Chapter 7

SEVEN

Yes, Jade heard what Henry had said about being too late.

Also heard Crispin’s real name—Ethan. She liked it. He seemed like an Ethan.

But mostly, she spotted sparks landing on the porch of Henry’s cabin, and her firefighter brain fixed on—house fire.

And then conflagration , if this thing took on new life.

“Get some ice on his wound. See if you can stop the bleeding,” she said to Crispin—she couldn’t wrap her brain around the Ethan quite yet.

He picked up Henry around the shoulders and helped him to a worn sofa. A stone chimney ran up one side of the cabin with a small living area, a rag rug on the floor, and a kitchen with a gas stove and a round table.

“You have a hose?” she asked Henry as she headed to the door. Sparks, carried by the wind, spat on the house and had already ignited spot fires in the dry grass.

“On the side of the house. From a well in the yard,” Henry said, his hand to the towel on his forehead.

“Shovel?”

“In the garage.”

Not great.

“I might have one at the back of the house, in the garden.”

In the kitchen, Crispin dumped ice onto a towel. “We need to get to the nuke.”

“It’s too late. Floyd and another guy were waiting for me. I managed to nick the other man, but they’d already ransacked my office?—”

He pointed to a room on the far side of the cabin, the door ajar. A glimpse inside evidenced his words—papers on the floor, drawers upturned. “They grabbed the topo map—I’d marked the silo where Fanny sleeps. My plan was to give you the map when you arrived.”

“Fanny?” Crispin came over with the towel.

“The Phoenix missile.” He held the towel to his head. “They stole my truck—I tried to stop them and hit the propane tank.” He took the towel. “They’re about twenty minutes ahead of us.”

“We need?—”

“We need to stop that fire before it spreads to the house and the surrounding forest,” Jade said, and ran outside.

The garden hose lay coiled in the back, already attached to a spigot in the yard. A shovel sat in black dirt inside an enclosed garden that sprouted cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers. She grabbed the hose—it had a spray head, so that would help. Cranking the water on full, she ran to the garage, as close as she could get, and opened up the spray.

Not a huge garage—maybe sixteen feet deep, twelve feet wide, one door, so big enough for a truck, maybe a workbench. But the propane tank attached to it spilled out gas onto the ground, burning in a puddle and she made sure not to touch it with the water. The fire chewed through the roof, the flames licking out thirty feet into the air. It charred the birch trees surrounding the property, and the heat bubbled the rubber seat of an old snowmobile parked outside.

No saving the garage, of course, so she focused on dampening the sparks and kicking down the fire at the roofline, then moving to the grass around the garage.

More sparks, however, flew in the wind.

“What can I do?”

Crispin, behind her. She pointed to the shovel. “Dig a line around that propane puddle—keep the fire from spreading.”

He grabbed the shovel. “Where?”

“About six feet from the edge—make it wide enough so it won’t jump. About three feet.”

The smoke turned gray, cluttered the yard, and she coughed. Pulling her handkerchief down around her mouth, she turned to the house and started to spray the roof. It hadn’t caught fire yet, so if she could wet it, she might save the house, contain the fire to the garage.

Behind her, Crispin grunted, digging fast. She sprayed down the side of the house, then the grass around it. When she glanced at Crispin, he’d already dug a five-foot trench rounding to the back of the tank.

He might have made a good hotshot.

She turned back to the house.

“You’re on fire!”

Jerking around, she spotted him barreling toward her.

He grabbed the hose from her and turned the spray on her.

The blast hit her like a fist, cold and fierce, shoving her to the ground. “What are you doing?”

“Your shirt was on fire!”

And now she was drenched too. She rolled, got up, breathing hard. Shucked off her flannel shirt.

“You okay?” He turned her around.

She jerked away. “I’m fine—let’s get this fire contained.”

He frowned at her, but she stepped away, turned the water onto the house again. “Finish digging that line!”

He said nothing, ran back to his project.

Shoot. Maybe he’d seen her skin. Oh well. The water might protect her from more sparks.

When she finished the house, she turned back to the garage. The roof had caved in, just the frame standing, the fire subsiding. The propane puddle burned hot, but the air dissipated the fumes, and Crispin’s line held. She turned her spray to the area outside the line.

Smoke blackened his face, and sweat trickled down into his shirt collar. And still, the man was terribly, devastatingly handsome, dressed in black, a warrior against the flames.

“You okay?” he asked again, now coming over.

