Best Worst Mistake

Dedication

To my readers, you guys are the best

Acknowledgments

G
RATITUDE
,
AS
ALWAYS
, to my brilliant editor, Amanda Bergeron, who makes everything I write way better. Special appreciation is also due to the fabulous Gabrielle Keck. To my lovely agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, you always know when to give the perfect pep talk and it’s so very appreciated.

Love to my dear writing compadres: Jennifer Ryan, Jennifer Blackwood, Natalie
Blitt, Jules Barnard, Megan Erickson, and A.J. Pine.

Super special thanks to my family for putting up with me. When I grunt an answer or stare off into the distance, what I’m really saying is “I love you.”

To my readers, I couldn’t do any of this without you. Your support means the world.

Contents

The Curious Tale of the Castle Falls Phantom

(Excerpt from
Brightwater: Small Town, Big Dreams
)

D
UR
ING
THE
DAWN
of the twentieth century, an alleged phantom haunted Castle Falls Gulch just beyond the Brightwater city limits. Anglers and hunters alike spun fireside yarns about a so-called “watcher in the woods.” A strange phenomenon was also noticed near the riverbanks above
the cascades, circles of flowers, perfectly formed fairy rings.

Many townsfolk believed the area was haunted and stayed away, but a few attributed the ghostly occurrences to the Castle Falls hermit. While his existence has never been proven, sightings of a mysterious man along the riverbanks occurred on and off for nearly twenty years. Unsubstantiated rumors claimed he was everything from
a ne’er-do-well hobo to a murderer on the lam to the victim of a horrendous physical malformation. As a result, Castle Falls and its surrounds were considered a place better avoided and remain unpopular to this day despite the area’s abundant natural beauty.

Stories of the phantom and the enigmatic fairy circles eventually dwindled. The official cause was never determined.

Chapter One

F
IFTEEN
HUNDRED
FEET
below the plane window, smoke and flame rose from the mountainside as if a dragon prowled the forest. “McDonald! Kane!” The spotter beckoned, shouting over the Twin Otter’s noisy propellers. “You’re up.”

Wilder Kane tightened his helmet’s chinstrap and maneuvered through the aircraft’s jam-packed interior, which was teeming with equipment and
other smoke jumpers. The adrenaline surge added an extra beat to his heart and cleared away the mental cobwebs. After reaching the back, he jittered his boot heel against the floor while his partner, McDonald, took position in the open door.

“Got any plans for your mandatory day?” the spotter hollered, bracing a hand on the roof as they hit a pocket of clear air turbulence and dropped hard.
It was a record temperature outside and Wilder’s gut rolled with the plane as he breathed deep, inhaling fuel and a hint of charred wood. Friday was his day off—he had to take one every three weeks because of pain-in-the-ass regulations. He’d just as soon work through the whole damn season.

“Probably going for a ride.” Free time meant thinking. Better to spend days off screaming his mountain
bike down heart-pounding single track in the Rattlesnake Wilderness or Pattee Canyon.

“A couple of us are going into Missoula for the night. Come along and bikini-scope college girls down by the river.”

“Nah, I’m good.” Occasionally, he drove west on I-90 to the Silver Dollar or Rusty Spur and searched the roadside bars for a pretty face and weary eyes. Someone hoping to forget, if
only for an hour. Someone like him. Bubbly and cheerful younger women weren’t his type. He’d lost hope and innocence so long ago, it was hard to know if he ever had them at all.

“Jesus, Brick.” The spotter shook his head, annoyance and amusement warring across his features. “Anyone ever try and clue you in to the fact that you’re a surly S.O.B.?”

“Once or twice,” Wilder replied, scrubbing
the thick scruff on his jaw. “But they never made the mistake again.”

The spotter’s laugh boomed. “You’re something else.”

“Got that right.” McDonald twisted around from his seated position in the door and shook his head. “Something that needs to get laid.”

Wilder shrugged. He hadn’t earned the nickname Brick for nothing. He caught good-natured shit from the others for the steadfast
way he maintained an unflappable personal wall, a stoic face no matter the situation, but he didn’t care. This job wasn’t about the accolades or prestige.

He was a smoke jumper because it was the only thing he could ever be.

He knew no other way to endure himself.

For the next two minutes, he’d be a kickass parachutist, and the second he hit the ground, it was time to transform into
a firefighting machine—a smoke jumper’s real work. What other career required flying over desolate wilderness with a team of warriors and jumping from a small plane armed with not much more than an axe, shovel, and iron-clad balls?

Best job on earth.

