Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) (42 page)

“R
eady?”

“Almost.” In response to her father’s cue, Aubrey lowered herself to the ground in front of the injured firefighter.

The man, a burly ten-year veteran who looked strong enough to bench-press a tree trunk, lay in one of two cots set up in the medical tent. He’d been brought in about an hour earlier with a dislocated pinky. The affected finger stuck out from his hand at a ninety-degree angle and probably hurt like the dickens—or had hurt until the Novocain her father administered took effect a few minutes ago.

“You hanging in there?” Aubrey asked. Draping an arm over the upper half of his body, she leaned close.

“I think so.” The man grinned and the dirt caking his face cracked in several places. “Could be worse. You’re a lot prettier than the last medic who patched me up.”

He smelled of smoke and sweat, though it was hardly noticeable over the acrid odor of burning wilderness. The smoke was inescapable, even at a distance of two miles from the fire. It permeated the air, causing Aubrey’s eyes to sting and her lungs to burn.

Blinking back tears, she unbuttoned the man’s yellow fire-retardant shirt in order to ease his breathing. Earlier she’d removed his hard hat, setting it on the ground next to his equipment pack.

“Should I bite down on a stick or something?” the man asked.

Aubrey returned his grin. “Only if you want to.”

“You think I’m kidding, don’t you?” His laugh deteriorated into a hacking cough.

Since their arrival sometime around nine, she and her father had worked nonstop. When Aubrey last checked her watch, it was almost four. Lunch, consisting of a protein drink, was gulped down between two bee-sting victims and a severe case of friction blisters.

Some of the firefighters, like the one suffering dehydration, had received rudimentary first aid from a medic on the line before being transported to their medical tent, a short fifteen-minute drive from the blaze. The more seriously afflicted firefighters, and Aubrey understood from snatches of various conversations she overheard there’d been a few, were flown directly to the hospital in Pineville or, if need be, as far as Phoenix.

The noise was relentless. People shouting, trucks roaring, the wind whistling and aircraft buzzing.

She’d witnessed the helicopters, zipping back and forth like giant insects, pouring water on the fire, airlifting firefighters to and from the fire, and transporting cargo. Planes—tankers she’d been told—also flew overhead, dropping brightly colored fire retardant from compartments in their bellies and missing the helicopters by mere inches.

The fire had started three days ago, the result of a lightning strike. While it had claimed nearly a thousand acres of land, lives and property were thus far spared. Talk among the firefighters was that could change—and possibly soon would—if the Smokejumpers, Hotshots, Helitack and Engine crews weren’t able to stop the blaze from heading into Blue Ridge. The Hotshots and other ground crews were on a race against the clock, attempting to cut a line around the perimeter of the fire that, God willing, would hold and save the town.

Wind, the same one that had caused the fire to change course during the night, presented the greatest danger. It had picked up speed, with gusts reaching forty-five miles per hour. Sparks and flying debris were starting new fires so fast, the firefighters weren’t able keep pace. Aubrey didn’t understand all the terms and jargon being bantered about, but she picked up enough to ascertain the people in charge were worried.

That worry was contagious.

Every second Aubrey’s mind wasn’t focused on a patient, she was thinking of Gage and praying for his well-being. She would have liked to check in with her mother, but her cell phone didn’t work, not that she’d found a spare second to place a call.

Her father rose to a half-standing position, braced their patient’s hand in his lap and, using his weight, popped the pinky back into its socket.

“Is it over?” The man looked questioningly at Aubrey, who’d positioned herself to block his view of the procedure. Sweat beaded his upper lip, more likely the result of nervousness than pain.

“Not quite.” She patted his shoulder and stood. “But the hard part’s over. You just take it easy while I get you some ibuprofen.”

No sooner did she turn than the wind blew so hard, the nylon tent rattled and shook, the entry flaps snapping like flags mounted to a parade vehicle. The gust didn’t let up and continued to pummel the tent with blasts of hot, stale air.

Icy chills danced up Aubrey’s spine. An overwhelming sense of dread accompanied the chill, and Aubrey shivered.

Gage!

