Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 4-2

Mr. Awful didn’t join the nature walk. Whether it was the large crowd, the elderly and grandkid mix he’d spotted as he neared the group, or he really did have phone calls to make, Laura didn’t care.

Instead she had a delightful day bird watching, pointing out Sitka columbine and Scotch bluebell, and showing off her favorite little spot to watch deer by a stream. An ATV had arrived ahead of them at the final destination meadow and set out picnic blankets and a large lunch spread. They completed the afternoon with games for all ages in the meadow. The real secret to this loop was, at the end of a very leisurely five-mile walk, they actually had lunch only a few hundred yards from the Lodge; always a happy surprise for the weary.

When she finally got back to her tiny Lodge office tucked beside the ski rental shop, her phone had two messages. The first from a number she sort of recognized simply said, Fire.

She’d already hit delete before it registered. That had to be Akbar and it explained why he hadn’t returned her call, he’d been on a fire. Suddenly she felt very small and petty. She had been so angry at him ditching her like that, and instead he’d been jumping a fire.

He could have said a little more than the one word. Not even a Sorry. Four lousy characters, five with the period. Maybe that was all he had time for, or the energy.

The second message, about an hour ago read, Sleep. Run tomorrow? –FB.

FB? Didn’t sound like an apology no matter how she tried to shoehorn words into it. Was it a Jetson reference? She didn’t think so. Then she thought of the theme song to the show, “his boy Elroy.” Boy? Fire Boy? Even if that wasn’t right, it was enough to make her laugh.

She sent back 7a.m. at Lodge. He’d find the message when he woke up.

Settling into her office chair she did a quick google and found the fire. A small but nasty blaze; small, two hundred acres had burned in a single afternoon and night. The photo, “supplied by MHA recon”—probably one of her dad’s drones—showed a towering wall of flame raging against the sky, a chopper in the foreground dwarfed by comparison. Nothing small about that fire. She kept reading. MHA had been on site for just twenty-eight hours and killed it. No wonder she hadn’t heard from him. He probably hadn’t slept in all that time.

As she finished the article, her phone buzzed with a new message. He sent back, Glood! Not awake enough to type accurately, but he’d answered her. She didn’t explain her smile when Bess remarked on it. And if Mister Ed noticed before they went out for a ride, he wasn’t saying a word either.