“Yeah. I saw.” Jim swiped the back of his hand over his mouth before strapping on his helmet and mask.
“Take her to three thousand,” Cards shouted.
Jump altitude. As first man, first stick, Rowan rose to take position. “About three hundred yards of drift,” she shouted to Jim, repeating what she’d heard Cards telling the pilot. “But there’s that bite. Don’t get caught downwind.”
“Not my first party.”
She saw his grin behind the bars of his face mask—confident, even eager. But something in his eyes, she thought. Just for a flash. She started to speak again, but Cards, already in position to the right of the door, called out, “Are you ready?”
“We’re ready,” she called back.
“Hook up.”
Rowan snapped the static line in place.
“Get in the door!”
She dropped to sitting, legs out in the wicked slipstream, body leaning back. Everything roared. Below her extended legs, fire ran in vibrant red and gold.
There was nothing but the moment, nothing but the wind and fire and the twist of exhilaration and fear that always, always surprised her.
“Did you see the streamers?”
“Yeah.”
“You see the spot?”
She nodded, bringing both into her head, following those colorful strips to the target.
Cards repeated what she’d told Jim, almost word for word. She only nodded again, eyes on the horizon, letting her breath come easy, visualizing herself flying, falling, navigating the sky down to the heart of the jump spot.
She went through her four-point check as the plane completed its circle and leveled out.
Cards pulled his head back in. “Get ready.”
And when the spotter’s hand slapped her shoulder, she launched herself into the sky.
Nothing she knew topped that one instant of insanity, hurling herself into the void. She counted off in her mind, a task as automatic as breathing, and rolled in that charged sky to watch the plane fly past. She caught sight of Jim, hurtling after her.
Again, she turned her body, fighting the drag of wind until her feet were down. With a yank and jerk, her canopy burst open. She scouted out Jim again, felt a tiny pop of relief when she saw his chute spread against the empty sky. In that pocket of eerie silence, beyond the roar of the plane, above the voice of the fire, she gripped her steering toggles.
The wind wanted to drag her north, and was pretty insistent about it. Rowan was just as insistent on staying on the course she’d mapped out in her head. She watched the ground as she steered against the frisky crosscurrent that pinched its fingers on her canopy, doing its best to circle her into the tailwind.
The turbulence that had caught the streamers struck her in gusty slaps while the heat pumped up from the burning ground. If the wind had its way, she’d overshoot the jump spot, fly into the verge of trees, risk a hang-up. Or worse, it could shove her west, and into the flames.
She dragged hard on her toggle, glanced over in time to see Jim catch the downwind and go into a spin.
“Pull right! Pull right!”
“I got it! I got it.”
But to her horror, he pulled left.
“Right, goddamn it!”
She had to turn for her final, and the pleasure of a near seamless slide into the glide path drowned in sheer panic. Jim soared west, helplessly towed by a horizontal canopy.
Rowan hit the jump site, rolled. She gained her feet, slapped her release. And heard it as she stood in the center of the blaze.
She heard her jump partner’s scream.
The scream followed her as she shot up in bed, echoed in her head as she sat huddled in the dark.
No point in it, she thought. No point in reliving it, in going over all the details, all the moments, or asking herself, again, if she could’ve done just one thing differently.
Asking herself why Jim hadn’t followed her drop into the jump spot. Why he’d pulled the wrong toggle. Because,
And had flown straight into the towers and lethal branches of those burning trees.
Months ago now, she reminded herself. She’d had the long winter to get past it. And thought she had.
Being back on base triggered it, she admitted, and rubbed her hands over her face, back over the hair she’d had cut into a short, maintenance-free cap only days before.
Fire season was nearly on them. Refresher training started in a couple short hours. Memories, regrets, grief—they were bound to pay a return visit. But she needed sleep, another hour before she got up, geared up for the punishing three-mile run.
She was damn good at willing herself to sleep, anyplace, anytime. Coyote-ing in a safe zone during a fire, on a shuddering jump plane. She knew how to eat and sleep when the need and opportunity opened.
But when she closed her eyes again, she saw herself back on the plane, turning toward Jim’s grin.
Knowing she had to shake it off, she shoved out of bed. She’d grab a shower, some caffeine, stuff in some carbs, then do a light workout to warm up for the physical training test.
It continued to baffle her fellow jumpers that she never drank coffee unless it was her only choice. She liked the cold and sweet. After she’d dressed, Rowan hit her stash of Cokes, grabbed an energy bar. She took both outside where the sky was still shy of first light and the air stayed chill in the early spring of western Montana.
In the vast sky stars blinked out, little candles snuffed. She pulled the dark and quiet around her, found some comfort in it. In an hour, give or take, the base would wake, and testosterone would flood the air.
Since she generally preferred the company of men, for conversation, for companionship, she didn’t mind being outnumbered by them. But she prized her quiet time, those little pieces of alone that became rare and precious during the season. Next best thing to sleep before a day filled with pressure and stress, she thought.
She could tell herself not to worry about the run, remind herself she’d been vigilant about her PT all winter, was in the best shape of her life—and it didn’t mean a damn.
Anything could happen. A turned ankle, a mental lapse, a sudden, debilitating cramp. Or she could just have a bad run. Others had. Sometimes they came back from it, sometimes they didn’t.
And a negative attitude wasn’t going to help. She chowed down on the energy bar, gulped caffeine into her system and watched the day eke its first shimmer over the rugged, snow-tipped western peaks.
When she ducked into the gym minutes later, she noted her alone time was over.
“Hey, Trigger.” She nodded to the man doing crunches on a mat. “What do you know?”
“I know we’re all crazy. What the hell am I doing here, Ro? I’m forty-fucking-three years old.”
She unrolled a mat, started her stretches. “If you weren’t crazy, weren’t here, you’d still be forty-fucking- three.”
At six-five, barely making the height restrictions, Trigger Gulch was a lean, mean machine with a west Texas twang and an affection for cowboy boots.
He huffed through a quick series of pulsing crunches. “I could be lying on a beach in Waikiki.”
“You could be selling real estate in Amarillo.”
“I could do that.” He mopped his face, pointed at her. “Nine-to-five the next fifteen years, then retire to that
