Page 16 of Some Like It Hot
“Those are prisoners,” Romeo said, sweating hard and coming up beside Riley. His guys had scraped the line down to the connection point, embers and char stirring in the air as the blaze grew.
“Yeah,” Riley said. “But minimum security, apparently.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t want a get out of jail free card,” Romeo said.
Tucker had called up right about then and deployed Riley to the meadow line to start the backfire. As Riley had assessed the fire from his vantage point, he admitted Tucker’s strategy just might work. If they burned out the meadow below the ridgeline and met the main blaze, they could stop it long before it hit the forest on the other side.
Riley ran along the burn line, starting the fire, yelling instructions. “Don’t let anything past you! Snuff it out with dirt or the back of your shovel!”
He got a good look at the crew.
A motley bunch of eight—three youngsters no more than twenty, an older man in his fifties, a pudgy redhead rank with sweat, who looked like he might fall over, a tattooed gang member, a tourist who looked like he’d been picked up for nothing more dangerous than shoplifting, and one guy whose eyes followed him and raised the hairs on the back of Riley’s neck.
The man had dark, pensive warrior eyes, the kind Riley had seen from some of the spec-op guys in his dad’s unit. Definitely former military the way he kept his head down and kept working.
The oncoming fire roared just out of sight, black smoke churning, seeping down the hill, meeting the gray fog from their backfire. The chopper returned, dropped a bucket of water on the eastern edge, slowing down the assault.
Riley noticed that Tucker had gone up to assess the situation from the ridge.
And that’s when it happened.
One of the prisoners—of course the guy with the gang tats—bolted, with Riley inconveniently on the far end of the meadow trying to snuff out a spot fire with the redhead.
“Hey!” Riley said, about to spring for the escapee, but Gangland was already on top of the ridge running—
Towardthe fire?
The man vanished over the top of the ridge, right into the chaos of flame and smoke.
What the—
And where was Tucker?
Riley grabbed up his radio, shouted for Tuck, and in a moment, he saw him appear on the ridge, one arm over Gangland’s wide shoulders.
Huh.
Then they scrambled into the scree behind the ridge, the safety zone, and the main blaze engulfed the hill, shooting over the ridge and down the meadow.
Riley stopped, breathing hard, his brain taking in the fact that Tucker had nearly burned to death all because Riley had been worried about the stupid prisoner escaping instead of watching the fire. If it weren’t for—
“Run!”
Watching the fire approach, one of the youngsters on the line had thrown down his shovel, and Riley turned just in time to see the older man grab his arm, pull him around.
Escape averted because the kid stopped, watching, almost mesmerized as the burn did its job. The blaze died out, almost like a miracle as it searched for fuel and came up hungry.
It amazed Riley every single time. The fact that just like that, a roaring blaze could die if you didn’t feed it. “Stay alert for spot fires!”
Tucker came into view, leaning hard on his Pulaski and—wait.
He wasn’t alone. As Riley watched, the brunette—from the bar last night?—appeared as if she’d materialized right out of the smoke and flame.
What on earth?
The older man—clearly the one in charge of the convicts—stalked up to Gangland and grabbed his collar. Riley didn’t hear what went down, but something dark by the way Gangland clamped the older man’s wrist.
The older man let him go, and Gangland picked up his shovel, a move that Riley sort of wanted to veto.