The inferno devouring Lost Moose Gulch appeared to be a classic “gobbler,” a wildfire hungry for destruction. Detected two days ago, following
an unremarkable lightning strike in the remote wilderness, the resulting smolder took advantage of the summer’s bone-dry conditions and changeable Montana weather, especially here along the Continental Divide. The calming wind left the fire vulnerable to defeat—just—providing the team could rally quick, scratch some lines to make a fire break, and hook it. If they couldn’t gain the upper
hand within a day or two, an extended attack crew would be sent out, the on-ground hotshots.

Wilder didn’t have any intention of letting that happen. He won. That was his reputation. He threw himself against every blaze as if his very life hung in the balance, and it did, in more ways than the others ever guessed.

The spotter slapped McDonald’s shoulder, and he was out the door in a blink.

“Take position,” came the order.

Wilder stepped forward, licking his dry lips. His partner’s parachute opened and McDonald swung around, expertly steering toward the designated jump site, a pre-determined meadow.

“Get ready,” called the spotter.

Wilder crouched to sitting and braced his hands on the outside of the plane, the aluminum cold against his palms. Tension hummed through
his body. His muscles might as well be rendered stone. The second the spotter’s hand slapped his shoulder he flung forward with every ounce of strength, giving over to the void.

He closed his eyes, in the tuck position, savoring the few seconds of free fall, the blissfully mind-numbing silence.
Goddamn.
Allowing his lips to curl into a rare smile, he exhaled a contented breath. No better
place existed than this limbo between earth and sky. Once out of the plane there were no take backs, only total commitment. The buzz gave way to a moment of absolute clarity. It was about being alive, about—

A sharp jerk wrenched him back into the present, knocking his teeth together.

He twisted, glancing up.
What the shit?
His head rang as his heart rate soared. Streamer malfunction.
The parachute hadn’t opened right. Bad news. Really fucking bad news. He yanked the reserve but they had jumped low and at a thousand feet, there wasn’t time to do much before he slammed into the earth at a hundred miles an hour.

This was going to go either of two ways: a lot of hurt or game over.

Impossible to gain orientation amid the gut-twisting free spin. Landscape flipped past in
a nauseating kaleidoscope, blue sky, green forest, blue sky, green forest, a river, fuck—the river? He’d careened too far from the jump site, over the steep gulch. An inferno now separated him from McDonald. The scenic beauty of this stark, lonely landscape was a steep and jagged catch-22. Crashing into the roughest terrain east of the divide would make it damn near impossible for a quick rescue.

If there was anything left of him to save.

The tree canopy closed in.
Got to relax
. If his muscles remained rigid, the impact would destroy vital organs. Better to keep his legs moving to avoid locked limbs, cover his head with his arms, elbows forward, lacing his fingers behind his neck. Wind roared in his face. Strange how his life didn’t flash before his eyes, only smoke and flame.

Figured.

A crash, a snap of bone or branch, followed by an agonizing pain through his lower leg and then nothing at all.

W
I
LDER
BLINKED
BUT
the world remained upside down. He tested his jaw. Not broken. His back ached while his left leg had a complete absence of feeling. Willing his rattled brains to come to order, he swung forward as silvery stars cascaded past his field of vision.
Looked like he’d gotten strung up in a lodgepole pine. How long had he swung from his ropes like a pendulum, blood pooling in his head? He waited until the vertigo passed and took a shuddering breath. The main chute had tangled in the branches while his left leg was caught tight in the reserve’s line, cutting circulation off below the knee. Not good.

The forest was silent except for the branch
creaking under his weight. No one else was around for miles. He’d blown too far off course.

If he was going to escape then it was up to him—for once it would pay to be a stubborn S.O.B.

Getting down wasn’t going to be a picnic, not with a headfirst, ten-foot plummet to anticipate. No choice though, especially not when the ridgeline above exploded in an avalanche of flame.

Aw shit.

His whole body reacted against the impending doom. A pulse ticked in his throat as cold sweat sheened his chest. He hadn’t survived the fall to be roasted alive.
No. No. No.
His thoughts screamed until he realized it was his own voice chanting the single word.

No man in his sound mind longed for death, but he’d idly hoped for a car accident or disease when his time came. Even a gunshot
or poison.

Anything but fucking fire.

Wilder fumbled for the compact utility knife clipped to his Kevlar jumpsuit and after a few clumsy attempts, his trembling fingers popped open the blade. There were a shitload of cords and he ground his wrist hard, sawing back and forth, going through one after another.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered. The initial fall’s impact left him with as
much strength as a baby. “Stay in control.” Hard to believe the pep talk given the pathetic rasp undercutting his voice. The forest thickened with choking smoke.

