Chapter 1

ONE

Everything was going according to plan.

Kind of.

Firefighter Charlie Benning stared down the flames, then turned and swung his axe at the tree. If they didn’t get this line cut, the fire would jump to the trees on the other side of the deer trail and spread toward residences.

So long as the wind didn’t change, they had a shot at containing this fire so it didn’t destroy any more of the Kootenai National Forest. In the last week, the blaze had nearly doubled in size. It was spreading north and had split into two forks, with the western tine headed for the town of Snowhaven.

He lifted his axe again.

Pain ripped through his side at his lower back. He hissed and barely managed to keep the axe from flying at one of the other hotshots on this team.

“Whoa.” Kane, one of the “Trouble Boys” as they’d been dubbed by the others, grabbed the axe handle. “Easy there.” The guy had close-shaved dark-blond hair and eyes one of the female hotshots had described as brooding.

Charlie grunted. “I’m good.” But he let Kane take the axe. That guy’s broody eyes saw way too much, and Charlie had been avoiding anything personal since the fire season started.

It wasn’t time to slip up now. Not when the fire had grown big enough that his plan had a shot at working. The alternative would be messy. This had to go one way.

“Why don’t you take a water break?” Kane turned and hammered at the tree with more strength than Charlie had even back when he was in his twenties. He was over the hill of four and zero now—a fact the hotshots insisted on reminding him of every day, calling him “old man” and “grandpa.”

Might’ve bothered him before, but not lately.

Charlie walked off the pain as he headed for the water barrel Hammer had carried out here. The fellow hotshot went by Ham most of the time, and he saw way too much with that military situational awareness he wore like a coat.

Everyone knew walking something off didn’t work. Not when the doctor had used words like chronic and dialysis .

He’d left Last Chance County before that conversation could turn to stage two or failure . Then he’d fudged the medical part of acceptance onto the hotshot crew—bypassing rookie training with the courses he’d taken over the years as a firefighter. He knew what he was doing. The truth would come out eventually, but that would be after the fact.

Too late.

Charlie might have had a decorated career in rescue squad, but he also had a failed marriage and an estranged daughter he’d dropped off at the teen firefighter camp up in the mountains. Wildlands Academy would be her home for the summer, and at the end of the season, Charlie would have done what he needed to do.

Everything would be taken care of.

Charlie patted the letter in his bulky fire-pants pocket, tucked next to the shelter he was supposed to never have to deploy.

“You good?” The boss lifted his chin. Conner Young was a good man, a family guy like Charlie would never be.

He lifted his chin in reply. “Probably just pulled a muscle.” He got a drink, wishing for a moment of solitude he could use to take a pill, and turned to watch the hotshot crew.

Two women, seven men, not including him. The two youngest guys were in their early twenties—which made him old enough to be their father.

A thought that didn’t make him feel more spry.

“I checked the weather report this morning. If that front comes over from the coast like they think, the fire could change directions and head to the firefighter camp, Wildlands Academy.” Charlie pulled a map from his pants pocket and unfolded it.

Conner nodded. “I’m waiting for Miles to confirm, but I think we’ll get redeployed after this to head up there.”

Charlie marked the path of the wind. If it came in from the west, it could funnel through a valley that would lead right to the camp north of them.

Orion Price lowered his Pulaski and headed over. The guy was twenty-two but had more experience as a hotshot than most of the crew. The kid had gel in his dark-blond hair and features that were familiar even though Charlie had never met him before this summer.

Now that he knew who Orion’s mother was, it made sense.

The guy said, “Not sure we need to worry about the academy. They’ll be protected even if the fire heads in that direction. It was designed that way, and Mom keeps the vegetation cut back.”

“Yeah?” Charlie liked the kid. Not too much of a know-it-all, and not so quiet like the youngest hotshot, Mack, that he never said a word.

Conner said, “Jayne knows what she’s doing.”

Her name cut through him like someone had taken their Pulaski and hammered it into him. Didn’t matter that he knew she lived there and ran Wildlands Academy now. She hadn’t been there the day he’d dropped off his daughter Alexis. That was the way he’d designed it. Purposely, so he didn’t run into Jayne.

Jayne Price, the girl he’d loved at seventeen and walked away from—never looking back. Orion’s mother. The woman who ran the teen firefighter camp. He would never not react to her.

And whatever odd expression was on his face hadn’t gone unnoticed. Quit thinking about her.

Orion frowned at him. “She’s been working at the camp since before I was born. It’s a fire safety camp. The whole place was designed to keep from catching fire, even if it’s completely surrounded by flames. The trees are at least thirty feet back from the cabins and the main house. There’s a lake to the west, so they can get a quick water drop if necessary.”

