griffin shouting in the shelter next to her.

“Griffin, because of his injury, couldn’t keep his shelter down. He suffered third-degree burns on his leg.”

“And you?”

“Just…minor. The fire got in around my elbows, my knees, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Out of the—this happens a lot?”

She pointed to his face. “This happen a lot?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Ninja move there.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Yes, we sometimes get burned. But if I hadn’t left him on the line—when he said he was okay and told me to leave—then he wouldn’t be walking around with scars today.”

Crispin’s gaze didn’t leave her as she reached over for his washcloth. But his hand caught her wrist. “You’re not to blame for another person’s stubbornness.”

She paused, then leaned in, lowered her voice, her eyes in his. “Pride goeth before the fall.”

A beat, and he let her go, then smiled. “Okay, Jade the Smokejumper, you win. Has anyone told you that you’re a little bossy?”

“I’d classify it as right .” She took away the cloth. “But most of it is just wanting to make sure that everyone makes it home. Actually, I had a friend in my dorm during undergrad who developed a tracking device you could wear on your finger. It’s a ring, but it connects to GPS. You download the app on your phone. I saw her last summer in Alaska—Tae’s dating a guy who’s from there—and she was working on an updated prototype. Gave me one, to test it. I should have worn it today.” She shook her head. “I’m working on a version for jumpers, something flexible yet easy to wear under their gloves. That way if they get separated, we can find them. There’s no fire that is worth the life of a teammate.”

She dipped the washcloth into the water. “And even this gang. Certainly they can’t be worth all this.”

He breathed in, wincing. “Some things are worth giving everything we have,” he said quietly and then looked away.

She so wanted to follow that comment down the road to answers, but the set of his jaw turned her silent.

“My brother believed that,” she finally said, quietly. “At least, until he and the woman he loved got caught in a fire.”

He looked back at her. “That’s right. You said your brother was a firefighter.”

“Sort of a legend among the firefighting community in the Lower 48. Hence why I planted my stake in Alaska.”

“That’s where you live?”

“Just in the summer. In the winter, I work for the Bureau of Land Management, in their fire sciences department. I have a masters in fire science, and we’re working on some virtual reality training programs to better prepare our crew chiefs.”

“So, you’re like the special forces of firefighting.”

“Not really, but…” She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Did your brother get you into this?”

“Jed? Not even a little. He hated that I fought fires. I attended Wildlands Academy one summer—ended up with the Top Firefighter award, and he wouldn’t talk to me the entire drive home. I think he’s still mad at me.”

Crispin frowned. “Why?”

And nope, she wasn’t going there. Because she couldn’t bear for him to look at her as damaged or broken, or even with that pity that would come, so…“You know. Big brothers. They can get overprotective.”

Something shifted in his eyes and he nodded. “Yeah.” Then he laid his head back and closed his eyes.

“You’re not sleeping on me, are you, Crispy?”

He grunted. “Keep it up and I’ll find you a nickname.”

“Anything to keep you awake.”

“I’m just…watching the stars behind my eyelids.”

“Fine. I’m going to make you a steak.”

“Try not to set the house on fire.”

“Hey. Firefighter in the house.” She got up, but he didn’t open his eyes. Still, he looked better, less pale, his breathing steady. “How’s the head?”

“Less banging. Can you find me a couple aspirin? Bathroom, above the sink.”

She flicked on the light, the shadows of the late afternoon turning the cabin dusky. The air still smelled of his soap from his shower and, for a second, flashed the memory of him sitting on the floor. Frustrated, a little wrung out.

Clearly, Crispin didn’t go down easily. And maybe she got that too.

The mirrored cabinet held a worn three-by-five snapshot of a young girl, maybe twelve, her hair in pigtails, grinning into the camera in front of what looked like a giant panda cage. She held up two fingers in a peace sign.

Jade found some ibuprofen and brought it out to him with water.

His breathing raked out hard from his broken body. She pressed her hand to his forehead—cool, no fever—and then picked up his wrist. Strong hands, bruised knuckles, which said he hadn’t gone down easily. And his pulse had slowed, turned stronger. So maybe she’d let him sleep.

She cleaned up the broken glass from the window, dumped it into a trash bin, then looked for cardboard in his office. Nothing, but he did have a map on the wall similar to the fire map in the Jude County office. Dry erase markers circled areas on the map with tight, block handwriting with numbers and initials beside arrows to each circle.

And on his desk, a printout of pictures—some mug shots, others simply candids. He’d written names on many of them, the name Floyd noted on one with a bearded man, long hair, eyes of darkness. He’d added a couple exclamation points to the name.

No cardboard.

She went into the kitchen and pulled the steak from the bowl of water, where it was thawing. A cast-iron skillet sat on the stove along with a glass jar of bacon grease.

The steak sizzled and popped, and she seasoned it with salt, covered it, then went into the office to call Conner.

No answer.

So maybe the fire had gone from a surface fire to a crown fire, or worse. She stepped out and found the steak smoking—so yes, no fires today—and flipped it. Her stomach growled.

It felt all so…provincial. Like she’d stepped into a life she’d only ever seen from a distance. Not that she hadn’t made a steak before, but…

Stop. She’d never gone down this road before for a reason. This was a weird nightingale moment, not a date . For crying in the soup, she didn’t even know this man. So she should shut down the crazy warmth that stirred up inside her when he smiled at her.

What- ever .

She checked the steak, turned off the heat, and transferred it onto a plate to sit. Then she put a cover over it and walked back over to check on Crispin.

He roused, opened his eyes. Startled for a second when he saw her—it rippled through him in a quick breath, the tensing of his body. Then, “Oh. You.”

You. Like she…what, belonged here? To make it worse, he sighed and smiled.

He possessed a devastating smile when he wanted to wield it.

“Steak’s ready,” she managed, but her voice came out weirdly high. Oh brother.

Then suddenly, lights flashed through the broken window, and a truck rolled into the driveway.

Crispin hit his feet as if he’d never gone down. Grabbed her hand and yanked her behind him.

She let him, the memory of shooting flushing through her.

He grabbed his AR-15 from the sofa. Only then did she realize he’d been sleeping with it.

The truck stopped and the front door opened. A man stepped out.

Crispin raised the gun?—

“No. Stop. That’s Conner, my boss. He’s here to get me.” She shoved the gun down and then headed for the door.

She nearly ran out of the cabin, down the steps toward Conner.

Conner wore his uniform and a JCFS hat, and came toward the deck eyeing the broken window. “You okay, Jade?”

Funny, she’d forgotten about her limp. “Yeah.”

He gestured to the window. Oh, that.

“It’s a long story. But I have a wounded man inside.” Okay, that sounded a little, weirdly, possessive. “I found him at the source of the fire.” Still sounded like she’d picked up a puppy or something. “There is a wounded man inside that needs medical assistance.”

She headed back up the steps, across the porch, and opened the door.

No Crispin.

He wasn’t standing in the dusky light of the family room, armed.

Nor in the bathroom. Or his bedroom, or even his office.

Where—

She came back out into the kitchen.

That’s when she spotted the door, tucked away from the kitchen, in what she thought might be the pantry. “Crispin?”

She headed to the door, opened it.

The back door hung slightly ajar. What?—

She opened it and stood on the small stoop, staring out at the tangle of forest.

“Crispin!”

The twilight ate her voice.

“Where’d he go?” Conner stood in the kitchen, staring out the window over the sink, then at her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Her gaze fell on the steak plate. The empty steak plate.

And despite the fist in her gut, she couldn’t help but smile.