“I’ve got a really hard head, Mommy.” As if to prove the point, Eddie rapped on the top of his head with his knuckles while opening and closing his mouth, making hollow sounds.
“That’s what I thought,” Buzz said.
Eddie looked at him and grinned. “What?”
Buzz grinned back. “Your head is hollow.”
“Is not!”
Kelly wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she laughed. At least she thought it was a laugh. Anything was better than the terror that had her tied up in little knots. She was so worried she could have lain down on the ground and cried, but the last thing she wanted to do was scare her son at a time like this.
Kneeling in front of Eddie, she zipped his jacket closed then kissed the tip of his little nose. “Buzz is going to take good care of you.”
“I know. He showed me his muscles this morning. They’re big.”
If she hadn’t been on the verge of tears, she would have rolled her eyes. As it was, she barely managed a smile.
“Don’t be scared, Mommy.”
She did laugh then and wondered when her four-year-old child had become so perceptive. “I’m not scared, honey.”
“Are, too. The end of your nose is all red.”
Blinking back tears she didn’t want either male to see, she hugged him to her and held him tight. “You’re the smartest little boy in the whole world,” she whispered. “I love you, puppy face.”
“Love you, too, Mommy.”
She pulled away and rose, her eyes seeking Buzz’s. He stood several feet away, his head craned up as if trying to spot the chopper. He was wearing a harness. Kelly tried not to notice the way the straps at his hips accentuated his male attributes, but she did and the realization that she could notice something like that at a time like this made her realize just how bad she had it for her ex-husband.
Putting the last touches on his harness, Buzz jerked his gaze to hers and walked over to her. “He’s in good hands, Kel.”
“Don’t let him get hurt,” she said, fighting tears.
“He’s not going to get hurt.”
She nodded, knowing she was being foolish and emotional, and wiped the tears off her cheek with the back of her hand. “He’s my life, Buzz.”
The muscles in his jaws flexed. “Hey, Kel, come on. I do this for a living, remember? Once we clip on it’ll take less than two minutes for us to be winched up to the hatch, another minute to unhook him and another minute for me to get back down to you. Five minutes max and we’ll be on our way to RMSAR headquarters.”
“I know. I’m just…. God, Buzz, this scares me.”
“Everything’s going to be fine.” Reaching out, he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
The gesture touched her deeply. Kelly wondered if she would ever be able to tell him how much it meant to her at that moment.
“You’ve got my word.” Cupping her chin in his palm, he forced her gaze to his. “You know I always keep my word, don’t you?”
The intensity in those stormy eyes stole the answer hovering on the tip of her tongue. Speechless and expectant, her heart racing with fear and anticipation, she stared at him, felt the ground move beneath her feet.
She didn’t expect him to kiss her. Not in full view of Eddie. Certainly not in front of his testosterone-laden teammates on board the chopper. But one minute she was standing there wishing with all her heart they didn’t have to do this, the next she was swept into his embrace, and his mouth was making love to hers with an intensity that sucked all the oxygen from her lungs and the last vestiges of rational thought from her brain.
Kelly didn’t intend to kiss him back, either, but her body reacted instinctively. Fear for her child mingled with a clash of emotions for the man holding her and made her legs tremble. But the pull of his mouth was too strong to resist. She looped her arms around his neck, her body falling full length against his. She heard his breath quicken. Her own stalled in her lungs when he deepened the kiss. Shoving logic and restraint and a hundred other emotions aside, she opened to him. And for a split second the rest of the world ceased to exist. Their hearts beat in a wild, simultaneous rhythm. Once. Twice.
As abruptly as he’d executed the kiss, he broke it. His eyes were dark, his pupils dilated when he eased her to arm’s length. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. His eyes conveyed all the things she needed to know.
“We’re not finished,” he said. “With a lot of things.”
Logic ordered her to correct him, to tell him they were, indeed, finished. That they’d been finished for a long time. But her brain was scrambled and her heart was beating so wildly she felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath.
“Hey, why’re you kissing my mom?” came a small voice.
Buzz looked down and grinned at Eddie. “Hang on to me, sport,” he said. “We’re going up.”
“Be careful,” Kelly managed, but the words were lost in the maelstrom of wind and debris kicked up by the rotor blades.
Buzz looked up at the belly of the chopper hovering forty feet overhead. “We’ve got to go.” Then he looked at her one last time. “I’ll be back for you.”
Stepping away from her, he looked over at Eddie, who was staring at them as if they’d just sprouted horns. “Ready, partner?”
Eddie nodded, but Kelly could tell he was still bewildered by the kiss. She wondered how to explain it without confusing him when she couldn’t even explain it to herself.
She wanted to touch her son one more time, but Buzz warned her away with his eyes. Turning the little boy toward him, he lifted Eddie so that they were facing each other, then buckled their harnesses together. Looking up toward the chopper, he stuck out his arm and gave a thumbs-up signal. A moment later a cable with a closed hook on the end was lowered by the winch stationed just above the main hatch.
