Page 50 of Burning Justice

“Whoa.” She shifted in her seat.

Rain started to patter against the windshield. “It’s coming down.”

“We’ll have more fires tomorrow.”

“Right,” Kane said. “Logan is out. Hammer can cover one slot, but we need alternates if anything else happens like Orion reinjuring himself. Now that you’re off the hotshots, he’s panicking. He wants Mitch, Grizz, Raine, and Mack to join a group from the Bureau of Land Management, get absorbed into their crew, and he wants to strengthen numbers and get the smokejumpers on a good footing for the remainder of the season.”

“He ordered you?”

“It was Hammer’s idea.” Kane glanced over, but with the lightning flashing and the rain coming down in sheets, he needed to keep his focus on the road. A peel of thunder rumbled the car. “Don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad? This is what you trained for. You’ve jumped out of how many planes with Delta Force?”

“We weren’t paratroopers, but we know how to jump.”

“There you go. It makes sense.”

Kane wasn’t so sure she was as okay with this as she was making out.

“One day after a bus crash where you’re all tossed around, and you’re jumping out of a plane. Makes perfect sense.”

There it was. “You know what we did. The kind of men we are.”

“It’s beginning to dawn on me.”

“As opposed to the one-woman save-the-world show?”

“You opted for the military. You chose that life.”

Kane grinned. “I like my backup next to me when I’m being shot at, not on the other end of the phone—or at a safe house on the other side of the city.”

“Made it easier to hide the fact I was looking for my father.”

Kane tapped the brake. “My ring.”

“What?”

“I dropped it in your dad’s pocket.”

“You saw my father?”

He nearly smacked his head on the steering wheel. “We got your location, and we rushed out to find you. I forgot to tell Jade I put my ring in your dad’s pocket after he told me I’d better find you.”

“You need to get a new one,” she said. “Do not go out smokejumping into the middle of nowhere with no tracker ring. Promise me, Kane Foster.”

She seemed to be more worried about him right now than she was about her father.

Given what she’d been through, he expected her emotions to be all over the place. But the fact was, if she didn’t want to ask about her dad, she had a good reason.

Whatever it was, she cared more about his safety right now.

He reached over and took her good hand, lifted it, and planted a kiss on the back. “I promise I’ll be safe. I’m not going to tell you not to worry about me, because I know you will. But I’ll be okay. I’ll have the whole team to watch out for me.”

“While I’m sitting back in the cabin feeling sorry for myself, trying to open the peanut butter with one hand. Spending all day talking to Jubal because everyone else is busy saving the day.”

He kissed her hand again.

“That isn’t going to appease me. You aren’t going to be out there with no way for anyone to find you. I’m not going to back down about this. You aren’t going to break my resolve.” She started to laugh, but it quickly dissolved into great big body-racking sobs that made his heart feel like it was going to burst out of his chest.

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