Нора Робертс - Chasing Fire

“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.

The 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 reports. I’ll have to brief with L.B. at some point, and squeeze in daily PT, after which there must be more food.”

“There must.”

“Then I believe it’s going to be a time for relax-into-a-nap sex.”

“I can write up an agenda on this, just so we don’t miss anything.”

“It’s all here.” She tapped her temple. “So...” She strolled naked into the bathroom. “Let’s get this party started.”

Rowan considered the first round a knockout. Now that she felt a hundred percent human, and with Gull shaving off the scruff in her bathroom, she went out to dress.

She picked up the note someone must have shoved under her door in the last forty minutes.

FULL BRIEFING ALL CREW

OPS

THIRTEEN HUNDRED

“Oh, well. Round two’s going to have to be postponed.” She held the note up for Gull to read.

“Maybe he has some answers.”

“Or maybe he’s just got a whole lot of questions. Either way, we’d better scramble if we’re going to get any food before thirteen hundred.”

“Marg might know something.”

“I’m thinking the same.”

Since Marg liked him well enough, Gull went with Rowan to the kitchen.

Probably not the best timing, he realized as they walked into the heat and the rush. Marg, Lynn and the new cook—Shelley, he remembered—turned, hauled, chopped and scooped with a creative symmetry that made him think of a culinary Cirque du Soleil.

“Hey.” Lynn filled a tub with some sort of pasta medley. “Shelley, we need more rolls, and the chicken salad’s getting low.”

“I’m all over it!”

“Bring the barbecue pan back when you come,” Marg told Lynn while she swiped a cloth over her heat-flushed face. “They’ll be ready for it by then. I know how they suck this stuff down.

“Briefing at one o’clock,” she muttered, and wagged a spoon at Rowan. “Right in the middle of things, so they all storm this place before noon like Henry the Fifth stormed, wherever the hell that was.”

“I could chop something,” Rowan volunteered.

“Just stay clear. Once we get this second round of barbecue out to them, they’ll hold awhile.”

“You were right.” Lynn bustled back in with a near-empty pan. Together, she and Marg filled it.

“This tops everything off but the dessert buffet. Shelley and I can get that.”

“Good girl.” Marg flipped out two plates, tossed the open rolls on them, dumped barbecue on the bottom, scooped the pasta medley beside it, added a serving of summer squash. Then pointed at Gull. “Get three beers and bring ’em out to my table. Take this.” She shoved one of the plates at Rowan before grabbing up flatware setups.

She sailed outside and, after setting the plate and setups down, pressed her hands to her lower back. “God.”

“Sit down, Marg.”

“I need to stretch this out some first. Go on and eat.”

“Aren’t you going to?”

Marg just waved a hand in the negative. “That’s what I’m after,” she said, taking the beer Gull held out to her. “I’ve got the AC set to arctic blast, but by the time we’re into the middle of the lunch shift, it’s like Nairobi. Eat. And don’t bolt it down.”

Gull lifted the sloppy sandwich, got in the first bite. Warm, tangy, with the pork melting into sauce and the combination melding into something like spiced bliss.