Montana Smoke (Blazing Hearts Montana Fire #1)

Chapter 1

Hot wind and prop blast tore through the Twin Otter’s open door as Deanna Brooks stepped to the edge, boots inches from nothing. Two thousand feet below, wildfire raced across the forested slopes of the Clearwater Mountains in the Idaho Panhandle.

Training told her to trust the drop.

Instinct screamed to stay.

Tongues of flame leaped from crown to crown through stands of lodgepole pine dried to tinder by a rainless July. Hundred-foot Douglas firs exploded into torches within seconds.

“Winds are pushing the flames!” shouted her jump partner, Kylie, over the engine noise.

Deanna checked her gear one more time: reserve chute, personal gear bag with fire shelter, and the let-down rope secured in her jumpsuit leg pocket.

Jim, the spotter, hung out the door and tossed out the weighted crepe-paper streamers to read wind speed and drift.

They whipped sideways and shredded toward the trees.

A fifty-yard-wide meadow bordered by lodgepole pine served as the landing zone.

Kylie peered over Deanna’s shoulder. “Conditions look dicey down there.”

“Just another day at the office,” Deanna reassured her, though the streamers showed wind speeds pushing the limits of safe jumping. One wrong move, one sideward gust, and she’d end up in the trees. Or worse, in the fire.

The spotter turned to them. “It’s your call, Brooks. You’re the jumper-in-charge.”

The crown runs had surged below, moving with predatory speed. If they didn’t act fast, this whole drainage would go up. She’d jumped dozens of fires without hesitation, back when she believed herself invincible. The squirrelly winds did nothing to calm her unease.

“We go,” she said, hating the slight tremor in her voice. “Once we’re on the ground, we’ll bail if conditions worsen.”

The spotter dipped a nod. “Get in the door!”

Deanna positioned herself, squatting with feet spread, hands gripping the sides of the door frame. From up here, the meadow appeared like a tiny island in an ocean of burning forest.

“Kylie, if we get separated . . .”

“We won’t,” interrupted Kylie. “I’ll be right behind you. Someone has to keep your crazy ass alive. You’re worth the trouble, even when you don’t act like it.”

Deanna smiled. Same thing her best friend had always said when they were kids growing up in Salmon, Idaho. Kylie said it when Deanna talked her into applying to jump school, and she still said it.

The spotter’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Go!”

Deanna launched herself into nothingness. The gusts hit her like a sledgehammer and she arched hard, fighting for stability while her chute deployed. The opening shock jarred her as she drifted toward the canopy. But the wind had other plans.

A violent gust snagged her chute, blowing her sideways, and she nearly lost her grip on the toggles. The meadow slid away to her left. A virgin stand of lodgepole pine rushed up to greet her, with branches like spears.

“Deanna! Turn right!” hollered Kylie.

Deanna toggled hard to her right, but too late. The forest closed in, reaching out to snatch her from the sky.

Branches exploded around her, scratching, tearing, grabbing.

Her chute caught with a violent jerk, snapping her head back.

She plunged several feet before another bone-jarring jolt stopped her fall as the chute lines snagged in the branches, leaving her dangling fifty feet above the ground with flames closing in fast.

Is this how it will end?

Her thoughts scattered, then reassembled in the space of a single breath.

Her father’s hands on the controls of a plane, steady the way hers refused to be right now.

The better woman she’d fought to become, the one she’d begun to recognize in the mirror.

Would she be gone before she even had the chance to change herself?

A thought flashed of her mother and all the respect Deanna had given up trying to earn. So much left unfinished.

Deanna gritted her teeth. She’d clawed her way out of her former self and would not succumb to dying as that person now.

No damn way.

Less than a quarter mile away, the crowning fire created its own wind, feeding itself in a terrifying cycle as it charged toward the smokejumpers.

Kylie landed in the clearing off to her left. She gathered her chute and sprinted toward Deanna. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

Deanna’s training kicked in. She fumbled for the pocket on her jumpsuit leg, fingers clumsy in her thick gloves.

Finding the let-down rope, she tugged it free.

The smoke thickened into a choking gray veil, and the roar of the fire intensified as it bore down on her.

With trembling hands, she secured the rope, preparing to cut her lines.

