Back to Eden

And he had waited, living as if he’d had a marriage vow to honor, knowing she’d come back to him someday.

Only to find out Missy was dead.

“I, uh…” Cole struggled to find the words to tell his friends what had blindsided him. “I just heard that…Missy is dead.”

Without a word they sat on either side of him on the hard-packed Montana earth.

Jackson put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. How did you hear?”

“Her little sister told me a few minutes ago.” Rachel had looked just the same as the picture he carried in his wallet—a stubborn lift to her chin, wisps of long black hair escaping from her ponytail, slender as a reed, wearing cowboy boots, scruffy blue jeans and a T-shirt. If it wasn’t for the way she filled out her T-shirt, she’d have tomboy written all over her.

What Rachel didn’t have written all over her was grief, because she’d had five years to come to terms with her sister’s death. All Cole’s dreams—

“Missy’s sister?” Logan broke into Cole’s thoughts, leaning forward and looking at Jackson, then at Cole. “The little girl who rebuilt your truck engine before she had a license to drive it? The one who beat you in a bareback horse race?”

“Logan.” Jackson held up a hand in Logan’s direction.

“Yeah. She’s a tanker pilot. I should have known she’d end up doing something crazy, especially with Missy gone….” Cole stared down at his boots. Rachel was no longer a little girl. She was a woman who’d never outgrown the daredevil spirit that he’d been sure Missy would temper as they aged. Crap. He still couldn’t believe Missy was long dead. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Maybe after we finish here, we can take a run over to Wyoming and pay our respects,” Jackson suggested softly.

Cole shook his head slowly, in wonder. “You didn’t even know her.”

“No, but we know you, buddy, and even if you’re not ready to talk about it, we’ll be there for you when you are.”

“LAST RUN OF THE DAY,” Rachel said as Danny landed Fire Angel One. They’d done nothing more exciting than drop retardant around the fire all day long. The fire had died down, so that there were no flames raging out of control and no firefighters trapped and in need of rescue. Very ho-hum.

“Last run of the season,” Danny corrected wistfully as he taxied the Privateer to the retardant base.

Despite the shift in winds this afternoon, the dragon appeared to be contained, and they’d been ordered to drop one last load of slurry on the steep eastern slope near the road before refueling and heading home to Wyoming. A season of flying was over.

Rachel sighed. At least she wouldn’t have to see Cole again.

In their passes over the fire, she’d caught glimpses of the crews below, bolstering the last of the fire lines before this beast burned itself out. She couldn’t help but wonder if Cole was one of them, if he looked to the sky as she flew over. How was Cole handling the news about Missy? Rachel had dreaded meeting Cole again. She had so much to blame him for. Even though she’d idolized him all those years ago, Cole Hudson never looked before he leaped, and that had contributed to Missy’s downward spiral and death. After so much time, Rachel had thought he’d shrug, offer his condolences and move on, but he’d appeared shaken.

Beside a shed on the edge of the runway, boots in puddles of red muck, the ground crew stood ready with hoses that would pump another twenty-five hundred gallons of fire-smothering slurry into the belly of the Privateer. Originally a long-range Navy patrol bomber built for World War II, Fire Angel One had been stripped clean to make room for the massive tank that had been riveted within the plane’s belly.

Without waiting for Danny to cut the engines, the ground crew approached, each dragging a hose and looking like aliens from the red planet, because their clothing, hats, goggles, gloves and masks were covered with a sticky glaze of crimson slurry. It would take them only a few minutes to fill the tank to capacity.

“My turn to fly.” Rachel faced the old bomber pilot, raising her voice over the whoosh and splash of slurry pouring into the Privateer. “How much do you want to bet this is the most boring run of the season?”

“I’ll pass on that bet.” Danny turned his cap backward and pushed his sunglasses firmly onto the bridge of his crooked nose. “It’s back to the boob tube for me and engine rebuilds for you.”

“At least I’ve got something to do this winter.” Rachel had an engine to rebuild on an old C119 warplane for a collector in Nevada. Danny would have to wait until spring to pick up work.

Danny laughed, rising to switch seats. “Yeah. Better make this last run stellar, then, kid. Are you up for barnstorming the camp?” Danny was always suggesting risky deeds, probably because as a fighter pilot in Korea and Vietnam, he’d cheated death more than his share of times.