Charlie managed to nod. “And your dad?” He hadn’t asked yet. As if he wanted to know that she was happily married now. Or that Orion loved his dad in a way Alexis would never feel about him. Charlie shook off the thoughts. He was the one who’d walked away from her at the end of the summer and gone home to Last Chance County. He hoped she had been happy all these years.

Orion shrugged. “Don’t have one. Never have.”

Oof. Sore subject much? Charlie didn’t need to care about Jayne’s love life—which was apparently as good as his had been in the twenty years since they’d seen each other. The thing he’d had with Alexis’s mother had been a bad idea from start to finish. They’d both made it worse, and Alexis had suffered in the middle. So Charlie had opted to make himself scarce versus making it harder for his daughter with all the friction between him and her mother.

Charlie said, “I dropped off my daughter Alexis at the camp at the beginning of summer. I’m going to worry.”

“Have you called her, asked her what they can see of the fire?”

He tried not to stiffen at Conner’s question, just saying, “Uh, no. Haven’t been able to get through. Ry, what about your mom? Have you checked in with her recently?”

The son of the woman he had never quit thinking about blinked. “I…uh.” Orion cleared his throat. “We had a fight. Right at the beginning of the season. She doesn’t even know I broke up with Laina over Memorial Day weekend.”

Conner set a hand on Orion’s shoulder. “You haven’t spoken to her at all?”

The kid shrugged it off. “She hasn’t called me either.”

Charlie wanted to tell the guy to suck it up and make amends, but that would make him the biggest hypocrite west of Denver. He’d sent Alexis two texts at the beginning of summer, but his seventeen-year-old hadn’t replied.

They’d been estranged since before his ex-wife had lost out to her protracted battle with cancer. Now Alexis was grieving the loss of her mother, and he had to figure out how to get her to let him be her father with the time he had left.

He didn’t know how to fix that. But he could fix the rest of it.

If he got everything to go as planned.

“Whoa.” One of the guys yelled from behind them, about fifteen feet away.

“Houston!” That was Emily who’d screamed.

Charlie turned to watch her scramble back, falling as she moved away from what had everyone’s attention. Houston had vanished into the earth in the center of a circle of hotshots. A cave-in, or some kind of sink hole?

Hammer got down on his stomach and inched forward. The ground in front of him caved in, and the whole area rumbled under them. Charlie got closer to the hole, grabbing Mack’s arm when he started toward his brother. “Don’t become another victim.” To the group he said, “Everyone take a step back. Ham, stay where you are.”

“I can see him.” The guy was military. It wasn’t something a guy like Ham could hide. His history of service was there in the way he walked, the way he focused right now.

Kane and Saxon, his buddies, hid it better. Mack appeared to be along for the ride as Ham’s kid brother. They regularly orbited Sanchez—the female hotshot—in a way that looked an awful lot like they were a protective detail.

They certainly had secrets. Maybe one day the world would discover what they were, but it wouldn’t be today.

“Stay where you are.” Charlie knelt by Ham’s feet and tried to see into the hole Houston had fallen into. All he saw was the top of Houston’s bald head and the nasty burn scars he had on one side of his face. Charlie called out, “Hey, Pastor! You good?”

No reply.

He patted Ham’s leg. “Tell me what you can see.”

“Shoulder. Side of his head.” Where those burn scars were. “No blood. But he’s pretty buried. It’s covering his chest and lower body. Not sure if he’s breathing.”

“He’s not too far down.” Charlie turned to the group. “Rope. We need to rappel in and pull him out.”

“Whoever goes down will end up being buried with dirt like Houston.” Orion pulled on his gloves. “Then we’ll have two victims.”

Charlie said, “That’s why we’re going to hook in and use a pulley system to get them both out. Houston, and whoever goes down after him.”

Saxon stared at the hole with his dark gaze and those Middle Eastern features. “Looks like a tunnel down there.”

Orion huffed. “I suppose you want to be the hero, Charlie?”

So everyone could realize he wasn’t able to do the things he’d done every day with rescue squad in Last Chance County? Nope. “You want this, Ry?”

Orion nodded.

“Then hook up. We need to get Houston out before more dirt piles on him and we have to call Sophie and tell her we lost him.”

Conner gave Charlie a dark look. Charlie ignored it and got to work, organizing everyone so there were guys holding the rope as Orion went in. He had the kid tie another loop around Houston, under his arms. Team two pulled Houston while team one pulled out Orion.

“Let me see him.” Charlie knelt beside Houston and tugged off one glove. He felt for a pulse, then checked Houston’s breathing. He patted his friend’s cheek. “Don’t make me call home and tell the chief his brother fell through a hole in the ground.”

