Page 85 of Burnin' For You

She glanced over, and he drew his mouth into a tight line. “This is how it’s going to be, Gilly. You and me. No choices made here—just us, together.”

She stared at him a second longer, and suddenly, her eyes began to fill. She swallowed, looked down at the avionics panel. Wiped a quick hand across her cheek.

Oh, Gilly.

Reuben nearly reached out for her then, but Conner came up, threw his gear bag onto the floor of the plane, climbed in. He squatted on the bare cargo area, out of earshot.

“Thank you, Reuben,” Gilly said quietly.

And he couldn’t help it. “You got this, Hot Cake.”

She gave the tiniest of smiles, and he managed one of his own.

“Air system charging valve,” he said.

“Open.”

“Air pressure.”

“Check. Less than thirty.”

“Parking brake.”

“Set.”

But not for long, because they moved through the list, then through the engine start list.

“Clear!” Gilly started the props, and the AN2 rumbled to life with the tremor of power. The cockpit shuddered with a roar of noise, and Reuben fitted on his headset as Gilly started the Annie.

A warm-up test, which the AN2 passed, and Gilly hollered at Conner to buckle in.

Then they were taxiing down the runway, the plane shuddering over the blacktop. Reuben glanced out at the biplane wings. They bounced along, catching the wind, no damage evident.

They might just live through this. All of them.

They lifted into the sky, his hands on the yoke, fortifying Gilly’s grip, adding strength to the rudder controls.

She called into the tower as they hit one thousand feet, lifting to three thousand, then five.

The transponder was working just fine.

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes or less,” Gilly said, pushing the airspeed above regs.

Reuben had left his stomach on the tarmac—or what felt like it—but maybe that was a good thing.

No airsickness yet.

They flew north, a beeline to the fire, which he could make out easily from up here. A thundercloud of gray smoke rising from the carpet of green forest filled the entire horizon, a smudge against the blue, dissipating as it reached for the firmament.

They soared over Yaak, and he recognized the forest road 338 below and then the blackened run of the Brownie fire farther north.

Gilly pointed them west toward the dark cluster of billowing white-gray smoke caught in a valley between two peaks.

As they got closer, he noticed the smoke hovered above a layer of gauzy dark-gray smoke threaded in and around the treetops, lodgepole pines, and towering cottonwood. Now and again, a flame licked out from the depths, igniting a crown.

Thankfully, it hadn’t started a run across the treetops.

Even from here, however, Reuben could see how close it edged in to the crash site.