Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts
WAKING TO THE VIEW of the Alaska Range and Denali lifted the spirits. As she stood in camp, Rowan felt the mountain was on their side.
The crews had worked their hearts out, had the burns and bruises, the aches and pains to prove it. They hadn’t slayed the dragon, not yet, but they’d sure as hell wounded it. And today, she had a good, strong feeling, today they’d plunge the sword right through its heart.
She knew the crew was banged up, strung out, but they’d gotten a solid four hours’ sleep and even now filled their bellies. With more equipment, more men, an additional fire engine and two bulldozers, she believed they could be flying home by that evening, and leave the final beat-down and mopping up to Alaska.
Sleep, she decided, the mother of optimism.
She pulled out her radio when it signaled. “Ro at base camp, go ahead.”
“L.B., Ops. I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”
“How’s my girl?”
“Hey, Dad. A-OK. Just standing here thinking and looking at a big-ass mountain. Wish you were here. Over.”
“Copy that. It’s good to hear your voice. Heard you had some trouble yesterday. Over.”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle with some bubble gum and duct tape. We softened her up yesterday.” She watched the cloud buildup over the park, and puffs of smoke twining up from islands of green. We’re coming for you, she thought. “Today, we’ll kick her ass. Over.”
“That’s a roger. Ro, I’ve got something you should know,” he began, and told her about Leo.
When she’d finished the radio call, Rowan walked over, sat down by Gull.
“Hell of a view,” he commented. “Libby’s in love. She’s talking about moving up here. Ditching us for the Alaska unit.”
“People fall for the mountain. Gull, Leo turned himself in this morning. He’s in custody.”
He studied her, then drank more coffee. “Then it’s a damn good day.”
“I guess it is.” She heaved out a breath. “Yeah, I guess it is. Let’s make it better and kill this dragon dead.”
“I hear that,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her.
IT SHOOK IRENE to the core to walk into the room and see Leo shackled to the single table. He’d lost weight, and his hair, thinner, straggly, hung over the collar of the bright orange prison suit. He hadn’t shaved for God knew how long, she thought, and the beard had grown in shockingly gray around his gaunt face.
He looked wild. He looked like a criminal.
He looked like a stranger.
Had it only been a month since she’d seen him?
“Irene.” His voice broke on her name, and the shackles rattled obscenely in her ears when he reached out.
She had to look away for a moment, compose herself.
The room seemed airless, and much too bright. She saw the reflection in the wide mirror—two-way glass, she thought. She watched Law & Order, and she knew how it worked.
But the reflection stunned her. Who was that woman, that old, bony woman with dingy hair scraped back from her haggard face?
It’s me, she thought. I’m a stranger, too.
We’re not who we were. We’re not who we’re supposed to be.
Were they watching behind that glass? Of course they were. Watching, judging, condemning.
The idea struck what little pride she had left, kindled it. She straightened her shoulders, firmed her chin and looked into her husband’s eyes. She walked to the table, sat, but refused to take the hands he held out to her.
“You left me.”
“I’m sorry. I thought it’d be better for you. They were looking to arrest me, Irene, for murder. I thought if I was gone, you’d be better off, and they’d find the real killer so I could come back.”
“Where did you go?”
“I went up in the mountains. I kept moving. I had the radio, so I kept listening for word they’d arrested somebody. But they didn’t. Somebody did this to me, Reenie. I just—”
“To you? To you, Leo? I signed my name with yours, putting up our home for your bail. You left, and now I’m going to lose my home because even taking another job isn’t enough to meet the payments.”
Pain, and she judged it sincere, cut across his face. “I didn’t think about that until I’d already gone. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just thought you and the baby would do better if I left. I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think I’d be alone with no idea where my husband was, if he was dead or alive? You didn’t think I’d have a baby to tend to, bills to pay, questions to answer, and all this right after I put my daughter’s bones in the ground?”
“Our daughter, Reenie.” Under the beard his cheeks reddened as he pounded his fist on the table. “And they think I killed my own girl. That I broke her neck, then burned her like trash in a barrel. Is that what you think? Is it?”
“I stopped thinking, Leo.” She heard her own voice, thought it as dull as her hair, her face. “I had to, just to get from one day to the next, one chore to the next, one bill to the next. I lost my child, my husband, my faith. I’m going to lose my home, and my grandchild.”
