Page 97 of Burnin' For You
It had taken two more weeks, but this morning they’d gotten lucky with the sighting of the men’s red station wagon on a remote forest service road in Idaho about a mile from the Canadian border.
Yeah, they should have possibly alerted local police.
Except this was personal.
Besides, they had Conner, who—before he ever started jumping fires—jumped into war zones and trekked up desert passes to find the bad guys.
It always helped to have a former Green Beret on the team.
And, at this moment, Conner looked very military. No Kevlar jumpsuit for him. He wore a tactical, all-black jumpsuit, a matching helmet, and body armor.
Reuben expected to see him armed with a semiautomatic machine gun, maybe an AK-47, or HK 416. But Conner only carried a very utilitarian Colt M45. Strapped to his leg.
Just in case Patrick still had the shotgun.
Conner also carried a backpack, like the rest of them, probably filled with camping gear. And all the necessities of an overnight—or even week-long—trek into the wilderness.
Because they weren’t coming home without their targets. Not after they’d pieced together the evidence, the clear truth.
Patrick had been out to take down the team since before the season started, tampering with the chutes, his first efforts at retribution.
After Kate’s heroic save of Pete during their first jump of the season, she’d discovered the sabotage, so Patrick had had to turn to something else.
Conner’s drones proved the perfect device. Patrick had been interested in them from the beginning, watching Reuben test them in early spring.
He’d even helped Conner with the avionics of the controller, discovering, no doubt, the frequency. They guessed that was how he figured out how to jam the signal and send a drone crashing, its transponder disabled.
Not unlike how he’d disabled Gilly’s transponder.
Then it was simply a matter of trekking out to the woods, following the trajectory, and picking up the drone. He waited until his targets were all listed on the go-chart in the office, and then sent the drone out with flammables to ignite a fire.
One that would call in the jump team.
Maybe, then, fate would take over.
It seemed, however, he’d gotten tired of waiting.
Or weary of luck turning against him, because the smokejumpers just kept surviving.
Which meant Patrick probably became desperate and turned to sabotaging the plane. Only problem—the wrong jumpers got on board.
But he’d still managed to inflict pain.
Jed was gritting it out to go on this trip, only three weeks after being injured. Thankfully, the metal bar narrowly missed a kidney. But he couldn’t sit still while the rest of the team went in search of justice.
Reuben understood that completely.
CJ had broken his pelvis, dislocated his shoulder, broken three ribs, and nearly died waiting out the night for rescue.
Hannah had kept him from going into shock, and only then did she reveal she was in her third and final year of nurse’s training, the smokejumping gig a long-awaited dream she wasn’t sure she would still pursue. No one blamed her.
They couldn’t guess when and how Brownie got involved, unless it had started when one of Conner’s drones went missing on Brownie’s land, a buffalo pasture near the base. Although, if Patrick’s revenge started at the beginning of the summer, then Brownie’s might have also.
But no one forgot why.
Nearly a year had passed since the fire that took Jock Burns, Tom Browning, and five other firefighters.
And yeah, that kind of grief could drive a man crazy.