Summer of the Burning Sky Read online

  She seemed to be counting the rounds, then she closed the chamber. “He’d just picked up an eighteen-year-old female hitchhiker, backpacking to the Lower 48.”

  Tucker hadn’t moved, too many images scanning through his head.

  “March is…well, I won’t go into the details, but the cop is still in trauma counseling.”

  How could he have let this man work on his team? With Skye—

  “Skye’s not answering,” Riley said, and Tucker grabbed the radio.

  “Skye, come in. Right now. Skye.”

  Static on the other end of the line. Tucker turned to hike up the ridge. “She was sitting watch—”

  “I’ll go, boss,” Seth said, already out in front of him. The big man could move like a running back when he wanted to.

  “I’m headed to that campground,” Stevie said, packing the gun into a pouch on the front of her bike. “I need someone to call the BLM. Tell them to get ahold of the US Marshal’s office in Anchorage and get some backup in here.”

  Tucker limped toward her. Already his knee was starting to loosen. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “Tucker—listen, you have a fire to fight.”

  “My guys can do the mop-up—”

  “You could get hurt—”

  “Tucker!”

  Seth’s low voice rumbled down the ridge and Tucker turned. The big man was headed back down the mountain, three figures in front of him.

  The youngsters, whom Tucker had pegged as DUIs. He tried to recall their names—

  And then he didn’t have to.

  “Those are the Cumberland brothers. Evan, Nico, and Bran,” Stevie said. “They probably got into a fight at Vic’s place and she decided to press charges. They’re harmless. Punks who boost a car now and again and smoke weed in their parents’ basement. Maybe they decided they didn’t want to do hard time for jailbreak.” She jogged over to them as Seth practically pushed them into camp.

  “What are you three idiots doing? Why did you run?” She even whacked one of them on the head, through his hard hat.

  “I dunno! Back off, Stevie—” He held up his hand, as if in protection. Skinny, dark haired, covered in ash—frankly, Tucker couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Evan,” Stevie said. “Listen. You came back, so this stays with us if you tell me where March went to.” She gestured to the other two to sit down on a nearby boulder. They obeyed her.

  Evan ran his hand along his chin. “It just happened. One minute I was asleep, the next your dad had his hand over my mouth, telling me to stay quiet.”

  She went white at his words, and Tucker wanted to reach out, grab her arm, hold her up.

  “He said that March was making a run for it, and if I didn’t want to get into more trouble, I’d stay down and keep sleeping.”

  Tucker put weight on his knee, testing. Yeah, he’d be okay.

  “Clearly you didn’t listen. Again.”

  Evan cast his gaze to the ground. “Yeah, well, that was Nico’s brilliant idea. He said that maybe we could grab March, bring him in for the reward money.”

  “You’re a prisoner—you don’t get rewards for escaping!”

  From behind them, one of the men piped up. “That’s what I said.”

  Probably Bran, because the other guy elbowed him.

  “So, we waited until March took off—with your father and those three others. Rio and Darryl and the tall guy.”

  Tucker didn’t know why, but the news that Rio had been in on the escape felt like a punch, deep in his gut. He’d wanted to like the guy.

  “And—why’d you come back?”

  Evan glanced at his brothers, then back to Stevie, something of fear in his expression. “Because March is crazy. Like, nut job, he’s-going-to-kill-everyone crazy. He took the girl—for a second, I thought—” He swallowed.

  “He had a gun to her head,” Bran said. “And a crazy look on his face.”

  Tucker’s entire body went numb, his heart a full stop in his chest, his breath flushed.

  A gun to her head.

  Skye!—

  “And then Rio went up to her and just… He just stood in front of her, between her and the gun, and March changed his mind. Told her that if she didn’t keep up, he’d shoot her, then they all took off and…”

  “We decided we didn’t want to die,” Bran said quietly. “Not for no reward money.”

  “Where’d he get the gun?” Riley asked.

  “It’s mine,” Seth said. “I always carry a bear gun in my gear. He must have seen me securing it in my PG bag last night.”

