Burns So Bad (Smoke Jumpers) (11 page)

Pull
thousand
.

The chute deployed perfectly and he
steered towards the LZ. The canopy bucked and everything was good. Gia hit the
ground textbook perfect, already running and rolling her chute.

Check
your canopy.

He eyeballed his chute—it was
open and not tangled, so he’d definitely improved on his last jump. Being
wrapped tight around Gia hadn’t been a hardship. He liked holding her and Gia
had steered them both in like Super Woman before depositing his sorry, falling
ass safely on the ground. So now he also owed her. Big time. That part, he
didn’t like. He preferred to operate on a cash-and-carry basis when it came to
his life. He didn’t owe anyone.

Except now he owed Gia.

His steel-toes hit the ground and
he ran hard, running out his momentum. The chute hit the ground, but Gia was
already there, chasing his ass and gathering up the surplus nylon. The DC-3
banked overhead and headed away from the drop site. Spotted Dick would make
another pass over the fire to do re-con while Rio and Gia assessed the site
from the ground. If everything checked out, the rest of the jump team would
join them on the ground.

“Ten minutes and they’ll be back,
ready to jump when we give the go-ahead,” he said and she nodded. That left
them just enough time to do a quick on-ground assessment. If conditions weren’t
right, they’d pull the plug on the impending jump and hike out themselves. They
turned as one and headed towards the fire.

Smoke poured up the sloping side.
The first order of business once the team landed would be building a fire
break. They needed to clear a strip of forest ASAP or that fire would burn
right up the hill.

Sheets of orange flames chewed up
the grass, but Gia didn’t hesitate. She waded right in.

“Hey.” He swung her to a halt with
a hand on her arm. “Where are you going?”

She looked at him like he’s crazy.
“For a beer.”

Lame question. He shut the hell up
and fell into step beside her. Settled for kicking down the small flames that
licked at their boots. She frowned, but she didn’t say anything. He could feel
it coming though.

When they reached the edge of the
ridge and peered over, he was ready to call it a day. That was definitely a new
flavor of hell down there. Embers and burning debris peppered the ground around
them, warning that the fire had no intention of staying put forever. That kind
of ground hid unseen gullies beneath all the tall brush that hadn’t burned in
years. Ten, maybe twelve, feet tall, he estimated, which would make even the
basic act of walking almost impossible. You’d have to cut your way through
because nothing had burned here for decades.

Beside him, Gia nodded. “Okay.
Let’s go radio the guys. It’s a tall order, but we can knock this down.”

He took a second look at the fire. “I
don’t like it.”

“We’re not picking out paint
colors. Give me specifics.”

“The wind’s shifting,” he pointed
out. When they’d jumped, the smoke column had been more or less vertical, but
now the tip had hung a left.

“Anything
else wrong with this site?” she asked dryly.

He had a list as long as his arm.
Number one, however, was the wind. While they’d stood here arguing, the wind
had picked up. The drift streamers on the ground danced restlessly. If the wind
hit just right, feeding oxygen into the fire, the whole damned place would
explode into flames and they’d be looking at area ignition.

“It’s not safe.” He needed a second
opinion, an escape route… Hell. He didn’t know what was up with his sorry ass
but, clearly, he didn’t want her to do her job. No—he wanted her safe and
they were standing face-to-face with fifty acres of wildfire. He wouldn’t get
what he wanted today.

“That’s why we’re here. To
make
it safe,” she pointed out.

“You want me to make you recite the
ten standard firefighting orders?”

Those orders were the mantra, rule
book and Bible for any firefighter on the ground. Following them kept good men
safe and had done for fifty-plus years. Which was the point. The Forest Service
didn’t want to lose any more firefighters.

She eyed him. “As long as you
remember that the tenth order says we fight the fire
aggressively
, Donovan.”

“And safety comes first,” he
pointed out. “That’s in the rule book too.”

“Fuck off,” she said amiably. “This
is my job and I’m doing it. What’s wrong with you, Donovan?”

“You,” he snapped, giving her the
truth. “You don’t think, Gia. You rush into dangerous situations.”

“I’m doing my job. That means
taking a risk sometimes.”

