Нора Робертс - Chasing Fire

“What the hell?” she demanded as Dobie pushed by her.

“Somebody hit the ready room. Gibbons said it looks like a bomb went off.”

“What? That can’t—”

But Dobie continued to run, obviously wanting to see for himself. In the cotton pants and tank she’d slept in, Rowan raced out in her bare feet.

The morning chill hit her skin, but what she saw in the faces of those who hurried with her, or quick-stepped it toward Operations, heated her blood.

Something’s very wrong, she realized, and quickened her pace.

She hit the door to the ready room in step with Dobie.

A bomb wasn’t far off, she thought. Parachutes, so meticulously and laboriously rigged and packed, lay or draped like tangled, deflated balloons. Tools scattered on the torn silks with gear spilling chaotically out of lockers. From the looks of it, tools, once carefully cleaned and organized, had been used to hack and slice at packs, jumpsuits, boots, damaging or destroying everything needed to jump and contain a fire.

On the wall, splattered in bloody-red spray paint, the message read clearly:

JUMP AND DIE

BURN IN HELL

Rowan thought of pig’s blood.

“Dolly.”

With his hands fisted at his sides, Dobie stared at the destruction. “Then she’s worse than crazy.”

“Maybe she is.” Rowan squatted, slid a hand through the slice in silk. “Maybe she is.”

Every able hand worked in manufacturing, in the loadmaster’s room, in the loft. They spread through the buildings, making Smitty bags, ponchos, finishing chutes already in for repair, rigging, repacking. Under the hum and clatter of machines, the mutters, Rowan knew everyone’s thoughts ran toward the same destination.

Let the siren stay silent.

Until they repaired and restocked, rerigged, inspected, there was no jump list.

Nothing in the ready room could be touched until the cops cleared it. So they worked with what they had in manufacturing, running against the clock and the moods of nature.

“We could maybe send eight in.” Cards worked opposite Rowan, painstakingly rigging a chute. “We can put eight together right now.”

“I can’t think about it. And we can’t rush it. It’s a damn good thing she didn’t get in here. Bad enough as it is.”

“Do you really think Dolly did that?”

“Who else?”

“That’s just fucked up. She was sort of one of us. I even...”

“A lot of the guys even.”

“Before Vicki,” Cards added. “Before Jim. Anyway, I mean, she worked right here on base, joking and flirting around in the dining hall. Like Marg and Lynn.”

“Dolly’s never been like Marg and Lynn.”

Focusing, Rowan arranged the chute’s lines into two perfect bundles. One tangled cord could be the difference between a good jump and a nightmare. “Who else is pissed off and crazy besides Dolly?”

“Painting that crap on the wall, too,” Cards agreed. “Like she did in your room. I was up till damn near one, and didn’t hear a goddamn thing. Wrecking the place that way, she had to make some noise.”

“She snuck onto base late, after everyone was bunked down.” Rowan shrugged. “It’s just not that hard, especially if you know your way around. It happened, that’s for damn sure.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Gull stopped on his way to another table with a repaired chute. “If there’s a fire when we’re not squared away, they’ll send in jumpers from other bases. Nobody’s going to jump until our equipment’s cleared. Who’s she trying to hurt?”

“Crazy doesn’t have to make sense.”

“You’ve got a point. But all that mess down there accomplishes is to cost time and money—and piss everybody off. Not to mention cops knocking at your door, when you slid by that one last time.”

“Vindictive doesn’t have to make sense either.”

Gull started to speak again, but Gibbons hailed Rowan. “Cops want to talk to you, Ro. To all of us,” he added as the machines hummed into silence. “But you’re up.”

“I’m going to finish packing this chute. Five minutes,” she estimated.

“L.B.’s office. Lieutenant Quinniock.”

“Five minutes.”

“Cards, when you’re finished there, you can go on over to the cookhouse. The other one, Detective Rubio’ll talk to you there.”

Cards jerked his head in acknowledgment. “Looks like you got the short straw, Ro. At least I’ll get some breakfast.”

“Gull, Matt, Janis, when the cops give us the go-ahead, you’ll be working with me on cleanup and inventory. You want chow, Marg’s got a buffet set up. Fill your bellies because we’re going to be at it awhile. Fucking mess,” he said in disgust as he walked out.

Cards signed his name, the time and date on the repacked chute.

“I’ll walk down with you,” Gull told Cards, and brushed a hand down Rowan’s back as he walked by her.

She finished the job, choking down everything but the task at hand. When she was done, she labeled the pack. Chute by Swede.

She shelved it, then gladly left the headachy din of manufacturing. But she detoured to the ready room.

She wanted to see it again. Maybe needed to.

Two police officers worked with a pair of civilians—forensics, Rowan concluded. She knew the woman currently taking photos of the painted message. Jamie Potts, Rowan thought. They’d been stuck in Mr. Brody’s insanely boring world history class together their junior year in high school. She recognized one of the cops as well, as she’d dated him awhile about the same time as Mr. Brody.

She started to speak, then just backed out, realizing she didn’t want conversation until she had no choice.

Besides, looking at the torn and trampled, the strewn and defaced, only heated up her already simmering temper.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of the hoodie she’d pulled on over her nightclothes.

Halfway to Operations, Gull cut across her path. He handed her a Coke. “I thought you could use it.”

“Yeah, thanks. I thought you’d headed down for breakfast.”

“I’ll get it. It’s a bump, Ro.”

“What?”

“This.” He gestured behind them, toward the ready room. “It’s a bump, the kind that gives you a nasty jolt, but it doesn’t stop you from getting where you’re going. Whoever did that? They didn’t accomplish a thing but make everybody on this base more determined to get where we’re going.”

“Glass half full?”

She honestly couldn’t say why that grated on her nerves. “Right now my glass is not only mostly empty, it has a jagged, lip-tearing chip in it. I’m not ready to look at it in sunny terms. I might be once her vindictive batshit crazy ass is sitting in a cell.”

“They’ll have to call in the rangers or the feds, I guess. U.S. Forest Service property that got messed with, so it’s probably a felony. I don’t know how it works.”

That stopped her. She hadn’t thought it through. “L.B. called the locals. The feds aren’t going to waste their time with this.”

“I don’t know. But I’d think if somebody wanted to push it, that’s where it would go. Destruction of federal property, that could land her a stiff stint in a cell. What she needs is a big dose of mandatory therapy.”

The man, she concluded, was a piece of work. Good work at the core, and right now that core of good made her want to punch something.

Possibly him.

“You’re telling me this because you’re not sure if I want her to do time in Leavenworth, or wherever.”