The Heat is On_Christian romantic suspense Read online

  Tucker was driving her crazy.

  Skye sat on the ridge just north of the fire, binoculars to her eyes, watching a black wall of smoke plume into the sky from a fresh fire that had called the team out this morning, some ten miles north of Copper Mountain into Denali National Park.

  From the minute she’d shown up with her personal gear—PG—pack, Tucker had decided to start babysitting. He’d checked her pack, her equipment in her leg pouches. “You have your hard hat, leather gloves, signal mirror—”

  Of course she did.

  But she’d kept a smile and nodded, even when he patted her on the shoulder and told her how to jump out of a plane. Like she might be in rookie camp all over again.

  Never mind that he’d assigned her to his stick—like he couldn’t trust her to jump with one of the other rookies.

  And yes, for a moment, as they soared over the fire in Barry Kingston’s yellow twin Otter, as Skye had leaned out and glimpsed the fire some ten acres in breadth, the heat boiling up like a cauldron, her stomach had nearly emptied.

  But it was simply the usual rush of adrenaline. The heat before the fire.

  “Your spot is about three hundred yards southwest of the fire. You should be able to pick your approach quartering in. If you overshoot, head south.” This from their spotter, Larke Kingston. She’d thrown out at least three streamers to gauge the wind, giving them the right directions for their landing.

  No one wanted to end up in the middle of the furnace.

  Tucker had turned to Skye right before the jump, his gaze running over her, checking her rip cord accessibility. And sure, that was part of the final check, but it still made her feel like a second grader.

  Although, indeed, maybe he’d listened to his instincts because things almost went terribly wrong.

  Her jump started with the ecstatic, freeing thrill of flying above the glorious mountainscape of Denali park. She’d deployed her chute, no tangles, and rode the currents easily, following Tucker as he sailed over the southern flank of the fire. The fire roared beneath her, ash and cinders blowing up around her as gusts tried to catch her chute.

  Then, just like that, the winds changed, down drafted, and her chute flattened out.

  She was falling—and she hadn’t yet cleared the fire. Tongues of flames from an inferno of black spruce licked at her, sucking her in. But she kept her head and reefed hard on her toggles, giving them everything she had to inflate the canopy.

  It worked. She lifted her feet as she floated past the hungry flames, the fury of the fire so close it filled her chest, her ears.

  But she hadn’t frozen. She’d reacted, kept calm, and stayed alive. Landed—okay, tripped—over some strewn logs, but still unhurt.

  Alive.

  She was pulling herself out of the tangle when Tucker ran over, grabbed her by her shoulder straps. “You okay?”

  She had to make a joke out of it, so, “You wouldn’t pass me for that.” She added a weak laugh.

  “You’re alive. You pass,” he said and helped her up and out of her gear. Babysitting.

  Thankfully, he’d let her pack up her own gear while the other sticks came down. He ordered Riley to supervise the retrieval of the cargo drop and went to survey the fire.

  From her vantage point in the sky, it had looked bigger than what they alone could handle. The last fire had taken ten days, two jump teams, and a Type 1 crew to put it out, including all the resources of the BLM—bomber planes for chemical and water drops and a couple helicopters with buckets.

  This fire was still in its infant stage, the black smoke evidence of heat, but not deep smoldering in the soil. It had started from a lightning strike, spotted by some bush pilot hours ago. Slow moving, given the humidity in the air and the scant winds, and that worked to their favor. Still, even as she’d helped Riley and the guys unpack the cargo drop, pulling out fuel, chain saws, drip torches, and a cubinator of water, Skye could make out spot fires bulleting out from the main body, moving south and west. If they didn’t get a move on, it would overtake their position.

  Below the fire, past a ridge, a low meadow relatively free of fuels just might make a decent place to cut a line and stage a burnout between the fire and the line. Then they’d just need to stop it on the western flank while the bombers came in and put it down to the east.

  Nothing but boulders and safety zone to the north, so…yeah. They had this. Especially if they got reinforcements.