“Are you up for having your pilot’s license revoked?” Rachel groused as she climbed behind the pilot’s controls, wondering why she was so somber. Was it because she’d reawakened her grief over Missy’s death through telling Cole? Or was it that Cole’s shocked reaction wasn’t at all what she’d expected?

The slurry hoses quieted. The tank was sealed back up. With a wave, the men in red retreated to wait for the next plane.

Unaware of Rachel’s mood, Danny grinned, shoving his mirrored glasses on. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Life is meant to be lived. Let’s take to the air, kid!”

“WHO’S READY?” Jackson yelled at the other eighteen Silver Bend Hot Shots packing their gear in base camp.

Doc and O’Reilly, among the youngest of the crew, already had their iPod earphones on and were oblivious to Jackson’s question.

The Silver Bend Hot Shots had been given marching orders. The fire was almost at the mop-up stage. That meant that less-skilled crews with lower hourly rates could be utilized. And since Silver Bend wasn’t a Montana crew, they were among the first to be released and sent home. States took care of their own.

Their duffels were stuffed with dirty clothes and reeked of smoke. They’d been fed and assured their paychecks were in the mail. All that was left to do was to pack up, load up, gas up and head for Idaho. Still, they weren’t in their civvy gear yet. There was always a chance when you were on a fire that you’d be called back into the thick of things. And this fire had created its own weather almost every afternoon since they’d been here, wreaking havoc with predictions and putting lives in danger when the winds whipped flames to dangerous heights.

Even now Cole could feel the wind pick up and change direction.

At the roar of an airplane overhead, Cole looked up. It was one of those antique planes that the Forest Service kept threatening to ground because of performance issues, planes so old they had a high likelihood of crashing. Cole had no way of knowing if it was Rachel or not, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the plane. In some weird way, she was the only thing he had left of Missy. The sisters hadn’t looked alike, and they were as different as milk to wine, but it was a link Cole was reluctant to break now that he’d found Rachel again.

WITH A SIGH Rachel took out her camera and snapped a quick shot of the base camp as they flew overhead. She tucked the camera back into her utility vest pocket. When Rachel got home, she and Jenna would sit together in front of the computer and look at her pictures from the season. This year she’d got some spectacular shots from above of other tankers dumping their payloads on hot targets. Jenna always seemed to enjoy looking at her pictures.

Voices crackled urgently in her headset.

“Did you hear that?” Rachel shouted over the roar of the four prop engines.

“You heard right.” Danny grinned. “Wind’s shifted. There’s a crew that might be trapped if they don’t get help soon. This is no longer a milk run, kid.”

Rachel banked and brought the plane into a new trajectory. They were minutes away from the location—a deep slope in a narrow part of the valley. As approaches went, it would be easy. They’d have to fly as low as they could over the canopy of trees. It was the climb out that was going to be tricky. Not impossible for Danny and Rachel, but it would by no means be a cake walk.

Rachel flew over the drop site once, taking in the fire racing after the fleeing men and women in yellow shirts before losing them in thick plumes of smoke, examining the seamless horizon broken only by a lone pine towering forty feet above the main tree line.

“Not much time,” Rachel noted as she prayed that wasn’t Cole down there running for his life. As Rachel angled around for a final approach, she rejected the feeling of guilt for keeping the truth about Jenna from Cole.

“Don’t need much time if your aim’s good,” Danny said, always fearless.

“We’ve got to watch out for that granddaddy pine as we come out,” Rachel observed, scanning the gauges for any sign of stress in the Privateer. Everything looked normal.

She spared a quick glance at her latest picture of Jenna and Matt. Jenna smiled with the unworried expression of a preteen who hadn’t yet discovered boys. Matt’s grin had been known to melt the hearts of ice-cream store clerks.

Coming out of the turn, Rachel leveled out the plane before pushing it into a steep dive through the thickening smoke. Down, down, down they plummeted toward the flaming treetops. Rachel flew as if she had no fear. Part of her reveled when her stomach dropped at their rapid descent. Part of her worried about Jenna and Matt, orphaned back at home if Rachel ever miscalculated.

She wouldn’t disappoint her kids.