“Yeah. Check on Henry.” She turned back to the house one more time.

“We need to get moving.”

She nodded, but he didn’t move. And aw, when she turned, his gaze hung on her back.

“That looks like a bullet wound,” he said tightly. Clearly, her white shirt clung to her body. Nice.

“It’s fine.” She shut off the water.

“It’s not fine. You’re bleeding.”

“Because you sprayed me!” She walked over to the garage now and doused the fire again, and fresh, dark-gray smoke billowed up. “The water opened up the wound.”

“You should have let me doctor it at the house.”

“I don’t need doctoring.”

“Now who’s the tough guy?” He walked over to his trench and started to throw dirt on the propane flames, killing the fire. The garage fire sizzled, the beams charred, the smoke dissipating in the soggy air.

She turned off the water. “Listen. We have more important things to do than worry about a little scrape?—”

“Says the woman who bribed me with food to take a nap on the sofa.”

“You needed the nap.”

“And you need stitches.”

“I don’t. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

He gave her a hard look. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”

Her mouth opened. “Seriously?”

He sank his shovel into the ground. “I don’t want you getting hurt?—”

“For the love.” Then she shut off the hose, looked at him, and took off her shirt.

His mouth opened.

“Please. This is my running bra. But—” She took a breath and turned. “See? Barely a scratch.”

She’d seen it in the bathroom mirror, so she knew exactly what he saw—a scrape along her shoulder, the width of a pinky finger, maybe a half inch deep. So yes, stitch-worthy, but she’d had worse.

Which probably, he also saw, because he went very, very quiet.

Yep, those were third-degree burns down her back, healed, the skin still rumpled and shiny.

She pulled her shirt back on, struggling a little since it was still sopping wet. Then she rounded on him.

He swallowed.

“I was in a fire when I was eight years old. Burned twenty percent of my body, so my back, my shoulder. But that was then, this is now, so let’s keep moving.”

She ignored whatever look or comment he might deliver and headed to the back, re-coiled the hose, and then went into the house.

Henry lay on the sofa, ice pack on his wound, eyes closed, and for a second—“Henry?”

Not dead. He opened his eyes, looked at her. Frowned. “You look so familiar.”

“Jade Ransom.”

“Jade. Right. You have a brother. Jed.” He made to sit up, winced. “I remember you. Firefighter at Wildlands Academy.”

She crouched next to him. “Let me see that wound.” The wound had clotted, leaving just a terrible welt turning purple on his head. “How’d you get this?”

“A bar across the forehead as I came into my cabin. It could have been worse—I got my hand up. And I got a shot off. But I couldn’t stop them from getting away.”

“Do you have superglue?”

“Yes,” Henry said. “Kitchen junk drawer.”

“Let’s close up that wound?—”

“And then we need to go after them.” Crispin had come in behind her.

She got up, and he put a hand on her arm as she walked by. “You too.”

Her mouth pursed. But she found the glue in the midst of a drawer filled with screws and tape and wire and a hammer and some lighters.

Henry was sitting up, Crispin beside him.

“You hold the wound shut, I’ll glue it,” said Jade.

“Sorry, Henry,” Crispin said as he pinched the edges together. She applied the glue.

“I’m just glad to see you, Ethan. I was hoping you’d come.”

“It would have helped if you’d told me where you were hiding.”

Jade had found a bandanna hanging on a hook near the door and now handed it to Crispin. He folded it and put it around Henry’s wound.

“I wasn’t sure you were still alive, so I didn’t want to send my location until I knew you were in town. And then…” He got up. “I was in the hospital.” His jaw tightened. “Surgery.”

He lifted his shirt and revealed a healing scar across his chest. “Lung cancer. I’m living on borrowed time, kid. Time to end this thing.”

Then he walked over to a bench by the door and pulled out a gun.

No, a lethal-looking Springfield AR-10 semiautomatic rifle.

Just like that, he morphed from the sweet old man she’d known, with a floppy-eared hound dog, to an older version of Crispin, probably, still fierce and capable. Gandalf, facing the Balrog. “Let’s go.”

“Not until I look at Jade’s wound,” said Crispin. He held the glue, raised an eyebrow.

“After we save the world, okay, Tough Guy?” Then she pushed past Henry, into the yard.

Henry came out, Crispin behind him, shaking his head.

And maybe it was her pride. Or just stubbornness. But the last thing she wanted was him taking another good look at her back, maybe starting to ask questions.

