Chapter 9

NINE

Do you think…after all this is over…

Crispin’s question simply ran through Jade’s brain, over and over and?—

Along with, well, breathtakingly beautiful?

Oh boy.

It didn’t help that all she could think about was kissing him. The hunger of his touch, the way he made her feel at once beautiful, wanted, and yet safe, as if he…

As if he respected her as much as he needed her.

Yes. Maybe after this was over?—

“He’s awake, but you’ll have to wait until he’s been transferred to a patient room to see him.” The words from one of the med-surg nurses made Jade turn from where she stood at the window overlooking the smoke building in the distant forest. It seemed darker, closer, and maybe she should call HQ, make sure that the team hadn’t been called out.

Meanwhile, behind her, Crispin had spent the last hour pacing a trail across the carpeted flooring.

“Thank you,” Crispin said now to the nurse.

“You’re like a tiger in a cage,” Jade said. “Sit down.”

He folded his hands behind his neck, sat on a straight-back chair, and let out a groan. “By now, the Russians could have gotten their hands on Fanny, could be headed for a major metropolitan area.”

She sat next to him, put her hand on his knee. “It’ll be okay.”

“Said the pilots as terrorists took over their planes.”

“Oh my, we’re there.”

“We’ve been there for three years.”

“So, let’s just take a breath.”

He looked at her. “I don’t know how you can be so calm.”

She lifted a shoulder. “I told you—because once you’ve been burned, you’ve already been through the worst.”

He offered a wry smile. “I thought you were being metaphorical.”

“I know. But it’s true—both in reality and in theory. And at the end of the day, I believe God’s grace is enough to carry us through.”

“My mom used to say that. Nothing is so heavy that God can’t take our burden from us.”

“There’s a verse about that.”

“I’m sure there is.” He sighed. “Is there a verse about wishing you could roll back time and start over?”

“No. But there’s one about how we have no idea what good God has in store for us. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind can imagine what God has planned for those who love him. My paraphrase, but it’s something like that. It’s what keeps me moving forward sometimes.”

“Hope.”

“Always.”

He sighed. “Another of your mother’s verses?”

“Yes.” She liked that he remembered.

“She sounds like a great mom.”

“She is. She lives in Boise with my dad. I was the surprise of the family—she never thought she’d have another child after Jed.”

“Jed, the big brother. The one who doesn’t approve of you smokejumping.”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

She took her hand from his knee, drew in a breath. “Because it’s dangerous.”

“And hard work. So why do it?”

“Because Jed did.”

“And you wanted to be like him?”

“I wanted to save lives like he saved mine.”

Crispin arched a brow.

Oh well. “I started the fire that burned me. I had made a fort in my bedroom, and I wanted light. So I got one of the many candles my mom had around the house and lit it. Only, it wasn’t a small candle but a tall taper candle, and it started the blanket on fire. And then, when that caught, I dropped the candle, and it lit the carpet on fire too. I tried to get away, but the blanket landed on me.”

He had gone still.

“Jed heard me screaming and came into the room. He pulled me out of the fire, put it out, and dragged me out of the house. Then he went to the neighbor’s house and they called 911. If he hadn’t, our house would have burned too.”

“So Jed’s not a jerk.”

“No. He’s just a brother. And he saw what I went through, and I get it. I do wish he’d see what I’ve done with creating the simulations of fire. We’re doing good things at the National Fire Institute. Someday, I hope to really help with wildfire suppression. Save lives.” She twisted the ring on her finger, playing with it. “Like this ring tracker.”

“That’s the prototype you got from your friend?”

“Yes.”

“How does it work again?”

“App on your phone, it connects to GPS. A fire supervisor could have one for every one of his crew.”

“What about a PLB?”

“This is smaller, and it won’t fall off. I’m testing it on my crew in Alaska.”

“Hence your summer gigs in Alaska.”

And here went nothing. “I love Alaska. But…I could also?—”

“Mr. Tucker, Henry is asking for you.” The nurse walked in, and Jade sat back, her words suddenly thick and wedged in her throat.

“We just moved him to a room down the hall.” She gave him the number.

He got up. “This conversation isn’t over.”

Then he took her hand.

Oh. Well. Okay then.

But what if—what if she stayed in Montana? And what? Lived happily ever after with a man who she’d known for three days?

Please.

Still, Crispin had a pretty firm grip on her hand.

He knocked at the door and then opened it. Henry sat in the bed, looking a thousand years older than when they’d walked out of the bomb silo only hours ago. Okay, even then he’d appeared rough, but now an IV protruded from his arm, and he wore an oxygen mask and had dressings on his chest and a bandage around his head.