No time. If she lingered, she’d become a pile of ash.

Kylie peered up with her no-nonsense face. “Get your ass out of there before you’re charbroiled!”

“Oh, you think?” Deanna cut one line, which sent her swinging violently into the trunk. Pain flared through her ribs, and she bit back a cry.

Sweating from the radiant heat, she fed the rope through her hardware. She rappelled down in rapid bursts . . . twenty feet, ten, five . . . until she reached the end of the line. She still swung fifteen feet from the ground, the end of the rope ghosting through her gloves.

“Cut the rope and jump!” hollered Kylie.

She had no choice. She let go. The brutal landing slammed her to her knees, sending a sickening shock through her spine.

Kylie grabbed her arm, hauling her upright. “MOVE!”

They stumbled through the underbrush, waves of heat boring into their backs. Flames licked upward, devouring the tree she’d hung from moments before.

“There goes my parachute!” Deanna’s voice quavered as she tore through alder and willow.

The two women broke away from the burning trees, sprinting to the middle of the meadow to safety. Every muscle trembled as Deanna stopped and bent over with her hands on her knees, sucking in air that tasted of char and pine resin.

Kylie dropped beside her, doing the same.

Deanna’s heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a canter. Her ribs throbbed where she’d slammed the trunk, and her palms stung. The inferno crackled, rumbling like an insatiable beast as it greedily devoured Douglas fir and lodgepole pine.

The Twin Otter made its second pass, and their cargo box thudded into the meadow, yellow streamers trailing. They opened the box and collected their tools, fire shelters, and water.

As Deanna straightened with her gear, a movement at the far tree line caught her eye.

A grizzly. Enormous, dark-humped, maybe six hundred pounds, lumbering out of the timber at a trot.

The bear moved parallel to them, heading away from the fire, its attention on escape rather than the two yellow-clad figures in the meadow.

The grizzly stopped and swiveled its colossal head toward them.

“Don’t move,” Deanna murmured, forcing herself to breathe.

Panic got people killed in grizzly country. Every firefighter knew the drill. No sudden movements. No running.

Kylie stiffened beside her. Without taking her eyes off the bear, Deanna slipped one hand toward the cargo box. Every movement felt exaggerated, painfully slow.

Her fingers found the smooth wooden handle of a Pulaski, a wildland firefighting tool with a long handle and a heavy steel head. She eased it free of the box, inch by inch.

The bear reared up on its hind legs, nose working the air. Testing and deciding. Ten seconds stretched into an eternity as they waited for the bear to move along. Instead, the grizzly dropped to all fours and padded toward them, huffing.

The world narrowed to the crunch of paws on ash-covered ground and the throbbing of her own blood in her ears. If it charged, there was nowhere to go. Flames burned behind them. Timber boxed them in. She tightened her grip on the Pulaski, fighting the urge to back away.

Deanna raised the long fire tool high above her head, making herself appear larger. “Go, bear! Get out of here! Go!”

The grizzly kept coming.

The shout ripped from her throat. “I said GO, BEAR!”

The bear paused. For one terrible second, it stared at her. Then it huffed once, swung its head toward the unburned timber, and loped into the woods, crashing through the underbrush.

Air rushed from Deanna’s lungs. She lowered her Pulaski, loosening her grip on the long handle.

“Alrighty, then.” Kylie blew out air. “A bad landing in a tree with oncoming flames and a grizzly, both wanting to eat you. The universe is officially messing with us.”

“The bear wanted to escape the flames more than it wanted to eat us.” The tremor in Deanna’s voice gave way to a laugh that bordered on giddy relief.

Kylie shook her head. “My heart is stuck behind my tonsils. Thanks for saving our lives, Dee.” She reached over to pluck pine needles from Deanna’s hair. “How is it you had two close calls and lived to tell about it?”

“Too close for comfort, wouldn’t you say?” Deanna’s pulse leveled off. She knelt on the sparse grass to pluck supplies from the cargo box.

“When you were stuck in that lodgepole pine . . .” Kylie’s voice cracked as she stuffed her pack. “I thought I’d have to watch you go up in flames.”

“But you didn’t.” Deanna glanced at her jump partner. “I got down safely.”

