Chasing Fire

“I’d have done that in midair if I could have because, my God, that was orgasmic. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I think you just did.”

She laughed, made him laugh by doing a quick victory dance. “I jumped out of a damn plane. My ex-husband said I’d be crazy to do it, the jerk. But I feel crazy, because I’m going to do it again.”

Still laughing, she ran over, arms wide, to her family.

“Ex-husband,” Lucas managed. And the heat spread up the back of his neck again.

7

With the siren silent, Rowan spent most of her time in the loft checking, clearing or mending chutes. She’d caught up on paperwork, repacked her personal gear bag, checked and rechecked her own chute, readied her jump gear.

She remained first jumper, first stick.

“Going stir-crazy here,” Cards said when he got up from the machine.

“Aren’t we all. And the word of today is...”

“Fastidious. We’ve been doing dick-all but cleaning and organizing. The ready room’s freaking fastidious enough to suit my mother’s scary standards.”

“It can’t last much longer.”

“I hope to Christ not. I had to kick my own ass for cheating at solitaire yesterday, and I’m starting to think about crafts. We’ll be knitting next.”

“I’d like a nice scarf to match my eyes.”

“It could happen,” he said darkly. “At least I had phone sex with Vicki last night.” He pulled the deck of cards from his shirt pocket, shuffling as he paced. “It’s fun while it lasts, but it doesn’t really do the job.”

“And gone are the days you’d hunt up a companion for actual sex?”

“Long gone. She’s worth it. I told you she and the kids are coming out next month, right?”

“You mentioned it.” One or two thousand times, Rowan thought.

“Gotta get in some time now, so I can take a couple days next month. I need to work, need the pay, need—”

“To resist trolling the aisle of the craft store,” Rowan finished.

“I won’t be trolling alone if this lull lasts much longer. Have you got anything to read? All Gibbons has are books that give me a headache. I read one of Janis’s romance novels, but that doesn’t help keep my mind off sex.”

“Nothing deep, nothing sexy. Check.” She signed and dated the tag on the repaired chute. “What’re you after?”

“I want something gory, where people die miserable deaths at the hands of a psycho.”

“I could fix you up. Come on. We’ll peruse my library.”

“Dobie’s in the kitchen with Marg,” Cards told her, passing a hand over Rowan’s head, then flipped out an ace of spades. “He got some recipe of his mother’s, and he’s in there cooking up some pie or other.”

Cooking, knitting—that bake sale could be next. Then struck, Rowan paused. “Is Dobie hitting on Marg?”

Cards only shook his head. “She’s got twenty years on him.”

“Men routinely hit on women twenty years younger.”

“I’m bored, Ro, but not bored enough to get into a tangle on that with you.”

“Coward.” But when they stepped outside, she paused again. “Look, check out those clouds.”

“We got scouts.” His face brightened as he studied the clouds over the mountains. “A nice string of them.”

“Could mean smoke today. With any luck, we’ll have that ready room messed up again before afternoon. Do you still want that book?”

“Might as well. I’ll get myself all settled in, good book, good snack. It’s like guaranteeing we’ll fly today.”

“It’s the slowest start to a season I remember. Then again, my father once told me when it starts cool, it ends hot. Maybe we shouldn’t be so eager to get going.”

“If it doesn’t get going, what’re we here for?”

“No argument. So...” She tried for a casual tone as they crossed to her end of the barracks. “Have you seen Fast Feet this morning?”

“In the Map Room. Studying. At least he was about an hour ago.”

“Studying. Huh.” She wasn’t interested in settling down with a book, but a little byplay with Gull might be just the solution to boredom she needed.

Inside, she led the way to her quarters. “Gruesome murder,” she began. “Do you want just violence, or sex and violence? As opposed to romantic sexy.”

“I always want sex.”

“Again, it’s hard to—” She broke off as she opened her door. The slaughterhouse stench punched like a fist in the throat.

A pool of blood spread over the bed. Dark rivers of it ran down hills of clothes heaped on the floor. On the wall in letters wet and gleaming dripped the statement:

BURN IN HELL!

In the center of the ugliness, Dolly whirled to face the door. Some of the blood in the canister she held splattered on her shirt.

“Son of a bitch!” Fists up, her mind as red and vicious as the blood, Rowan charged. A war paint line of pig’s blood splatted on her face as Dolly screamed and dropped to the ground—seconds before Cards grabbed Rowan’s arms.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

“Fuck you.” Rowan pushed off her feet, adding to the blood when the back of her head connected sharply with Cards’s nose and had it spurting.

He yelped, and through sheer grit managed to hold on for another second or two.

“You’re so dead!” Rowan shouted at Dolly, and, blind to anything but payback, jabbed her elbow into Cards’s ribs, sprang free.

Shrieking, scrabbling back, Dolly pitched the canister. Globs of blood flew, striking wall, ceiling, furniture, when Rowan batted it away.

“You like blood? Let’s see how you like painting with yours, you crazy cunt.”

Rowan clamped her hands on Dolly’s ankles when Dolly tried to crawl under the bed. Even as she hauled Dolly across the blood-smeared floor, men who’d come running at the commotion dived in to grapple Rowan back.

Rowan didn’t waste her breath. She punched, kicked, jabbed and kneed, heedless of where blows landed, until she ended up facedown on the floor, pinned.

“Just stay down,” Gull said in her ear.

“Get off me. Goddamn you, get off me. Do you see what she did?”

“Everybody sees it. Jesus, somebody get that screaming idiot out of here before I punch her.”

“I’m going to kick every square inch of her skanky ass. Let me up! You hear that, you psycho? First chance I get it won’t be pig’s blood you’re wearing, it’ll be your own. Let me the fuck up!”

“You’re down until you calm down.”