“Not too long,” said a male nurse as he walked past them. Then stopped. “Crispin?”

Crispin wore a wry smile. “Hi, Nick.”

“This one stays put,” Nick said. Crispin made a noise as he nodded.

“What was that about?” she asked, but Crispin was pulling up a chair beside Henry’s bed.

“I got a call from someone named Logan Thorne, who told me you’re the president’s uncle.”

Her mouth opened. No wonder he’d been pacing.

Henry sighed. Nodded.

“Which is why you hid instead of coming forth with the nuke, right?”

Henry reached up a suddenly frail hand and moved the mask aside. “After our department was nearly decimated, I knew the faction wasn’t just taking out the team but that, most likely, I was the target. My nephew had just been inaugurated, and the details of the assassination attempt were just coming out, and I thought…they’re still out there. So I took myself—and Fanny—out of play. As far as I know, Isaac shut down the Phoenix program. She’s one of a kind.”

Crispin nodded.

“You have to know, Ethan, how terrible I felt after I wiped your identity. I stole your future, your past, your family—I did it to save your life, but…I know what you lost.”

Crispin drew in a long breath.

“That’s why I bought the land for your sister and moved her here. Sure, I wanted to watch over her, but I thought it might be the one thing I could do for you.”

He swallowed, looked away. “Yep.”

“When this is over, you can walk away. You’re still dead. You can stay dead.”

Crispin looked at Jade. “Or maybe, start over?”

Everything stilled inside her.

“Sure. Whatever you want, I can make it happen.”

He looked back at Henry. “Okay, so who is this Thorne?”

“He runs a private off-the-books group that is tasked with taking down threats against our country. Specifically, right now, the Petrov Bratva. They’ve been behind numerous attacks on our country. They’d like nothing more than to detonate a nuclear missile inside America and blame it on the Russians. Which, of course, is true, but?—”

“Would only provoke a war,” Jade said.

Henry tapped his nose, then replaced the oxygen mask.

“Logan says he’s sending a man here—probably for security reasons, but we need to grab that nuke before Floyd hands it off to someone named Igor.” Crispin got up. “But I can’t leave you?—”

“I’m fine, kid,” Henry said through the mask.

“Yeah, well, I’m tired of people dying—or trying to die—on my watch.” He gave Henry a pointed look. Then Jade.

“What? I didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly. When you shoot a gun, aim better.”

“I aimed exactly where I wanted to aim.”

He held up a hand. “It’s fine. I just…wish I had eyeballs on the compound to see if they’ve moved it.”

Eyeballs. “What about a drone?” Jade said.

He stopped pacing. “A drone. You have a drone?”

“The team does. I bet we can get Conner to launch it.” She pulled out her cell phone. Finally, a signal.

Conner picked up on the second ring. “Jade?”

“Hey, is there any way we can fire up the drone?” She’d walked to the window, and before he spoke, she knew his next words.

“It’s already in the air. We’ve had a flare-up, and we need to call you in.”

Yeah, she saw it—the billowing clouds of blackened smoke clogging the air, the fire nearly visible as it crowned across the tree line. “How far is it from Snowhaven?”

“Twenty some miles. But?—”

“Yeah, I know. Late in the day, high winds…could be a week, could be tonight.”

“The entire hotshot contingency is out on the line. We just need more people fighting this.”

“I’m on my way.” She shut the phone. “I gotta go.”

“I heard,” Crispin said. He looked at Henry, something of pain on his face.

“Go, kid,” Henry rasped. “You didn’t come this far to fail.”

Crispin frowned, then nodded.

“Just try and not get dead, okay? The paperwork is a nightmare.”

Even Jade smiled as they walked out the door and ran down the hall.

* * *

He didn’t know what was worse—the fire engulfing the town, or Russians wandering around the country with a nuke.

The nuke, definitely the nuke.

But as Crispin stood in the Ember fire command center and watched the real-time screen of the fire’s progression—along with a few helmet cams from the teams on the line—broadcast to flatscreens in the command room, he sort of wanted to bring Jade with him.

Instead of watching her kit up to jump into an inferno.

Who was this woman?

She came walking down the hallway to HQ, having changed into her canvas pants and yellow Nomex shirt. “Did you get a glimpse of the compound?”

She’d introduced him to her boss, Conner Young, and the incident commander, Miles Dafoe, an older guy who seemed to have a calm handle on the conflagration.