She couldn’t explain how she knew, but something was wrong. Terribly, frighteningly, wrong. Her feet cemented to the ground, she went from shivering to shaking. The background noise grew in volume, becoming unbearable. She covered her ears, remembering the night her Uncle Jesse and Aunt Maureen were brought into the E.R.

“Aubrey, sweetheart. Are you okay?” Her father came up behind her.

“Dad...” She let him hold her, but it didn’t quell her shaking.

“Hey,” the injured man called from the cot. “What’s going on?”

At that moment, the tent flaps were shoved aside and a grim-faced firefighter entered. “Wanted to give you folks a heads-up. We just received an alert from command post. There’s a dry cold front moving in. Could mean trouble of the big variety. Prepare for incoming, just in case.” As quickly as he arrived, he left.

“Incoming?” Aubrey asked. “Like in injuries and casualties?”

“Yeah,” her father answered, as serious as the firefighter had been. “We’d better hop to it.”

Aubrey’s last thoughts before sprinting into action were of Gage and how she wished their last words hadn’t been angry ones.

* * *

“This isn’t the place I would’ve picked to make a stand.” Gage straightened, ignored the arrows of pain shooting up both sides of his back, and stabbed the axe end of his Pulaski into the ground.

“Yeah, well, sometimes we don’t get to pick.” Marty reattached his radio to the front of his jacket. “The fire does it for us.”

The Hotshots had been hard at it, cutting a fire line since sunup. On the hill opposite them, across a narrow ravine, flames devoured everything in their path, impervious to the war being waged against them. Starved for water after a dry summer, the brittle vegetation supplied the perfect fuel.

Low-flying tankers dropped retardant, covering the untouched landscape with a blanket of red chemical powder. While bulldozers toppled trees and brush, lumberjacks wielded chainsaws, providing a solid second line of defense. Ground crews, Gage’s among them, provided the first—a backfire they’d set hours earlier in the hopes of halting the fire by forcing a convection column.

If their cumulative efforts failed, the results could prove to be the most disastrous wild land fire in the state’s history.

Command post had just called, warning them of the approaching cold front and accompanying high winds. Of all the news they could have received, it was without a doubt the worst. Gage’s bones, already weary well past the point of exhaustion, tingled with a sense of foreboding.

For ten straight hours, he and his crew had been pounding the ground, with only periodic ten-minute breaks—and that was just today. Yesterday, they were at it for fourteen straight hours. The day before was a blur, beginning around 11:00 p.m. when he left Aubrey standing on the porch of her grandmother’s house and ending some twenty-four hours later when he and his crew lay down to sleep in the dirt of the fire line they’d just dug.

Six hours later, they were up and at it again, cutting trees, scraping earth and burning safety zones. Somewhere or other, there’d been a second short snooze, Gage couldn’t remember when.

The fire had started out small. Didn’t they all? And until this morning they’d foolishly believed it would be quickly contained.

They were wrong.

By midmorning, what had been a gentle breeze progressed into a strong wind. That was when all hell started to break loose. The cold front, however, would make the wind look like a sneeze in comparison.

The firefighters, over a hundred in all counting three Hotshots squads, Smokejumpers, one Navajo crew and one inmate crew, had been ordered to take a stand. A different location, one less susceptible, would have been preferred. Time and the weather denied them the luxury of choosing.

They either stopped the fire at this steep, rocky slope or the flames would roar right over them, pushed by the relentless wind. The first privately owned land the fire would reach belonged to Gage’s family. The town of Blue Ridge lay eight miles beyond that.

He hoped to hell his father and Hannah had moved the herds to the west pasture. The cows would move themselves when confronted with a fire and likely scatter. They could get stuck in a gully or run into a fence. Either situation spelled the end to both their lives and the Raintree finances.

Had Aubrey left for Tucson yet? Gage wondered. Was it even today she was supposed to leave? He’d lost track of the date, measuring the passage of time by the Hotshots’ progress, not hours or minutes.

God, he was tired

“Call the crew together.” Marty’s order shattered Gage’s momentary lapse of concentration.

The Blue Ridge Hotshots took a short reprieve from their labors to discuss strategy and determine the fastest escape route to their safety zone. Should there be a blowup, a very real possibility with the wind acting like the inside of a blender on high speed, Gage wanted every one of them to make it out in one piece.

