Radclyffe - Firestorm

“I didn’t know how seriously he was injured, but he appeared unconscious.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t going to stand up on that trail waving my arms in the air while a guy died from respiratory obstruction or bled out.”

“Judgment call?”

Jac’s jaws ached, and she made an effort to unclamp her teeth. “That’s right.”

“You didn’t finish the course today,” Mallory said in that infuriating calm tone.

“Are you gonna wash me out?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“No reason at all.” Jac sucked in a breath. She wouldn’t make an excuse, but she wouldn’t go quietly either. “Except—”

Mallory leaned forward. “Except what?”

“Except I’m a damn good runner, and I climb as well as I run. And if you’d been up on that crest today, you would have done exactly what I did. Any good smokejumper would have.”

Mallory smiled but her eyes were flat. “You think you have me figured out?”

“I know I don’t. But I know I want to.”

Mallory leaned back in her chair, the cool mask sliding into place. “You’ve got half an hour to get something to eat, then you and I are going out for a run. Let’s see if you make the time. Last chance.”

“Why don’t we run with packs this time?” Jac rose, wondering where along the trail this morning she’d lost her mind. Maybe when she smelled the honeysuckle.

“Ever run with eighty-five pounds on your back?”

“No, but I know I can do it.”

Mallory stood, and they were very close together. Jac caught the scent of honeysuckle and saw a trickle of perspiration track down Mallory’s neck. She wanted to catch it on the tip of her tongue. She raised her eyes to Mallory’s face and wondered if Mallory could read what was in her mind, because the green of her eyes had changed yet again, brightening, gleaming, reminding her of a secluded forest glade on a spring morning. Ripe with invitation.

“All right, Russo,” Mallory said softly. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

Chapter Six

By 1300, the early May day was as warm as late June, and Jac started to sweat a minute into the run. She’d stripped down to her T-shirt and cargo pants in anticipation of the long, hot, hard run, even though she knew the eighty-five-pound pack was going to chafe her shoulders without a jacket to cushion the weight. A calculated risk. She wanted to make good time. Hell, she wanted more than that. She wanted to beat Mallory back to base, fully loaded, running all out. Dumb, yeah, but she couldn’t shake the feeling there was more on the line than a temporary six-month posting or even whether or not she moved on to the next round of boot camp. This felt personal—between her and Mallory. She’d gotten so used to others taking her at face value, or what they assumed to be face value, she’d long ago stopped caring what people thought of her. From the instant she’d met Mallory that morning, everything had been different. She’d felt judged, sure, but that was nothing new. What was new was she cared that the woman making the judgment know the truth about her. If she was gonna wash out, she was gonna make the decision hard for Mallory.

Not exactly a brilliant plan, and definitely not the best one she’d ever had. She was going to have to work to impress Mallory, because the woman was a machine. Mallory ran effortlessly beside her, a zip-up canvas jacket over her T-shirt. Standard field apparel under her pack, not as heavy as a Kevlar jump jacket but still damn hot, and not a drop of sweat showed on her forehead or her neck. Jac’s T-shirt already clung to her back and between her breasts, wet through.

Mallory caught her looking and observed calmly, “You’re flirting with heat exhaustion.”

“I’m not the one wearing a coat.” Jac wasn’t breathing heavily and could still talk while running, which was proof enough that her cardiovascular state was pretty damn good. She tried not to look self-satisfied. “I think you’re the one who needs to worry about the heat.”

“You’re running pretty close to a five-minute mile, which might be impressive on a high school track, but it’s just plain stupid out here in the mountains,” Mallory said, more worried than aggravated. She didn’t need another rookie down, and Jac was setting a blazing pace over unpredictable ground. The trail was scarcely a trail, more like a barely trodden path through densely packed trees and heavy undergrowth. No point training on groomed trails—there wouldn’t be any of those where the jump plane dropped them.

Jac was a smart runner, clearly gauging the terrain ahead in time to cut around fallen trees and other obstacles, skirting frozen patches of runoff in the shadow of boulders, at home in the mountains the way many rookies weren’t. Experienced firefighters didn’t always acclimate to mountain terrain. City fires held their own inherent dangers—burning buildings that collapsed in on themselves, trapping firefighters between floors, abandoned warehouses and garages filled with flammable chemicals, unstable rooftops that gave way underfoot. But the mountains waged war not with man-made artillery, but nature’s most fundamental weapon—the earth itself. Valleys acted like funnels, propelling flames on downdrafts to flank firefighters and cut them off from their escape routes. Mountain ridges hid advancing fire fronts until a blowup surged over a crest, catching a team far from its safety zone. Timber went up like tinder, fire soaring from treetop to treetop, a juggernaut of annihilation. Jac needed to be more than fast, she needed to be vigilant, and caution did not seem to be in her vocabulary.

Mallory dropped back a step to watch her. The pack on Jac’s back shifted a few inches from side to side with every long stride. Rookie mistake, running with that much weight and no coat to absorb the stress. Even so, she seemed comfortable, her breathing even, her stride regular. She was in excellent physical condition. Her shoulders were broad and muscled, tapering to a narrow waist and hips that weren’t much wider. Even in her heavy cargo pants, her ass was tight, her thighs muscular and hard-looking. She had a great body. Heavy tension coiled between Mallory’s legs.

Shock raced through her, nearly throwing her off stride. She didn’t look at women that way. Not even when she was interested in a date, and never in the field, never a fellow firefighter. She dated women who were easy to talk to, women whose interests were as far away from what she did every day as possible—teachers or businesswomen or waitresses. She didn’t date firefighters or forest rangers or cops or emergency medical personnel. She didn’t choose dates for their looks and didn’t care if they slept with her or not, as long as they were easygoing, quick to laugh, calm and steady. Jac was nothing like that. Jac was as tantalizing and dangerous as fire.

Mallory dropped back farther, needing space where there shouldn’t have been any connection at all.

Jac glanced back over her shoulder. “Want to stop and unload that jacket?”

“Just keep running, Russo, and watch where you’re going,” Mallory said.

Jac flashed her a cocky grin, jumped over a nest of fallen logs, and raced on, leaving a trail of spice and musk. Mallory kept her focus on the trail, running in Jac’s wake, Jac’s scent sliding over her skin.

*

Twenty-four minutes later, the end of the trail was in sight, and Jac slowed. She was ahead of Mallory, but she hadn’t outpaced her and didn’t want it to look as if she had when she reached the yard. Mallory could have overtaken her easily, but she’d never tried. Mallory ran right beside her, right where she’d been the entire run, still breathing easy, still cool and unruffled. Nothing to prove. Mallory knew how good she was. Another thing Jac liked about her, her self-assuredness. She wasn’t arrogant, didn’t need to throw her authority around. Confidence was sexy on a woman. But there was something, wasn’t there? Something that drove her to drive herself—the woman slept with her plane after all. And whatever was driving her probably put that haunted look in her eyes when she didn’t think anyone was looking. Jac had been looking, she just didn’t know how to ask.