Houston pulled in a breath and coughed. Dirt expelled from between his lips.

Charlie let out a breath. “There you are.”

“Don’t tell Macon.”

Charlie chuckled. “That goes both ways, brother.”

“Deal.” Houston sat up, groaning.

Conner said, “Charlie, Orion, take Houston back to town in my truck. Get him checked out at the hospital. The rest of us will finish up here and hit the bus. We’re getting redeployed to the north edge of the fire so we can cut it off from up there.” Then he pointed at the sky.

A series of parachutes dropped from a plane to the north, always a sight to see. The Ember smokejumpers had been sent in, probably to contain the blaze from the north and push back against the edge before it ravaged the entire county.

Charlie picked out his lieutenant, Logan Crawford, in the middle of the line. He heard someone mutter a prayer for their protection.

Conner clapped his gloves together. “Let’s move out.”

* * *

“Let’s get that pile cleared away!” Jayne Price pointed at the stack of brush the kids had cleared. This area to the east of a fire road an hour’s walk from Wildlands Academy hadn’t been cut back in weeks. “Down to the road. Okay, guys?”

“On it.” A couple of teen boys, normally eager, walked a lot slower now. The Masterson twins from Benson, whose parents worked search and rescue, had jumped at every challenge she and her staff had presented to them. But it had been a long day.

All in all they had fifteen kids, a mix of male and female. Right now all of them were tired and dirty, probably sick of sucking in the gray air. Most had given up brushing falling ash from their clothes and hair.

They had a couple of guys from town that came out with them on field trips or came up to camp and taught classes. One was a crusty old firefighter who’d fought blazes in the sixties and seventies. The other had been a smokejumper, and the kids always sat riveted, listening to stories of jumping out of planes to fight fire.

They’d all been out here for hours, working like hotshots to slow the spread of a fire that might come this direction.

Thanks to the way God had carved this canyon, the smoke hung above them like a ceiling of cloud. But they wouldn’t be able to stay out here much longer when the air quality was so bad. Not without suffering long-term effects—the way her grandpa had. She could hear that wet-rattle cough in her mind even though he’d died when she was much younger than these kids.

She strode down the line, her boots kicking up the dusty earth.

“Doesn’t look good.” Her administrator walked over to meet her. Bridget Willis had been working at the camp since back when Jayne had been one of these kids—the summer her life had flipped upside down. A story she’d broken down and decided to tell the kids last night over the cooking fire while their dinner hot dogs sizzled. All because two of her campers had been caught sneaking off.

Not unheard of—after all, it was what Jayne had done. Then it was what Logan and one of the camp girls had done years after, and so many others. She’d seen Logan in the grocery store at the beginning of summer, and they’d had a good ole laugh about that.

But it wasn’t funny.

Even if she had Orion as a result, she didn’t need more parents complaining to her that their kids had spent summer at her camp and learned more than just wildland firefighting. Wildlands Academy was about learning to be a hotshot. Building strength of mind and body—and strength of character.

Bridget, in her fifties and more comfortable in a library, glanced at the smoke to the west. She’d surprised Jayne from the beginning with her brand new hiking boots and a smile that never got tired. “That weather report didn’t do it justice. The wind is picking up.”

Jayne nodded. “Let’s get this brush in the truck and head to the river. They might get up close and personal with the fire tonight, but it won’t jump the water.”

One of the girls walked by her. Alexis Martin, one of the older teens, had been giving her the cold shoulder all morning. The girl glanced aside at Jayne when she thought Jayne wasn’t looking, peering between the strands of the brown curls that fell to her shoulders.

Because of the story Jayne had told them all? Her cautionary tale of why hookups were a bad idea. She had no idea why the seventeen-year-old reacted that way over Jayne’s sordid tale of a summer romance and discovering two months later that she was pregnant. She’d kept the tale youth-group friendly, but teens responded better when she was “real” with them, and that meant being honest about why she had a grown son and no husband.

About the boy named Charlie who had swept her into what had felt like a dream.

Bridget clapped her hands together. “Listen up, everyone! We’re heading to the river.”

More than one teen groaned.

“We know you’re tired,” Jayne called out. “But the wind is picking up, and if it changes direction, we could end up in trouble.”

They were all kitted out in fire gear. They knew what to do in a disaster scenario—each one had a fire shelter. Safety was a nonnegotiable for her.

“I’ve never lost a firefighter, and I won’t break that streak today. So we push to the river, and then we break out the soap and get cleaned up. Who wants my famous spicy gumbo for dinner? Maybe we can do those hot ham and cheese sandwiches tomorrow.”

