Chasing Fire
Page 79

“My thinking, too. I tell you, Ro, I say I’m too old for this, but I’m starting to mean it. I might just ask your daddy for a job come the end of the season.”
“Hell. Cards is the one with the hole in his face.”
He looked toward the west, the setting sun, the black mountain. “I’m thinking I may want to see what it’s like to sit on my own porch on a summer night, drink a beer, with some female company if I can get it, and not have to think about fire.”
“You’ll always think about fire, and sitting on a porch, you’d wish you were here.”
He gave her a pat on the knee as he rose. “It might be time to find out.”
She had to browbeat Cards into packing out. Smoke jumpers, she thought, treated injuries like points of pride, or challenges.
He sulked on the flight home.
“I get why he’s in a mood.” Gull settled down beside her. “Why are you?”
“Sixty hours on fire might have something to do with it.”
“No. That’s why you’re whipped and more vulnerable to the mood, but not the reason for the mood.”
“Here’s what I don’t get, hotshot: why, after a handful of months, you think you know me so damn well. And another is why you spend so much time psychoanalyzing people.”
“Those are both pretty easy to get. The first is it may be a handful of months, but people who live and work together, particularly under intense conditions, tend to know and understand each other quicker than those who don’t. Add sleeping together, and it increases the learning curve. Second.”
He pulled out a bag of shelled peanuts, offered her some, then shrugged and dug in himself when she just glowered at him.
“Second,” he repeated. “People interest me, so I like figuring them out.”
He munched nuts. Whatever her mood or the reasons for it, he wasn’t inclined to lower his to match it. A hot shower and hot food, followed by a bed with a warm woman in it, ranged in his immediate future.
Who could ask for better?
“You’re starting to think about what’s waiting back at base. All the crap we’ve been too busy to worry about. What’s happened while we were catching fire, if the cops charged Brakeman, found Dolly’s killer. If not, what next?”
He glanced over toward Cards, who snored with his head on his pack, a fresh bandage snowy white against his soot-smeared face. “And you’re mixing in worrying how bad Cards messed his face up. Whatever Yangtree and you talked about before we demobbed topped it off.”
She said nothing for a moment. “Know-it-alls are irritating.” Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes. “I’m getting some sleep.”
“Funny, I think having somebody understand you is comforting.”
She opened one eye, cool, crystal blue. “I didn’t say you were an understand-it-all.”
“You’ve got me there.” Gull shut his eyes as well, and dropped off.
Rowan headed straight to the barracks after unloading her gear. To settle down, Gull decided, as much as clean up. Maybe she’d label it as “taking care of her,” and that was too damn bad, but he postponed his own agenda to hunt down L.B.
He waited in Operations while L.B. coordinated with the mop-up crew boss.
“Got a minute?”
“For the first time in three days, I’ve got a few. I’m stepping out,” L.B. announced, then jerked his head toward the door. “What’s on your mind?”
“You telling me the status of things around here so I can pass it on to Rowan.”
“I don’t know how much they’re keeping me in the loop, but let’s find a place to sit down.”
When Rowan stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, a still filthy Gull was sitting on the floor.
“Is something wrong with your shower?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in it yet.”
“I’ve got a lot to do before I’m done, so we’ll have to reschedule the hot sex portion of the evening.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind, Swede. I like the track, but there are more than one.”
She opened a drawer, selected yoga pants and a top.
“I’ll give you the rundown,” Gull began. “Trigger dragged Cards to the infirmary. The wound’s clean. No infection, but it’s pretty damn deep. Plastic surgeon recommended, and after some bullshit, he’s going into town to see one in the morning. He wants to keep his pretty face.”
“That’s good.” She pulled on the pants and top without bothering with underwear—something Gull appreciated whatever the circumstances. “And it’ll be fun to rag him about plastic surgery,” she added, stepping back into the bath to hang the towel. “We ought to get some fun out of it.”
“Trigger already suggested they suck the lard out of his ass while they’re at it.”
“That’s a start.”
“They’ve charged Leo Brakeman.”
He watched her jerk, just a little, then cross over to sit on the side of the bed. “Okay. All right.”
“His rifle, prior threats and the fact he can’t verify his whereabouts for the time of the shooting. He admitted he and his wife had a fight, and he went out to drive around for a couple hours. He’d only just gotten back when the cops showed up at the door.”
“His wife could’ve lied for him.”
“He never asked her to. Some of this came from the cops, some of it’s via Marg. I could separate it out, but being a know-it-all, I figure Marg’s intel is as solid as the cops’.”
“You’d be right.”
“They fought about him coming out here, going off on you. About Dolly in general. I think losing a child either sticks the parents together like cement, or rips them up.”
“My father had a brother. A younger one. You probably know that, too, since you studied Iron Man.”
Gull said nothing, gave her room. “He died when he was three of some weird infection. He’d never been what you’d call robust, and, well, they couldn’t fix it. I guess it cemented my grandparents. Has he admitted it? Brakeman?”
“No. He’s claiming he was driving around, just tooling the backroads, that somebody broke in, took his rifle. Somebody’s framing him. His wife finally convinced him to get a lawyer. They held the bail hearing this morning. She put up their house to post his bond.”