Chapter 5 #2
She laughed good and hard over that. “A few minutes ago you were ready to throw up on your boots, Ace, so don’t talk about who’s in charge here. You want to see the perimeters? Great, let’s go. I’d fly you, but as we discovered on the way in here, we’d have no visibility anyway. So…lead the way.”
He stared her down for a long moment, but when she didn’t budge, he shrugged, then donned his pack. “Have Sergio radio us when Tom gets here with the tractor and latest weather report.”
“Fine.” She translated the request, then followed him.
It was rough going. They didn’t waste energy talking, but kept to the perimeter of the fire, climbing upward as they went. With the sun blocked, the day looked like dusk, adding even more spookiness to it.
In excellent shape, she shouldn’t have had a problem, but she was in tennis shoes, not boots, and the smoke was getting to her.
The going was steep, and almost overwhelmingly dusty.
Slippery beneath her rubber soles. She climbed, extremely aware of her rough breathing, of the man at her side, and maybe it was that awareness that made her slip and fall hard to her knees. “Damn it.”
An arm slipped around her waist, lifting her up. Snug to Griffin’s side, she blinked at him. “I’m fine.”
“Your knees okay?”
“I just said I was fine.”
Running a hand down her thigh to the new hole in her pants, he pulled the material aside to reveal a bloody knee. “I have a first aid kit in my pack.”
Since his touch eased her pain, she scoffed. “This doesn’t even warrant a Band-Aid.”
With a shake of his head, he lifted his hands from her in a surrendering gesture.
They moved on, with Lyndie’s knees screaming in protest. But she figured she’d fall off a cliff before admitting such a thing.
The man hadn’t been kidding; it was hard, hot work, made more time consuming by the fact he was creating a map as they went.
At five foot three, she had trouble keeping up with his long stride and had to really kick it in gear to keep him in sight, and that annoyed her.
She’d slacked off with her running lately.
She decided she’d have to add a mile to her regimen.
Already her lungs felt like she had a vise on them from inhaling the bad air.
They kept going, up the next hill, the whole time keeping the fire at their right. She was stunned and dismayed at the extent of it, and startled at how she now felt like she had a knife between her ribs. “This has to be bad for us.”
“Yeah.” But he wasn’t even breathing hard. “You okay?”
Hell, if she’d say otherwise. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know, maybe because your knees are bleeding. Maybe because the flames are licking at us no matter how fast we move ahead of them. Maybe because it’s hot and smoky, and we’re climbing hard and fast, and you’re breathing pretty hard?”
Damn it. She was not. “Are you fine?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, I am too.”
When he gave her only a long glance, she sighed. “You just worry about yourself, Ace.”
And yet he still looked her over, slowly, from head to toe, as if he had to check for himself.
“Okay,” he finally agreed. “You’re fine.
” His eyes were back on her now, but with an awareness in them that seemed strange and different from the usual sexual spark, because he clearly felt a reluctance to feel that spark.
Well, that was mutual, she thought grimly, with little satisfaction. She didn’t want any sparks either.
They came to the base of a craggily steep-looking, unwelcoming mountain.
The flames were still uncomfortably close to their right, steadily eating their way north and southbound.
Fire central was also south of them about a mile or so she figured, but they still couldn’t see the end of the northbound flames.
How much further could this thing go?
Griffin craned his neck. “Up.”
She sucked in air, which she couldn’t get enough of, into her asthma-tortured lungs. The sky was red, the heat unbearable, with the smoke so thick she wanted to part the curtains to see. “Right behind you.”
Nodding, he turned and began to climb. She whipped out her inhaler, hating the weakness, taking as deep a breath as she could. Holding, counting, she kept her eyes on Griffin’s back in front of her.
He kept going.
Kick ass, she told herself, and feeling slightly better, she pocketed the inhaler and followed him.
Griffin glanced at the sun, then back at his compass.
They stood just east of the fire, surrounded by towering pines lining the mountain in a blanket of dark green.
Deep gorges, high rock-lined peaks… Lyndie had told him there were villages scattered sparsely throughout this region, most of them completely self-contained and so isolated people were bred, born, and died all within the same few square miles.
Amazing country. “We still have a few hours left before nightfall,” he said, still unable to believe how primitive a fight this was going to be.
