I'll Be There
Table of Contents
Front Matter
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Thank you so much for reading
Montana Fire Book One
And don’t miss Susie May’s newest series, Montana Rescue!
The Montana Fire Series:
Where There's Smoke
Playing With Fire
Burnin' For You
Oh, The Weather Outside is Frightful (novella)
I’ll Be There
A Montana Fire/Deep Haven Novel
I’ll Be There
Published by SDG Publishing
15100 Mckenzie Blvd. Minnetonka, MN 55345
Copyright © 2017 by Susan May Warren
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations are also taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc®. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
For more information about Susan May Warren, please access the author’s website at the following address: www.susanmaywarren.com.
Published in the United States of America.
CHAPTER ONE
Conner Young needed just one perfect weekend.
One perfect weekend free of drama. No grizzly maulings, no plane crashes, no firestorms, no criminal accusations, and he didn’t think it was too much to ask God for a little sunshine either.
After all, a guy only got married once.
And after everything his fiancée, Liza Beaumont, had gone through this year, she deserved perfect. A crowd of her friends and family showing up to celebrate with her, with them.
If it were up to him, he’d make sure she’d get it.
He flipped his wipers on high, the deluge just short of a biblical flood as it obscured the road. Around him, fog had descended, cutting his vision dangerously tight. He tapped his brakes, took the truck off cruise.
The brake lights of the semi ahead of him cut through the haze of the road, the driver clearly thinking the same thing.
Perfect. Add a few more hours to this trip. Conner’s hand tightened on the steering wheel as he turned the defrost on high. Minnesota—just when you thought you’d have a sunny day, the weather turned on you. Worse, the onslaught of rain created the perfect storm for a hydroplane, and Conner saw in his mind’s eye a bumper-car collision from the mess of cars traveling north for the long Memorial Day weekend.
Good thing Liza had booked their cabins for their wedding weekend at the Evergreen Cabins and Outfitters six months ago.
He would have preferred an elopement to Hawaii or Cancún. Had suggested the getaway too many times over the past few months as Liza changed from one reception venue to the next, trying to accommodate her swelling guest list.
Liza had friends from one end of the country to the other.
His side of the aisle consisted of the three groomsmen sitting in the truck with him, currently grousing about the early morning and woeful lack of breakfast.
“Seriously, Conner, just swing through a McDonald’s,” Jed Ransom said, sitting in the passenger seat. “I’m dyin’ here.”
Conner shot a look in the rearview mirror, where Reuben Marshall sat, arms folded, staring fixedly out at the horizon. Beside him, Pete Brooks was sound asleep, forehead pressed against his window. He wore his blond hair pulled back with a bandanna, a copper-gold grizzle on his chin. Reuben, at least, had showered and trimmed his dark beard, trying to be presentable.
Maybe he should have let the guys sleep longer this morning instead of rousing them before the gray hues of morning collapsed the night. Or maybe cut the trip from Montana into three sections instead of trying to make it in less than forty-eight hours.
“Why didn’t you pick up a donut at the gas station like Pete and Rube?” Conner said, switching into the slow lane, falling in behind the semi.
“I would have if I knew we were on war rations.”
“I can’t stop, Jed. I’m already a day late, thanks to your OCD equipment check.” Conner glanced at Jed, saw his mouth tighten.
“Really? After last summer, you think I’m being irrational?”
“We caught them, Jed. No one is trying to kill us anymore—”
“Except for every fire we jump into this summer.”
Right. Sure, they’d lived through last summer’s sabotage of their chutes, arson, and a deliberate crash of their jump plane, but that didn’t mean that some natural tragedy didn’t wait to ambush them.
Every time they leaped from the open door of their Twin Otter, a hundred-pound jump pack strapped to their back, arrowing down into the mouth of the dragon, they risked coming home in a body bag.
The death of Jock Burns and his crew two summers ago gave that truth legs. And put a fist in Conner’s chest.
Deep down inside, his gut said he shouldn’t be dragging a wife into that world.
Liza hadn’t said it in so many words, but the idea of spending the summer with him in his tiny fifth wheel, parked near the Ember Fire Base in western Montana, waiting for him to come home from his fire deployments...waiting, praying, and watching the mountains flame around her...
Yeah, neither one of them had wanted to dig into what that might look like for a woman who’d already lived through one life-threatening, harrowing event.
Frankly, he’d rather focus on simply holding onto Liza. Making sure her big Yes to his proposal hadn’t been a side effect of the pain pills, her frustration at her recuperation, and the inspiration of the view he’d given her of a glorious Glacier Mountain morning when he’d proposed.
Most of all, the closer the date crept, the more his brain couldn’t seem to sway from the honeymoon.
Thankfully, he had their living arrangements all figured out. Another reason for his epic lateness and heavy foot on the pedal.
He eased up again. But one side of his mouth tipped up, and he started to hum one of Ben King’s new singles sweeping into his brain, lighting a warm simmer through his entire body.
