Hot as Sin (3 page)

Joe, the helitack pilot, was waiting for him when he crested the hill. As soon as Sam climbed into the helicopter, the rotors started whirring and they lifted into the air.

After working together on wildfires for the past six years, they didn’t bother with small talk. Flying slowly over the dry landscape, Sam carefully surveyed the mountains for any telltale signs of new fires. The lookout towers that ringed the region were useful, but they didn’t catch everything. Especially in the densely forested valleys.

About to give the all clear, Sam saw a flicker of smoke emerge from behind the next ridge.

“Let’s head west.”

Joe shot him a concerned glance. “You see something?”

“A smoke column is rising up, just past that redwood grove.”

Joe kicked the helicopter’s blades up a notch and they soon spotted a fire blazing at the base of the hill beside a stream. Thank God they’d gone in to take one last look.

After radioing the fire’s coordinates, Logan said, “I’m sending a support crew up the fire road. ETA is thirty minutes.” He paused and Sam knew what was coming, the same thing his squad boss had been telling them since last summer. “Don’t go in if it’s too dangerous.”

The previous summer’s wildfire in Desolation Wilderness had turned from a routine job to a disaster in a matter of moments. The two of them, along with Sam’s younger brother, Connor, had gotten caught in a blowup. Although Logan and Sam had emerged unscathed from their run up the mountain to safety, the wildfire had chewed Connor up and spit him out, and he’d ended up with serious burns on his arms, hands, and chest.

This was the first year in almost a decade that Sam had run these trails without his brother beside him. Every day, Sam missed Connor’s company out in the forests. They were all adrenaline junkies—even the hot-shots who denied it—but Connor had always been more reckless than most.

In the past few years, Sam had felt that he wasn’t all that far behind his brother on the recklessness scale. Without a wife or kids to go back to at the end of a fire, he had no reason not to go all the way to the edge. Especially if the chances he took meant saving a life.

So even though this was a potentially deadly situation, Sam couldn’t turn back.

“I’m heading in on foot to verify whether the area is populated,” Sam informed Logan before shoving the radio back into his turnouts.

He was going in with his Pulaski, an ax-hoe combination, his chain saw, his “shake and bake” emergency fire tent, and his first-aid supplies. Hopefully, he’d need only the first two to cut a fire line through the brush and light a backfire. But until he knew what awaited him down below, he’d make damn certain he was prepared for a worst-case scenario.

“Drop me in, Joe.”

A strong breeze shoved the helicopter a half-dozen feet closer to the mountain and Joe shot Sam a concerned glance. “The winds are really picking up. You sure you don’t want to wait for backup?”

The breeze blew the flames away for a split second, just long enough for Sam to see a structure.

“There’s a cabin down below. I have to check it out.”

“I don’t know if this is such a great idea,” Joe said as he maneuvered the helicopter so that it hovered directly over a flat part of the roof, just out of reach of the highest flames. “I can’t get any closer. It’s going to be a long way down.”

Sam looked out the bubble-front window to assess the risk. By rough calculations, he figured that the distance was a little less than ten feet. One measly story. No problem.

“It’s close enough.”

Sam pulled the emergency ladder out from beneath his seat, then opened the passenger door and latched the ladder onto the metal rim. Carefully climbing out of the hovering helicopter, he was halfway down the ladder when Joe shifted position so that the distance from the ladder to the roof closed in from ten feet to eight.

Sam let go and dropped. The fall was faster than he’d expected, but he managed to land on the peeling roofing tiles with both feet and hands like a spider.

The helicopter pulled up and away, leaving an eerie stillness all around the remote mountain cabin. Sam understood why people liked living deep in the woods. Who wouldn’t want to listen to the wind through the trees and the rushing river, rather than traffic and neighbors? A cabin like this was the perfect place to get away from it all.

The only downside was that when danger struck, it usually meant there was no one around to help.

Suddenly, the silence was replaced by the sound of a child crying. Moving quickly across the roof, Sam found a rock cropping at the rear of the house. Using the rocks as natural steps to the ground, he headed in the direction of the cries toward an outbuilding.

