“I have to complete a safety inspection before we can start, so I’ll walk you around the course first,” she said.
There were ten obstacles in all. She checked every rope and flat surface for fraying and dirt as she explained each obstacle to him. It was clear she took safety seriously and Dan was impressed.
“This is where we practice how to safely exit a helicopter,” she said when they reached the far wall.
The helicopter fuselage could only be accessed by a zipline from above or the knotted rope dangling from the platform to the ground. She scaled the rope with a cat’s predatory grace, the muscles on her upper arms and shoulders flexing and bunching, her feet catching the knots and boosting her upward. She made it look easy. Dan knew it wasn’t. She did a quick check of the platform’s surface, then descended to the floor with breathtaking speed.
“All set,” she announced, wiping her palms on her shorts.
They returned to the start of the course. Brody, who’d been patiently waiting for them, shrugged into a jumpsuit, then lifted a pack hanging from the wall and slipped his arms through the straps.
Jazz held up a second suit. “Full gear or for fun?” she inquired of Dan.
He eyed the suit and the packs. Those packs were filled with firefighting equipment and weighed more than a hundred pounds each. She couldn’t be serious. “Which are you doing?”
“Full gear. But I’ve already been around the course once, so I’m not going to try to break my own record,” she added, speaking to Brody.
If she’d be running the course carrying close to her own body weight, then Dan wasn’t taking the easy way out. “Full gear it is.”
“Turn around, Jazz,” Brody said. “The boss is going to have to strip down to the tighty-whities, first.”
Dan shucked his work shirt and jeans and Brody helped him suit up.
He eyed the first obstacle. It was a rope bridge, stretched across twenty feet of matting. According to Brody, he had to cling to it upside down, using his arms and legs, and shimmy across—with the heavy pack weighing him down.
He could do this. But only if he made a few concessions.
“You’d better go first,” he said to Brody, “because I doubt if I’ll be breaking anyone’s record.”
“If you make it to the halfway point, I’m going to be really impressed,” Brody replied. His grin widened. “I might even vote for you in the next election, Sheriff.”
While Dan might not break any records, and the equipment he carried was heavy as hell, not making it all the way to the end was no longer an option. “Whatever, funny man.”
“Since I’m not trying to break any records either, I’ll bring up the rear,” Jazz said, looking all perky and fresh. “There are a few rules. The helicopter exit is for the smokejumpers, so it’s not part of the course. Don’t attempt it. Only one person on an obstacle at a time. And if you can’t complete an obstacle on the second try, you’re finished.”
“No pressure,” Dan muttered.
A tiny frown puckered her brow. “You can have a third try, if you like. Since this is your first run,” she offered. “And you aren’t a firefighter.”
“Thanks.”
Great. Now Dan was going to have to do the entire course without any errors at all. It wasn’t because he was worried about having a woman out-perform him…
Then again, maybe it was. He wasn’t the one carrying his own weight in equipment, after all. And he really wanted to improve her opinion of him.
He made it across the rope bridge, crawled under horizontal cargo netting using his elbows to drag him along, and scaled the vertical net, before he began to slow down.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve. The jumpsuit was heat-protected to withstand 2000 degrees. That couldn’t possibly include the inside of the suit, because he could swear it had already passed the 1000-degree mark. Brody was already well in the lead. Meanwhile, Jazz was doing a great job of hiding her impatience behind him—all of which forced him to examine his pride.
And yet his pride demanded he soldier on.
He powered through the tire obstacle, leaping from one to the other, then grimly swung across the monkey bars with his stomach clawing its way into his chest. He was breathing heavily now, but he’d seen a defibrillator on the wall so figured he should be fine. Jazz and Brody were both first responders, and if things did reach that point, he’d have to live with the shame. Or die from it. He was good with that, too.
He sneaked a peek at Jazz. She looked bored.
He took a running start and cleared the next wall. Thank God he was tall. By now Brody was finished with the course and had jogged back to help cheer him on.
“Go, Dan. You got this,” he said.