Buzz caught the shank in his hand, then quickly secured it to the carabiner on his harness. He gave another thumbs-up signal and an instant later, the cable went taut. Man and child were jerked off their feet.
Kelly wasn’t sure which was louder, the rotor blades or her own heart as she watched Buzz and her son being hoisted upward. She saw them talking, saw Buzz’s arms go around her child. Eddie wrapped his little legs around Buzz’s body. Upward they went. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. Forty feet. She could see a dark-haired man in an orange flight suit just inside the hatch, waiting for them.
A heavily gloved hand reached out and snagged the cable. A moment later, Buzz and Eddie disappeared inside the hatch. Relief made her legs go weak. The man in the orange flight suit looked down at her. She couldn’t see his face because he was wearing a helmet with communication gear, but the thumbs-up said it all.
“Thank you, God,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Wind from the rotors whipped her hair into a frenzy. Dust stung her eyes as the chopper hovered. She didn’t care about any of those things as long as her son was safe on board. She squinted upward, saw Buzz at the hatch, checking his harness. All the while her heart pounded out a maniacal rhythm because she knew that in another minute she would be face-to-face with him dangling from a cable forty feet off the ground and all this would be over. She could go back to her life the way it was before any of this happened.
We’re not finished.
Buzz’s words rang in her ears. She tried not to think of them now, about what they meant in terms of how his knowing about Eddie would affect their lives.
Her thoughts were cut short when Buzz backed up to the hatch and dropped down. She watched him, terrified and fascinated and slightly in awe that he was so damn courageous. He was only ten feet down when the chopper jolted and swung hard in a counter-clockwise rotation. She stared in horror as Buzz was swung around and around, like a wildly spinning yo-yo.
“Buzz!” she screamed. “What’s happening?! Buzz!”
The chopper spun sickeningly. The engines revved. Buzz swung around, his boots actually hitting the uppermost branches of a tall pine. “Buzz
! Oh, my God!”
Kelly stood motionless, unable to move, unable to tear her eyes away from the monstrous craft or the man dangling from a cable ten feet beneath it. She could see him gripping the straps of his harness. They’d put a helmet on him when he was inside the chopper. But a helmet wasn’t going to help if he hit those trees. Or if, God forbid, the chopper went down.
The engines screamed, deafening her. The craft shuddered. The tail rotors groaned. Wind and debris pelted her, blinding her. All Kelly could think was that her little boy was on board that chopper. And the man who’d risked her life to save them both was in very real danger of being killed.
And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it but stand there and watch it happen.
Buzz knew the instant the cable shuddered that he was in dire straits. Just as he knew what the chances were of his making it back through the hatch before he got slammed into those trees—or the rock face of the cliff on the other side of the stream. He maintained his equilibrium by keeping his eyes on the horizon, but by the fourth or fifth spin he was starting to get disoriented.
“Mayday! Mayday!” Tony Colorosa’s voice barked over the VHF radio. “This is Eagle. I’ve got to put her down. Lake City do you read?”
“What the hell is going on, Flyboy?” Buzz shouted into his own headgear.
“Just stay cool, Buzz.” John Maitland’s voice came over his communication gear headset. “We’re bringing you up.”
“Like hell you are!”
The cable jolted and Buzz felt himself being pulled upward toward the hatch. Cursing, forgetting about professionalism and keeping his cool, he looked down at Kelly and realized the chopper was no longer spinning, but moving away from her. He shouted an oath into his mike.
A moment later, he reached the hatch. Maitland snagged the cable and dragged him inside. Buzz turned on him like a mad, snarling dog.
“I’m not leaving her!” he shouted.
“Steady, Buzz.”
“Damn it! We can’t leave her out here all alone. You could have cut me loose. You could have left me with her!”
“That’s not procedure.”
“To hell with procedure!”
“Calm down, Buzz. Just…stay cool.”
Only then did he notice Eddie sitting on the litter a few feet away. His face was chalk-white, the tip of his nose was red from crying. Tears streaked his cheeks. He looked up at Buzz with the ravaged eyes of a child who had been terrified. Buzz felt the contact like a bone-shattering blow.
He’d seen too many terrified children in his time. Children he hadn’t been able to help. He stared, remembering, remembering so damn much, and he swore this time would be different
“Eddie.” Grappling for control, he walked over to the child and pulled him into his arms. “Everything’s going to be all right. You hear me?”
“I’m s-scared.”
“We’re going to be fine.” He didn’t know that. He could feel the instability in the way the chopper flew. Some kind of mechanical malfunction. Hydraulics, maybe. Or the swash plate. He prayed to God Flyboy could get them down.
“Are we gonna crash, Buzz?”
“No.”