After he cut some ten cords, he dropped an inch, two more and then a foot while embers drifted past, devilish fairies, bright with hypnotic beauty. He couldn’t afford to screw up this landing because in another minute it was going
to be out of the frying pan and into the—damn it—he recoiled from the explosion as the fire jumped from the ground to the tree canopy with a noise like a freight train taking a corner too fast.

His blade popped through the final filaments and he plummeted to the pine needle duff with a muffled thud, automatically rolling away from the encroaching blaze. He pushed to his feet and keeled over.
Something was wonky with his left leg, the one still wound tight in the reserve parachute line. He lurched up and fell again, panting. A few large scattered boulders ahead where the trees thinned. A clearing.

The Lost Moose Gulch landslide.

He exhaled, a jolt of purpose shooting through his core, open space meant a shot at survival.

If he could crawl, there might be a chance.

His radio crackled from his backpack. “Kane, are you there? Fucking copy, man.”

McDonald.

A crash. Wilder froze as a doe and fawn hauled ass through the underbrush. They each had four working legs to their advantage. The air was devoid of birdsong, even the radio’s static couldn’t compete with the roar—the same nightmarish sound that haunted his dreams for over twenty years.

Fire had
always held a strange sort of destructive beauty, dazzling in its doom. He learned that lesson as a six-year-old, while his little brothers, Sawyer and Archer, clung to his hands, whimpering while their family home transformed into an inferno, trapping Mommy and Dad inside.

The two younger boys had cried when the roof caved, after the police and firefighters arrived too late to do anything
but sort through the smoldering rubble. They sobbed until Grandma Kane had showed up in her flannel pajamas, hair tightly rolled in pink curlers, offering stiff but heartfelt hugs.

Wilder hadn’t said a word. He didn’t have the right to tears.

Not when everything was all his fault.

This job, this life, was a way to atone.

But he came from a long line of gamblers, and every debt
must eventually be paid, right?

Wrong. The fire wouldn’t win. Not today.

He tore open his backpack and grabbed the radio. “Copy, McDonald, I’m here, but things are getting hot.”

“What are your coordinates, over?”

The embers lit the underbrush around him, a dozen tiny spot fires stood between him and the clearing. Time was almost out. He scrambled faster.

“Can’t check the GPS,”
Wilder panted. “Got to deploy the fire blanket pronto. My location is the southern perimeter of the Lost Moose Gulch landslide, over.”

The heat was all consuming. It was too much. Too far. He heaved onto his back, to glimpse a last patch of blue, a final shred of sky, but nothing remained except for an ashy haze.

Death would come quick and there was a certain mercy in that knowledge. Maybe
on the other side his parents waited, and he could finally say sorry.

Or he might burn forever.

Either way he’d soon find out.

The sound of mad thrashing grabbed his attention and he turned, raising his head. The baby deer from earlier had run headlong into a thicket on the rockslide’s edge, trapping itself among the bramble in its panic, abandoned by a terrified mother.

The pitiful
sight forced him to gather the dregs of his nonexistent strength.
Just a little farther.
Hand over hand, ignoring the coals branding his palms, the sweat stinging his eyes, he reached the fawn. It struggled for a moment before stilling, as if understanding this was the only choice.

Wilder couldn’t feel the thorns, not through the red-hot pain radiating across his palms and shooting up his
arms. “Go,” he growled at the fawn, ripping down the branches and slapping its spindly leg. “Get out of here.” He tugged the fire blanket from his backpack. Survival odds were statistically nil. The blanket might protect him from the fire’s caress but the heat could easily scald his lungs, incinerating from the inside out.

The young deer didn’t budge, instead it stared transfixed by the approaching
horror.

With a muffled curse, Wilder seized the delicate, trembling body tight, somehow tugging the blanket over them as the fire’s edge passed like a vengeful angel of death. He angled his face down toward the rocks, running water bubbled only feet below, the cool damp temperature making it possible to breathe.

After a few seconds, minutes, or hours, the roar subdued to a crackle, and
the deer stirred, hopping to shaky legs and tearing out from under the blanket toward the west without a backward glance.

Wilder coughed and wiped his mouth, ignoring the blood staining his blistered hand.

Bright blue fireworks shot across his peripheral vision as the womp-womp-womp sound of a helicopter closed in. More time passed and then a deep voice called his name.

He couldn’t
answer.

Couldn’t sit.

Couldn’t do a damn thing but slump under the blanket, suspended in this numb semiconscious state, teetering on the edge of oblivion.

T
HE
WORLD
HAD
gone white. Was this the other side—whatever came next? No. Not unless the afterlife was full of dull, throbbing pain, that peculiar hospital disinfectant smell, and voices refusing to ever shut up.

“Wilder? Wilder?”

“Did you see his eyelids twitch?” Another deep voice chimed in. “See? There they go again.”