“Slow down. Don’t lose them in the smoke.” The voice of the attack boss, circling high overhead in a small Cessna, crackled through the airwaves. “You’re coming in pretty damn fast.”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s never flown a bird like this in his life,” Danny yelled, leaning forward as if that would help him see better through the smoke. “We need speed. More speed.”

Rachel agreed with Danny. They had to come in fast and slingshot out, even if they were breaking a few safety regulations by flying in near-blind conditions. She gave it more throttle.

The plane shuddered with anticipation. The air seemed thick with the heavy threat of danger, making it hard to breathe. Usually Rachel imagined a young Cole was there at her side on adrenaline-pumping runs like this, egging her on, past the fear and into a zone where she operated on instinct.

She couldn’t find that Cole today, couldn’t bring the image of the object of her teenage affections to mind. But Rachel didn’t let the fear hold her back or keep her from diving into the shrouded air space over the retreating crew, who might be consumed by flame if she didn’t slow the fire and create a path to safety.

Visibility dropped as smoke wrapped around them. Rachel craned her neck as she tried to see out. She had no time to acknowledge the fear that clenched her heart, no time for more than a fleeting thought of home.

Pockets appeared in the smoke, showing her the way, then disappeared and teased just at the edge of her vision. Common sense screamed for her to pull up, get out, but Rachel had a job to do.

She kept her hands steady. There’d be time to let the shakes and the what-ifs take over later.

“Almost there. Don’t let up.” Danny wouldn’t back off either. “And…now!”

With economy of motion, Rachel punched the button on the steering yoke and felt the first three drop doors shudder open. At their rate and angle of descent, the red slurry would fall at a ninety-degree angle. She’d planned this run to catch the front flank of the fire with her first drop, hoping it would slow, if not halt completely, the raging head of the beast.

“Right on target, kid. Hit it again,” Danny cried, peering down at the flaming forest.

Rachel released the final three doors, catching sight of some of the fleeing crew as she did so, hoping this drop would provide a safe escape route for them.

The Privateer was long gone by the time the slurry hit the ground.

The smoke ahead was dense and dark. Visibility dimmed as she entered the plume, then cleared, then dimmed again as Rachel threw the flaps to bank, forcing the plane into a blind move against their momentum, against gravity. The Privateer bucked and groaned in complaint. The cockpit was dim, the air ahead of them impenetrable to the eye.

The attack boss cursed over the airwaves. “Can’t see a damn thing. Where are you, Fire Angel?”

“Hold together, baby,” Rachel murmured, praying for a clear windshield, even if it was only a view of the smoke-filled sky.

“Steady,” Danny cautioned. “You’re doing great.” He’d undoubtedly be crowing when they made it out of here. It was just the kind of adrenaline-pumping last run he’d wanted.

The smoke thinned as the plane climbed, shuddering from the effort.

Then they were bursting out of the smoke into a blinding dose of sunlight toward a thick spire of green. Too close. It was too close!

“The tree! The damn tree!” Danny shouted, as they raced toward the lone pine. It was fifty feet ahead of them and they were flying nearly one hundred miles an hour.

But it was too late to turn. Fire Angel One took the pine head-on about thirty feet from its top. The crack of the tree and the rip of metal was all Rachel heard as the windshield shattered into the cockpit, bringing a barrage of glass, branches, wood and pine cones onto them.

Rachel’s face stung and the air whooshed out of her lungs as something struck her in the rib cage. Impossibly, the plane seemed to float there, as if deciding whether to continue or give up. And then it bucked forward.

“We’re still flying!” Danny cried, as if that were the best news ever. “Three engines running. Hot damn!”

Danny didn’t know how hard Rachel was fighting to keep the plane going or to keep her shit together. Or maybe Danny did know and was just trying to keep her spirits up.

Her ribs were on fire. Something must have hit her when the windshield shattered, because breathing had become agony. But she didn’t dare spare a glance down at herself, because she could barely control the steering yoke, much less reach the other controls hidden beneath piles of green.

The Privateer bobbed and dipped dangerously above the canopy. Rachel didn’t think they could stay in the air much longer. They’d lost an engine on the right side, possibly damaged by debris. The landing strip was too far away, and the only thing between them and the airport was miles and miles of trees.

