Chasing Fire

emotional punching bag. Dolly was a liar, and her being dead doesn’t change that.”
    She got to her feet. “I told you this morning I was fit and fine. That wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t completely true, either. Now it is. Nobody’s going to treat me like Dolly and her father have and make me feel bad about it. I’m not responsible for the baggage full of shit they’ve hauled around. I’ve got plenty of my own.”
    “That sounds like you’re fit and fine.”
    “I can help out in Ops if you want, or head up to the loft, see what needs doing there.”
    “Let’s go see how our boys and girls are doing.”
     
     
    DICICCO MADE HER WAY to the cookhouse kitchen, found it empty, unless she counted the aromas she dubbed as both comforting and sinful. She started to move into the dining area when a movement out the window caught her eye.
    She watched the head cook, Margaret Colby, weeding a patch of an impressive garden.
    Marg looked up at the sound of the back door opening, pushed at the wide brim of the straw hat she wore over her kitchen bandanna.
    “That’s some very pretty oregano.”
    “It’s coming along. Are you looking for me, or just out for a stroll?”
    “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. And to the other cook, Lynn Dorchester.”
    “I let Lynn go on home for the afternoon since she was upset. She’ll be back around four.” Marg tossed weeds into the plastic bucket at her feet, then brushed off her hands. “I could use some lemonade. Do you want some?”
    “If it’s not too much trouble.”
    “If it was, I wouldn’t be getting it. You can have a seat there. I spend enough time in the kitchen on pretty days, so I take advantage of being out when I can.”
    DiCicco sat in one of the lawn chairs, contemplated the garden, the lay of the land beyond it. The big hangars and outbuildings, the curve of the track some distance off. And the rise and sweep of the mountains dusted with clouds.
    Marg came out with the lemonade, and a plate of cookies with hefty chocolate chunks.
    “Oh. You hit my biggest weakness.”
    “Everybody’s got one.” Marg set the tray down, sat comfortably and toed off her rubber-soled garden shoes.
    “We heard it was Dolly. I let Lynn go as it hit her hard. They weren’t best of friends, Dolly didn’t have girlfriends. But they’d worked together awhile now, and got along all right for the most of it. Lynn’s got a soft core, and punched right into it.”
    “You worked with Dolly for some time, too. Were her supervisor.”
    “That’s right. She could cook—she had a good hand with it, and she never gave me a problem in the kitchen. Her problem was, or one of them, was she looked at sex as an accomplishment, and as something to bargain with.”
    Marg picked up a cookie, took a bite. “The men around here, they’re strong. They’re brave. They’ve got bodies you’d be hard-pressed not to notice. Dolly wasn’t hard-pressed.
    “A lot of them are young, too,” she continued, “and most all of them are away from home. They’re going to risk life and limb and work like dogs, sometimes for days at a time in the worst conditions going. If they get a chance to roll onto a naked woman, there’s not many who’d say no thanks. Dolly gave plenty of them a chance.”
    “Was there resentment? When a woman gives one man a chance, then turns around and gives the same chance to another, resentment’s natural.”
    “I don’t know a single one who ever took Dolly seriously. And that includes Jim. I know she said he was going to marry her, and I know she was lying. Or just dreaming. It’s kinder to say just dreaming.”
    Though he’d used different words, L.B. had stated the same opinion.
    “Was Jim serious about Rowan Tripp?”
    “Ro? Well, she helped train him as a recruit, and worked with him. . . .” Marg trailed off as the actual meaning of serious got through. Then she sat back in the chair and laughed until her sides ached. She waved a hand in the air, drank some lemonade to settle down.
    “I don’t know where you got that idea, Agent DiCicco, but if Jim had tried to get serious with Ro, she’d’ve flicked him off like a fly. He flirted with everything female, myself included. It was his way, and he was so damn good-natured about it. But there was nothing between him and Ro but what’s between all of them. A kind of friendship I expect war buddies understand. Added to it, Rowan’s never gotten involved with anybody in her unit—until