Page 11 of The Heat is On
“I need you on lookout.” He pointed to the northern edge, where he’d climbed to get a look at the fire. “Watch our backs.”
Seriously?“I can keep up, Tucker.”
“I know. Believe me, I wouldn’t have passed you if you couldn’t. But we need someone to make sure we all stay alive.”
Right. Make it sound important. She half expected him to spout out a rule, so she did it for him. “Firefighting Order five. Post a lookout when there is danger.”
He grinned at her and nodded, like she was his favorite student.
Nice. Now she got towatchas her team put down the fire.
But she’d shouldered her pack and trudged toward the ridge, upwind. Climbed up to her lookout perch.
At least, up here, she wouldn’t freeze, get anyone killed. There was that.
Something rugged and breathtaking about the Alaskan mountainscape felt different than Montana. She was used to glaciers, to the cottony breath of the mountain slinking into the valleys, to the fresh breezes rife with the fragrance of wildflowers. But Montana, despite the big sky feel of the state, turned compact, jagged, and rugged where she lived, near Kalispell. Arching mountains that ringed tight valleys, jammed together as if pushed by ancient glaciers, forcing them to ripsaw peaks.
In Alaska, the mountains breathed. Sprawled. Yawned over great expanses of forests and valleys. The peaks towered so high that most of the time Denali’s face hid inside a wispy white beard. The air reaped the wind off the mountain, glacial cool, rife with pine and the scent of boreal moss, mixing now with the campfire smell of burning resin, pine, and willow.
Montana she knew. Had hiked and skied the mountains, put out fires in its forests for the past three summers as a hotshot. Camped and fished and paddled through its wilderness.
But Alaska—it was bold and surprising and wild, and a tiny sense of awe rippled through her as she sat down on the rock and let her binoculars scan the view below her.
Smoke and fire, yes, but the bluest of lakes to the south. Granite ridges and lush green forests, and to the east, a river that dissected the land.
Maybe this is what her father had seen that summer he worked as a hotshot for the Alaska Bureau of Land Management. Maybe that’s why he’d stuck around, met her mother, had decided not to return to college. Alaska had seduced him with its dangerous beauty.
She wouldn’t be quite so easily seduced.
Of course, her father had been seduced by many, many things. Hopefully, she wasn’t made of the same weak DNA. The last thing she wanted to do was die in prison like Liam Doyle.
And how she’d gotten to that dark place from the beauty of Alaska, she didn’t know, but she knew one thing for certain. She wouldn’t let her heart lead her into trouble, let it destroy the people she loved.
After all, what kind of man takes a match to his entire life by breaking the law and ending up behind bars? Not one she cared to remember. Or emulate.
A crackle over the radio and she caught Tucker’s voice. “Watchout, how’s it looking?”
“Flame lengths are about five feet, maybe less. Wind is scant. The fire is digging in, moving slowly.”
“Roger,” Tucker said.
The heartbeat of a chopper thundered in the distance, and Skye used her glasses to find the pinprick. Hopefully Barry Kingston bringing in a basket of water.
But no line dangled from the bird as it came into view, flying low and finally dropping into the meadow beyond the ridge. It landed, and she could barely make out through the screen of smoke a group of firefighters in bright orange shirts disembarking from the chopper.
The handcrew. Good.
They ran toward Tucker, carrying gear and covering their heads as the chopper lifted off. Skye scanned over to the fire again, and indeed, the wash had whipped it up. But as the chopper rose and pulled away—hopefully for water—the flames settled back down.
Tucker was rounding up the crew. Her vision tracked to her team, cutting a line down the western flank. Hanes and Eric were scrubbing out the initial line, downhill to the anchor point, with Seth, Riley, and Romeo coming in behind to fortify. Seth mowed down saplings and scrub brush with his chain saw, tossing them out of the path of the fire, while Riley and Romeo scratched the dirt down to the mineral soil in a line some three-feet wide. They worked quietly, with intention, their heads down.
Cinder and ash blew into their faces, and she imagined right now their eyes would be thick with mucus, itchy and watering, sweat curdling down their spines, their chests tight as they breathed the acrid smoke through their bandannas.
So maybe she didn’t hate being up here. But she did hate the fact that Tucker had so easily picked her.
Down over the ridge, he was scratching out a line with his new crew. Probably shouting rules at them—how Tucker loved his Firefighting Orders. And Watchout Situations.
Keep informed on fire weather conditions and forecasts.Rule number one.