Chasing Fire

reserve. And thank God so far none of the ones we’ve gone over show any signs of tampering. Do you know how long it takes to repack a single chute?”
    “About forty-five minutes. I’ve taken the tour. All right,” Quinniock repeated, and took out his notebook. “You have a list of who checked off the equipment?”
    “Sure I do, and I’ve gone over it. I’ll give you the names, and the names of the mechanics who did any of the repairs or cleaning. It doesn’t fall on one person.”
    “Are any of your crew dealing with more than the usual stress?”
    “My people in Alaska who had to jerry-rig pumpers with duct tape, goddamn it, or lose their ground.”
    As he also sent men out into the field, bore the weight of those decisions, Quinniock understood the simmering rage. He kept his own tone brisk. “Have you had to discipline anyone, remove anyone from active?”
    “No, and no. Do you think one of the crew did this? These people don’t know when they’ll have to jump or where or into what conditions until they do. Why in the hell would somebody do this when they might be the one with a starter cord snapping off in their hands, or scrambling with a useless pump with a fire bearing down on him?”
    “Your support staff, your mechanics, your pilots and so on don’t jump.”
    “And Leo Brakeman walked into your house this morning. He’s already shot up mine, and isn’t shy about starting fires. Tampering with the equipment here takes a little mechanical know-how.”
    “And he has more than a little.” Quinniock blew out a breath. “I’ll look into it. If it was him, I can promise you he’s going to be sitting just where he’s sitting for some time to come.”
    “His wife’s leaving him,” Lucas put in. He’d finished packing the chute, tagged it, then turned to address Quinniock. “She’s giving the baby to the Brayners, the father’s parents. They’re coming in from Nebraska. She’s making arrangements to turn the house over, to sell whatever she can sell, cash out whatever she can cash out. She’s thinking about moving out near the Brayners so she can be near the baby, help out, watch her grow up.”
    “You’re well informed.”
    “My . . .” Did a sixty-year-old man have a girlfriend? he wondered. “The woman I’m involved with is a close friend of Irene’s.”
    “Ella Frazier. I’m well informed, too,” Quinniock added. “I met her at the funeral.”
    “She’s helping Irene as much as she can. Irene told Leo all this when she went to see him this morning.”
    Quinniock passed a weary hand over his face. “That explains why he shut down.”
    “It seems to me he’s got nothing left to lose now.”
    “He wants to take a polygraph, but that could be the lawyer’s idea. He’s sticking with the same story, and the more we twist it up, the harder he bears down. Maybe tossing this tampering at him will shake him. I want the timelines, when each piece was last used, last inspected, by whom in both cases if you can get that for me. I have to make a call first.”
    He flipped out his phone, called the sergeant on duty and ordered a suicide watch on Leo Brakeman.

27
     
    T he plane touched down in Missoula shortly after ten A.M. They’d hit very rocky air over Canada, with hail flying like bullets while the plane rode the roller coaster of the storm.
    Half the crew landed queasy or downright sick.
    Since she’d slept the entire flight, Rowan calculated she felt nearly three-quarters human. Human enough to take a yearlong shower, and eat like a starving horse.
    As she and Gull walked to the barracks, she spotted L.B. with Cards, supervising the off-loading. She suspected L.B. had been waging his own war while they had waged theirs.
    She didn’t want to think about either battle for a little while.
    She dropped down to sit on the bed in her quarters, remove her boots. “I want lots and lots of sex.”
    “You really are the woman of my dreams.”
    “First round, wet shower sex, after we scrape off a few layers of the Alaskan tundra, then a short and satisfying lunch break.” She unbuckled her belt, dropped her pants. “Then a second round of make-themattress-sing sex.”
    “I feel a tear of gratitude and awe forming in the corner of my eye. Don’t think less of me.”
    God, the man just tickled every inch of her. And, she decided, even with the scruff on his face, his hair matted, twanged her lust chords.
    “Then a quickie just to top things off before I start my