Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) (30 page)

Liza frowned.

“They are
way
too easy to fall for.” She grinned and cast a look at CJ.

Oh boy.

The room emptied, and Conner pulled up a chair, settled into it.

“How’s Esther?” Liza asked, reaching out for his hand.

“She had surgery on her foot. I think they were able to set it, but I’m sure she’ll have a long haul. I saw Shep, though. They brought him to see her.”

“Oh, I’m sure Dr. and Mrs. Billings loved that.”

“I dodged them. But Esther’s mother made it to the hospital. I saw her in the lobby on the way in—she said to tell you thank you.”

“For what—believing that a girl like Esther can’t land the hottest, cutest boy in the school?”

“Yeah, that was pretty silly.” He shook his head. “No, I think it was for saving her daughter’s life.” He raised an eyebrow.

Right. That.

As for the other... “Now that you’re not going to jail—”

“You already said yes. It’s a done deal. You promised, Donut Girl. Marriage. You and me, living in the trailer.” Her mouth opened, and he laughed. “We’ll negotiate.”

She touched his hair, curly, tousled, grimy. “You need a shower.”

“After you go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to close my eyes.”

He leaned over, caught her gaze and ran his finger down her cheek ever so gently. Then he pressed a kiss to her lips, lingering before he finally pulled away, a gleam in his eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll wake you up in time to watch the sun rise.”

Thank you so much for reading
Playing with Fire.
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And if you’re interested in more Summer of Fire, check out the final book in the trilogy
: Burnin’ for You
, where pilot Gilly Priest and tough-guy Reuben Marshall have to outwit a killer to save their team!

Thank you again for reading!

Susie May

If they started running now, they just might make the lake before the fire consumed them.

That’s what Reuben Marshall’s gut told him when the wind shifted and rustled the seared hairs on the back of Reuben’s neck, strained and tight from three days of cutting line through a stand of black spruce as thick as night.

After a week, the fire in the Kootenai National Forest had consumed nearly twelve hundred acres, and, as of breakfast this morning, his team of smokejumpers, as well as hotshot and wildland firefighter teams from all over Montana and Idaho, had only nicked it down to sixty percent contained.

Now, the fire turned from a low crackle to a growl behind him, hungry for the forest on the other side of the twenty-foot line that his crew—Pete, CJ, and Hannah—had scratched out of the forest, widening an already-cleared service road. CJ and Hannah were swamping for him as Reuben mowed down trees, clearing brush. Between the two of them, they worked like an entire crew, still proving themselves. Pete worked cleanup, digging the line down to the mineral soil.

Reuben’s eyes watered, his throat charred from eating fire as he angled his saw into a towering spruce—one more tree felled and it would keep the fire from jumping the line or candling from treetop to treetop.

Chips hit his safety glasses, pinged against his yellow Nomex shirt, his canvas pants. His shoulders burned, his arms liquid.

In another hour they’d hook up with the other half of their crew—Jed, Conner, Ned, Tucker, and Kate—dragging a line along the lip of forest road that served as their burnout line. They’d light a fire of their own, consume all the fuel between the line and the active fire, and drive the blaze to Fountain Lake.

The dragon would lie down and die.

At least that seemed the ambitious-but-attainable plan that his crew boss, Jed, had outlined this morning over a breakfast of MRE eggs and protein bars. While listening, Reuben had opened three instant coffee packs into one cup of water and drank the sledge down in one gulp.

Still, deep in his gut, Reuben had expected trouble when the wind kicked up quietly, early this morning, rousing the team. They’d been tucked into their coyote camp—a pocket of pre-burned space—their safety zone on the bottom of the canyon near a trickle of river. Already blackened, the zone shouldn’t reignite, but it left an ashy debris on Reuben, the soot probably turning his dark brown hair to gray under his orange hardhat. His entire team all resembled extras on
The Walking Dead
.

He felt like it—the walking dead, his bones now one constant vibration, fatigue a lining under his skin. Ash, sawdust, and the fibers of the forest coated his lips despite his efforts to keep his handkerchief over his mouth.

They’d worked in the furnace all day, the flame lengths twenty to thirty feet behind them, climbing up aspen and white pine, settling down into the crackling loam of the forest, consuming bushes in a flare of heat. But with the bombers overhead dropping slurry, the fire sizzled and roared, dying slowly.

He’d watched a few of them—the Russian biplane AN2, which scooped water from the lake in its belly, and the Airtractor AT, dropping red slurry from its white belly.

Way overhead, the C-130, a loaner from the National Guard, circled for another pass,

Reuben wondered which one Gilly piloted—a random thought that he shoved away. It did him no good to let his thoughts anchor upon a woman he could barely manage to speak to.

Not that he had any chance with her anyway.

Keep his head down, keep working—wasn’t that what his father always said?

Indeed, they all had expected the Fountain Lake fire to fizzle out with their efforts.

