White Heat (5 page)

Her passenger let out a choked sound that might have been a laugh, which had her risking a glance at him. “People who volunteer don’t show up all the time,” she said. “Why did you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He was right, it didn’t, not at the moment. All that mattered was that he’d come, experience and all, to help get this wildfire under control. She knew he would do his best or die trying, because whether she liked him or not, he’d once been a hotshot. Helping others was ingrained.

Or so she hoped.

A hot wind was a constant now, and the thick ash and smoke combined to block out the sun but trapped the heat. Her chest tightened uncomfortably. The situation seemed far more desperate than she had imagined.

She eyed the way the scorching wind fueled the flames. “I guess the weather is pretty crucial here. You have one of those fancy little weather kits on you?”

No response from the firefighter, so she dared another quick peek. Ah, hell, he didn’t look so good again.

Well, he could get sick all he wanted now, this wasn’t her Jeep. It was no less than Tom deserved for sticking her here with him alone.

But in that moment, she lost a good amount of her confidence in him, and in their combined ability to be any help at all.

L
yndie navigated the narrow rutted driveway that wound past the charred ranch house and barn, around the base of a low hill. She knew from Tom that no one had died here last night when the house had gone down, but it was a devastating loss for the family.

She made the last turn and stopped the Jeep in a natural clearing where they had a clear view down to San Puebla. They had a long afternoon and evening ahead of them, keeping the flames from making this last leap down the hill to town.

There were a handful of guys sprawled out on the ground in an already burned-out area. A few appeared to be napping, some just sitting quietly or eating army rations, all with dirty faces and clothing, looking hot and exhausted.

Lyndie turned off the Jeep and got out. “Let’s go, Ace.”

Griffin didn’t move.

She bent down and retied her boots, but when she straightened, squinting in the gusty, hot wind, her skin tight and feeling sunburned from the heat of the flames, Griffin still sat in the Jeep. “It’s going to be hard to work from there,” she said.

With a face that might as well have been carved from granite, he got out of the Jeep. Head tipped back, he studied the sky, or what there was to see of it. Then he turned into the wind, his T-shirt plastered to his chest. “Weather sucks.”

“It’s what we’ve got.”

He looked at her, still pale. “It’s extremely dangerous.”

“I imagine it is.” Something was going on here, something she didn’t quite get—other than that he didn’t want to do this. She got that part loud and clear.

But why? “Look, you seem…sick. Maybe I should radio Tom—”

“No.” Reaching into his pack, he pulled out a Nomex firefighter’s shirt. It was yellow and long-sleeved, and he shrugged into it, covering up what she had to admit was a drool-inducing chest and strong shoulders. He buttoned up, and when she lifted her gaze up to his, his was lit with the knowledge that she’d been looking him over. Unashamed, she lifted her chin, but instead of saying a word, he simply started walking toward the men, two of whom she recognized.

Jose ran a horse ranch on the other side of San Puebla with his family, and Hector worked at the farmers’ market in town. They introduced her to the others, all of whom worked in or around Copper Canyon and did indeed have some limited fire experience.

She spoke in Spanish, in which she was fluent, introducing them to Griffin. That they were ecstatic over his help didn’t need translation.

“There’s no real leader here,” she explained to Griffin after she got the terrifying scoop. “Jose says that as a result, there’s been little progress in containing it. It’s got three ranches in its grip right now, and the hill behind us. If it goes north, it claims the peaks, and he says they’ll never catch it. If it goes south, it makes its way right through the town. At the moment it’s poised to do both.”

Griffin didn’t respond to her words, he just stood there, shoulders tense, hands fisted at his side, staring into the fire. The scorching heat and gagging smoke were insufferable; the sound of the flames licking at the vegetation fairly petrifying. “Griffin?”

There were beads of sweat on his forehead, and he was breathing shallowly, and her annoyance at him became something else entirely, and the most unsettling urgency to touch him again nearly overcame her. “Hey.” She put her hand on his arm. “You okay?”

He jerked his head toward her, and the stark pain in his eyes grabbed her by the throat. “Griffin?” She kept her hand on his arm, not positive he wasn’t going to keel over on her right where he stood. Medically, that wouldn’t be a problem—she was trained in the basics, but this wasn’t about the basics. This guy had a problem, and she didn’t know what it was.

