Radclyffe - Firestorm

“Keeping tabs on me?” Jac called without looking back.

“Just making sure you don’t get lost,” Mallory responded, running half a step behind Jac.

“No problems here.” Jac glanced over her shoulder. Mallory had tied her hair back in a loose ponytail, and her face glowed with healthy exertion. Her eyes were bright, deep green, intense and focused. She’d shed her sweatshirt too, and her bare arms were sculpted and buff. Her white tank top clung to her chest and abdomen. Firm high breasts, long tight abdomen. Her breathing was steady, deep, unlabored. She was gorgeous.

“You checking up on all the rookies?” Jac started up a steep incline, looped an arm around a tree and pulled herself up the last few feet of the slope onto more level ground. She didn’t slow for Mallory but kept on running. A few seconds later Mallory was just behind her right shoulder again. So was the smell of honeysuckle. Her stomach tightened, and a jolt of electricity shot up her spine, throwing her off stride. Man, she had to focus, or she was going to trip over her own feet.

“You’re setting a pretty fast pace,” Mallory commented. She wasn’t breathing even a little bit hard.

“Feels comfortable to me,” Jac said.

“Not trying to prove anything, are you?”

“Nope.” Jac slowed on the downhill. Another stream, this one wider, rocks in the center, wet and mossy, slippery. A broken ankle waiting to happen. She glanced left and right, saw a shallower area a bit off the trail, and cut right. Splashing through the stream, she clambered back onto the trail on the other side. Mallory followed.

“All you have to prove is that you can handle the work,” Mallory said.

“How’m I doing?”

“You haven’t finished your run yet, Russo. Don’t wear yourself out.”

Jac ran on. Mallory’s footsteps faded, then disappeared. An unexpected swell of loneliness filled Jac’s chest, and she shook it off, uncomfortable with the unfamiliar feeling. She’d long ago gotten used to being alone.

*

Jac skirted along the crest of a rocky ridge about three-quarters of the way through the course, starting to enjoy herself. Her time was good, the morning was brilliant, and the scent of honeysuckle lingered. A flash of red halfway down the craggy slope off to her left caught her eye before being obscured by trees. After running another twenty yards, she saw it again, and whatever it was, it had not moved. Curious, she slowed, then circled back and cut off the trail for a better look. She expected to see a piece of abandoned equipment, but finally made out a red T-shirt covering a broad torso. A still figure lay against an outcropping of rock forty feet below the ridge. She sucked in a breath and narrowed her eyes, memorizing the location. Picking a tall, bifurcated pine as a landmark to orient herself once she went off trail, she took one quick look into the sky, didn’t see a spotter craft, and eased over the edge of the ravine. The steep terrain was rocky and densely forested. Without guidelines, the descent was tricky and slower than she would have liked. After a few feet she couldn’t see the figure, but she spotted the pine tree and followed the trajectory she’d mentally mapped out. Two minutes later she found Ray Kingston sitting on the ground with his back propped against a boulder, blood streaking down the right side of his face from a gash in his forehead.

“Ray,” Jac said, kneeling beside him. “How you doing, buddy?”

“Been better,” he muttered, rubbing his face and smearing the blood onto his hand and neck. He looked around, his expression confused. “Never was much of a runner. Tried to cut some of the distance and took the red trail. Must’ve tripped.” He squinted at her. “What are you doing here?”

“Got lonely up there. Let me take a look at your head.” Jac gently cupped his chin and checked his eyes. Pupils were equal, but pinpoint. Adrenaline surge. Maybe a prelude to shock. The laceration was long and deep. He’d need stitches. “How are your arms and legs, Ray? Can you move them? Feel everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He braced a hand on the rock behind him and tried to push himself upright. “I’m okay. I need to finish the course.”

He swayed, his face graying, and Jac quickly jumped up and wrapped an arm around his waist. “I don’t think you’ll be doing any more running today, buddy. Let’s just take it easy and get back to level ground. I’ll flag down a spotter.”

“No way. You need to finish the run. Go on, get outta here.”

She grinned. “Oh no, I’m not leaving you. Hell, you’ll probably try another shortcut, get lost, and I’ll be up half the night looking for you.”

“Frak you, Russo.”

“Promises, promises.” Jac slung his arm over her shoulders, gripped the waistband of his pants, and took his weight. “Let’s go. Nice and easy now.”

“Crap.” Ray leaned heavily on her, his balance unsteady and his breathing labored. “James is going to fry your ass, you know, if you don’t finish.”

“You let me worry about the boss.” Jac eased him down the slope toward a clearing in the trees, trying to ignore the acid burn of disappointment in her stomach. Mallory James had been right. She was going to wash out the first day.

*

Mallory checked her watch and watched the trees, resisting the urge to pace. Three rookies were already back at base. Jac wasn’t with them. Neither was Ray Kingston. The others had made it under the time limit, but Jac should’ve been in well before them. Mallory moved a little away from the group and radioed the pilot in the spotter helicopter. “Benny? You got anything?”

“Just sighted them, Ice. Looks like we got one down.”

“Damn,” Mallory muttered. “Where?”

She was already striding toward the equipment room for a FAT pack as Benny radioed the location. “I’ll be there in seven minutes. Stay over them until I get there.”

“Roger that.”

Mallory shouldered into the field and trauma kit, mentally sorting down the emergency response checklist that was second nature to every paramedic. Firefighters got injured all the time—occupational hazard. Still, having a rookie go down the first morning was not how she wanted to start boot camp. Anxiety swirled in her stomach, and she pushed the feeling aside. She was just worried about one of her team, that’s all.

But as she raced for the trail, the image of Jac running so effortlessly, her stride as smooth and graceful as a deer, flashed through her mind. She didn’t want to imagine Jac lying injured somewhere. She didn’t want her to be hurt. Warning bells clanged, too loud to ignore. She couldn’t afford to have any kind of personal feelings for another firefighter, not even friendship. She couldn’t take another loss.

Chapter Four

Mallory took the left fork off the yellow trail and cut cross-country, following her GPS to the coordinates Benny had triangulated from the spotter craft. Off trail, the groundcover was dense. Her Kevlar jump jacket protected her from the worst of the gouges and scratches that might have been inflicted by low-hanging limbs and broken branches. At home in the mountains, she moved as quickly and surely as a New Yorker maneuvering crowded midday Manhattan sidewalks—effortlessly dodging, weaving, and bounding over obstacles.

The squirming tension in her stomach was an unfamiliar background noise that she tried to ignore, chalking that unusual disturbance up to her new level of responsibility. Surely her unease had nothing to do with the identities of the rookies out on the trail. She let her mind empty. Speculating about what she might find when she reached the injured was pointless. Emergency triage protocols were so ingrained in her mind she didn’t have to think about them. And she didn’t want to think about the individuals. She ruthlessly obliterated faces and names. She was a paramedic and she had injured. She didn’t need to know anything else and wanted to feel even less. Her mind settled into the zone, that place of ultimate focus, where her heart beating a steady tattoo in her ears and the sensation of her breath flowing in and out of her chest centered her, at once readying her for action and obliterating all distractions.