Kylie’s chin trembled for a second before she wrestled it steady.

Deanna knew the look, the same face Kylie made at thirteen, standing on the bridge over the Salmon River, too scared to jump, while other kids cannonballed into the water below.

Deanna had grabbed her hand, and they’d hit the water holding on so tight their fingers cramped.

Twenty-five years later, they still jumped together.

Despite her usual strength and resilience, Kylie’s fingers savagely moved her jumpsuit’s zipper up and down.

Deanna straightened with her hands on her hips. “Kylie, relax. I’m fine, okay? Breathe.”

“Working on it,” her friend grumbled as she organized her gear for the firefight ahead.

While Deanna had been stuck in that godforsaken tree, it wasn’t the fire she’d thought about.

A random image of Raynie Atwood, an Alaskan firefighter, had invaded her thoughts.

Deanna winced whenever she recalled Raynie’s face upon seeing Deanna kissing her boyfriend, Cohen Tremblay, at a firefighter fundraiser in Talkeetna.

The memory came from two fire seasons back, on a temporary jump assignment to Alaska.

What if I’d died today? Would this be my legacy?

She snapped to the present when her remaining jump squad hit the ground. Deanna lined her crew out on their firefighting strategy. They set to work digging line and removing fuel from the fire, using drip torches to light a backburn and rob the advancing flames of fuel.

That evening, the jumpers pitched their tents in the meadow. After dinner, the firefighters drifted to their campsites. Deanna walked with Kylie to theirs.

“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight,” said Kylie.

“Did a lot of thinking digging line.” Deanna stared into the dark, the weight of the day sinking into her shoulders. “I’ve been a terrible person, Ky.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kylie’s steps slackened. “What brought this on?”

“Hanging in that stupid tree.” Deanna blew loose strands away from her face.

“You know what kept running through my dimwit brain? Raynie Atwood’s face when she saw me kissing Cohen, like I’d ripped the ground out from under her.

” She swallowed. “Then in Redmond, when I flirted with Sarah Kincaid’s husband at a crew barbecue. And I didn’t even like the guy.”

Kylie said nothing, her flashlight beam fixed on the trail ahead.

“I saw other faces too, Ky. People who I treated like they didn’t matter after messing up their lives. I told myself they’d get over it.” She kicked a pinecone out of her path. Her voice thickened. “But if I’d died today, that’s who they’d remember. The woman other women warn each other about.”

Kylie’s shoulders dropped. “No stinking way, Dee. That’s a hell of a thing to figure out anywhere, much less hanging from a tree. Most people pay a therapist for their epiphanies.”

“The tree did it for free, so I saved some cash.” Deanna chuckled. “Thinking you’re about to die can reorganize your priorities in a hurry.”

Kylie bumped her hip. “So, what’s next after your newfound revelation?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Deanna. “What I do know is, I don’t want to be that woman anymore. I’m done with her.”

“Good. That’s a start.” Kylie held her gaze. “Tell me how I can help. Whatever it takes.”

“Just support me in this.”

“Okay,” agreed Kylie. “Permission to kick your butt if I see you circling a guy like a turkey vulture.”

Deanna laughed. “Permission granted.”

Their radios crackled. “Brooks, Sumner, you copy?”

Deanna grabbed her radio. “This is Brooks. We’re getting ready to turn in.”

“Copy that,” replied the McCall Smokejumper Base dispatcher. “You’re both being assigned to the Copper Creek project fire on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in western Montana. Your jump crew will demobilize tomorrow morning. Chopper will extract you at 0600.”

“We’ll be ready. Brooks clear.”

The two women exchanged glances. They were heading to the land of big timber and steep terrain. If they were calling in jumpers from other fires, it meant serious business.

“So, new fire, fresh start?” asked Kylie, twisting her dark hair into a bun.

Deanna let out a long breath. “Yep, fresh start. No more of the old me.”

“Good. Because I’d hate to toss you at the next grizzly we meet because you’re a shitty human.”

Deanna laughed. “Deal.”

And tomorrow, when the helicopter lifted away, she’d take one last look at the blackened forest, where she’d come within seconds of being part of the devastation.

The Montana fire waited, and with it, a chance to become a better person.

And someone worth saving.