Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) (25 page)

“Conner, Pete, and Reuben were part of the team. Their crew was spread out and separated from each other when the fire they were working on jumped the line. Jock, their jump boss, had ordered them all out to the safety zone, but there were conflicting orders from another crew boss, and the communication got messed up. Jock went back for the guys down the line, and they all got trapped.”

Skye put her hand to her mouth. Liza’s breath tightened in her chest.

And she hadn’t answered his letters, returned his calls. She wanted to weep.

“Conner’s pretty quiet about it. But according to Pete and Rube, he spent the entire winter holed up in his camper working on those drones.”

“If I know Conner, he thinks he could have predicted the fire jumping the line,” Liza said, looking over at him. The wind ran fingers through Conner’s blond hair, ruffling it as he stood to launch the drone. His deft hands worked the controls as the plane bumped down the meadow, then lifted and soared.

Pete had dropped to one knee, was confirming readings on the tablet, answering questions.

And all of that narrowed down to one sharp fact.

She shouldn’t have abandoned him. Shouldn’t have disconnected her landline, invested in a cell phone. Should have been his friend, despite her broken heart.

Her throat filled, her eyes burning.

I’m not ready for you to walk away.

And she wasn’t ready to walk away, either.

Because despite his inability to look beyond today, she could. And maybe that’s what he needed—someone to hold on long enough to help him see the future.

And sure, maybe he couldn’t promise her anything, but hadn’t he been giving her pieces of himself every day since he’d met her? His friendship, when he called from his strike camps or alone at home, preferring her voice to his team’s after a fire. And his crazy impulsiveness when he’d tracked her down in Arizona. He gave her his strength when he took her skydiving. When he told her about his brother, he gave her that part of his heart that was still wounded over the death of his family. And he gave her his heroism, his courage when he answered the phone and showed up just because she asked. No, he didn’t need to speak his promises.

She saw them.

She walked over to him as the drone landed. It bumped over to Conner and he bent down, his hand on it. “The batteries seem to be cool. I don’t see them as the source of a fire.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Dude, your place is a wreck.” Pete held the tablet. “Apparently the Feds came in yesterday after you left and they tore the place apart looking for your drones. They’d broken open your bedside table, but must not have recognized the remote. Jed told me to tell you that you’d better bring the drone back with you or you’ll have nothing to exonerate you.”

“Exonerate him from what?” Liza asked as Conner shook his head.

“We’ve had some questionable fires around Ember—looks like arson—and the investigators out of the National Interagency Fire Center Arson team have tied Conner’s drones to two of them.”

“My drones are not causing fires!”

Pete held up his hand in surrender. “I’m just the messenger.”

“Are you in trouble?” Liza asked softly.

Conner shook his head as Pete answered, “Yep. The Feds want to question him, but he jumped ship, and now they think he has something to hide.”

Liza did the math. “You jumped ship because I called you and asked you for help!”

“You needed me.”

“What if you get arrested?” She didn’t mean the spark in her voice.

Conner looked at her then, his blue eyes calm, dark. “Let’s just worry about Esther.”

“I’m worried about you going to jail.”

“My drones are not guilty, and neither am I.” He offered her a half smile. “But I’m not going to spend time thinking about what could go wrong, rehearse trouble in my mind. Let’s find Esther, that’s the important thing.”

She wanted to live in his world, where he put off worry for another day.

Except someone had to think ahead, right?

“When we find Esther, you are turning yourself in,” she said. “And you’re going to prove that your drones aren’t responsible for the fires.”

His eyes widened. “Really?”

“Mmmhmm. Because I’m not interested in living life on the lam. Or lining up outside San Quentin for visiting hours.”

Then she held her breath.
Please don’t freak out.

Conner’s smile came slowly, a sweet understanding in his eyes, a twinkle in his gaze that lit her entire body afire.

“San Quentin, huh?”

She shrugged. “I’m not well versed in my correctional facilities.”

Still wearing his smile, he turned to Pete. “So do you think you can figure out the coordinates from the map? Translate them to CJ?”

Pete nodded, and Conner called CJ over. “Listen. You and Skye head back to the river and work your way down the shore. I’m going to stay here and start working the drone. Pete will call in the coordinates as we clear areas.”

“I’m going, too,” Liza said, and held up her hand when Conner looked at her. “Listen, Esther is probably spooked, maybe injured, and needs a friendly face.”

“Who am I, Frankenstein?” Skye asked.

“Of course not. But Esther and I are friends and, frankly, I want to be there.”

Liza looked pointedly at Conner, and after a moment, he gave her a tight-mouthed nod.

“Did you bring fresh water?” she asked.

“And fresh first-aid and survival packs,” Pete said. “The supplies are in my jump pack.” He indicated a large backpack next to his folded chute.

She found the canister of water, then opened the survival pack and found the supplies—mag flashlight, whistle, blanket, leather gloves, fire starter, compass, mirror, rope, flare gun. “All I need is a life preserver.”

“That’s not funny,” Conner said, not looking at her, but his mouth tweaked up anyway.

And bear spray. But she left that part out.

Certainly, however, their so-called predator bear had gone looking for other prey by now.

She shouldered the pack as CJ checked his walkie batteries, his connection with Pete, and his SAT phone. Skye headed for the forest, CJ following her.

Liza turned to follow but was stopped by a hand on her arm. “Liza.”

Conner stepped in front of her, shielding her from the sunlight, his outline bold and imposing, blocking her way. He reached out to her, cupped her chin in his hand, and raised it. “Please, be careful out there.”

