Jenna Kernan - Firewolf

Dylan resisted the urge to glance at her breasts again.

“Mind moving your vehicle?” Dylan added a generous smile after his request. It was his experience that Anglo women were either wary of or curious about Apache men. This woman looked neither wary nor curious. She looked pissed.

Had her car broken down?

“You ruined my shot,” she said, motioning at her tiny camera.

She was shooting in the direction he traveled, toward his destination, the house that broke the ridgeline and thus had caused so much controversy. Dylan had an appointment up there that could not be missed, one that marked a change in direction.

“The dust!” she said, and dropped a cloth over her camera.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Dylan’s years in the Marines had taught him many things, including how to address an angry Anglo woman. “But I have to get by. I have a meeting.”

“I can’t have you in the shot.”

Was she refusing to move? Now Dylan’s eyes narrowed.

“Are you unable to move that vehicle?” he asked.

“Unwilling.”

She raised her pointed chin and Dylan felt an unwelcome tingle of desire. Oh, no. Heck, no—and no way, too. This woman was high maintenance and from a world he did not even recognize.

“You’ll have to wait.” Her mouth quirked as if she knew she was messing with him and was enjoying herself.

“But I have an appointment,” he repeated.

“I don’t give a fig.”

“You can’t just block a public road.”

“Well, I guess I just did.”

Dylan suppressed the urge to ram her Audi off into the rough. That’s what his friend Ray Strong would do. Ray spent a lot of time cleaning up after his impulsiveness. Right now Dylan thought it might be worth it. He pictured the car sliding over the embankment and resisted the urge to smile.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

He lowered his chin and bit down to keep himself from telling her exactly what she was. Instead, he shook his head.

“I’m Meadow.”

She gave only her first name, as if that was all that mattered. Not her family name or her tribe or clan. Just Meadow.

He shrugged one shoulder.

“Meadow Wrangler?”

He shook his head indicating his inability to place the name.

Her pretty little mouth dropped open.

“You don’t know me?”

“Should I?” he asked.

“Only if you can read.”

Charming, he thought.

In a minute he was getting out of his truck and she wouldn’t like what happened next. He could move her and her camera without harming a blue hair on her obnoxious little head. Dylan gripped the door handle.

“My father is Theron Wrangler.”

Dylan’s hand fell from the handle and his eyes rounded.

She folded her arms. “Ah. You’ve heard of him.”

He sure had, but likely not for the reason she thought. Theron Wrangler was the name that Amber Kitcheyan had overheard the day before the Lilac Copper Mine massacre. It was the name of the man that FBI field agent Luke Forrest believed was a member of the eco-extremist group known as BEAR, Bringing Earth Apocalyptic Restoration. But what was Theron Wrangler’s profession?

“I’m not surprised. He won an Oscar at twenty-five. I’m working for him now. Documentary film on the impact of urban sprawl and on the construction of private residences that are environmental and aesthetic monstrosities.” She motioned her head toward the mansion rising above the tree line on the ridge. “I’ve been here filming since construction. Timelapse. Sun up to sun down and today I finally have some clouds. Adds movement.”

The wind was picking up, blowing grit and sand at them.

“I still need to get around you,” said Dylan.

“And have your rooster tail in the shot? No way. Why are you going up there? I thought your people were protesting the building of that thing.”

She was referring to the private residence of Gerald W. Rustkin, the man who had founded one of the social media sites that self-destructed all messages from either side of any conversation. The man who allowed others to hide had put himself in the center of controversy when he had donated generously to the city of Flagstaff and afterward quietly received his variances to break the ridgeline with his personal residence.

“My people?” asked Dylan.

“You’re Native American, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but we don’t all think alike.”

“But you’re all environmentally conscious.” she said, as if this was a given.

“That would be thinking alike.”

“You don’t want to prevent that thing from being built?” She pointed at the unfinished mansion sprawling over the top of the ridge like a serpent.

Dylan glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go. You know you really should put on a hat.”

She scoffed. “You think I’m worried about skin cancer? Nobody expects me to make thirty.”

He wrinkled his brow. “Why not?” She looked healthy enough, but perhaps she was ill.

“Why?” She laughed. “You really don’t know me?”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s refreshing. I’m the screwup. The family’s black sheep. The party girl who forgot to wear her panties and broke the internet. I’m in the tabloids about every other week. Can’t believe they didn’t follow me out here. I thought you were one of them.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, I can see that.” She approached his truck. “Can’t remember the last time I did this.” She extended her hand. “I’m Meadow.”

Dylan looked at her elegant hand. He considered rolling up his window because this woman represented all the trouble he tried to avoid.

Instead, he took her hand gently between his fingers and thumb and gave it a little shake. But something happened. His smile became brittle and the gentle up-and-down motion of their arms ceased as he stared into bewitching amber-brown eyes. After an awkward pause he found his voice.

“Nice to meet you, Meadow. I’m Dylan Tehauno.”

Her voice now sounded breathy. “A pleasure.”

Her eyes glittered with mischief. Now he needed to get by her for other reasons, because this was the sort of woman you put behind you as quickly as possible.

She slipped her hand free and pressed her palm flat over her stomach. Were her insides jumping, like his?

“What’s your business, Dylan?”

“I’m a hotshot.”

She shook her head. “What’s that, like a jet pilot?”

“I fight wildfires. Forest fires. We fly all over the West—Idaho, Oregon, Colorado. Even east once to Tennessee. Man, is it green there.”

“Really? So you jump out of airplanes with an ax. That kind of thing?”

“No, those are smoke jumpers. We walk in. Sometimes twenty miles from deployment. Then we get to work.” In fact, he had most of his gear in the box fixed to the bed of his truck.

“That’s crazy.”

He thought standing in the sun with a GoPro was crazy, but he just smiled. “Gotta go.”

“All right, Sir Dylan. You may pass. How long will you be up there?”

“Hour maybe.”

“Time enough for me to get my shot then.” She reversed course and moved her tripod behind her sports car.

Dylan rolled past. He couldn’t stop from glancing at her in the rearview mirror. He kept looking back until she was out of sight. Soon he started the ascent to the house, winding through the thick pines and dry grasses.

His shaman and the leader of his medicine society, Kenshaw Little Falcon, had recommended Dylan for this job. This was his first commission in Flagstaff. He’d recently earned his credentials as a fire-safety inspector in Arizona. As a fire consultant, it was usually his role to give recommendations to protect the home from wildfire, identify places where wildfire might trap or kill people and provide fuel-reduction plans. Something as simple as trimming the branches of trees from the ground to at least ten feet or not placing mulch next to the house could be the difference between losing a home and saving it. But this consultation was different because so many did not want this house completed. Cheney Williams, the attorney who had filed the injunction, waited for him on the ridge. Dylan felt important because he knew that his report might prevent the multimillionaire Rustkin from securing insurance. At the very least it would buy time. That would be a feather in Dylan’s cap. He lowered his arm out his window and patted the magnetic sign affixed to the door panel—Tehauno Consulting.