Firestorm

Chapter Eight

Mallory concentrated on packing up the medical supplies. The cavernous hangar suddenly seemed way too small, and Jac was way too close. Even in summer, the hangar was cool, and this early in the year it was downright cold. But Jac’s naked back had been warm. So very warm. Mallory glanced at her fingertips, half expecting them to be red. They still tingled from where she’d brushed them over Jac’s neck. “You should get some chow, Russo.”

“Are you heading over?” Jac asked.

“Not just yet.” Mallory knew she sounded dismissive, probably downright unfriendly, but she just needed a minute or two by herself to recalibrate, get her bearings. She hadn’t been herself all day, not since the moment she turned around and bumped into Jac. The world had angled to tilt, and she hadn’t been able to right it yet. And she really needed to—the persistent churning in her stomach was a distraction. So was the low-level buzz of arousal slightly lower down that absolutely should not be there, not when she hadn’t planned on it, not when she wasn’t prepared.

“Mallory?” Jac’s voice came from very nearby, soft, gentle, questioning. “Everything okay?”

“Of course. I’ve just got some things to do.” She did have plenty to do before the afternoon’s exercises, but that wasn’t the reason she wasn’t going to have lunch with Jac. Last year at this time she would’ve socialized with the rookies—lending moral support, giving them a few tips, answering their questions. She’d been closer to being one of them last year. Still senior, often in charge, but she hadn’t been determining their fates. At least, not consciously. Now she couldn’t afford to stop thinking about what she needed to do to keep them safe, and getting friendly with them wasn’t going to help her do that. The realities of the job had changed—every smokejumper lived with the knowledge that the work was dangerous, life-threatening, and any call might be their last. No one spoke of it, and she doubted that very many thought of it. She had never feared for her own life. She’d also never considered that she would be the one to walk out of the mountains beside stretchers bearing two jumpers she’d been responsible for. She would have sworn on everything she believed that she would die before she would let one of her fellows perish. She’d been wrong, and she would never be able to make that right. She could only see it never happened again. Jac was a distraction she couldn’t afford, and friendship was out of the question. “You go ahead, Jac. You’ll need fuel for this afternoon.”

“Okay.” A whisper of heat brushed over her shoulder, Jac touching her ever so briefly. “You ought to take your own advice.”

The caress was so butterfly light, Mallory might’ve thought she’d imagined it except for the tremor coursing through her body and settling in her bones. Resolutely, she kept her back turned as Jac’s footsteps faded away. Taking a deep breath, she settled herself. Jac derailed her balance like no one else she’d ever met, probably because Jac was so unpredictable. Challenging and cocky one minute, incredibly tender, unknowingly vulnerable the next. Jac was nothing like Mallory had expected, considering her family, her father, and her reputation. And wasn’t that exactly what Jac had been saying since the moment she’d arrived? Jac was a problem all right, but not because she was anything like the person Mallory had assumed her to be.

Mallory sighed. Expectations based on appearances were so very often wrong, and she’d fallen right into the trap. Jac was nothing like her aloof, condescending, virulently privileged father. Jac was, if anything, remarkably open considering how careful she apparently needed to be just to protect the privacy others took for granted. God, imagine having someone you’d slept with expose your intimate moments. Mallory couldn’t imagine having something so private spread across the nation in a trashy newspaper. She’d had enough trouble dealing with the media notoriety after Idaho. At first she’d been too numb to really notice the intrusion, and after a few weeks, a new story came along, and she was no longer front page. Considering that Franklin Russo was a front-runner for the presidential nomination, Jac was likely to remain in the public eye indefinitely. Was it any wonder she was so vigilant? First a lifetime of scrutiny, then a lover using her for some twisted gain.

Mallory’s hands shook as she closed the locks on the FAT box. How could Jac blame herself for that woman’s betrayal? She wished she knew who the woman was. She wasn’t prone to violence, in fact rarely ever lost her temper, but her blood burned with the desire to do something—say something—find some way to extract a measure of justice on Jac’s behalf. She laughed bitterly, and the sound echoed like bullets ricocheting against the metal roof.

Justice. Where was the justice in two men dying while she walked away? Where was the justice in Jac bearing the pain of another’s betrayal? Foolish to think justice was anyone’s due. Mallory sucked in a breath. She was getting morose, and she didn’t have time for self-indulgence. She quickly gathered the incident report, slid the sheets into a plain manila folder, and returned the FAT box to its spot on the equipment shelf. Time to bring Sully up to date on Ray’s status. Time to focus on her mission. Jac Russo could take care of herself.

“Hey, Ice,” Benny called from beneath the belly of the plane. “Some exciting morning, huh?”

Mallory slowed as he rolled out on a dolly. “I could’ve done without it.”

“I don’t know, that was a pretty slick and seamless pickup this morning.” He rose, wiping his hands on an oil-stained rag he pulled from the pocket of his coveralls. “Didn’t seem like a rookie down there with you. The kid’s pretty solid.”

The kid. Benny tended to see anyone under forty as a kid, her included until she was made ops manager. Now she seemed to have graduated into adulthood. Jac was anything but a kid—a combat veteran, a veteran of political wars from the time she was young, and bloodied on the field of personal battle as well. Too many battles. “She did okay.”

