Free Where There's Smoke: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 1) by Susan May Warren Page B

it. He said that we’d get cut off from communication and lose our eyes on the fire. Otis was listening to Overhead, though, and he ranked higher than Jock, so Jock fell back to the far end of the line with me, Rube, and Pete. He told Browning, Nutter, Deke, Suds, and Weiner to work the middle and connect the line with the shots higher up the mountain.”
    “Jim Winner,” Reuben corrected. “And Anthony Sutton, both from South Dakota.”
    Right. Jed knew them all.
    Nutter—Doug Turnquist—age thirty, father to a son he never met.
    Tom Browning, twenty-four-years-old and son of their small-aircraft mechanic on base.
    Deke Johnson, out of Minnesota, age twenty-five, kid brother to a seasoned shot Conner had trained.
    Bo Renner, rookie, former running back for the Ember Flames, and town darling.
    And, of course, Jock.
    Conner folded his hands over his chest, looked away.
    Reuben picked up the story then. “We constructed our line, and Jock was ready to start the burn, so we all went to finish hooking the lines together when we heard the shout. The fire was making a run up the middle, coming in fast. They hadn’t yet connected the lines above us, so a burnout wasn’t possible. Then Otis came over the radio and told us to run toward the safety zone he’d found—up the mountain. But Jock turned to us—and told us to run back, toward the cool black area—already burned over. It was about the size of a football field, and he said if we had to deploy our shelters there, we had enough distance to survive the radial heat. The fire was going to run over us either way, but he calculated the distance to safety and realized level ground would get us there faster.”
    “Except Otis’s route had them going half the distance,” Jed said quietly.
    “Uphill.”
    Reuben slid down, his back to the wall. “Jock knew that Nutter and the guys would never make it up the hill. He told them to drop their tools and run to us, but Otis came on the line and ordered them to him.”
    A heartbeat, then Jed filled in the rest. “Jock ran back into the fire to stop them, try and save them, bring them back down”
    “The shots on Otis’s crew, the ones working the far edge, ran up the trail,” Conner said.
    “They had to deploy their shelters,” Reuben said. “Four are still suffering from burns, but they lived.”
    “But the guys caught in the middle—Browning, Nutter, Suds, Deke, Renner, Winner and Jock...well, they simply couldn’t outrun it.”
    “If they’d obeyed Jock instead of Otis, they might have made it.”
    “And if we’d gone Otis’ direction, we would have died, too,” Conner said. “But because Jock defied orders, he’s the bad guy. Some of the shots claimed that while he was arguing with Otis, the guys could have been fleeing to higher ground, but I’m telling you, Jed, Rube and I hiked that pass, and there was no way to outrun that fire uphill. We lived because Jock followed his gut. And if the guys had listened to Jock, they’d still be alive, too.”
    Jed closed his eyes, seeing the old man, his dark hair salted with gray under a JCWF gimme cap, staring up at the mountains through his aviators. Always thinking.
    “Good decision, bad outcome.” Jed glanced at Reuben, then Conner. “His luck finally ran out. It just takes once. I wish Kate would get that.”
    “Like I said—she has instincts like her old man, Jed. Have a little faith in her.” Conner walked over to the Wii, turned it off. The music died. “She certainly has faith in you, dude. According to her, you saved her life a while back.”
    Reuben stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. “She told us about the fire and how you hiked out with a broken leg. That’s dope, man.”
    “Yeah, well, she’s telling it backwards. I might have saved her—briefly, but it was my fault. I read the fire route wrong, and we had to deploy our shelters. She climbed into mine and held it down for me.” He held out his hands, the skin rumpled along his