There’d been little softness in her life, and therefore, little coddling. She didn’t need or miss it, but neither did she know how to give it. And yet she had to try to help him, it was that simple. Maybe it was the utter desolation in his stance, or the way he stood there rigid as stone, but she lifted her other hand to him as well, holding both his arms.

The men around them shifted uneasily.
“Que pasa?”

She had no idea what was the matter, but she smiled over her shoulder at them. It’d been a long day, she told them. A rough flight.

As she said this, Griffin backed away from her, then…turned and walked away.

After sending the men an apologetic smile, she followed Griffin in silence back to the Jeep—the growth crunching beneath their feet, the heat of the fire beating at their backs—and when he got in the passenger seat, she stared at him in disbelief.

Griffin felt the stare but he didn’t return it, he couldn’t. Not with the nightmare rolling in his head, showing him in vivid Technicolor the last time he’d stood before a fire. Over and over again he’d replayed the scene, always in slow motion, of course, so as not to miss one agonized second of all that he’d lost.

God, once upon a time he’d loved this life, he’d thrived on it; the rush to get the fire under control, working as a team against the awesome force of Mother Nature.

Now all he could hear were the screams. Smell the burning flesh. Suffer the heat blasting him, scorching him.

He remembered watching Greg go down, remembered hearing the helicopter coming, knowing it was useless…

A moment ago, he’d stood with Lyndie and the others, all looking at him, waiting for him to take charge, and he…couldn’t. His heart had been pumping—was still pumping—so fast and hard it was a miracle it didn’t burst right out of his chest, and though he was sweating through his clothes, he shivered.

He heard Lyndie say his name as she got behind the wheel of the Jeep but he shook his head harshly. It’d been inhumanly hot that day, too, the winds vicious, with gusts over fifty mph. Humidity at twenty percent, dropping suddenly to less than ten.

No doubt, the weather had destroyed them—combined, of course, with miscalculation and human error, and there’d been plenty of that.

As a result, twelve people had died, twelve people he’d loved dearly. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to forget, but he did know one thing. He shouldn’t have come here, should never have allowed Brody to get him into this, into letting people depend on him.

He couldn’t be depended on, not ever again.

Next to him, Lyndie still watched him with those luminous drown-in-me eyes. “Well, hell,” she finally said, and shoved the Jeep into reverse to turn around in the clearing. She got them halfway back down the flaming road before she spoke. “You going to be sick?”

“No.”

“Sure? Because I can stop.” She sent him a quick glance of concern.

She felt sorry for him.

Jesus, he really had to get it together. But thinking it and doing it were apparently two different things. He started with breathing, counting each and every inhale and exhale.
One. Two
—

“You’re okay?”

“Do I look okay?”

“Actually, you look like death warmed over.”

Three.
It was ironic, really. All his adult life he’d been with quiet, unassuming women. And yet here he was, inexplicably attracted to this brass, blunt, upfront one who probably wouldn’t recognize quiet and unassuming if it bit her on the ass.

A shame he’d given up women for now. He was simply too screwed up for anything but solitude.
Four. Five…

The ride back felt every bit as bone-jarring as it had been coming, and his teeth rattled in his head. Maybe it rattled his thoughts, too, because though he’d fallen apart back there, suddenly leaving seemed wrong. “Pull over.”

“Right.” She kept going.

“Pull over.”

She risked another glance at him, then slammed on her brakes right in the middle of the narrow, pitted road, as pulling over wasn’t really an option unless they wanted to either barbeque themselves or fall off the cliff.

Instead of stopping, they slid for a heart-stopping moment.

Six. Seven…

The Jeep rocked to a stop.

“Go back,” he said into the silence.

She slowly shook her head. “No can do. I have to take you home and find someone else. You obviously have some serious shit to deal with. On your own time.”

Message clear. She was going to come back here. She’d been flying all day, but she was going to repeat it all in order to see this through. Her dedication was humiliating and shaming, and just the kick in the ass he needed. “Go back,” he said again.