Turn down the lights
Turn up the songs
Come dance with me, baby
Right where you belong
“Stop thinking about the honeymoon,” Jed said. “And focus on the fact you’ll never get to the wedding if you don’t feed us.”
Conner glanced over at him. “What—”
“You’re like a glass house, dude. Sheesh, and I thought I was bad waiting to marry Kate.”
“You drove us crazy. We were ready to ship you off to Vegas.”
“I was ready to marry Kate the day I met her. Seven years is a long time to wait.” Jed fiddled with the ring on his finger, turning it in a circle.
Behind them, Reuben’s mouth tightened into a dark, uncommenting line. Conner glanced at him through the mirror. “Thinking about Gilly?”
“We’re not quite there yet,” Reuben growled.
Conner caught Jed shaking his head. “What’s going on?”
“Gilly has been
talking about trying to get more bomber experience and heading to work for the Midnight Sun crew this summer. The terrain is a bit more...edgy. She wants to up her ranking with the NFS,” Jed said.
“Alaska? Are you going with her?” Conner looked at Reuben.
Reuben’s massive sawyer shoulders lifted in a quick shrug. “She thinks I’ll get in the way. Says I’m too overprotective. Whatever.”
No one said anything.
“Thanks, guys.”
Jed grinned. “By the way, have you figured out who your best man is going to be? Someone needs to be in charge of the party.”
An old Suburban with paneled sides and rusty wheel wells edged up next to them in the fast lane, boxed them in.
The semi had slowed, and Conner noticed the traffic packing in, the storm deafening as it razed the truck. He didn’t want to think about their luggage turning into a soggy mess in the back.
Just what Liza needed, the tuxedos bleeding out, ruined.
Around them, the traffic tightened, and Conner touched the brakes.
Next to him, the Suburban sped past, shooting up alongside the semi—
“Look out!” Jed slammed his hand on the dash.
The semi had started to pull out into the fast lane, clearly not seeing the Suburban. The SUV hit the brakes, swerved into Conner’s lane.
Conner did the math in a second—hit the brakes, hydroplane and crash into the SUV going sixty, or—
Jerking the wheel, he sent them over the rumble strips into the roughened pavement on the side of the highway, littered with glass, tire debris, and rutted gravel.
“Geez!” Pete said, bouncing awake as the truck’s passenger wheels hit dirt and slammed them all against their belts. Conner fought the wheel as it shimmied, the squeal of the antilock brakes hiccuping them to a hard stop.
Beside—then behind—them, the Suburban spun a full three-sixty, then launched into the ditch, front first. The nose caught, and the vehicle flipped.
It landed with a spectacular, horrifying crunch, upside down.
The semi kept going, now in the fast line, oblivious.
Conner’s hands viced the wheel, his heart in his mouth.
Jed’s other hand had found its way to the dash, and now he breathed out hard. “Good reflexes.”
“We’d better see if someone’s hurt,” Reuben said, already unbuckling.
Pete, too, unbuckled and opened his door, getting out into the mud of the ditch.
He and Reuben jogged over to the overturned Suburban.
Jed unbuckled. “You okay?”
Conner’s breath released, finally, over a washboard of what-ifs and could-have-beens. “Uh huh.”
Pete was running back to their truck. “We need a knife—the driver’s belt is jammed.” He stuck his head in. “It’s a teenager. He’s pretty scared, but he seems okay.”
“Glove box,” Conner said. Jed opened it and found Conner’s Yarborough and handed it, still sheathed, to Pete. He ran back through the torrent as Conner grabbed his phone.
Not necessary, because he heard sirens peeling from across the highway. And, in a moment, he spied cherries through the fog.
Some other driver, seeing the catastrophe, had called 911.
Conner got out and ran to the wreck, following Jed. Pete and Reuben had already released the driver, catching him and pulling him out of the smashed driver’s window.
No more than seventeen, maybe, he seemed unscathed, just shaking. Until— “My brother!” He shook off Pete’s hands on him and scrambled back to the car.
Reuben stopped him. “We got him.” He fell to his knees and peered into the car. When he sucked in a breath and glanced back at Conner, a hollowness rushed through Conner, scraping him out.
No.
Conner couldn’t place why the ground suddenly rushed up at him, his legs buckling. In a second, he’d collapsed in the drenched grass, the smells of gasoline, mud, and the cry of the siren a knife, separating now from yesterday.
He could almost taste it, the coppery rush of blood in his mouth, the rank odor of rubber burning.
Hear his parents’ screams.
“Conner—?” Jed crouched beside him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine.” Conner jerked away. “I slipped.” He didn’t look at Jed as he climbed to his feet.
Reuben broke the window as Pete returned from the truck holding a sleeping bag from Conner’s go bag. He draped it over the glass and crawled into the Suburban.
The teenager had collapsed too, a hand to his head as if unable to move.