That picked up a few spirits. Thankfully Jayne had set it up in the slow cooker back in the camp lodge before they’d come out this morning, so it should be about ready. They were going to camp out overnight, but that didn’t mean not eating well.

They just had to get to a good spot.

She said, “S’mores for dessert.”

That got the rest of them moving.

Bridget said, “Let’s get this brush to the truck so I can go pick up dinner from camp and bring it out.”

“I’ll take a pepperoni pizza.” One of the guys grinned—Mr. Romance, who’d convinced Shelly from California (not Shelly from Alaska) to sneak off into the bushes with him last night after bed down. Jayne had spotted them more than once, and it was why she’d decided to tell the story.

“I’ll get right on that.” Bridget grinned.

The crew started grabbing bundles of brush and walking down the trail to the truck they had on hand for emergencies and supply delivery. Other than that, they were alone out here. Carrying what they needed, and walking from camp nearly ten miles to the northwest.

Most years there were a few fires they could help put out by clearing lines hotshots had already dug to keep this area safe, all the while praying the fire stayed far away and even that it might head in another direction entirely.

It didn’t look like that prayer would be answered today, so she asked for wisdom instead and protection for the kids—and all the firefighters. Not just her son Orion, but every one of them, and the smokejumpers she’d seen parachute overhead a bit ago.

She wasn’t a stranger to unanswered prayers.

God didn’t say yes to everything, and why should He when He knew far better than she did? If the wind blew the fire toward them and the camp, then the outcome would be in His hands.

Jayne tugged on the hem of each glove, then picked up a bundle of brush in her arms and raced one of the kids to the truck parked on the fire road a quarter mile to the north.

Alexis dumped her load in the truck bed beside Jayne’s.

Jayne caught her attention as they turned. “Everything okay?”

The girl shot her an odd look. “Sure.” Alexis brushed hair back from her face and wound up with a smear of dirt on her forehead. “Your son…the one you mentioned. Does he ever come around the camp?”

“Sometimes.” Jayne wasn’t going to lie to the girl. “We actually had a pretty big fight at the beginning of the fire season.” Her stomach clenched and she looked at the thirty-foot pine trees that stood in two rows flanking the fire road. “He wants to be a smokejumper. That’s…it’s actually what killed my dad. His parachute failed.”

Alexis studied her, entirely too much pain in her eyes. She’d suffered loss, but for the most part refused to talk about it.

“Who did you lose?”

Alexis said, “My mom died right after Christmas. Couple days before New Year. She had cancer.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

The girl winced. “It was…” She shrugged. “I don’t even know. It was bad for a long time. But she wasn’t a nice person, which sounds like a horrible thing to say about someone who’s dead.”

“All we can do is be honest about how we feel.” Jayne set a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “God knows it before we even come to Him, but He wants us to talk to Him. To build that relationship and rely on Him for our comfort and strength. It sounds hard, but it’s actually very simple.”

Jayne had no idea where the girl was with faith. She made no secret of the way she guided the kids. If they needed help or advice, it was going to be based on the Bible—the book Jayne had lived her life by since Orion was born and she’d realized he needed more than she could give him.

The teen shook her head. “There’s nothing simple about this.”

Alexis had said her father had custody of her and that he was a hotshot in Ember for the summer. With the exception of the time since yesterday, when she’d told her teenage love story, Alexis had been her right-hand girl so far this summer. In a lot of ways, she’d come to rely on the teen, who had some basic medical training and a lifeguard certification and was planning on getting an EMT certificate next year in her senior year of high school. The girl was going to make something of her life, even if none of the adults she had watching out for her had ever encouraged her to do it.

Alexis was going places, and she didn’t need anyone’s help. Maybe it was worry for her father that had Alexis out of sorts. If she were Jayne’s daughter, Jayne would be proud of the way she carried on after her mother passed and her father dumped her here for the summer so he could join the Jude County Hotshots. The way she was proud of Orion and the good he was doing in the world every day, not just during fire season. Her son had grown up to be a good man.

Despite who his father was.

“I’m gonna go help with the rest.” Alexis wandered off toward the brush that still needed clearing.

Jayne checked on everyone and kept one eye on the clouds in the distance as she did it, then she looked at her phone to see if there were any new updates.

It chimed as she pulled it from her belt holster, and she sucked in a breath. It’s worse than I thought. The text from Miles and the update from the National Interagency Fire Center in Idaho was a double alert?—and they needed to respond in double time.

“Hustle up, everyone! Change of dinner plans. The camp has been upgraded to ‘Ready to go’ status. We need to get back there and be prepared to evacuate.”