  Which Tucker had lined up on his call into BLM HQ after running his own assessment of the fire.

  When he marched back to them, his already sooty face bore a grim expression. He spread out a map on the ground. The wind grabbed it, but she and others put their feet on the edges. A gust caught up cinders and sprinkled them onto the map, landing like bites on her skin. She wore her hair in a braid, a bandanna around her neck and pulled it up over her nose.

  He’d traced his finger along the far western edge of the meadow, right where she’d imagined a cut line. “We’re going to box the fire in and drive it east, try and burn out the fuels. I want you to scratch out a line along the western flank of the fire down to this point here.”

  She squinted through the haze and found the rocky outcropping at the southern point of the ridge that would serve as the anchor for both the western and southern lines.

  “I’ll work with the crew coming in, and we’ll cut the southern line and meet you there.”

  So he had gotten a crew from the BLM. Good. Hopefully a Type 1 team—those guys knew how to work.

  “Our goal is to corral the fire enough for Kingston to get some water on it and take it down.”

  The guys hooyahed, and she grabbed her Pulaski, reached for her pack.

  And that’s when the babysitting really kicked in.

  Tucker already had a hand on her gear. “You’re with me.”

  What—?

  “I need you on lookout.” He pointed to the northern edge, where he’d climbed to get a look at the fire. “Watch our backs.”

  Seriously? “I can keep up, Tucker.”

  “I know. Believe me, I wouldn’t have passed you if you couldn’t. But we need someone to make sure we all stay alive.”

  Right. Make it sound important. She half expected him to spout out a rule, so she did it for him. “Firefighting Order five. Post a lookout when there is danger.”

  He grinned at her and nodded, like she was his favorite student.

  Nice. Now she got to watch as her team put down the fire.

  But she’d shouldered her pack and trudged toward the ridge, upwind. Climbed up to her lookout perch.

  At least, up here, she wouldn’t freeze, get anyone killed. There was that.

  Something rugged and breathtaking about the Alaskan mountainscape felt different than Montana. She was used to glaciers, to the cottony breath of the mountain slinking into the valleys, to the fresh breezes rife with the fragrance of wildflowers. But Montana, despite the big sky feel of the state, turned compact, jagged, and rugged where she lived, near Kalispell. Arching mountains that ringed tight valleys, jammed together as if pushed by ancient glaciers, forcing them to ripsaw peaks.

  In Alaska, the mountains breathed. Sprawled. Yawned over great expanses of forests and valleys. The peaks towered so high that most of the time Denali’s face hid inside a wispy white beard. The air reaped the wind off the mountain, glacial cool, rife with pine and the scent of boreal moss, mixing now with the campfire smell of burning resin, pine, and willow.

  Montana she knew. Had hiked and skied the mountains, put out fires in its forests for the past three summers as a hotshot. Camped and fished and paddled through its wilderness.

  But Alaska—it was bold and surprising and wild, and a tiny sense of awe rippled through her as she sat down on the rock and let her binoculars scan the view below her.

  Smoke and fire, yes, but the bluest of lakes to the south. Granite ridges and lush green forests, and to the east, a river that dissected the land.

  Maybe this
is what her father had seen that summer he worked as a hotshot for the Alaska Bureau of Land Management. Maybe that’s why he’d stuck around, met her mother, had decided not to return to college. Alaska had seduced him with its dangerous beauty.

  She wouldn’t be quite so easily seduced.

  Of course, her father had been seduced by many, many things. Hopefully, she wasn’t made of the same weak DNA. The last thing she wanted to do was die in prison like Liam Doyle.

  And how she’d gotten to that dark place from the beauty of Alaska, she didn’t know, but she knew one thing for certain. She wouldn’t let her heart lead her into trouble, let it destroy the people she loved.

  After all, what kind of man takes a match to his entire life by breaking the law and ending up behind bars? Not one she cared to remember. Or emulate.

  A crackle over the radio and she caught Tucker’s voice. “Watchout, how’s it looking?”

  “Flame lengths are about five feet, maybe less. Wind is scant. The fire is digging in, moving slowly.”