Again, she just looked at him as if he was crazy, and in truth, he was. He wasn’t going to reach her with words, he didn’t deserve to. But he wasn’t going back home. Just as she had in her plane, he reached out and put a hand on her knee. “Do it, or I’ll walk back to that fire.”

She stared down at his hand on her, then looked into his face.

“I’m doing this,” he said softly.

The wind rippled, the ash continued to rain over them. The eerie silence except for the ominous crackling of the fire made him feel like he was starring in a bad horror flick. He squeezed gently on her leg, feeling the strength quivering within her. “Please, Lyndie.”

She let out a sigh, and rolled her eyes. “Fine, if you want to make a fool out of yourself.
Again.
” She knocked his hand off her knee, then shoved the Jeep into reverse, and with a startling skill and ease, hit the gas, driving
backward
up the curving, narrow dirt road until she came to a spot in the road where she could turn around without toasting them. She did this so fast his head spun as he ate their dust.

Grimly, she worked the stick into first gear and took off again, heading forward now, getting them to the clearing in the same heart-stopping manner she flew her plane. For a minute she sat there, short fiery hair blowing about her like a halo, eyes flashing with determination and more grit than he’d seen in a good long time. She was strong and brave, and amazing.

Griffin would have liked to match her determination and grit, pound for pound, to be as brave and strong as she. Even sweating, shaking just a little, heart still racing, he wanted that.

But he’d left all his courage and strength on a different mountain, in a different country entirely. He’d left his heart there, too.

She turned off the engine. “Before we try again, you want to tell me what’s going on?”

No. No, he didn’t. He didn’t want to tell her he’d lost everything, that he didn’t know how to get it back, or if he even wanted to. “I’m fine.”

“Uh huh.”

“I am.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her green, green eyes revealing nothing but her impatience to do this. “Play it however you have to, Ace.” She leaned in close enough that he could smell her, some complicated combination of plain soap and one hundred percent woman. “Just play it. You hear me?”

Up close and personal, he could see her eyes weren’t just green, but a deep jade, and so clear and fathomless he could have dived into them. Her bangs were just a little too long, and impatiently she pushed them out of her way just before she stabbed him hard in the chest with her finger, reminding him that while she might have been something to look at, while she might have unbelievable passion and strength, she was also rough and gruff and pushing him in a way he didn’t want to be pushed.

“Whatever’s going on,” she said, “Deal with it on your own time.
Vamanos.
”

Let’s go.
Grabbing the finger digging into his pec, he pulled her hand down but didn’t let it go. Like it or not, she happened to be his only lifeline out here. There’d been a time when he hadn’t needed one, but apparently those times were a thing of the past. She was a reluctant lifeline, but a lifeline just the same, and he held on tight.
“Vamanos,”
he repeated softly.

In a move that shocked him, she turned her palm in his so that suddenly they were holding hands. Gently she squeezed, maintaining an eye contact he couldn’t tear away from. “Can you really do this?”

In his life, until a year ago anyway, he’d always been the one with all the strength. People looked to him, people leaned on him.

Or they had.

It should have been humiliating, at the very least humbling, to need someone to lean on now, but somehow being humiliated and humbled were the least of his concerns.

Getting through this, getting them all through it, was apparently so deeply ingrained he couldn’t ignore it. He looked over his shoulder at the group of men, all of whom had come to a stand when they’d driven back into the clearing. He saw their willingness to do whatever it took. Even as he stood there, the clinging, choking smoke moved in, cloaking the beautiful scenery that they were losing with every passing second. “I can do this,” he said.

Please, God, let him be able to do this.

“Then get out of the Jeep.” Tugging her hand free, she got out and slammed the door. She gave him one last long look so completely void of any of the brief softness he’d just witnessed, he figured he’d only imagined it.

Then, turning forward, she walked her sweet ass right into the fray.

The air was laced with the burning heat of the flames, with the putrid smoke, tasting thick and acrid in his mouth, stinging his eyes. Just like old times.

Wanting to curse his brother, wanting to curse Lyndie, wanting to curse every damn thing, Griffin got out, too. He reached into the back of the Jeep for his gear, and then with one deep breath full of smoke and remembered horrors, he followed her, right into hell.