Page 26 of Burnin' For You
So far, so good. They’d all lived through a summer the arson inspector from the National Interagency Fire Center said might be the hottest in decades.
Jed put down his coffee. Looked over at Reuben, now seated at the U-table bench. “So, are we going to talk about it or pretty much forget it ever happened?”
Reuben stilled, glanced at Pete, who sat across from him and played some video game on his phone that required him to tilt it back and forth.
“Forget what?” Pete asked, looking up at them.
Conner was in the kitchen area, opening the box of cupcakes. “The fact Reuben asked Gilly to dance last night at the Hotline.”
Reuben frowned at him. He’d clearly left out the most important part of that event. Still. “I choose option B. Forget it ever happened.”
Pete looked up, grinned at him. “My idea. Good job.”
Oh for crying— “It was a disaster, okay? Let’s move on.”
Kate, who had opened the door, stepped inside. “Are we talking about Gilly?” She wore her auburn hair caught back in a ponytail tugged through a baseball cap, jeans, and a Montana Griz T-shirt. She walked over to the coffeepot and helped herself. “They were cute together. Reuben has some crazy-hot dance moves.”
Seriously? “Oh good grief. Were you there? Did anyone see—”
“I can’t believe she said yes,” Kate said, buffaloing over him. “I mean, of course she said yes to you, Rube. It’s just that she hasn’t—doesn’t date.”
Ho-kay. If they weren’t going to bring up the debacle, then he wasn’t going to chase it around. Except, “Of course she said yes to me? Am I the team pity case or something?” Reuben reached for a carrot muffin.
Kate shook her head, drank her coffee. “No. You’re trustworthy. Dependable. And not, well, whateverheis.” She gestured loosely to Pete, whose mouth fell open.
“What am I?”
Jed’s mouth drifted up one side. “I’m not sure of the word—a charmer?”
“Pete gives them just enough to stay interested but not enough for them to show up on his doorstep the next day,” Kate said.
Pete set his game down, folded his arms over his chest. “I like to keep ’em guessing.”
“Exactly my point. Reuben is a straight-up, you-get-what-you-see guy,” Kate said. “And Gilly needs a guy like that.” She took another sip of her coffee. “She’ll be okay. Your fall just sort of…well, brought up some old memories. It had nothing to do with you.”
Shoot. So theyweregoing to talk about it. But he focused on the last part of that sentence. “What kind of memories?”
Kate ran a finger along the top of her cup. “It’s not my story. But let’s just say that Gilly used to be very girly. She was a lead ballerina in the Northwest Ballet Company.”
Lead ballerina?And now he really felt like an ox as he remembered stomping all over her feet, knocking her over. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Listen, Rube. It wasn’t as bad—” Kate started.
“I am not a dancer, okay? I’m a sawyer. And a bull rider. I totally embarrassed her, and I have no clue how to make it up to her.”
“You don’t have to make it up to her,” Kate said, but the grins on Jed and Conner’s faces were enough to make him want to hit something.
“Let’s just talk about the fires,” Reuben said. He pushed his way off the bench. His head nearly hit the ceiling of Conner’s trailer as he headed for the coffeepot.
Conner’s camper screamed bachelor pad with his maps of the Kootenai National Forest, the Cabinet Mountains, Glacier National Park, and the Bob Wilderness area papering the walls. Most were marked up with previous fire jumps, rescues, and x’s where his drones had crashed. He had bigger x’s where the fire service determined his drones caused fires. All except the last one, which had crashed while Conner was searching for a lost girl in the forest.
“The last confirmed drone fire was Whiskey Creek. Are there any more that were ruled arson or at least not ruled weather related?” Reuben asked.
“No. But I did notice a pattern to the fires.” Jed traced the maps. “Conner says his drones have a one-mile radio-control radius. All the drone fires were located within ten miles of logging roads, hiking trails, or highways out of Ember but in areas the hotshots couldn’t access by vehicle. As if the arsonist hiked to the farthest place out, then sent the drone into an inaccessible area.”
“But all within our territory,” Pete said. “So we’d answer the call.”
“Right.”