  “Roger,” Tucker said.

  The heartbeat of a chopper thundered in the distance, and Skye used her glasses to find the pinprick. Hopefully Barry Kingston bringing in a basket of water.

  But no line dangled from the bird as it came into view, flying low and finally dropping into the meadow beyond the ridge. It landed, and she could barely make out through the screen of smoke a group of firefighters in bright orange shirts disembarking from the chopper.

  The handcrew. Good.

  They ran toward Tucker, carrying gear and covering their heads as the chopper lifted off. Skye scanned over to the fire again, and indeed, the wash had whipped it up. But as the chopper rose and pulled away—hopefully for water—the flames settled back down.

  Tucker was rounding up the crew. Her vision tracked to her team, cutting a line down the western flank. Hanes and Eric were scrubbing out the initial line, downhill to the anchor point, with Seth, Riley, and Romeo coming in behind to fortify. Seth mowed down saplings and scrub brush with his chain saw, tossing them out of the path of the fire, while Riley and Romeo scratched the dirt down to the mineral soil in a line some three-feet wide. They worked quietly, with intention, their heads down.

  Cinder and ash blew into their faces, and she imagined right now their eyes would be thick with mucus, itchy and watering, sweat curdling down their spines, their chests tight as they breathed the acrid smoke through their bandannas.

  So maybe she didn’t hate being up here. But she did hate the fact that Tucker had so easily picked her.

  Down over the ridge, he was scratching out a line with his new crew. Probably shouting rules at them—how Tucker loved his Firefighting Orders. And Watchout Situations.

  Keep informed on fire weather conditions and forecasts. Rule number one.

  Know what your fire is doing at all times. Rule number two.

  Sheesh, she could recite them in her sleep, a casualty of rookie camp.

  The crews were making progress along both ridges, and she tried to keep her boredom out of her voice when Tucker radioed in. His new crew were bulldogs—they scraped out a cup trench at the bottom of the slope, just in case the fire rolled snags down the hill from the ridge. Their orange shirts had turned ruddy and black.

  The afternoon dragged on, the fire burning deep into the reindeer moss, the loam of pine needles that embedded the forest. It exploded a stand of black spruce, a tower of black dissecting the blue.

  Tucker finally hiked up the far ridge, surveying the fire as it ate its way to his southern line. She watched him turn, as if he could spot her through the smoke from this distance, and asked for an update.

  “Nothing’s changed, boss. Same wind speed, same humidity. Flame lengths short and tight.”

  “Just a bit longer, then I’ll get Romeo to spell you.”

  “Whatever.” Oh, she didn’t mean to sound annoyed, but—

  A gust rose, rippling through her shirt, a cool breath from some icy slope. It whipped down the slope, and she could almost feel the blaze tremble with an injection of fury as the wind fanned the combustion of fuel and chemical reaction. Skye lifted the walkie to inform Tucker, but his voice came across the radio.

  “Riley, you get down the ridge and start the burn. Seth, you and Hanes and Eric, watch the flanks. Romeo—you spell Skye on watch. I’ll call in the drop.”

  Okay, so maybe she’d been a little too annoyed. Riley offered an affirmative, and Skye kept the fire framed in her glasses as she watched Riley jog down to the southern fire line to join the other crew and start the burn.

  Tiny droplets of fire splashed into the burn area, consuming the fuel between the oncoming blaze and the fire line.

  The familiar whump-whump of a chopper indicated a drop coming in from the southeast. She could barely spot the bird but made out a long drop line swinging in the wind, carrying a bucket of water.

  Yeah, they’d put this to bed, no problem. With no real help from her, but…

  She centered her glasses on Tucker. He stood at the ridge line between the two fires, and from this angle—

  “Tucker, if that’s you I see, get out of there. You’re standing between the two fires.”

  Barry’s voice on the radio, but yeah, that’s what she would have said. The chopper rounded in and let the water drop along the leading eastern edge of the fire.

  She’d taken her eyes off Tucker for just a second, but when she turned back, he’d vanished.