Something sputtered to her left.

“More thrust!” Danny reached for the thrusters. “Crap,” he yelled as he realized what Rachel already knew. Even if she could reach the control panel, it wouldn’t matter. The thrusters and gauges were covered with chunks of tree, barricaded in as if the old pine, in death, wanted to make sure it didn’t go down alone. Danny tugged at the wood, but a good portion of the trunk lay across the controls.

And pinned Rachel to her seat.

Double crap. Now that Rachel had looked, her hands started to shake.

The noise level decreased as one of the engines on the left died. Something an awful lot like doom swirled in Rachel’s gut. She couldn’t leave Jenna and Matt like this. The corner of their picture peeked out from behind pine needles.

“Fuel?” Rachel shouted as they shot out over the ridge and a new crop of trees waiting to shish kebab them.

Danny tugged frantically at the wood covering the thrusters. “Fuel’s fine, but we need more power. I’ll try restarting the engines.”

“We’re losing altitude,” she said, unsure if Danny heard her.

Danny released a string of curses and dug for the controls Rachel was sure wouldn’t work, her eye momentarily caught again by a corner of the photo still visible on the dash.

What had Rachel done?

Now Cole would never know the truth.

CHAPTER TWO

“DID YOU HEAR THAT?” Cole craned his neck to look up into the smoke-strewn sky.

“It’s just a plane,” Logan answered, busy packing his bags.

Cole shook his head. “It was a crack or a boom or something.”

A small two-seater plane was circling low over a point to the northeast.

“Look at that.” Jackson pointed at the Incident Command tents pitched on the rise above them. “Something’s happening.”

Sure enough, members of the IC team were running out of their individual tents that served as mini-offices tracking fire behavior, weather, personnel and the like, and were heading for the main tent. Just as a pair were about to yank open the door to the IC tent, the camp helicopter pilot burst out and ran toward the makeshift chopper pad at the end of the parking lot.

Something cold and unpleasant gripped Cole, momentarily freezing him in place. He didn’t need to possess Jackson’s near-psychic abilities to guess what had happened. The observation plane, which coordinated air attacks, was circling, flying too low. A plane had gone down.

“Come on.” With one hand, Cole dragged Doc to his feet. The kid had finished medical school in the spring and was about to start his internship. “You and I are getting on that chopper.” They’d be asking for volunteers to go on the rescue, crew members with medical training or rappelling experience, not that Cole had a lot of either.

Hearing Doc’s protests, Jackson moved closer. “Cole, what are you doing?”

“You’ll need your medical kit, Doc.” Cole swung the red bag emblazoned with a big white cross from the ground into Doc’s chest and started towing the slighter man in the direction of the chopper.

“Cole?” Jackson trotted beside him. “Where are you going?”

“A plane went down.” Cole didn’t slow up. He was getting on that bird.

The helicopter pilot was hurrying around the chopper, checking out rotors or flaps or whatever pilots did before they took off. A younger man in coveralls ran to the helicopter. The two men exchanged words and then the younger man hopped into the cockpit. Cole assumed he was the copilot. They wouldn’t allow the rescue team in the cockpit.

Jackson wasn’t giving up. “You think the plane that went down was Missy’s sister’s?”

Cole didn’t think; he knew. Yet it sounded stupid to say it out loud.

“Let me find out what’s going on first.” Jackson had spent the past few days of the fire working with the IC team. “There may not have been a crash. It might not be Missy’s sister.”

“No. By the time you do that, this bird will be gone.”

Jackson ran a few steps ahead and stopped in Cole’s path. “Don’t go running off based on a feeling.”

“Why not? You do it all the time.” Cole gave Jackson his fiercest glare.

Jackson shook his head.

“Look, I wasn’t there for Missy when she died. I’ll be damned if I’m not there for Rachel when she needs me,” Cole said through gritted teeth. “Now, step aside. Me and Doc are getting on that chopper.”

Jackson swore and did step aside. “Let me talk to the pilot. I know him.”

“Just get me on that chopper.”

“THERE!” Cole shouted above the whine of the helicopter rotors. The fuselage of the plane rested precariously on a canopy of trees fifty feet above the ground to their left.