“I’ve been living like an animal,” he began. Then stopped, squinted at her. “What are you talking about? They can’t take Shiloh away.”
“I don’t know if they can or not. But I know I can’t raise her right on my own without a good home to give her, or enough time. The Brayners will be here tomorrow, and they’re taking her home to Nebraska.”
“No.” That stranger’s face lit with fury. “Irene, no. Goddamn it, you listen to me now.”
“Don’t you swear at me.” The slap in her voice had his head snapping back. “I’m going to do what’s right by that baby, Leo, and this is what’s best. You’ve got no say in it. You left us.”
“You’re doing this to punish me.”
She sat back. Funny, she realized, she didn’t feel so tired now, so worn, so full of grief. No, she felt stronger, surer, clearer of mind than she had since they’d come to tell her Dolly was dead.
“Punish you? Look at yourself, Leo. Even if I had a mind to punish you, and I just don’t, you’ve already done plenty of it on your own. You say you lived like an animal—well, that was your choice.”
“I did it for you!”
“Maybe you believe that. Maybe you need to. I don’t care. There’s an innocent baby in all this, and she comes first. And for the first time in my life I’m putting myself next. Ahead of you, Leo. Ahead of everydamn-body else.”
Something stirred in her. Not rage, she thought. She was sick of rage, and sick of despair. Maybe, just maybe, what stirred in her was faith—in herself.
“I’m going to do what I have to do for me. I have some thinking to do about that, but I’ll be leaving, most likely to move closer to Shiloh. I’ll take my half of whatever’s left once this is said and done, and leave you yours.”
He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “You’re going to leave me like this, when I’m locked up, when I need my wife to stand with me?”
“You need,” she repeated, and shook her head. “You’re going to have to get used to your needs being down the line. After Shiloh’s and after mine. I’d’ve stood with you, Leo. I’d’ve done my duty as your wife and stuck by you, whatever it took and for however long. But you changed that when you proved you wouldn’t do the same for me.”
“Now you listen to me, Irene. You listen to me. Somebody took that rifle, took that gun, right out of my house. They did that to ruin me.”
“I hope for the sake of your soul that’s true. But you and Dolly made our house a battlefield, and neither one of you cared enough about me to stop the war. She left me without a second thought, and when we took her back, because that’s what a parent does for a child, she lied and schemed just like always. And you fought and clawed at each other, just like always. With me in the middle, just like always.”
God help her, Irene thought. She’d mourn her child for the rest of her life, but she wou
“Now she’s gone, and my faith’s so broken I don’t even have the comfort of believing it was God’s will. I don’t have that. You left me alone in the dark when I most needed a strong hand to hold on to.
“I don’t know what you’ve done or haven’t done, but I know that much. I know I can’t depend on you to give me that strong hand, so I have to start depending on me. It’s past time I did.”
She got to her feet. “You should call your lawyer. He’s what you need now.”
“I know you’re upset. I know you’re mad at me, and I guess you’ve got a right to be. But please, don’t leave me here alone, Irene. I’m begging you.”
She tried, one last time, to reach down inside herself for love, or at least for pity. But found nothing.
“I’ll come back when I can, and I’ll bring you what they say I’m allowed to bring. Now I’ve got to go to work. I can’t afford to take any more time off today. If I can find it in me to pray again, I’ll pray for you.”
L.B. HAILED MATT as Matt came back from his run.
“Have you got your PT in for the day?”
“Yeah. I was going to grab a shower and some breakfast. Have you got something you want me to do?”
“We could use some help restocking gear and equipment as it gets inspected. The crew got in from Wyoming while you were out.”
“I saw the plane overhead. Man, L.B., did they have trouble, too?”
“Another bad pumper.”
“Well, shit.”
“We’ve got mechanics going over every inch of the rest of them, the saws and so on. We’re unpacking all the chutes, and I’ve got master riggers going over them. Iron Man’s here, so he’s helping with that.”
“Jesus Christ, L.B., you don’t think somebody messed with the chutes?”
“Are you willing to risk it?”
Matt pulled off his cap, scrubbed a hand over his hair. “I guess not. Who the hell would do something like this?”
“We’re damn sure going to find out. Iron Man had news. Leo Brakeman turned himself in this morning.”