The rain poured down, drenching all of them, a ghoulish mist rising from the forest beyond the road.
Pete emerged, pulling the victim out by the shoulders, lifting him onto the sleeping bag.
Jed crouched in front of the distraught teenage driver, put his hands on his shoulders. “Breathe.”
Even Conner had to look away at the crumpled body of a fifteen-year-old kid.
Pete was working on him anyway, giving him CPR, breathing for him.
A feral whimper emerged from the driver, a keening that worked its way into Conner’s bones, his cells. One he too well recognized. Conner got up, his stomach writhing, pretty sure he might lose it.
The cruiser had crossed the highway, pulled up, and a state patrolman ran down into the ditch.
Conner lifted his head to the rain, closed his eyes.
“That could have been us, if it weren’t for you,” Reuben said quietly, coming up beside him.
Conner’s mouth tightened around the edges. “It was me, twenty-one years ago. I wasn’t driving, but...” he glanced at Reuben. “I don’t know what my problem is. It’s not like I haven’t seen a car accident before.”
Or watched people die.
But maybe that was it. He turned back, his gaze on the driver, now rocking, weeping as Jed tried to hold him together.
As Pete continued CPR on the whitened body.
It came to Conner then, the source of the roiling of his gut. The one person missing from this weekend was the one other person who’d survived the crash that killed their parents.
The one person who should be celebrating his wedding.
Justin.
Wow, he missed him, although he lived with the wounds scabbed over most of the time. But maybe he’d gone too long without thinking about him. Without remembering how his brother loved sunrises and fishing and harassing him until Conner had finally cheered when he left for the military. Without caring that his brother lay in a crappy grave on a grassy hillside in Montana, his killer free, unknown, and with impunity.
And, thanks to one P.T. Blankenship, former lead investigator at the NSA, in charge of his brother’s murder case, never to be found.
Yeah, he should be here. Conner pressed a hand to his stomach and walked up to Jed. Crouched next to the driver. “What’s your name?”
A hitched breath. “Gunnar.”
“C’mon, Gunnar. Sit in the truck or you’re going to go into shock.”
Gunnar raised his gaze to him, brown eyes unseeing.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Conner said softly, but didn’t add any words of absolution. They wouldn’t set anyway. He grabbed Gunnar by the arm, hauling him to his feet. Led him across the grass and mud to his idling truck where he shoved him into the passenger seat.
Then he reached over and turned the heater on, full blast. Not that it would help.
The cold would seep in, latch on, and frankly, he doubted the kid would ever be warm again.
Conner grabbed his cell phone before he closed the door. He hunched over in the rain as he opened the text app and thumbed out a quick message for Liza. Will be a little late, sorry.
She didn’t text back, and he guessed the hour still might be early for her. He tucked the phone in his back pocket, folded his arms, and leaned back against the grimy truck, giving up any attempt to keep out the chill.
There’s nothing you can do.
Conner shivered against his own
words.
A siren whined in the distance, an ambulance cutting up along the shoulder of the now parked traffic. The cruiser had pulled out, routing traffic down to one lane, away from the mess. In the distance, thunder pummeled the sky cracked from bursts of lightning.
The ambulance pulled up, and Conner stayed at the truck, partially to trap Gunnar as the EMTs resumed work on his brother, packing him up. Not as hurried as they might be, but unable to pronounce him here.
The patrolman, badge name Monroe, came over, his vinyl rain poncho squeaking. “I need his statement. And yours.”
“He needs a hospital, first,” Conner said, moving in front of the door. Jed came up to join Conner. “Let him ride with his brother.”
Patrolman Monroe’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “Better hurry.”
Conner opened the door. Heat poured from the sauna inside. “You okay to ride with—in the ambulance?”
Reddened, swollen eyes. A swallow, a nod. Gunnar climbed out of the cab, grabbed the side of the truck bed for a second, as if to steady himself. Conner had the crazy urge to hook his hand under his arm, half carry him to the rig. But he’d have to learn how to stand up, walk on, endure this wound soon enough.
“You’ll notify his parents?” Jed said behind him to Monroe as the kid headed to the ambulance. The EMTs were just loading in his brother.
Conner didn’t need to plead his case to the EMTs—it was enough that Gunnar just stared down at his brother, stiffening, unable to breathe.
Yeah, he needed a hospital. That would be the easy part.
Jed was giving his account to Monroe of what happened when Conner returned. Pete came up, wiped his mouth. Blood came away, across his sleeve. Conner reached into the cab, handed him a bottle of water, but Pete waved it away.
Turned, gripping his hands on his knees.
Reuben stood with his back to them, watching the rig pull away, cross the median ditch, and merge back onto the highway.
Conner’s back pocket vibrated. He clamped his hand on his phone, pulled it out, and thumbed in the unlock code.
The app opened with Liza’s return message. No problem! I can’t wait to see you! We’re going to have a perfect weekend. Drive carefully—it looks like it might rain.