  Stevie drew in a breath. Looked at Tucker.

  “I’m coming with you,” he whispered. “That’s my teammate, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  She tightened her mouth but gave him a nod.

  Tucker grabbed his radio and turned to Riley. “Call the BLM, tell them what happened and where we’re going. Then put that fire out and get everyone back to base as fast as you can.”

  Riley nodded, his jaw tight.

  Tucker ground down against the pain in his knee and strode over to Stevie, picking up his PG pack on the way. She’d fired up the bike, and he didn’t give a thought to arguing with her. Just threw his leg over the bike. Set his hands on her hips.

  “Let’s go.”

  She must have left her brains back in Anchorage. Because from the moment she arrived in Copper Mountain, Stevie had made one colossal mistake after another.

  Okay, so meeting Tucker might not have been a mistake, but walking into the Midnight Sun Saloon had turned dark, fast. Which caused her to have to sleep in her truck. Which left her tired and crabby, so when she arrived at the Copper County facility she hadn’t called in for backup or even an update.

  Instead, she’d arrived at her mother’s house, half out of her brain with fury. She’d simply jumped on the bike—barely checking the fuel level—leaving her Glock, walkie, and her overnight supplies in her truck, along with all her training, clearly.

  Because how could she have not seen that March would have figured out who her father was? Of course the CCCF would be populated with inmates who knew him. Whom he’d put away.

  He didn’t have a cover to blow.

  And now March had her father. And Skye.

  If she were a praying person—and once upon a time, she had been—she might start now. In fact— Please God, save them. Help us get there in time.

  Stevie gunned the bike up the ridge, aware of the hold Tucker had on her, his thighs pressed against hers, hands bracketing her hips. He leaned into the momentum, as if he knew how to ride. Still, she didn’t want to throw them. Neither of them wore helmets—never mind that piece of stupidity.

  Yeah, she was racking up the bad decisions like old boyfriends. Not that she had many, but her small list had done enough damage to warn her into happy singlehood.

  Something she should keep in mind, given the way her sidekick was holding onto her.

  They topped the ridge, and she got a good view of the fire that had ravaged over twenty acres of beautiful boreal forest. Once-glorious black spruce now jutted blackened and shunted, the landscape ashy gray as it rolled over hills into valleys.

  The line the firefighters had cut up the ridge had turned the blaze back on itself, but even out of the corner of her eye, she could see the flames still gnawing away to the east, smoke drizzling up into the sky.

  “At least we turned it away from the camp!” Tucker said into her ear, and she supposed he was referring to the Boy Scout camp some three miles southeast.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that March might be headed that direction, and for a moment, she slowed the bike down to a stop, stepping a foot out to balance it.

  Ahead of them, to her right, a mountain rose, jagged and pricked with forest. Not snow peaked yet, it wasn’t an impossible climb, and five miles due west March would run into the highway.

  But he’d be exposed then. And yes, tourist season kept the highway busy, but…

  �
��What’s wrong?” Tucker asked.

  “I’m just…I’m not sure.”

  He leaned back and pulled out a set of binoculars from his pack. Set it to his eyes. “They’re on foot. They won’t have gotten too far yet.”

  He scanned the mountain, then the landscape ahead of them.

  Roughed out with dry riverbeds, alpine meadows rife with goldenrod and blue forget-me-nots, and spires of white spruce and aspen, thickets of white birch heavy with willow brush, the forested terrain could hide someone standing ten feet from them. Below them, south, the forest thickened, with black spruce and tamarack closing in like a wall.

  Brutal, unforgiving country, not made for dirt biking, at least not at the speeds she wanted to achieve.

  Breathe, Stevie.

  “I think I see something.” He pointed to the southwest and handed her the binoculars.

  She followed his gesture. The world loomed large, almost indecipherable, and she panned too quickly, nearly missing—

  A flash of orange.

  She pulled the binoculars away, stupidly thinking she could spot it with her naked eye, then raised them again. A large man, he was trekking into a nest of forest. “That looks like Darryl.”