“No,” he repeated. “Your job is
what I say it is.”

She stepped into him, her hand
shoving his chest. “Bullshit, Donovan. I’m a smoke jumper. I fight fire. Really
nasty, really hot fire. So that makes this fire line all part of a day’s work.
You know it. I know it.”

He stared at her, because keeping
his mouth shut right now was the only prudent course of action.

“You
know what your problem is?”

He
was certain she’d tell him.

“Surprise
me,” he drawled.

“Sex.” She rocked back on her
heels. “But here’s a newsflash for you. Having sex with you doesn’t make me
incompetent or the little woman—so you stick your alpha male bull crap up
your uptight, over-protective ass. Sex doesn’t make you the boss of me.”

###

“You liked taking orders just
fine,” Rio growled.

Gia considered planting her Pulaski
in his thick skull, but there were probably laws against assaulting her boss with
the razor-sharp hand-tool even if he was asking for it.

“We had a deal,” she snapped,
slamming the Pulaski into the ground instead. See? She’d get a start on cutting
line and get her frustrations out at the same time. That was practical.

Because what Rio didn’t get to do
was to change the terms of their deal. Sex wasn’t supposed to change anything
between them. It was supposed to be fun, not a game changer. From what she’d
heard, Rio Donovan should have understood that very well. Hell, he hadn’t had a
relationship that outlasted a fire season.

“Remember that conversation?” She
prompted him when he didn’t answer right away. He was staring at the low flames
chewing up the forest floor. She squinted, following his gaze. Sumac and scrub oak,
yucca and manzanita all hung on for dear life to the mountain slope in a thick,
almost impenetrable web of branches. Getting through the tangle would be almost
impossible.

He moved, putting a few feet
between them “We didn’t talk.”

It was too hot to get much closer
to the flames. The day was going to be a scorcher too. The thermometer had read
75 when they’d taken off.Once
again, however, he angled himself until he blocked her access to the flames.
Standing between her and the fire was definitely not part of the deal. She
hooked a boot around his ankles and tugged until he was sprawled on his ass.
Only then did she step back into position. “Careless of you, Donovan.”

“I said: Sex changes nothing,
right? You. Agreed.” She punctuated each word with a stab of her finger.

“I was busy. You distracted me,” he
accused.

“Why does it matter?” The sex in
her truck had been fantastic. She couldn’t have asked for better. Hell. She was
fairly certain he’d set the bar so high that she’d be disappointed the next
time she picked a lover. She’d been pleasantly sore afterward, deep inside her
body, a primal reminder of where he’d been and what they’d done together. She
liked it, which probably said all sorts of things about her.

He swung around and stared at her
in frustration. “We had sex.”

“I was there,” she reminded him.
“And it was fairly unforgettable.”

“Fairly?” He growled the word and
she bit back a grin.

She wasn’t grinning a moment later
when the ground gave way beneath her, sending her backwards down the hill.

Gia pinwheeled, jamming her fingers
into loose rock to halt her downward plunge.She cursed like a trucker and his heart
took up residence in his throat as time did the slow-down-speed-up thing. Rio
didn’t know what he’d do if he lost her, but it wasn’t an option. Since she’d
joined the jump team, he’d been pussy-footing around his feelings for her. He
still didn’t know what they were—only that desire definitely had a
starring role on the list—but he wasn’t losing her. Not to the fire, not
to an accident. Not ever and particularly not now when he was finally ready to
find out what this thing between them was.

He jammed his Pulaski into the
loose shale and descended after her.

Twenty long seconds later, he
reached her. She was sitting up. That was a good sign. She wasn’t
standing
though, and that said it all.

“Talk to me,” he said. If she could
talk, she hadn’t cracked a rib or punctured a lung.

“I jammed my ankle.” Tight with
pain and frustration, her voice made it plenty clear that Gia did not appreciate
her current situation. “Goddamn it. I didn’t see that coming.”

“That’s why it’s called an
accident
,” he pointed out. “As opposed
to an
on purpose
or
suicide
.”

“Try
stupid
,” she groused.