A little girl with tear-streaked cheeks barreled into his legs. She was crying too hard for him to understand what she was saying, so he knelt down and gently brushed the hair out of her eyes. She was a skinny little thing and he wasn’t exactly sure how old she was, but he guessed she wasn’t quite in the double digits yet.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he told her in a gentle voice. When her wild gaze finally locked onto his and her sobs receded, he asked, “Are your parents here?”

This time he was able to make out the words, “My dad’s away at work. My mom is sick.”

“Anyone else here with you?”

The girl shook her head.

“A dog or cat or iguana?”

Her lips almost curved up at his reptilian reference and he knew she was going to be just fine. Children were the first ones to forget their fear. He’d been just like that as a kid. So had his brother.

“I’m Sam. What’s your name?”

“Piper.”

“Can you show me where your mom is, Piper?”

The girl started running and Sam jogged behind her into the house. A woman was lying on the couch in a fetal position. Her hands were on her rounded stomach. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were wide and he could see that she was frightened.

She was tall and blond and slim, and her features were close enough to those of a woman Sam used to know that something splintered apart in his chest before he could shut it down.

Dianna
.

Forcefully pushing thoughts of his ex aside, he knelt beside the woman. “I’m a firefighter and I’ve come to help you. What’s your name?”

Her lips trembled slightly and her cheeks were wet from tears. “Tammy.”

“Your daughter tells me you’re not feeling well.”

“I’m cramping,” she whispered. “It’s too soon for the baby to come. And I’ve miscarried before.”

Every word was a knife in his gut. He knew, firsthand, how painful miscarriage was. His chest squeezed and his throat grew tight before he managed to take his emotions out of the picture.

After ten years as a hotshot, he knew better than to let anything get in the way of the job he had to do.

From the window above the couch, he could see the treetops bending in the mounting breeze. Within minutes, flames would roll over this house.

Joe was going to have a hell of a time getting down here to pick them up, and Sam found himself wondering if the three of them were going to make it out alive.

“Our phones went out and my husband has our car,” Tammy said in a frantic voice. “I didn’t think anyone was going to find us.” She started crying again. “I don’t want to lose my baby or let anything happen to my little girl.”

Damn it, he didn’t have time for doubt, for second-guessing himself. He had to get them out.

“Can you walk?”

She tried to stand up, then sank back into the cushions.

“It hurts too much,” she said, her cramps obviously far too intense for her to stay upright.

With the fire raging, there was no way Joe could drop low enough to the cabin in the helicopter to get near them. Besides, in her condition, Tammy couldn’t climb a ladder, which meant Sam needed to get them to an open patch where Joe could land.

Pulling out his radio, he said, “Joe, I’m heading northwest with a pregnant woman and her daughter. First open spot you can land, we’ll need pickup for transport to the nearest hospital. Radio me when you choose your spot. And keep it close.”

Reaching under Tammy’s knees and shoulders, he hoisted her into his arms. “Wrap your arms around my neck and hold on tight.” Turning to Piper he said, “You look like you’re pretty fast.”

“I am.”

He smiled at the pretty little girl. “Good. Let’s get out of here. We’re going to hitch a ride on a helicopter.”

Moving as fast as he could without jarring Tammy, they eventually made it past the cabin to the stream that ran adjacent to the property. The acrid smell of fresh smoke hung in the air, and he instructed them to cover their mouths with their shirts.

Joe radioed with news that he’d found a meadow a half mile up from the cabin. It was a steady slope to get from the valley to the meadow, but even pregnant, Tammy didn’t weigh much.

As they began their ascent, he checked in with the brave little girl. “How are you doing, Piper?”

“Good. I’m going fast, aren’t I?”

“You sure are, Piper. Tammy? Am I moving too fast? Am I hurting you?”

She had stopped crying and he sensed that she had turned her entire focus to making it to the clearing, to getting up in the helicopter and flying to the hospital.

“Please, just hurry,” was her reply.

He hadn’t seen blood on her clothes or the couch when he’d picked her up, and he was praying that her cramping hadn’t yet turned into a full-blown miscarriage.