“What is your problem?” Crispin came off the porch. “And I know this isn’t life-threatening, but seriously?—”

“Fine!” She rounded on him. “I don’t need your pity, okay. I don’t need you looking at my wounds and thinking…oh, poor Jade. And then suddenly you don’t see me as…well, as?—”

“The capable, smart, brave woman that you’ve proved yourself to be?” His mouth tightened. “Has it occurred to you that maybe your wounds are only proof of that?”

Oh.

She drew in a breath.

Behind her, an engine had fired up. She looked over to see Henry at the helm of a four-seat utility vehicle. “Get on. You two can have a lovers’ squabble on the way.”

Lovers’ squabble?

Even Crispin raised an eyebrow. But he climbed into the backseat of the vehicle.

She took the front.

And ignored Henry’s smile as they motored down a trail in the woods.

* * *

This was all sorts of out of control.

Crispin gripped the sidebar of the ATV, holding on as Henry put the gas down, flooring it over ruts and breaking branches and plowing a hole through a worn trail in the woods.

Overhead, smoke mottled the sky, turned the woods hazy and difficult to navigate. Ash and smoke littered the air the farther east they drove. So, clearly, into firestorm country.

“How far is it?”

“About a mile,” Henry shouted over the roar. “There’s a cave system—I have a place there.”

“You hid the missile in a cave?”

“No. A silo—it was already built into the ground. An old minuteman missile silo. Montana is lousy with them.”

They emerged from the forest, the terrain turning rocky, mountains rising from either side. They drove through a gorge of sorts, perhaps a dried riverbed, although the boulders seemed struck from the side of the mountain, the size of the Kia he’d stolen.

He’d have to track down the owner, send an anonymous money order.

In the front seat, Jade also braced herself, one hand on the bar, the other on the dash—they probably needed seatbelts.

Then again, she was tough.

Her accusation still simmered inside him. I don’t need your pity, okay. I don’t need you looking at my wounds and thinking…oh, poor Jade.

As if. But maybe…sure, if he let her story find root, his heart might turn a little at an eight-year-old going through the torture of burn treatments and skin grafts. But now, of course, her words about surviving today made sense.

So maybe she was a little fireproof, like the burnt area of a forest fire, already having suffered the flames. And no wonder she faced life the way she did, the wounds of a bullet shot—or a gunfight, or a house fire—glancing off her.

Or at least, they seemed to. And yes, it made him respect her just a little more. But he’d shoved the glue into his pocket because they weren’t done yet.

Henry drove them to a flattened place inside the gorge, a rocky area where bloomed purple wildflowers and tall grasses. He slowed, then pointed to a rusted metal door in the ground.

A trail led to the door, up from a dirt road in the distance, although hard to make out in the hazy air. “Had to back the trailer in here, but it’s tucked back in here good,” he said. “Hard to spot. Maybe they haven’t found it.”

He stopped the ATV, and Crispin barreled out, running to the metal door. Six feet wide, it had square handles protruding from two sides. “It looks cleaned off.”

Henry came over, Jade just behind him, as if she might catch the old man if he went down. But Henry was part cowhide, part old-school tough. For a second, an ancient fondness rose inside Crispin.

The man had saved his life. Protected him, in his way, from the rogue CIA faction.

Henry bent down and grabbed a handle, Crispin the other. They lifted together.

The door opened with a grinding shriek. Inside, rusty corrugated-metal stairs led down into a cement bunker.

“Where’s the missile?” Crispin had pulled out the Glock he’d picked up from Henry’s place. He’d left the Browning in the four-wheeler.

Henry glanced at him, nodded. “This is the bunker that leads to the missile silo.” Then he headed down the stairs. Jade followed. Darkness swathed the corridor as he closed the door behind him, but Henry had flicked on a light.

“The bunker is connected to a grid—and a generator—by underground electrical lines,” he said. He walked up to a door, put his hand on it. “This is the blast lock area, one of four 6,000-pound blast doors. It withstands over 1,000 psi of pressure. FYI, a tornado blows a house down with about 5 psi.” He was opening the door with a boat-like round handle. The door opened, clearly weighted well on its hinges, and they entered another room, this one small, with a punch-pad code on the next door. “This is the entrapment area of the blast block. You can’t open both doors at the same time.” He closed the door they’d walked through, then pushed a code, and the next blast door opened.

“Where’s the missile silo?”