  She passed the glasses back to Tucker, staring at the route. They had to cut down the ridge, into the meadow, then along the canyon riverbed to the opposite forest.

  How March had covered so much ground…

  She shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

  Tucker’s hands settled back on her hips, his feet on the ground to steady the bike. “Go.”

  She edged the bike forward, moving it along the rocky edge, toward the ravine. From here, the rocks stairstepped down the side of the mountain, the edge narrowing as it descended. “Don’t lean. Let me do the work,” she said. “And stay on the bike.”

  He took his hands off her waist and gripped the back of his seat. His thighs tightened around her. “Once we start going, we don’t stop until we hit the bottom.” Hopefully in one piece.

  She eased the bike forward, throttled, and they moved over the edge, down the wall. A hard drop—she put her feet down to steady them, even as she banged on the seat. Tucker grunted but didn’t release his hold, and she kept going, over another lip, across a bumpy path, then down a steep wall that shucked out her breath. They were moving too fast toward another set of stairsteps, and she hit the brakes.

  Tucker just barely stopped from careening over her, his chest tight against her back as he reigned in his momentum.

  She kept the speed steady as they maneuvered down, then back up the trail, and veered back into the mountain along a fifteen-foot wall. She slowed, and at the precipice of another run, put her foot down. Stopped.

  He put his foot down beside hers.

  She glanced behind them.

  They’d traveled a good fifty feet, maybe more. The meadow spread out below them, another thirty feet down.

  And between them and escape lay a jagged wall of tumbled rock, not steep enough to jump, too vile to traverse. But if she could get enough speed and run them down the trail farther, they could fly off the edge, clear the wall, and land on the meadow below.

  Or kill them both.

  “Do it,” Tucker said, his breathing hard in her ear, as if he could read her mind.

  Right. “Hold on, whatever you do.”

  He tightened his hold and she gunned the bike. She fought the bouldered path, arrowing them straight for the edge, praying she had the guts to maintain her speed enough to shoot them over the cliff and clear the rubble at the bottom of the wall.

  They shot into the air, and Tucker’s legs tightened around her. She bit back a scream and held on.

  The ground slammed up too fast, and when they hit, she would have jerked right off if it hadn’t been for Tucker’s arm flinging around her, grabbing her tight to his body.

  They bounced, but she ground down on her hold, kept the bike’s speed steady, and let Tucker center her.

  She rode them down the trail, easing into the brake when they hit the meadow. He finally loosened his hold on her as they slowed to a stop.

  Sweat slicked down her back despite the cool morning, and she fought to catch her breath.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Tucker said, his words oddly stilling her shaking.

  She wanted to turn, to look at him, but feared the emotion he might see in her eyes. So she gunned it over the meadow, loosening her arms to give the bike movement as they bounced over the ground, rough and rutted. The wheels trampled the reindeer moss, the wildflowers, and she cut a path around the occasional spruce jutting from a lonely patch of earth.

  The forest loomed ahead of them, rimmed only by the dry river ravine, and Stevie searched it for glimpses of the orange shirts.

  She increased her speed, her eyes on the forest—

  They hit the log hard in a bone-chilling crunch.

  She screamed, Tucker’s body hard against hers as they flew from the bike.

  Airborne.

  She landed so hard, her breath slammed out of her.

  She sprawled, dazed and broken, her body jarred.

  Only after a moment did she feel Tucker next to her, his arm around her.

  He’d tried to cushion her fall—she got that much as she gulped for breath, wheezing—because she lay half on top of him, half in the grasses.

  “Tuck—” Her voice wouldn’t return to her, and she sat up, huffing hard. Her head spun.

  She put a hand to it, found a welt growing just above her eye. “Tuck—”

  Her vision cleared, her breath full in her lungs.

  Tucker lay on his side, unmoving beside her, eyes closed.

  “Tucker!” She hit her knees, leaned over him, her fingers pressed to his jugular artery. A heartbeat— Thank you, Almighty God. And breath—she put her face close to his mouth to confirm it.