Until the wind shifted. Again.

And that’s when the fine hairs on Reuben’s neck stood on end, his gut began to roil.

He finished the cut, released his blade from the trunk of the tree.

“Clear!” He hollered, then stepped back as the massive tree lurched, crashed into the blazing forest.

The fire roared, a locomotive heading their direction.

It seemed Pete, twenty feet behind hadn’t yet alerted to the shift. Reuben couldn’t account for why his gut always seemed to clench as a second sense when he scented danger. The last time he’d felt it, he’d known in his bones that teammates were going to die.

And they had.

Not again.

Reuben did a quick calculation. They’d completed about twenty-four chain lengths in the last six hours, about a quarter mile from the safety zone. They could run back to their strike camp in the burned-out section—a theoretical safe zone.

However, he’d known forest to reignite, especially the loam that had been flashed over quickly and hadn’t been scorched down to the soil. Plenty of fuel left, if the fire got serious. And air was lethal, too, searing hot in their lungs as it cycloned around the safety zone.

If they turned and ran another hundred yards along the uncleared forest service road, they’d be over halfway to the lake, less than a half mile away. But they’d be running into unburned forest with nowhere to hunker down into safety if the fire overtook them.

Reuben listened for, but couldn’t hear the other team’s saws.

Through the charred trees, the sun backdropped the hazy gray of the late afternoon, a thin, blood-red line along the far horizon.

Jed’s voice crackled over the radio. “Ransom, Brooks. We’re battling some flare-ups here, and the fire just kicked up. Sit-rep on your position?”

Reuben watched Pete toggle his radio, standing up to gauge the wind.

“Must be the lake effect. She’s still sitting down here,” Pete said.

Reuben frowned, nearly reaching for his radio. But despite his instincts, Pete was right. Except for a few flare-ups, the fire
behind
them seemed to be slow moving.

Maybe—

“Right,” Jed said, confirming Pete’s unspoken conclusion that they were safe. “Just don’t turn into heroes. Remember your escape route. To the fire, you’re just more fuel. We’re going to start bugging out to the lake.”

Which probably was what they should be doing.

As if reading his mind, Pete glanced up at Reuben. For a second, memory played in Pete’s eyes.

Only he, Pete, and Conner had survived being overrun last fall in a blaze that had killed seven of their team, including their jump boss, Jock Burns.

That had been a case of confusion, conflicting orders, and hotshots and smokejumpers running out of time. Fingers had been pointed, blame assigned.

The what-ifs still simmered in low conversations through their small town of Ember, Montana. Thankfully, this summer had been—well, mostly—injury free.

Reuben wanted to keep it that way. Except if their safety zone was not quite burned to the ground, it could reignite around them, trap them.

If they left now they could probably make the lake. But what if the fire jumped the road, caught them in the middle of a flare-up?

Reuben’s low-muttered suggestion could end up getting them all killed. And if he were wrong, God wouldn’t exactly show up to rescue them.

Reuben couldn’t help, however, shooting a look back at Hannah and CJ still working and unaware of the radio communication.

Embers lifted, spurted out of the forest, across the line, sparking spot fires near the edge of the road. Reuben ran over, stomped one out, threw water from his pack on another.

Pete joined him. “We’ll head back to the black.”

Reuben glanced up, back along the route. Clear, for now.

“Roger,” Reuben said.

Pete yelled to CJ and Hannah as Reuben shouldered his saw, started jogging back along the road to their safety zone. The air swam with billowing dust and smoke. His eyes watered, his nose thick with mucus.

“
Why is being a smokejumper so important to you?
”
The words, his brother’s disbelief after his father’s funeral, smarted in his brain,.

Why indeed? He coughed as he ran, a blast of superheated air sideswiping him, peeling a layer of sweat down his face. Sane people had normal jobs—like ranching or even coaching football. They didn’t bed down in ash, drink coffee as thick as battery acid, smell like gas and oil and soot, and run
toward
a fire, hoping to find refuge.

If Reuben lived through this, he’d take a serious look at the answer.

Behind him, he heard Pete yelling at CJ and Hannah. “We’re not on a scenic hike! Move it!”

Around them, sparks lit the air, the roar of the fire rumbling in the distance.

They should be running the other direction.
The thought had claws around his throat.

As if in confirmation, a coal-black cloud rolled down the road, directly from their safety zone, a billow of heat and gas.

Reuben stopped cold.

Jed’s voice burst through the radio, choppy, as if he might be running hard. “Pete. The fire’s jumped the road. Head to the black
right now.
”

Except their safety zone was engulfed in smoke, embers, and enough trapped poisonous gasses to suffocate them.

Reuben whirled around, and Hannah nearly ran him over. He caught her arm. “Not that way!”

Pete had run back to him. He still held his Pulaski, his face blackened behind his handkerchief, eyes wide, breathing too hard. “We’re trapped.”