as she could. “Get behind me, Matt, so I can look out.” She angled beside Gull, cautiously eased her head out to look out, up. “It didn’t crown, didn’t roll the wall. Just spots. Jesus, Gull, your jacket’s smoking.” She beat at it with her hands as he worked to shrug out of it. “Are you burned?” she demanded. “Did it get you?”
“I don’t think so.” He crab-walked back. “The ground’s still hot. Watch yourselves.”
Rowan crawled out, reaching for her radio. On it Gibbons shouted her name.
“It’s Ro, Gull, Matt. We’re good. We’re clear. Is everybody all right? Is everybody accounted for?”
“We are now.” Relief flooded his voice. “Where the hell are you?”
She stood, scanned the area to give him the best coordinates. “Matt’s bunged up his ankle. Gull and I can handle these spots, but we dumped most of the gear on the run so... Never mind,” she said as she heard the shouts, saw the yellow shirts through the smoke. “Cavalry’s coming this way.”
Dobie came on the run with Trigger right behind him. “Jesus Christ, why don’t you just give us all heart attacks and get it over with?”
He grabbed Gull, slapped his back. “What the hell happened to you?”
“A little dance with the devil. Better put out those spots before we end up having to run again.”
Trigger crouched beside Matt, held out a scorched and mangled helmet. “Found your brainbucket, snookie. You’re a lucky bastard.” He put Matt in a headlock, a sign of relief and affection. “A lucky son of a bitch. Have a souvenir.”
He set the helmet beside Matt before hurrying over to help Dobie with the spot fires.
“Let’s check that ankle out.” Rowan knelt to undo his boot.
“I thought we were finished. I would’ve been finished if you and Gull hadn’t gotten me in there. You saved my life. You could’ve lost yours trying.”
She probed gently at his swollen ankle. “We’re Zulies. When one of us goes down, we pick them up. I don’t think it’s broken. Just sprained bad enough to earn you a short vacation.”
She looked up, smiled at him as she started to wrap it. “Lucky bastard.”
Though he protested, they medevaced Matt out, while the rest of the crew beat the fire back, finally killing it in the early hours of the morning. Mop-up took another full day of digging, beating, dousing.
“You volunteered to stay back, confirm the put-out,” Rowan told Gull.
“I’ve got to quit all this volunteering.”
“With me. The rest are packing out.”
“That’s not such a bad deal.”
“We’ve got MREs, a cool mountain spring, in which the beer fairy has snugged a six-pack.”
“And people say she doesn’t exist.”
“What do people know? I wanted to see this one through, all the way, and take a breath, I guess. So you’re good with it?”
“What do you think?”
“Then let’s take a hike, start doing a check before the sun goes down.”
They moved through the burnout at an easy pace, looking for smoke and smolder.
“I wanted to wait until it was over—all the way—before I said anything about it,” Rowan began. “I didn’t think we were going to make it back there against the fire devil. If you hadn’t spotted those boulders, reacted fast, we’d have all ended up like Matt’s now-famous helmet.”
“I don’t plan on losing you. Anyway, if you’d been on my side, you’d’ve seen the boulders.”
“I like to think so. It was beautiful,” she said after a moment, and with reverence. “It might be crazy to say that, think that, about something that really wants to kill you, but it was beautiful. That spinning column of fire, like something from another world. In a way, I guess it is.”
“Once you see one, it changes things because you know you can’t beat it. You run and hide and you pray, and if you live through it, for a while, all the bullshit in real life doesn’t mean dick.”
“For a while. I guess that’s why I wanted to stay out, stick with it a little longer. There’s a lot of bullshit waiting out there. Leo Brakeman’s still out there. He’s no fire devil, but he’s still out there.”
She blew out a breath. “Every time we get a call, I wonder if we’re going to stumble over another body. His, someone else’s. Because he’s out there. And if he didn’t start those fires, whoever did is out there, too.”
“It’s been three weeks. That’s a long time between.”
“But it doesn’t feel over and done.”
“No. It doesn’t feel over and done.”
“That’s the bullshit waiting.” She gestured. “Why don’t you take that direction, I’ll take this one. We’ll cover more ground, then meet back at camp.” She checked her watch. “Say six-thirty.”
“In time for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”
She beat him back to the clearing by the bubbling stream. The campsite, a hive the night before of very tired, very grungy bees, held quiet as a church now, and shimmered in the rays of evening sun. She stowed her gear, checked on the six-pack of beer and the six-pack of Coke she’d asked L.B. to drop.
She’d rather have that, she realized, in this remote spot on the mountain than a bottle of the finest champagne in the fanciest restaurant in Montana.
In anywhere.
She went back for her PG bag and her little bottles of liquid soap and shampoo.
Alone in the sunlight, she pulled off her boots, socks, stripped off the tired work clothes. The stream barely hit her knees, but the cool rush of the water felt like heaven. She sat down, let it bubble over her skin as she looked up to the rise of trees, the spread of sky.
She took time washing, as another woman might in a hot, fragrant bubble bath, enjoying the cool, the clean, the way the water rushed away with the froth she made.
Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them, laid her cheek on her knees, closed her eyes.
She opened them again as a shadow fell over her, and smiled lazily up at Gull. Until she saw the camera.
“You did not take my picture like this. Am I going to have to break that thing?”
“It’s for my private collection. You’re a fantasy, Rowan. Goddess of the brook. How’s the water?”
“Cold.”
He, as she did, pulled off his boots. “I could use some cold.”
“You’re late. It’s got to be close to seven.”
“I had a little detour.”
“Did you find fresh spots?”
“No, all clear. But I found these.” He picked up a water bottle filled with wildflowers.
“You know you’re not supposed to pick flowers up here.” But she couldn’t stop the smile.
“Since we save them, I figured the mountain could spare a few. Yeah, it’s pretty damn cold,” he said as he stepped into the water. “Feels great.”
She pulled out the bottle of soap she’d shoehorned between rocks, tossed it to him. “Help yourself. It feels like we’re the only two people in the world. I wouldn’t want to be the only two people in the world for long—who’d do the cooking?—but it’s nice for right now.”
“I heard birds in the black. They’re already coming back, at least to see what the hell happened. And in the green, across the meadow where I got the flowers, I saw a herd of elk. We may be the only people here, but life rolls on.”
“I’m going to get dressed before I freeze.” She stood, water sliding down her body, sun glinting to turn it to tiny diamonds.
“Wow,” Gull said.
“For that, and the bottle of wildflowers, I guess you’ve earned a beer.” She got out, shivering now, rubbing her skin to warm and dry it. “We’ve got spaghetti and meat sauce, fruit cups, crackers and cheese spread and pound cake for dinner.”
“Right now I could eat cardboard and be happy, so that sounds amazing.”
“I’ll get the campfire going,” she told him as she dressed. “And you get the beer when you get out. I guess cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will consist of—Holy shit.”