“The rest of the group looks pretty good too,” he said.

“So far.” She grinned. “Then again, it’s early days.”

He grinned back. “Looking forward to getting them up in the plane.”

“Soon enough.” She thought ahead to the first of the requisite jumps. They wouldn’t be going up in the plane right away—they’d start working on the mechanics by jumping from a stationary tower first. She was looking forward to the exercises, and if she was honest with herself, looking forward to seeing how Jac handled the course. She liked watching Jac work. And that was the last time she was going to think about that.

*

“So what’s the word on Ray?” Anderson said, sliding his brown plastic lunch tray onto the table across from Jac and settling onto the bench seat. Most of the guys had already eaten, and the mess hall was nearly empty.

“He’s doing better.” Jac brushed cornbread crumbs off her fingers and scraped the bottom of her bowl with her spoon. “Man, this is good chili.”

“It’s a good thing Ice is working us so hard,” Anderson said, dipping cornbread into his chili. “If I show up at home at the end of the season ten pounds heavier, my wife will never believe I spent the summer working.”

“Somehow I get the feeling we’ll be burning it off pretty quick.” Jac buttered another piece of cornbread. “Word is we’re gonna jump soon.”

Anderson brightened. “Yeah? Excellent.”

Hooker thumped his tray down on Anderson’s left and dropped onto the seat. His tight green T-shirt accentuated his muscled chest, and a day’s growth of stubble added to his roughneck image. “Not a great way to start boot camp. Can’t say I’m exactly surprised, though. I had my doubts when I heard who was running the show up here.”

Jac chewed carefully and swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“A bad injury on the first day? Doesn’t say much for the training manager.”

“Accidents happen.” Jac didn’t figure Mallory needed anyone defending her, but she wanted to all the same. Hooker was opinionated and abrasive, although on the surface he wasn’t all that different from a lot of guys. Most of the time, once all the posturing and jockeying for position was out of the way, everybody got along. Something about Hooker put her on edge, though. He wasn’t just griping about authority, he had a target. And the target was Mallory. “I don’t see how Ray falling could be put on anyone. Just bad luck.”

“The training manager’s responsible for laying out the trails. She ought to have known if one wasn’t safe. We should have been told.” Hooker slurped beans from his spoon and tore off a hunk of bread, waving it for emphasis. “She doesn’t have a great track record. I’m surprised they moved her up after she fucked up last year.”

Jac stiffened. Hooker had just crossed the line. “Look—”

“Nobody can predict a blowup,” Anderson said mildly, disproving his own words by metaphorically getting between Jac and Hooker. He held Jac’s gaze across the table, his steady gaze saying Take it easy. Not the time or place. She nodded slightly, acknowledging his support.

“Hey, I’m just saying,” Hooker said gruffly, “spotters are supposed to pick safety zones that are safe. Those guys who died never made it to the safe zone James picked out.”

“The fronts can shift out there in seconds,” Jac said, fighting down the urge to leap over the table and strangle the asshole. “Especially on the slopes.”

Hooker stared at her, and his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Got a hard-on for the ops manager, Russo?”

Jac slowly sucked in a breath. She’d been baited by the best, and personal insults rarely disturbed her. But this wasn’t about her. He was taking shots at Mallory. “Getting a little personal, aren’t you, Hooker?”

“Hey, I’m just saying. I don’t care if you’re looking for a little extra something after hours. She’s got a great ass. I wouldn’t mind having a piece of that myself, but out in the field—”

Jac’s vision narrowed, and her ears filled with the rushing sound of a freight train barreling down in the dark. She pushed the bench back and stood, gripping her tray so hard her knuckles ached. “I’m going to suggest you not go there again,” Jac said softly. “If you do, I’m going to shove the words back down your throat.”

Hooker laughed as she walked away. Asshole. She’d lived mostly with men the year she was overseas. Crude talk, endless discussions of female body parts, graphic tales of sex and more sex, none of that bothered her. When there was nothing around you but sand and death, not much penetrated the numbness except your connection to your buddies and sex. You looked after your buddies and you shared sex stories. The guys didn’t treat her any differently than they did each other. She didn’t pretend she didn’t like women, she just never gave details about anything. If the guys included her in their banter and their bravado, she never objected. But Hooker—that was different. He’d singled out Mallory, and he’d suggested he wouldn’t mind putting his hands on her. The idea of him anywhere near Mallory sent blades slashing through her insides. She wanted to kill him.

Jac kept walking even though every fiber in her wanted to turn around and confront him. She’d started out on the wrong foot with Mallory and then compounded it by deviating from safe procedure, climbing down that ravine without backup or safety gear. Homicide was probably not a good idea as a follow-up. She dumped her food into the receptacle and piled her tray on top of the stack nearby. Stepping outside into the brisk spring afternoon, she tried to clear her head. She had time to get in a workout, and she needed it. Between lingering sexual frustration and the simmering urge to crack Hooker’s skull, she felt like a short fuse burning too fast. She needed to get some calm going before she showed up for the afternoon session. Mallory would be watching her, and she wanted to be ready.