Chasing Fire

 
    G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2011 by Nora Roberts
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
    Published simultaneously in Canada
     
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
     
    Roberts, Nora.
Chasing fire / Nora Roberts.
p. cm.
    eISBN : 978-1-101-51378-1
    1. Women firefighters—Fiction. 2. Montana—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.O243C
813’.54222  
     
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
     
    While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To Bruce
For understanding me,
and loving me anyway

INITIAL ATTACK
     
    Soon kindled and soon burnt.
    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
     

     

1
     
    C aught in the crosshairs of wind above the Bitterroots, the jump ship fought to find its stream. Fire boiling over the land jabbed its fists up through towers of smoke as if trying for a knockout punch.
    From her seat Rowan Tripp angled to watch a seriously pissed-off Mother Nature’s big show. In minutes she’d be inside it, enclosed in the mad world of searing heat, leaping flames, choking smoke. She’d wage war with shovel and saw, grit and guile. A war she didn’t intend to lose.
    Her stomach bounced along with the plane, a sensation she’d taught herself to ignore. She’d flown all of her life, and had fought wildfires every season since her eighteenth birthday. For the last half of those eight years she’d jumped fire.
    She’d studied, trained, bled and burned—outwilled pain and exhaustion to become a Zulie. A Missoula smoke jumper.
    She stretched out her long legs as best she could for a moment, rolled her shoulders under her pack to keep them loose.
    Beside her, her jump partner watched as she did. His fingers did a fast tap dance on his thighs. “She looks mean.”
    “We’re meaner.”
    He shot her a fast, toothy grin. “Bet your ass.”
    Nerves. She could all but feel them riding along his skin.
    Near the end of his first season, Rowan thought, and Jim Brayner needed to pump himself up before a jump. Some always would, she decided, while others caught short catnaps to bank sleep against the heavy withdrawals to come.
    She was first jump on this load, and Jim would be right behind her. If he needed a little juice, she’d supply it.
    “Kick her ass, more like. It’s the first real bitch we’ve jumped in a week.” She gave him an easy elbow jab. “Weren’t you the one who kept saying the season was done?”
    He tapped those busy fingers on his thighs to some inner rhythm. “Nah, that was Matt,” he insisted, grin still wide as he deflected the claim onto his brother.
    “That’s what you get with a couple Nebraska farm boys. Don’t you have a hot date tomorrow night?”
    “My dates are always