Page 18 of Burning Justice

But there was more to it. This wasn’t a woman with a crush and no other cares in the world to speak of. The undercurrent was far darker, but Maria didn’t know what could have possibly happened between Tristan and Raine.

It wasn’t like they’d spent much time together, even if Tristan had been around the last couple of weeks—since he and Crew had both burned their association with the Sons of Revolution militia group. The ones who had been running around the backcountry, shooting at wildland firefighters.

Maria could ask her friend plenty of questions. But bringing up Tristan shut everything down. She stared at Raine, deciding to give the other woman a break from talking about Tristan. “Why did you become a hotshot?”

“So I could escape them.”

“Who?”

“All of them.”

Maria shifted in the seat, dislodging Jubal. “Sorry, dog.” She petted his head, and he found another place to lie down. “Talk to me, Raine.”

The other woman scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter now. I’m a hotshot. I don’t have a family. I only have this.” She motioned at the jump base around them. “I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me. It is what it is.”

Her friend, this strong woman forged by the savagery of the Alaska landscape, had become a hotshot to escape. Maria said, “I only became a spy to be privy to any intel on my father. The government considered him a threat for years until they realized he was being trafficked for his scientific skills. Sold to the highest bidder for what he could do. And they only know that because I dropped proof they couldn’t ignore on their desks. I’ve been trying to get him back.”

“They didn’t help you?”

Maria snorted. “The CIA tried a couple of times to ‘buy’ him like a sting operation. It never worked, and I’m half convinced they’d have locked him away in some kind of facility where he’d be no better off than he is now.”

“So you’ve gotta bust him out!” Raine sat forward on the chair, tossing her wrapper in the firepit. “Like Tristan did with Crew.”

Maria frowned. “Turns out I have to find him first. Remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Raine sat back in the chair with a sigh.

“Our shot at getting inside intel dried up when Crew and Tristan were discovered.”

Raine winced. “I, uh…actually might have a way to find out what you need.”

“That one.” Kane put an X on the map on the wall in the mess hall. The one Jamie had listed numbers in the corner of months ago, back when they’d had no idea what it all meant.

No idea what was going on in this part of Alaska.

They’d been through kidnappings, a plane crash, met up with dirty federal agents, backwoods thugs, revolutionaries. They’d destroyed a whole facility, kept these militia guys on the run for weeks, and now finally had a shot at exposing the entire operation—taking down Senator Deville.

And yet this thing was far from over.

Rio, an FBI Special Agent out of Anchorage who had a personal connection to the smokejumper team, came over, scratching his jaw. “You’re sure?”

Kane said, “Ask Mitch. We were all there.”

“We’re sure.” Grizz settled on the edge of the table.

Rio looked at the clock. “When are the smokejumpers due back?”

“Probably tomorrow,” Grizz said. “They’re fighting the south fork, and the wind is too strong for the chopper to pick them up tonight.”

Mitch sat across a table from Mack, eating chili. The rest of them had finished already. Kane’s mouth was still on fire from the spices, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He was just going to keep drinking water.

A table over, Logan and Jamie sat close. Logan had been grounded after passing out during a jump a couple of days ago, so his team had deployed without him. Jamie’s brother Tristan was across the table from them, beside Crew. The two men were confidential informants for the Feds, as far as Kane could tell.

Actually, he wasn’t sure what Tristan was. Some kind of career undercover guy, or a Fed who’d been burned when his handler turned out to be dirty. Either way, it was too close to what had happened to their team.

Crew had been recruited as a confidential informant for the Feds because he could get in with the militia without being suspected.

Now that the Sons of Revolution knew who Tristan and Crew were, they had no way to go back in undercover.

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