  “Tucker.” Stevie pressed her hands to his face. “Wake up.”

  Movement, and in a second his eyes blinked open, widened. She stared at him, and it took a moment, then his breath sucked in, hard.

  She touched his chest. “You’re okay. Just got the wind knocked out of you.”

  He put his hand over hers on his chest. “You…okay…?” The voice seemed torn from the wreckage inside.

  “I think so.” She gripped his hand and helped as he pushed himself to a sitting position.

  He shrugged out of his backpack—and sure, that was what had shucked the breath from him, landing crazily on his gear.

  He turned to her and ran his hands down her arms, gripped her hands.

  “No broken bones?”

  “I think you made a good landing pad.”

  His mouth tweaked up on one side. “I’m not that padded, I hope.”

  Oh no. All hard planes and muscled surfaces. And he’d scuffed his chin. “How’s your knee?”

  He reached out, kneaded it. “Fine. Let’s get the bike up.” He grunted, however, as he climbed to his feet. Closed one eye in a wince, hobbling over to the bike.

  The fact they hadn’t broken any bones—a shiver went through her. She followed Tucker over, just in time to hear his word of frustration.

  “The fuel line broke.” He crouched next to a black puddle spilling onto the earth.

  “My mother just replaced it. Maybe she didn’t clamp it on tight enough.” Stevie pressed her hand to her forehead, hot and pulsing against the blood flow of the hematoma.

  He noticed and winced. “That looks like it hurts.”

  “No more than your knee, liar.”

  He hid a smile, gave her a look. “Okay, so we’re both liars.” He got up and half limped, half ran to his backpack. “Let’s get going.”

  She retrieved her gun from the bike’s front pouch, shoved it into her belt, and walked over to him.

  He was shrugging on the pack.

  “Maybe I should carry that.”

  “Maybe you should keep up. This is what I do.” Then he headed toward the forest in a wretched, high-speed hobble tha
t had her scrambling.

  They walked in silence across the meadow, just the occasional grunt from Tucker to thicken the morning. The sun gilded the field, the sky arched and blue. A wind scurried off Denali to the west, sneaking under her jacket. If Tucker hadn’t given her his sleeping bag last night… Well, she’d spent the night shivering anyway.

  “Your dad called me Sport,” Tucker said, and his weird segue had her looking at him.

  “He likes you, then.”

  He made a tiny harrumphing sound. Walked in silence. Then, quietly, “Can I ask how he ended up in prison?”

  She’d known it would come sooner or later, really. Should have been armed, ready with some quick and easy response. He killed a man.

  Except, the truth had tangles and barbs and needed unknotting if she were to tell it right.

  “It’s my fault,” she said.

  He didn’t comment, didn’t pause his steps. Nothing of surprise or even blame in his reaction.

  It made it easier, perhaps.

  “Involuntary manslaughter. That’s how it played out after the dust settled, although Nate wanted more. Second degree murder at the least.”

  “Nate, the guy at the bar.”

  “Nate, Chad’s brother.”

  “The guy who didn’t stop at no.”

  Her lips tightened. “My boyfriend.”

  Tucker glanced at her then, his eyes tightening just a little around the edges.

  “I told you it was complicated.”

  “Still seems pretty simple to me. Except the part about your dad.” He kept walking.

  “It would have been simple, had I listened to him.” She tucked her hands into her windbreaker, not sure how far back to go. “My dad had been sheriff in Copper Mountain for about eight years. He knew Chad pretty well—had coached him in football, had picked him up a couple times at parties for underage drinking.” She drew in a breath. “Had taken a report from a girl who said he attacked her. She later recanted.”

  “He told you to stay away from Chad.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, I am a little…”

  “Stubborn?”

  “Headstrong. Always have been. I don’t like people telling me what to do, how to live my life, and I was twenty-one-ancient-years old at the time.”

  His lips tightened. “But you’ll always be daddy’s little girl.”