A topographic map of Kootenai National Forest hung on the wall, with pushpins of various hotshot teams deployed in the field. They’d brought in teams from Idaho, Alaska, Minnesota, and even southern Montana. And if he understood the chatter correctly, they’d also deployed airplanes and choppers from the area to bomb the fire with water and slurry.

He knew what his request had cost them, but Conner had obliged and directed the drone operator to fly it north to the coordinates Crispin had given.

The compound was, of course, empty, and Crispin leaned on the back of a chair and hung his head.

He’d finally walked out into the hallway and leaned against the wall, trying to sort out his next move. Oh, he wanted to put his fist into a wall, but…

Well, but Jade had come walking down the corridor with her question. He managed a dark shake of his head.

She grabbed his hand. “We’ll find them.”

Just like that. We’ll find them. Oh, he wanted her faith.

But tragedies like Oklahoma and 9-11 told him differently.

They walked into the room to a weather report from Miles. “Winds from the north have whipped up the wall of flames. We’re getting reports of a running crown fire, moving downhill. We’re pulling the teams out and digging a road here, along the river to the north of town, and moving incident command over to the Snowhaven fire department. It’s got a parking lot big enough for a chopper, and the airport is right across the street.”

Jade stepped up to the map. “If we start a back-burn here”—she pointed to a thin service road marked as Shelly Mountain Trail , so narrow it had only a penciled name—“we can burn out the fuels to the north, meet it head-on.”

“It’s burning so fast it’ll jump that,” said Conner.

“Maybe not, if we can burn out the fuel in front of it. Then we extinguish it at the trail.” She looked at Conner. “We have to try. If it keeps growing, it jumps your line in front of the Kootenai River, and then it’s a free-for-all into Snowhaven.”

Even Crispin could see she was right.

“That’s really close to the fire head,” Miles said. “You’d have to put down here, at Penny Creek Campground, and hoof it a quarter mile southwest. But it’s still far enough from the fire you should be clear. If not, do not proceed.”

“Yes, sir.”

He blew out a breath, stared at the map. “Okay, if you get into trouble, this is your safety area. Penny Lake. The trailhead to the river is about a half mile south of your drop, and it leads to a river. So if you get there, you can follow the river to the lake. The river is too shallow for real safety, so keep moving.” He shook his head, his jaw tight. “You start the burn, keep it under control, but no mistakes, Jade.”

“Yes, sir. No one dies today.”

“Let’s get a look at that landing area, CJ,” said Miles, now leaning over the drone guy.

CJ guided the drone over to the coordinates. A cleared field shone on the screen.

“That’s more than a campground,” said Crispin.

“It’s an old farm turned glamping area,” said Conner. “Lots of cleared land.”

Crispin stepped closer and leaned over the man’s shoulder. “That’s a truck. Can you get over that truck?”

CJ flew the drone closer and Crispin froze. “That’s—” He glanced at Jade. “ Them .” Three men, and one looked up and spotted the drone. Pulled out a handgun.

“Uh-oh,” said CJ, and he angled the drone up and away, even as the man shot at it.

“Whoa,” said Miles. “What’s with that?”

“Stay on it, CJ,” said Crispin as he watched the men climb into the truck. Another truck followed, and they pulled out toward the thin mountain road.

Crispin looked at Jade. “I have to go.”

“Me too.” She grabbed a walkie.

“Stay safe, Jade,” Conner said.

Crispin followed her out of the room, down the hall. Voices emerged from the ready room, her team getting ready.

He grabbed her arm. And then, because…well, because this could all go south, for either of them, he pulled her into a darkened office. Shut the door.

Dim light shone through a side window.

He stared at her. She looked up at him.

“I want to tell you not to go,” he said.

“Right back at you.”

He swallowed. “I can’t…I don’t…” He closed his mouth, looked away, hated how his chest tightened.

Of course, she saved him again. “I know…” She touched his chest. “I know it’s only been three days, but I guess I’d like at least three more.”

He looked at her. “And three more after that?”

She nodded. “Who knows what?—”

“Yeah. Exactly. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?”

She kissed him. Just like that, and yes, he was right there, all in. He wrapped his hand around her neck, brought her to himself, and kissed her back. Fiercely. Possessively. And full of the terrible, brilliant, terrifying hope that everything she believed—everything he wanted to believe—might be true.

That God had more for him. That a good, new day awaited. And that providence just might—please—be on his side.

He let her go, breathing hard.

She nodded. “No one dies today.”

He shoved out the door and didn’t look back.