“On the other side of the door. The door to the old silo was six tons and had a mechanical opening operated by the launch center. Which of course, if opened, activated a security alert at NORAD. My pickup would only haul two tons, so I had the door changed out and the security alert disabled.” He shook his head. “Probably a bad idea.”

He opened the second door. A long, round tunnel extended maybe fifty feet underground.

“The missile is at the end of this tunnel,” Henry said.

Crispin ducked his head in and headed down the tunnel, his gut a fist. Because even from here he could make out the empty silo chamber.

But his breath still caught as he came to the end.

“Is the pad empty?” Henry said.

Crispin stepped inside, looked up. Sixty feet down, the chamber measured maybe ten feet wide. And at the top, the door hung open, smoke clouding the view.

“Yes,” Crispin called back. He wanted to hit something. If only?—

Jade had followed him down the tunnel. She came out and stood beside him, her voice small. “What does this mean?”

“It means The Brothers have the missile and are enroute to selling it to the Russians,” Crispin said, his jaw tight. “It means we have to find it and stop them.”

She inhaled. “Okay. But how?”

“There’s a tracking device on the missile,” Henry shouted—so, clearly their voices had carried. “We can activate it in the launch room.”

They scooted back down the tunnel, and Crispin closed the door behind him while Henry opened the next one. A cement hallway led toward the stairwell where they’d entered, then down another tunnel and into the launch room. They came out to a space with bunks built against the rounded walls, a table, chairs, and a small kitchen. A rounded stairwell extended from the middle. They took the stairs up to the second story.

A launch room with screens and computers, and it looked like something out of the eighties, with fat monitors and wide consoles.

“None of this is hooked to anything. Except this.” He walked over to a laptop and powered it up.

A flatscreen hanging on the wall also lit up, and in a moment, GPS flickered, illuminating a red dot on the screen.

“It’s not moving,” said Jade. “I wonder why.”

“That’s one of The Brothers’ encampments,” Crispin said grimly.

Henry sank down into a nearby straight chair.

“You don’t look so good,” Jade said, crouching in front of him.

Crispin didn’t feel so good either. “We need to go.”

“He needs a hospital. Probably a CT,” Jade said.

“I’m okay,” said Henry. “Let me pull up a map.” He scooted his chair to the laptop and began to type.

Jade got up.

Crispin stalked away, just trying to breathe. Mission fail. After three years?—

“Hey.” She came up behind him, softly, her hand to his back. “You don’t look so good either.”

He closed his eyes. “This isn’t happening. I can’t have died for three years only to have this…” He turned to face her. “If we fail?—”

“We won’t fail,” she said and put her hands on his arms. “God hasn’t brought you this far to let you fail.”

He gave her a wry look. “That’s hope more than theology, right?”

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

He wanted to believe it. Wanted to sink into her gaze, to pull out of her that faith that seemed so tangible, so…real.

And maybe that’s why he let his emotions unleash, why he found himself stepping up to her, his gaze searching her face.

Why he cupped her face.

She gasped, something small, and her mouth parted.

That was enough of a yes for him to bend down and kiss her. Maybe a little desperate, maybe a little unhinged, but he kissed her hard, needing that hope from her, and maybe even the crazy calm that she always seemed to exude, but…

Yes, in this moment, right now, everything washed away, and it was simply her, kissing him back, centering him, stilling his racing heart.

And maybe restarting it also, to a different rush, a different hammer of adrenaline.

She tasted of the coffee she’d had for breakfast and smelled of woods and fire, and when she put her hands on his chest, then fisted his shirt, he just wanted to put his arms around her, pull her tighter, maybe pick her up and set her on one of those abandoned desks and dive in.

Except—no. No …aw, what was he doing ?

Because even as he pulled away, even as she looked up at him with those beautiful golden-brown eyes…

He was just going to hurt her. And maybe it wouldn’t be because terrorists killed her on his watch, but he had a life, a solo life and…

“I’m sorry,” he said softly and stepped away. She frowned.

Then Henry put a fine point on it when he said, “So, are we going to stay down here and snog, or save the world from terrorists?”

Right.

Oh, he was a jerk.

Suddenly, she smiled, stepped away from Crispin, grabbed his hand and said, “Door number two, Henry. Let’s go.”

And bad, bad Crispin, because he gripped her hand all the way down the tunnel, into the corridor, until they reached the stairwell and emerged into the sunlight.

And even then, as they hopped in the ATV, he wanted to reach for her and simply hold on.