Dropping to the ground beside her, he
ran his hands down her arms and sides. She didn’t shrug away, but he could
sense her impatience. A check-out after a slide like the one she’d just taken
was standard operating procedure. She was dirty as hell, wearing half the
hillside, but all in all the damage seemed to be limited to her right ankle.

He probed her ankle carefully and
she hissed. “Bedside manner, Donovan.”

“Rio,” he said and pressed lightly.
“Can you bend it?”

“Maybe.” She tried and succeeded. Except she bit her lip, her gloved hands flexing on her thighs, the
whole time. He needed a medical pickup.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes on his
hands. “I can move it.”

She sounded relieved. Apparently
she’d had her own doubts.

“Not broken,” he said, not trying
to hide his own relief. A broken ankle out here would be a challenge.

“I should buy a lottery ticket,”
she muttered.

She was probably right. She’d slid
a good thirty feet.

Overhead, the column of smoke no
longer punched straight up. Instead, it bent slightly at the top, as if a
southwest wind had joined the party. Mack had guesstimated the wind speeds in
the area at maybe twenty-five miles per hour. If that wind dropped, however,
and hit the ground, the wildfire could explode. The wind would sweep through
their gulch and funnel the downslope fire towards them.

“Rio?”

He liked the sound of her name on
her lips, although he decided he’d prefer to hear her moan his name when he had
her in bed. An
oh
, Rio
as in
more, Rio
and
yes, please,
Rio
.

She tried to tug her ankle away and
he held on. Carefully.

Hurting Gia was the last thing he
wanted to do. Not that he routinely went around with the plan of inflicting
bodily harm on others—although there had been that incident with the Big
Bear Rogue hotshots earlier this summer—but Gia got special treatment.
She was in a category all by herself.

“Let me look at your ankle.”

When he reached for the laces on
her boot, however, she stopped him. “Don’t.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be a
baby, Jackson. Let me see the damage.”

“It’s not that. Look behind you.” She
nodded and he looked up. Holy. Hell. The wind had shifted all right, sending
smoke and flames boiling up the hillside.

She grimaced. “I’m going to need
that boot on. If you unlace it and my ankle swells, I’m going to be running
barefoot. I don’t want to do that.”

One of the first rules of fighting
fire from the ground was to remain aware of situations to watch out for. Donovan
Brothers ran a safe operation. Every man—and woman—on their team
knew the eighteen watch out situations. He had unburned fuel between himself
and the fire, winds picking up, and terrain that was rough as hell. Worse,
their current location had all the makings for a really, really bad flashover.

She shoved to her feet and he had
to let her. He knew that. The ice-cold sensation was back in his stomach,
because the fire behind them meant business. All he could think was: thank God
the jump team hadn’t landed yet. Because this was the kind of set-up where no
one went home alive.

Gia started limping away from the
flames. “The fire’s going to outflank us.”

He knew that too.

He wished with everything he was
that she was wrong.

But she wasn’t.

Instead, he followed right behind
her. Her face paled after two steps, her teeth worrying her lower lip. Shit.
She’d definitely done a job on her ankle.

“Drop and crawl,” he ordered. “Save
your ankle. I’m going to grab our packs and get a better view.”

He could see her, he reminded
himself, and their lives were on the line. Leaving
her—temporarily—was the only way to keep her safe. He sprinted
rapidly to the top of the ridge, his boots digging into the loose shale. And
got his first full-on view of the fire. The fire downslope was moving steadily
towards them, a wall of super-heated flame and gasses.

Definitely
fuck-you territory.

He ran options in his head and came
up blank. The fire was making a run up the hill, it had plenty of fuel even
without the pick-me-up boost from the wind. He and Gia had a ridge that
required mad monkey skills to scale and a canyon that was going to suck in air
and flames. They’d definitely been dealt the losing hand in this round.

He hoped like hell that other team
had been dropped on the south side of the fire, because anyone over here was
looking at a barbecue. Swiping his pack from the ground, he searched for open
ground. The flames crept steadily up the hill now, and his head picked this
time to remember stories of blowups that had consumed thousands of acres,
taking down good men and women. The Mann Gulch fire had killed thirteen
firefighters in minutes. No one had successfully run from that fire, bad ankle
or not. A fucking cheetah or Olympic sprinter would have died right alongside
those firefighters.