He probably needed Booth, but his partner was fighting a fire, and maybe, if he did this right…

Aw, there was barely a hope that this would go well. But still…

A hope.

The smoke clogged the sky as he got into his Ford and tore out of the lot. On the tarmac, a female pilot walked around her small plane. A few of the smokejumpers had jogged out, carrying helmets and packs, axes and chain saws and shovels.

He turned his truck north and floored it up the highway to Snowhaven.

He’d memorized the map, so he took the road outside the town, toward the bridge over the river, then cut northeast on a dirt road that wound into the woods. Here, the haze of the fire hung low, and the dirt his truck kicked up didn’t help visibility. But the truck hauling Fanny would be hard to miss.

He thought a plane droned overhead but couldn’t see it, so maybe it was just his pulse in his head. Please, God —he didn’t know what else to say, really. Okay, maybe, “ Protect her. ”

Three more days. And three more and…

He just had to survive today.

The sound of a heavy engine ahead made him hit his brakes, and then, as he came over a rise, he spotted it, down the road a half mile.

Henry’s old blue Ram truck, ferrying Fanny to her new owners.

Another truck kicked up dust behind it.

Here went nothing. Crispin unhooked his seatbelt, then punched the gas.

C’mon, swerve.

The truck kept coming, and of course, his little F-150 wasn’t a match for the power of the Ram, but it could slow it down and maybe force it off the road and put the trailer in the ditch and?—

The truck wasn’t veering.

“C’mon!”

The driver seemed to be panicking, the truck rocking, as if he might be trying to decide?—

Crispin kept coming, even as he glanced at the ditch. Hard landing. But he might live through it. How he wished for tactical gear, but he was still wearing the silly sweatpants and T-shirt from the hospital. He’d fixed the problem of where to stash his handgun, but a leap out of the truck would definitely hurt.

The truck had lurched to one side, as if trying to juke him out, like they might be playing basketball.

That’s right. He matched it, then back?—

The driver jerked the wheel hard—too hard, and suddenly the truck skidded, the swerve too severe, and with the weight of the trailer, the truck’s back wheels lifted.

The trailer barreled forward, twisting the hitch, and the truck went over, rolling just as the trailer tore free.

Crispin slammed on his brakes, turning the wheel as the F-150 skidded, barely missing the ditch. Then he slammed the truck into drive, away from the rolling Ram?—

Too fast. The F-150 careened into the ditch as the Ram truck settled on its side, a cloud of dust clogging the road.

Fanny’s trailer lurched into the forest, bumping across the ditch, taking out bramble and crashing into a tree before falling on its side.

Fanny jerked from her bonds and rolled away.

She lay in the forest, lethal and free.

Crispin grabbed Henry’s rifle and rolled out of the cab just as the following truck roared up behind the rolled Ram.

The Ram lay on its side in the middle of the road, undercarriage forward, and Crispin raced up to it.

A man emerged, and behind him, the driver had gotten out of his truck. “Get down!” This from the second driver, who lifted his AK-47.

Crispin dove for cover behind the truck, the bullets landing behind him, scraping off dirt. But he’d gotten a good look at the man. Long dark hair, beard, an American militant in Russian fatigues.

Floyd Blackwell.

And that’s when, overhead, the sound of a small plane burned through the sky.

He glanced up.

Big mistake. The man from the cab launched himself out and over the truck and lunged at Crispin.

Crispin found his feet a second before the man grabbed him around the waist. Big guy, clearly some Russian thug with meaty hands and a good forty pounds on Crispin. He slammed a fist into Crispin’s ribs, and Crispin held in a grunt as pain exploded through him.

But he got his elbow in the man’s face, exploded his nose, and Igor the Russian rolled off him, shouting.

Crispin spotted the rifle and dove for it, grabbed it, rolling.

The shot hit Igor center mass from eight feet away.

Crispin bounced to his feet, blood on his shirt, his face. He spotted Floyd in the woods as he was trying to pick up one end of the nuke.

“It’s over!” Crispin shouted. He lifted the gun to Floyd.

“Nyet.” The voice emerged behind him, and he turned. The driver, blood saturating his shirt from a head wound, stood, a little wobbly, on the dirt road outside his overturned cab. He aimed a handgun at Crispin. “Gun down,” he said, motioning with his Ruger.

“Finally.” This from Floyd, and Crispin glanced over to see that he’d abandoned the effort and picked up his AK-47. “Time to end this.”

Crispin stood there, listening to Jade’s words. No one dies today.

Sorry, babe.