“He’s back? In Missoula? The cops have him?”
“That’s exactly right. It makes me wonder how long he’s been around these parts.”
“And he could’ve done this. Screwed with us like this.” Matt looked away, stared off, shaking his head. “Threatening Ro, shooting at her, for God’s sake. Now messing with equipment. We never did anything to him or his. Never did a damn thing, and he can’t say the same.”
“Right now, we take care of our own, so grab that shower and some chow, then report to the ready room.”
“Okay. Listen, if you need me back on the jump list—”
“We’ll leave you off for now.”
“I appreciate it, a lot. My parents should be in late this afternoon. I’m going to let them know I might have to cut it short. I don’t want you having to shuffle somebody into my spot with the other crap on your plate, too. You call me in if you need me.”
“Copy that.” He gave Matt a slap on the shoulder.
He headed back into Operations. He had twenty-one men in Alaska, and didn’t expect to see them back until the next day, soonest. Another load barely touched down, and a fire in California where they might need some Zulies before it was said and done. Dry conditions predicted for the next two weeks.
He’d be damned if he’d send the first load up without being sure, absolutely sure, every strap, every buckle, every fucking zipper and switch passed the most rigorous inspection.
He thought of Jim, felt the familiar heartsickness. Accidents couldn’t be controlled, but he could and would control this human-generated bullshit.
AT THE END of a very long day, Lieutenant Quinniock drove out to the base. He wanted to go home, see his wife and kids, have dinner with them the way men did who weren’t cops.
Most of all he wanted to be done with Leo Brakeman.
The man was a stone wall, wouldn’t give an inch.
Every pass he or DiCicco had taken at him—together or separately—met with the same result.
Zero.
Brakeman just sat there, arms folded, eyes hard, jaw tight under that scruffy man-of-the-mountain beard. He’d lost ten pounds, gained ten years, and still wouldn’t budge from his I’m-being-framed routine.
Now he demanded—through his lawyer, as he’d stopped talking al-together—a polygraph. So they’d have to go through that dance and shuffle.
Quinniock suspected if the polygraph results indicated Brakeman was a lying sack of shit who couldn’t tell the truth over the size of his own dick, he’d claim the polygraph framed him.
They had circumstantial evidence aplenty. They had motive, means, opportunity and the fact that he’d run. What they didn’t have was a confession.
The DA didn’t want to charge Leo Brakeman, former All-State tackle, a Missoula native, with no priors and deep ties to the community, with the murder of his own daughter without a confession.
And since every goddamn bit of that evidence tied Dolly’s murder with Latterly’s, they couldn’t charge him with that, either.
Need a break, Quinniock thought. Need a little off-the-clock before going back the next day to beat his head against the DA’s. But first he had to see what the hell Michael Little Bear wanted.
Once on base, he aimed directly for Little Bear’s office.
“You looking for L.B.?”
Quinniock stopped, nodded at the man who hailed him. “That’s right.”
“He just walked over to the loft. Do you know where that is?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He changed direction. It struck him how quiet the base seemed. None of the crew training outside or hustling from building to building, though he had seen a couple of them hauling ass down one of the service roads in a jeep. Either a test or a joyride, he decided.
When he made his way to the loft, passed what he knew they called the ready room, he saw why.
Here the hive of activity buzzed. Men and a handful of women worked on tools, taking them apart or putting them back together. Others pulled equipment off shelves or replaced it.
Routine inspection? he wondered, considered the organized chaos as he entered the loft.
There he saw chutes spread on counters, being unpacked or meticulously repacked. More hung in the tower waiting to be inspected or already tagged for repair or repacking.
He spotted Little Bear standing beside Lucas Tripp at one of the counters.
“Iron Man.” Quinniock offered a hand with genuine pleasure. “Have they talked you back on the team?”
“Just helping out for the day. How’s it going, Lieutenant?”
“I’ve had better days, and I’ve had worse. You wanted to talk to me?” he said to L.B.
“Yeah. Where’s the tree cop?”
“Seeing to some tree cop business. Did you want her here?”
“Not especially. I have crews in Alaska, and another just back this morning from Wyoming.”
“I heard about the fires in Alaska, threatening Denali Park. What’s the status?”
“They hope to have it contained within a few hours. It’s been a long, hard haul and my people jumped that fire with defective equipment.”