“Holy crap. Will you look at that,” Doc said beside him. “What lucky SOBs.”

Cole could only hope Rachel had been lucky. The nose of the plane was smashed in and the windshield shattered. From this angle, he couldn’t see inside the cockpit. Branches thrust through the windshield. No one flagged them down as they approached.

Not dead. Rachel couldn’t be dead.

The copilot came back to the area where Cole and Doc sat. He snapped a hook attached to his harness to a safety line, then opened the side door.

Wind and the smell of smoke—both wood and fuel—rushed into the cabin as the copilot began prepping the equipment needed to drop someone out of the airplane.

Cole unbuckled his seat belt and stood, grabbing a hand loop for balance and stepping toward the door.

“Sit down,” the copilot commanded with a stern look, yelling over the din.

“I’m going down there.” There was no way anybody was going to keep him from being a part of Rachel’s rescue.

“Of course, you are,” the copilot agreed, still shouting. “But you’ll fall out if you aren’t strapped in. The air up here is choppy. Ever see a man fall eighty feet to the ground?”

Doc looked up at Cole and swore.

“Now, sit back down so you’ll get your chance at being a hero.”

As if emphasizing his point, the helicopter pitched Cole in the direction of the open door.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Doc moaned as he yanked Cole back.

The copilot laughed. “I always knew you Hot Shots were a bunch of wusses.”

Buckling in next to Doc, Cole glared at his friend. “Hang in there. I need you.”

“You could have taken the camp medic.” Doc closed his eyes. His skin had become a sickly shade of white.

“I chose a doctor instead. Now, quit your griping.”

“Have you rappelled out of a helicopter before?” The copilot shouted at Cole. Who didn’t even blink as he nodded.

Despite his nausea, Doc managed to raise his eyebrows at Cole.

Cole scowled back at him. So what if he’d only rappelled once? So what if he’d rappelled onto solid ground? Rachel was down there hurt, perhaps dying.

Cole recoiled at the thought, leaning back into his seat. The little girl he’d once rescued from a flash flood couldn’t die. She was too stubborn, too full of life.

“Get into this.” The copilot tossed a four-point body harness at Cole’s feet.

When Cole had the harness strapped on tight around him, the copilot hooked a nylon rope to it, fit him with a helmet containing a built-in headset and positioned Cole near the door.

“I’m going to let you down slowly until you get to the wreck. Try not to put your weight on the plane because we don’t know how stable it is. You will not be going inside, copy?”

Cole nodded.

“Once you’re there, let us know if the pilots are salvageable or not.”

“Salvageable?” Damn him. “There will be survivors,” Cole growled.

The copilot looked down on the fuselage. “I hope so, although we’ll have a hell of a time extracting them in anything more than a basic harness. We won’t be able to get a cage down there.”

Cole nodded. He knew what the copilot was saying. If Rachel or her copilot had neck or spine injuries, it would be next to impossible to get them out without increasing their injuries or killing them.

Cole glanced down at the crumpled metal shell that had flown through the sky less than an hour ago. No matter what, he was getting Rachel out of there.

“Ready?” the copilot asked.

Cole gave a tight nod and went to rescue Rachel.

When Cole neared the plane, he found purchase on the roof as he sought to steady his descent. Mistake. The branches beneath the fuselage cracked in protest, the sound nearly stopping Cole’s heart. The plane swayed in the trees, and Cole looked to the forest floor with a start.

It was a long way down. No one would survive that kind of fall.

Cole worked up enough saliva to swallow. He would not send the plane plummeting to the forest floor. He would not be the cause of Rachel’s death.

“Don’t put your weight on it until you absolutely have to,” the copilot chastised him through the radio.

Sweating, Cole tucked his legs in and continued down. With the help of the helicopter, Cole pulled himself forward until he was straddling the nose of the plane, hating to look inside, knowing that he had to look inside. Bearing Cole’s weight, the plane swayed as if it were a playground swing.

Not dead. Not dead. He couldn’t lose both Rachel and Missy.

Cole stared past the debris and shattered remains of the windshield and saw Rachel’s face, looking fragile and white as a sheet. Her sunglasses hung awkwardly off one ear. Blood oozed from her temple, and little cuts crisscrossed the rest of her face, probably from the windshield breaking.