  “Tucker?” Skye toggled the mic but got no response. But before she could call again, Tucker appeared again on the ridge. He must have ducked into the black for cover from the drop.

  She let out a hot breath of relief. Silly. Tucker might not be a seasoned fire boss—their usual smoke boss, Jed, had only put him in charge of the team because he had to leave town to check on his pregnant wife. But Tucker was careful.

  He knew the rules that kept them all alive.

  The smoked turned gray, the fire gasping for air as it drowned under the water. The fog filled the valley, cut off her view. Tucker’s voice came over the line asking for another drop.

  She barely made out his yellow shirt as he climbed to the top of the ridge again.

  Where was Romeo? She got up, letting the glasses dangle around her neck, and picked up her pack.

  The roar of the fire stopped her. A fierce gust of breath crested off the mountain as if refusing to let the fire surrender, raked past her, and poured into the flames.

  With a feral growl, the fire regrouped, reignited, and flamed over, the lengths doubling.

  Chewing up the forest toward the ridge.

  She scrambled for her glasses, searched for Tucker, but couldn’t make him out in all the smoke—

  There.

  A yellow shirt, right in the path of the flames. He’d fallen, maybe because he was struggling up the hill.

  Watchout rule number seventeen—when terrain and fuels make escape to safety zones difficult…

  She toggled her walkie, dropped her pack. “Tucker, get out of there!”

  He was scrambling to his hands and knees, then up. Limping…

  His knee. She’d seen him wrench it a couple times skiing, an old injury from his snowboard cross days. Now, it crippled him, sending him to his knees.

  “Tucker’s in trouble!” she screamed and couldn’t take her eyes off him as he fought to climb out of the flames.

  Oh God, please, please—

  A man burst out of the smoke at the top of the ridge and scrambled down toward Tucker. He grabbed him around the waist and struggled up the hill with him. They disappeared over the ridge into the rocky, safe area.

  The fire engulfed the hill seconds later. It swept over the ridge and down into the meadow to meet the burn.

  For a second, Skye couldn’t move.

  Please be okay. Please be okay—

  “Tucker?” She listened for anything, but only got static over the line. “Tucker!”

  That was just it.

  She t
ook off down the slope, her feet landing hard on the granite, not caring that one wrong step could send her flying.

  She should have warned him of the upsurge in the fire before he went over the ridge. He could have burned to death right before her eyes!

  She hit the ground and sprinted down the fire line, past Romeo, Seth, Hanes, and Eric, over to the anchor point. Heard one of her teammates calling her name. But she didn’t stop until she reached the rocky anchor point where the other line connected.

  Turning, she ran along the southern line, black on one side, green forest meadow on the other. And all along the line, men in orange shirts, yellow hard hats, wearing the green Nomex pants of a fire crew. They used their shovels to put out spot fires that spiked over the line.

  Riley had also run down to the end of the line, as if looking for Tucker. And that’s when she realized—one of the new crew had saved Tucker. A hero, running through the fire to drag her boss to safety.

  Sweat trickled down her face and she leaned over, breathing hard.

  One of the firefighters turned, his back to her.

  She stared at the imprint on his shirt. CCCF.

  And she hadn’t a clue what it meant. But she recognized the block-style lettering.

  No. What—?

  No.

  Please let her be wrong. Because by the looks of it, the heroes who had shown up to fight with them were none other than…prisoners.

  Three

  Rio had nearly been burned alive.

  And to think, he’d actually been contemplating a change of profession. Because although the very marrow of his bones ached from hours of digging—evidence of how prison had stripped him of girth and muscle despite his in-cell push-ups—the breadth of Alaskan sky, the scent of the pine, the grandeur of the Denali range sluiced a freshness into his soul that Rio hadn’t experienced for a long, long time.

  As if God had suddenly looked down and realized Rio needed to escape.

  He’d tried not to let the smoke prick tears into his eyes, but yeah, he’d turned into a soggy-eyed mess as he fought to dig out the line in the soil.