Page 5 of Burning Justice

“You don’t want a medal because you think it was your fault.” She glanced aside at him. “Even though it wasn’t. You guys were there to rescue me. You had no idea?—”

“Neither did you,” Kane said.

“So neither of us is at fault.”

“We’ve been over this.”

Sanchez sighed. “You rescued me, and you were betrayed.”

“Now ask me what we’d have done if we knew going in that it was a trap. So I can tell you we’d have done it anyway. We’d have rescued you even if we knew it would work out like this.”

She shook her head but said nothing.

“And when Hammer realized Mack was at home, living under his father’s thumb—the worst kind of place to be—we picked him up and brought him with us. Because we don’t let people fall through the cracks. Everyone deserves to have someone show up for them. You, me, and Mack.”

He continued, “Now we’re going to do the same with your father. And we’re going to find the people behind the Sons of Revolution militia and finish this. When it’s all done, we’re going to get our lives back.”

“I hope so.” She said it so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

The line of hotshots slowed, and Mitch stepped off the trail, toward the tree line.

“I guess we’re here.” Kane knew for a fact there was a snowcapped mountain in front of them, but the thick wildfire smoke made it invisible. Enclosed them in a cloud that hung like fog on the horizon and caused a scratch in his throat that he had to cough out.

Saxon walked back to them. “Everything okay?”

Kane and Saxon had been in boot camp together. They’d fought, sweated, and bled together. Now they were dead together. It brought a certain clarity to everything he did. Who had time to beat around the bush when the fate of a country was on the line?

“Everything is fine. What’s with the location?” Kane motioned up the trail and spotted Mack right as he tossed another rock.

He knew Saxon didn’t buy that he was fine, but he didn’t challenge Kane. “Mitch said there’s a cabin through the?—”

An explosion rocked the ground under them. Fire, smoke, and dirt sprayed into the air, caught a tree and sent it skyward in pieces.

All of them ducked into a crouch.

The last one down was Raine, looking around at him and Saxon. “What was that?”

“No one move!” Everything in Kane went cold. “That was a land mine.”

Two

Maria spun around in her crouch, wobbled, and landed on her butt in the dirt. “What? He said land mine.”

Saxon turned that dark stare on her. When he wanted to be, he could be scary, but the guy was a teddy bear. Earlier in the season, they’d come across an evacuating family with a deaf child, and he’d spent an hour hiking alongside the kid, conversing in sign language until the kid had snorted because he was laughing so hard at Saxon’s jokes.

Over by the trees, Mitch called out, “Everyone good?”

They each sounded off. Raine’s voice wavered, and both Hammer and Mack turned to face her—but Maria couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Mitch yelled, “No one moves until we figure this out.”

Maria looked from him to Saxon, then Kane, who had crouched closer to her. “I feel like I should check under my feet and around me. Just to make sure.”

“Quicker to toss rocks and set them all off.” Saxon turned to face up the trail, eyeing the ground between him and Raine. He yelled, “I told you we should get a K-9!”

Grizz looked as unhappy as he normally did, but the typical grumpy expression on his face had softened a lot since he’d met Dani. Right now? The mountain man surveyed the area around them between the trail and the two fields of tall spruce.

Maria checked the dirt around her. “I don’t think there are any land mines on the trail. We would’ve hit one before now.”

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