Their weariness forgotten, the crew returned to work with renewed gusto. Arms resembling the pistons of a finely tuned machine, axes, shovels, and Pulaskis hit the ground in rapid fire succession. Foot by foot, they cut a line, trying their damnedest to reach the Navajo crew on the lower end of the slope and close the gap before the fire crossed the ravine.

Sweat dripped from every pore, soaking their grimeencrusted clothing. What were, in reality, forty-pound equipment packs felt as if they weighed a hundred and forty. Smoke, thick and foul, breeched their protective equipment, seeping into their lungs. Breathing became sheer agony.

Still, the Hotshots kept digging. Nothing would stop them, not when the enemy continued to advance.

So much was at risk—so much depended on them—and the Hotshots took the responsibility personally. Gage more than the others. This wasn’t just any town, any people. Blue Ridge was his home, the lives in jeopardy those of his friends and family.

All at once, the Navajo crew members were practically beside them. Positioned at the end of the Blue Ridge line, Gage signaled with a raised hand. The Navajo crew member nearest to him pointed. Gage looked up, and his superheated blood instantly froze.

The fire had vaulted across the narrow ravine, propelled by the strong, oxygen-rich wind. Before his eyes, the fire caught and grew to an amazing size. Like a giant emerging from the entrance to hell, it funneled up the hill toward them. In its wake lay a wide path of burning trees and brush.

Gage hollered a warning to his crew, who simultaneously raised their heads. Until that moment, they’d had their noses to the grindstone, focused exclusively on digging the line. Several of the men shielded their faces with their forearms and stepped back. One crossed himself.

Suddenly, the fire exploded into a tower of flames a hundred feet tall. Bits of fiery debris rained down, igniting small fires every place they landed. If the Hotshots didn’t get the hell out of there, they’d be dead.

“Run!” Gage shouted. He didn’t have to give the order twice.

Breaking formation, his crew dropped their tools and scrambled up the slope toward the safety zone on top. The Navajo crew had the same idea and were one step ahead of the Blue Ridge Hotshots.

Gage knew he should follow. There was nothing in his training or his past experiences that didn’t scream at him to run for his life. But ten feet of ground remained open. It could be insignificant—it could also be the gate through which the fire passed.

Remote as that possibility was, he couldn’t take the chance.

His Pulaski slammed into the ground again and again until his chest ached and his arms trembled. He didn’t realize for some seconds he had company. Marty worked beside him.

“You’re an idiot,” Gage screamed at him.

“Takes one to know one.”

Another minute flew by. They closed the gap to five feet. Two. Then it happened. An invisible wave of heat blasted them, throwing them backward. Gage glanced up and stared into a mammoth wall of fire—what some called the mouth of the dragon.

“Shit!”

His knees buckled, his insides clenched. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d been scared plenty during his career as a firefighter. All those times rolled into one didn’t match the terror gripping him now.

Twisting sideways, he shoved Marty. Hard. “Move!”

They sprinted up the slope, the fire chasing them. Flames blistered their backsides, licked their clothing. Whether they dropped their equipment packs or the fire burned through the straps, Gage wasn’t sure. The lack of extra weight proved a blessing.

“Go, go, go!”

Fingers clawing at any available handhold, feet grappling for traction, they half ran, half crawled. And still, the fire kept coming. Fast. So fast. Through watery eyes, Gage saw the top of the slope where his crew waited. He and Marty were almost there. Incredibly, they’d gained a few yards on the fire.

Then, without warning, the earth beneath them collapsed. Marty stumbled and bowled into Gage, knocking his legs out from under him. Gage pitched forward and landed on his face. He began to slide. Whatever air his lungs held whooshed out. Dirt filled his mouth. His vision blurred. Dimmed. Pain seized his limbs, immobilizing them.

He lay there, unable to do more than breathe the dragon’s poisonous fumes, absorb its searing heat.

Aubrey’s face appeared before him, first in a younger incarnation, then as she looked today.

Gage grunted. He wasn’t ready to die, not by a long shot. But unlike the movies, the revelation didn’t miraculously empower him with the strength to rise and stagger that last little bit to safety.