No air support. No smoke jumpers. No hotshot team.
Hell, what was he saying? He didn’t even have a trained crew.
They weren’t that far from the States, but they might as well have been on another planet.
Or another century.
Lyndie had matched him pace for pace, assuring him the pilot was in better than just decent shape, though he had already seen that just by looking at her tight, compact yet curvy body.
He’d never met anyone like her, which didn’t explain why his eyes kept getting drawn back to her time and time again.
He was worried about her, as he would have been with anyone without training, and yet somehow it went deeper.
“What does your weather kit say?” she asked.
“Sometimes you have to go by instincts.” Something he hadn’t done on that long-ago day in Idaho, something he’d regret for the rest of his life.
She put her hands on her hips, breathing hard but evenly enough. “Well, what do your instincts say, then?”
That they were screwed. The fire had taken root in the dry timber, going both north and southward, eating up everything in its path, and they still hadn’t gotten to the end of it. “They say we have a lot of work ahead of us, but everything will be okay.”
She stared at him for a beat. “Now say that again without the bullshit factor.”
She was right, he’d automatically added in words of comfort to ease her mind.
He was used to coddling the women in his life, but it felt startlingly refreshing not to have it expected of him, even if he still wanted to tuck her away somewhere, safe and sound, and far away from this fire. “All right. We’re in trouble.”
Her gaze somber but calm, she nodded. “Tell me.”
She could have no idea how amazing it was not to have to be careful with her.
She wasn’t fragile; hell, she was stronger than he was.
He gestured with his head southward, down the hill toward the direction of town.
“That’s where we should be concentrating our efforts. To save the village from the flames.”
“Right. But…”
“But the fire is racing uphill, as it always will, toward the wild, open wilderness. We need to get ahead of it. But we don’t have enough men or resources to divide our efforts.”
Lyndie drew in a shaky, shuddery breath. “Yeah. We’re in trouble—hey.” She cocked her head. “Hear that?”
He did. Running water. Wishing for a little luck had seemed too much to hope for, especially since he had no luck left and hadn’t for some time, but he heard what he heard. “Come on.”
“Coming on.”
Her echoing words had been uttered innocently enough, but for some reason his mind played with them, turning them into something else.
Coming on. Coming…How did he have any brain power left for sexual thoughts, especially given that he’d not felt anything in that department for a year, but when he looked at her, she looked at him right back.
Unwavering, direct.
He was so not prepared for that. For her.
“The río,” she said. “It’s low right now—”
“It’s still music to my ears.” He scrambled through the bush, with her right behind him, until they came to it.
It was definitely a river, low-running, yes, but falling north to south from the peak above, running parallel to where they stood, then eventually falling again, down another rocky cliff, to the ranches and town below. “My God…”
“What?”
“A natural firebreak.” He let out a rare smile before adding some of the coordinates on his GPS.
“So. We’ve got a river bisecting a canyon and a hard rock hill above us, both of which are good, very good.
” He slipped his unit back into his pocket and wriggled his fingers.
“We’re going to cross. Give me your hand. ”
“Why?”
“So I can help you.”
She laughed. “I can manage.”
No doubt she could, so he lifted his hands in surrender and let her pick her way unaided over the rocks and branches through the water.
He’d known what he was going to be doing today, and he’d dressed appropriately in boots.
Lyndie hadn’t. She’d counted on flying him in and then leaving again, hence the tennis shoes, which hadn’t been too much of a problem until now, as they began some serious climbing.
Another concern he’d had all along…her blouse, the sleeves of which she’d shoved up past her elbows.
He’d asked her twice to pull down her sleeves, but she hadn’t.
He stopped. “We’re not going on until you pull down your sleeves and put on the gloves Sergio gave you. I have an extra shirt too—”
She shot him one of her patented quelling looks, one he was quite sure sent everyone in her path shaking in their boots. But he had far too many other things going on to allow her to scare him.
Hell, his very life at the moment was terrifying enough. “Just do it, Lyndie.”
She tipped her head up to the sky, sighed, then looked at him again. “You always so bossy?”
He thought about that. “Yes.”
She studied him for a long time, then lowered her sleeves. “I am too.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. So watch it.”