He’d been too late with his own child. He had to save this one.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” he promised, hoping like hell that he was telling the truth.

He couldn’t hear the helicopter yet, though, only the sound of hot flames already feasting on outbuildings. Could he get the three of them off the hill before they were next?

And then, thank God, he heard the whir of the helicopter’s blades above them.

“Joe’s coming to get us now,” he said, and a couple of minutes later, when they crested the hill, the helicopter was already on the ground, waiting for them. Together, the two men lifted Tammy into the aircraft.

On the way to the hospital, another helicopter was heading in with a full load of water. Squeezing Tammy’s hand, he smiled and said, “If the crew works fast, the fire may not move beyond your outbuildings and they’ll be able to save your house.”

“I don’t care about my house,” she said, her voice even weaker. “All I want is a healthy baby.”

It was all he’d wanted for himself, too. “I know,” he told her. “We just need you to hold on a little longer, okay?”

Piper was holding tightly to her mother’s hand. “You’re going to be okay, Mama. And so will my baby sister.”

He swallowed hard, the ache in his chest threatening to split wide open. If things had turned out differently for him, he would have had a kid Piper’s age.

Seconds later they arrived at the hospital and Sam was incredibly glad to see that there was still no bleeding. A nurse came to wheel Tammy away, but Piper remained standing beside him.

“You saved my mom. And the baby sister I’m going to have, too.”

Her smile was a ray of sunshine and then, suddenly, her skinny arms were around his legs and her face was pressing hard into him. Just as quickly, she released him and was gone, running down the hospital hallway after her mother and the nurse.

Everything was going to be all right. Tammy and her husband would be the proud parents of a new baby girl. Piper would be a great big sister.

But still, something dark and hard squeezed his chest, the dull pain he’d never been able to crush completely.

He found Joe chain-smoking in the smoking area in the side parking lot.

“I can’t decide if what you did today was incredibly brave or mind-numbingly stupid,” Joe said. “That fire was moving fast. What if it’d run right over you before I could land and get you out?”

The truth was, in all his years as a hotshot, while Sam had been in equally dangerous situations, he’d never dealt with one so close to his heart.

And he’d never had to work so hard to keep his shit together and stay on task.

Not planning to admit a damn thing to his friend, he simply said, “I did what I had to do.”

Joe took a few quick puffs on his cigarette, then dropped it onto the cement and lit another. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t nerve-racking as all hell knowing you were out there in the middle of a firestorm.” His mouth moved into a half grin. “Would have sucked if you died on my watch.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, trying to shake off the lingering tension still weighing down his shoulders. “You would have never lived it down if you flew back to the station minus one.”

After confirming via radio that they’d caught the last of the fires, Joe flew Sam back to the Tahoe Pines station. Flying over Lake Tahoe, Sam stared down into the bright blue water and reflected on the fact that coming to Lake Tahoe had changed his whole life.

He’d been a fenced-in suburban kid with a tagalong little brother, a mom who tried too hard to act like her marriage didn’t suck, and a dad who was never around if he could help it. By the time Sam hit his teens, his mother’s veneer had finally cracked wide open and the fights began. Endless, self-obsessed screaming matches between his mother and father that he tried to block out by turning his stereo speakers up as loud as they would go.

Sam didn’t know what to do with his growing anger, his frustration, the fact that the adults clearly didn’t have any answers. So he drank. He partied. He cut class. And then he got busted for driving with a six-pack of beer.

Thank God his football coach had stepped into his father’s empty shoes and dragged his ass up into the Sierras for community service. Coach Rusmore had pretty much saved his life by showing him another way to let out his aggressions, how to consistently hit the level of adrenaline he needed to survive.

Very quickly, Sam had become a capable outdoors-man. All year long, the huge lake was cold and wild. When Sam wasn’t deep in the mountains—for work or pleasure—he was on the water. Fishing, boating, kayaking, river rafting, kiteboarding. Despite the huge surge of tourists every winter and summer, and the more unsavory aspects of the casinos, Sam still couldn’t believe he’d considered leaving Lake Tahoe behind ten years ago.