“She was in the middle of an operations plan when I dropped in this afternoon. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk.” Although she could have found time if she’d had something important to discuss.
Dallas spoke up. “Don’t rush things with her, Dan. Let her take the job in McCall and see what happens.”
“McCall is twelve hours away.” Dan allowed his tone to imply what he thought of the idea.
“We could always let Ryan have that private helicopter he’s been begging us for,” Dallas said.
“That’s a great idea,” Ryan chimed in, his eyes lighting up. “It’s tax deductible, too.”
Except Jazz would be living in Idaho and Dan would be in Montana. Once she accepted that job, nothing would tear her away from it. She took her work seriously—as she should—but he was tired of being patient and taking his chances. Fate could be a real jerk, sometimes. He’d tried letting Andy go and look how that had turned out.
Fate, however, didn’t own the whole blame for what had happened to Andy. She’d been thumbing her nose at it for years. At least Jazz didn’t have one finger on a self-destruct button. If she needed the job in McCall—if it meant that much to her—then she should take it. They’d find a way to work around it if she did.
He’d talk to her about it after dinner.
*
His mother hadplanned a small barbecue at the ranch.
Dallas had talked Ryan into trying out a virtual reality studio in Forsyth, a neighboring town. After dinner, his parents were off to visit friends for a movie. That would leave Dan with Jazz all to himself, something he really needed.
Except Jazz never showed up. Something had to be wrong because this wasn’t like her. The two text messages he sent went unanswered. An hour went by.
“Go ahead and eat or you’ll miss your movie,” he said to his parents. “I’ll drive out to the base and see what’s keeping her.”
Fifteen minutes later he limped onto the base, cursing the crutches as he fought his way through the heavy exterior door. Inside, he followed the voices. He found six people crowded into the small briefing room. Jazz was hunched over the radio in a world all her own.
Brody, who’d run the obstacle course with him, turned when he entered the room.
“What’s going on?” Dan asked him, although by the grim looks on everyone’s faces, it wasn’t anything good.
“The grassfire in the Swan Range blew up,” Brody said. “Larry is missing.”
Larry was the youngest and most inexperienced of the smokejumpers on Jazz’s team. He and one other man had been dropped onto the western facing slope. Larry then radioed a warning that the wind was unacceptable and not to drop anyone else. He and the smokejumper from Missoula would clear a strip of land and start a controlled burn above the fire line. Unfortunately, the same wind that made it impossible to drop the rest of the team also caused a significant rise in burn conditions. Within twenty-five minutes, the flames were fifteen feet high and traveling upwards at a rate of more than twenty miles per hour. The last message from Larry said that he and his teammate were going to cut downward diagonally on the east side of the fire, according to plan.
“Why didn’t anyone call me?” Dan asked.
“Because you’re on sick leave, Sheriff. Eli called your office instead.”
Jazz started to say something to Eli, standing behind her and peering over her shoulder, and spotted Dan at the back of the room. She signaled for Eli to take her place and pushed through the gathered men to meet Dan by the door. The white script on her beige tank top saidBorn to Jump. She wore matching yoga pants and white canvas flats. Shadowed, anxious blue eyes burdened her delicate face.
Dan followed her out of the briefing room and into the hangar where they could talk in private without disturbing the others. The door shut behind them. Bright light glared from the rafters.
“I’m so sorry. I forgot all about dinner,” she said.
He brushed that aside since it was no longer important. He knew exactly how helpless she had to be feeling right now. He’d gone through a similar range of emotions the day he’d been shot and realized his deputy was driving straight into danger.
“How long have the men been missing?” he asked.
“Two hours now. I’m second-guessing myself,” she confessed. She jiggled one leg, unable to stand still. “The time of day was all wrong. Most blowups happen before five o’clock. That’s why they were dropped in just after five. We last heard from them at five thirty. The operations plan I drafted called for them to get below the fire line and head downhill if it blew up, but it happened so fast. With the wall moving at that speed, there’d be no time for them to reconsider their options. If I made an error, or they were too slow abandoning plan A, they could be dead.”
He wished he could hold her and tell her everything would be okay, but she knew the risks far better than he did. “They must have thought the original plan was a good one because they had to agree to it. No one can predict the wind. You’ve got to trust them, Jazz. They know their jobs or they wouldn’t be where they are.”
“Right now, I have to decide when to let Larry’s parents know he’s missing,” she said.
He knew how hard that was, too. But it was her job to make the decision, not his. “Are you asking for my advice or are you thinking out loud?”
“Thinking out loud.” Her leg continued to jiggle. “I’ll wait two more hours. Missoula initially said they wouldn’t send firefighters onto the slope after dark, but once the drop in temperature slows the fire down, they said they’re sending volunteers with night vision goggles in to check on their last known position.”