Page 4 of Burnin' For You

She grabbed his hose, leveled it on the fire biting at the branches, the bark.

The fire had doubled back along the top, relit the branches around him. He gritted his teeth, standing in the furnace, fighting the saw.

Don’t get stuck.

He broke free, the wood parting like butter.

The stump fell to the ground, an escape through the trunk. Reuben grabbed Hannah and pushed her through, commandeering the hose and dousing the flames with the last of his water.

Pete and CJ, on the other side, had banked the flames with the last of the water in their canisters.

Ahead of them, the fire edged the road—beyond, a wall of flame barred their escape.

Reuben dropped his saw. “We can’t deploy here. We’ll die.”

He looked up into the sky, saw nothing but gray, hazy smoke.

He scooped his radio from his belt. “Gilly, where are you?”

Nothing. He looked at Pete with eyes blurry from smoke and ash. Hannah was working out her shake-and-bake fire shelter—he didn’t have the heart to repeat himself. CJ had run ahead, as if looking for a way out.

They had a minute—or less—to live.

“Gilly,” he said into the walkie, not sure if she could hear him. His voice emerged strangely distant, vacant.

Void of the screaming going on inside his head.

“If you don’t drop right now, we die.”

Her first day officially flying bomber planes just might be her last.

“Tanker Five-Three, and I’m talking to you, Gilly, abort. I say again, abort. Alter course northward and climb. The wind gusts are too strong.”

The voice came through the radio—their lead plane pilot, Neil “Beck” Beckett—and he sounded just on the edge of furious.

If she could, Gilly would shut the radio off. Having their lead plane pilot Beck bellowing in her headphones did nothing for her focus as she held her course into the canyon, her flaps extended, aiming directly for the road.

Nobody died today. Not if she could rescue them.

Best case scenario, air command grounded her. But if her smokejumpers survived, she’d gladly spend the rest of the summer turning a wrench and gassing tankers at the Ember Fire Base, home of the Jude County Wildland Firefighters.

Gilly toggled the radio switch. “No go, Lead Four. I’m already in the neighborhood.”

“You’re going to kill us,” Jared, her copilot, snapped. “Just because you’ve been flying smokejumpers around for years doesn’t mean you can handle a bomber.”

“No, I’m not.”

Except during the last pass she’d taken, searching for the road Reuben had frantically described, the super-heated wind roiling out of the canyon had nearly flipped the plane. She’d barely missed trees as she pitched the plane up, fighting the washboard turbulence that seemed strong enough to rattle the teeth from her mouth.

When they hit the blue sky, her heart restarted.

Now, as she banked, headed around for another run, Jared used a word her pastor father wouldn’t approve of and actually made a grab for the controls. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Those are my jumpers down there.”

“You know these wings could rip right off—I’ve seen it happen. This old Russian Annie is a tin can of rivets and patches. If we go down there again, we die.”

“If we don’t, our friends die,” she said, her voice tight. “We’ve already had too many close calls this summer.” She didn’t bring up the tragedy from last fall, the one that killed seven smokejumpers.

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