Another Pandora box had sprung open and she knew why. Saying this to a smokejumper gave her immense satisfaction. Problem was, it was the wrong one.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “I’m sorry I unloaded like a dump truck. I guess, because you’re a smokejumper…when the one I should have said this to, is twenty-five hundred miles away.” She stretched her arm out in a haphazard direction.
“I got the part about gender discrimination.” He scratched his cheek. “But you lost me at sex with coworkers.”
“Let me explain…”
“Look, Tara. I don’t know what’s going on with you. But that’s not the issue here. The real issue is you need to focus on your job. Put whatever is bothering you out of your brain. You’re a wildland firefighter. Now act like it.”
His authoritarian tone pissed her off. “Or what? You’ll fire me?” Keep it together. Don’t lose it again.
He let out a long sigh. “You’ve brought things up I can’t address right now.”
“You mean you won’t address right now. So, is this the fire instructor talking, or the guy who kissed me? I take it they’re two different people.” She watched a small spider resting on the toe of her boot, wondering if her anger was hot enough to torch the little bugger.
“We’ll talk about that later, but not while we work together. No more screw-ups. You’re better than this. It’s not good for a new crew to have safety incidents in their first work session. We aren’t even on a fire.”
She wanted to say the more I’m around you, the more I screw up. Instead, she focused on the spider crawling off her boot to cool herself down. She lifted her chin. “For the record, I didn’t deliberately hit Hudson, though he may deserve it. He honest to God moved in the way.”
“That may be, but I’m still required to write an incident report.”
“Tupa and Angela were behind me. They must have seen what happened.”
“All right, I’ll talk to them.” He turned to go.
“Wait.” Okay, she’d swallow some pride. She couldn’t afford her training instructor thinking she was a raving lunatic. “I wasn’t angling for a pat on the back from you this morning,” she lied.
He stopped to look at her. “I’m sorry if I offended you, but what you did was reckless. I get that you want on a hotshot crew. You proved you can handle it. Chena Hotshots had an opening, but the slot filled fast. If I’d known you were…” He gestured at her, head to toe. “…this capable, I would have advised you to apply.”
“Please put it in writing for Jim Dolan so he can recommend me to the Lolo Hotshots.” She put on her sunglasses.
“You’re having an off day. Tomorrow will be better and it’s the last day of training. Let’s get back to it.” He walked out of the woods and she followed to join her crew.
All she wanted was to do her time here and go home. She tried to leave her baggage in Montana, but it clung to her like tree sap. She had taken her frustration out on Ryan, because Silva said Ryan changed women like underwear…and because he was a smokejumper. She knew it wasn’t fair to him, but she feared a Travis 2.0: Been there, done that.
Her heart was split into two halves. One half longed to be loved and the other was an armament of defense. When you love people, they abandon you.
Not even Ryan was proving that wrong.
Chapter 15
The van rocked along the dirt road leading up to Moose Creek campground, same as yesterday. Sipping his coffee, Ryan looked bleary-eyed at Aurora Crew’s worksite up ahead. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Mel drove. “Glad it’s the last day of training?”
“Yep.” Hopefully, the day wouldn’t be a calamity. He wasn’t in the best of spirits after staying up writing Tara’s log incident report.
“That good, huh? You’ll be back to jumping fire next week, buddy.” Mel smiled out the windshield.
Ryan let out a long sigh. “Yep. Back to normal.”
Yesterday’s discussion with Tara bugged Ryan. Her remark about sex with people at work. What was that? Someone had sure pissed her off. Obviously a smokejumper. He was curious to know her story.
Mel lurched the van to a halt at the same clearing as the day before. Aurora Crew piled out.
Ryan adjusted his hardhat and exited the van. “Spread out. We’re going to practice fire shelter deployment,” he announced, pulling his stopwatch from his pants pocket. “Under twenty seconds. Go!”
Tara yanked the foil shelter from its case below her day pack and fumbled it open. Most of the crew had deployed and hit the dirt by the time she’d managed to shake hers.
“You'll keep deploying until everyone is under twenty seconds.” Ryan glanced at her, then back at the crew. “Repack ‘em.”
Angela stood next to her. “Get with it so he doesn’t make us do it again.”
“Working on it,” she muttered, folding her shelter to stuff it back into its container.
“Today’s the last training day. Let’s just get through it.” Angela closed her shelter case and positioned it under her day pack.
Tara scolded herself for being slow. The harder she tried, the more she screwed up. What was wrong with her? Come on, Tara, get your act together.
Ryan’s patience was at an all-time low. It took four tries for everyone to deploy under twenty seconds. In a real fire situation, they may not have that long. He ordered Aurora Crew to hike the half-mile to resume digging where they left off yesterday. Staying up late last night caught up with him and he let Aurora Crew knock off work early. He instructed everyone to head back to the vehicles and waved everyone ahead.
Halfway to the trucks, someone screamed, followed with laughter. Ryan hurried toward the sounds. When he caught up to the group, Tara and Angela stood in a squirrel cache full of