The intensity in his blue eyes could lay waste to a girl’s lingering resolve to hike out, to leave him behind when this was over. “I’ll find her.”

“Just...” But he didn’t finish. Instead, he bent down and kissed her. Possessive, his hand moving to cup her cheek, his thumb offering a quick caress.

Then he leaned back, his eyes still on hers, filled with so much unshed emotion that it turned her body to flame.

Then he offered a tight, solemn smile.

She heard the words, even if he couldn’t say them.

Come back to me.

#

A little overhead perspective could change everything. The goggles gave Conner a view of the ground as well as a heads-up display revealing altitude, horizon, direction, pitch, and air speed. Behind him, Pete read the data, knitting together the pictures of the terrain acreage as the drone took photos.

Sweat trailed down Conner’s back, his neck tight from what felt like peering down over a knotted patchwork of lodgepole pine and towering oak. Their progress seemed achingly slow, with CJ and the girls making better time, moving back to their makeshift camp, then along shore. He’d worked his way toward the river, snapping so many shots that he’d had to bring the drone home and change batteries by the time Pete scanned them all and they reset their search grid.

Maybe he should call for reinforcements.

In fact, “What do you think about calling Jed, getting the team in here?” he asked Pete.

“I already checked in,” Pete said. “Gilly just finished dropping them in at a fire north of Ember about twenty miles. Just a flare-up, but Jed wanted to get a handle on it before it became a conflagration, started threatening the town.”

“Another fire.”

“And two more in Glacier, one in the Bob and one in Yellowstone. Every jump team in the west is deployed, and Alaska is coming down to help in Idaho.”

Which meant that a drone like his could right now be tracking fires, saving lives. If it didn’t get confiscated, dissected, and tangled in lethal red tape.

Conner started the drone across another patch in the grid, the river on the far edge, blue and crystalline under the noonday sun. His shoulders burning with holding the remote, he knew he looked crazy with his inability to stand still, his urge to bob, duck, and dodge as he flew the machine lower into the trees. But Esther could be injured, and the closer he got to the ground, the clearer his shot would be.

He dodged a towering lodgepole pine and jerked back, nearly stumbling.

“Whoa, dude, you look a little woozy.”

“Nearly got hit by a tree.”

No comment from Pete. Until, “Huh. I was thinking it was that kiss you planted on Liza. I’d forgotten that you two hooked up in Arizona.”

“We didn’t hook up.” He flew the plane deeper along the grid, startled a fox, then a deer that ran springing away, her sprawl-legged fawn on her tail. “But, yeah. We sorta, I don’t know, had a date, I guess.”

“I guess? That wasn’t a
date, I guess
, kiss. That was a
come-back-to-me-Scarlett
kind of smackeroo.”

Conner smiled, remembering Liza’s expression—all wide-eyed and what-just-happened?—and another line of sweat trickled down his back. “Yeah, maybe.”

Yeah,
definitely,
it was a come-back-to-me kind of kiss. One full of promise and hope, and maybe he didn’t have to say the words. Maybe he could simply show her that he wanted her in his life. It didn’t have to be complicated—after all, she was staying here this summer. And after that, well...

After that he’d track her down back to Deep Haven if he had to. Because for the first time in a year, life didn’t feel so suffocating. And, if he looked up, past his tiny, dark world where grief lay in wait at every turn, he could spot something on the horizon.

Light.

Healing.

A future.

The battery light on his visor began to blink, and he turned the drone around, directing it back before it dropped and he had to hike to find it.

Conner skimmed the aircraft over the wilderness, scattering birds, then he cleared the forest and soared into the meadow.

He spotted himself and Pete in the heads-up display, a surreal look at the world below, the two men trying to locate a needle in the haystack of the Montana forests. Then he shifted the drone to autopilot, and it landed. He taxied it over to himself then pulled off the goggles, bent, and felt the body of the drone.

Still not hot. Which meant that his lithium batteries weren’t going to explode and ignite the tinder-dry forest.

He turned the drone over, opened the compartment, and pulled out the battery. He changed it out with the first one, fresh off his portable charger, and screwed the compartment shut.

“I’ve got something.” Pete stood up from where he was examining the pictures. Sweat dribbled down his temples. He’d pulled a space blanket over himself to view the screen in darkness, and now held out the tablet, pointed to a square of topography.

The plane could take photos from half a mile up, but Conner had kept his view smaller, under five hundred feet. The images could capture trees, shadows, boulders, bushes, and hopefully a frightened fifteen-year-old girl.

“There. The red dot to the left of the screen. By the river.”

Conner peered at it. He couldn’t make out a face or body, just the red blotch. Still, it could be something. “Radio the coordinates to CJ.”

“It looks to be about a quarter of a mile from their last position,” he said. “They’re pretty close.”

“I’ll get the drone back up, see if we can confirm.” Conner’s pulse thundered as he pulled on the goggles.

The drone lifted off, and he flew it straight for the river. He’d run the length of it until he came to the search point.

Behind him, he heard Pete on the radio and CJ’s answering affirmation.

“Anything?” Pete asked, the blanket rustling behind him.

“Not yet…” Except—“Yes!” Conner had slowed the drone as it followed the river, a little afraid of a stall. But as he flew it overhead, he thought he’d spotted a body lying in a pocket of rock along the shore.

“I’m not sure she’s moving,” he said quietly. He turned the drone for another pass.
Please, God.

And then, as he soared the drone overhead, the person lifted her head, stared right into his camera.

“I got her! She’s alive!” Bedraggled, lying in the fetal position, as if cold, terrified, and clearly hurt, the girl had even lifted her hand to wave.