“Where’s my mommy?”
“We’re going to have to go back to get her, son.”
Eddie began to cry. “We left my mommy.”
“I know. The chopper….” He grappled for a word an upset child would understand. “The chopper had some kind of mechanical problem.”
“You mean it broke?”
“That’s right. We just have to go back to base and fix it.”
“How are we going to find mommy?”
“We know her coordinates.”
The little boy closed his eyes and began crying in earnest.
“Strap in.” Tony Colorosa’s voice crackled in Buzz’s headset. “We’re going to put her down at Lake County.”
Buzz looked over at John Maitland. “You heard the man. Strap in.”
John took the jump seat at the rear and buckled in. “If anyone can get us down, Flyboy can,” he said.
Setting Eddie on the seat next to him, Buzz reached into the overhead cabinet and pulled out a helmet. It would be too big for Eddie, but if things got bumpy it would protect his head.
“Here you go, partner.” Kneeling before the boy, he slipped the helmet over his small head, then drew the chin strap tight.
“It’s too big.”
“It fits you just fine.”
Eddie’s chin trembled. “I want Mommy.”
Buzz wanted her, too—in ways that were far too complex to communicate to this child—so he said the next best thing. “I’m going to get her. I promise.”
The little boy nodded, but he was still scared. Buzz didn’t blame him. Frankly, he was scared, too.
He could only imagine what Kelly was thinking. He would never forget the look of utter horror on her face as he’d been swung wildly around and around before Maitland had been able to winch him up and get him on board.
“Okay, ladies, ETA two minutes,” came Tony Colorosa’s voice into their headset communication gear. “Hold on. This is going to be rough.”
The engines groaned. The chopper shuddered.
“You scared, Buzz?” Eddie asked a moment later.
The need to hold his child was strong, but Buzz knew both of them would be safer strapped into the seats. “A little,” he admitted. “How about you?”
“A little. You sure we’re not going to crash?”
“I’m sure.”
The chopper began to vibrate as they lost altitude and speed. Buzz glanced through the portal of the hatch across from them, saw the familiar roofs of the hangars. They’d reached Lake County airport.
“I want you to lean forward and put your head between your knees,” he said to Eddie.
The boy looked at him with huge, frightened eyes.
“Go on.” Leaning forward, Buzz demonstrated. “Like this. It’ll be okay.”
The child obeyed, but he’d started crying again. Buzz leaned close to him, wrapped himself around the small body as best he could. A moment later, the chopper jolted violently. A rooster tail of sparks spewed high outside the portal. The grate of steel against concrete screeched through the cabin as the skids scraped the tarmac.
An instant later the chopper went still. Buzz raised his head, looked wildly around for smoke or flames, but found nothing. Quickly, he worked off the straps, then turned to Eddie. “You okay, partner?” he asked.
Eddie’s chin quivered, but he nodded. “I want Mommy.”
“I’m going to go get her. Right now.”
“I want to go, too.”
Kneeling in front of him, Buzz took the boy’s small hands in his, rubbed them gently because they were cold, then looked into his eyes. “You’re the bravest young man I’ve ever met,” he said.
Eddie grinned, trying desperately to look the part even though he still had tears on his cheeks.
“I want you to stay here,” Buzz said. “You’re smaller than I am and you’ll slow me down. Understand?”
“I want to go with you, Buzz!”
Buzz looked over at Maitland. “Get on the horn. Get me an ATV. I want Jake Madigan looking for her. I want volunteers. I want another chopper. And I want all this yesterday. Got it?”
John started toward the door. “I’m on it.”
“I’ll meet you at the hangar office in five minutes.”
Maitland gave him a mock salute, then swung open the hatch and jumped to the tarmac.
Tony Colorosa looked satisfied with himself as he strutted out of the cockpit. “Not a bad landing job considering hydraulics were at 10 per cent, huh, Buzz?”
Buzz stood, unimpressed. “I’d like you to keep someone entertained while I go find my ex-wife.”
Colorosa looked down at Eddie, his smile faltering. “What?”
“You heard me.” Buzz might have grinned if he hadn’t been so terrified. Big, bad Tony Colorosa going pale at the prospec
t of watching a four-year-old for a few hours.
“I want to go with you!” Eddie shouted.
Tony laughed, but he was starting to look a little green. “Hey, wait a minute….”
Ignoring him, Buzz eased the boy closer to Tony. “He’s hungry and he needs a shower.”
“A shower?” Tony shot the kid a horrified look. “Hey, look, Buzz, I don’t do—”
“I think you’re familiar with the procedure.” Buzz started toward the door. “And be sure to get him some dessert.”
“Dessert? Malone!”
Buzz slammed the door in his face and sprinted toward the airport office.
The news from the front lines wasn’t good. The winds were fanning the flames and driving the fire south at a devastating speed. The fire was burning out of control, consuming everything in its path like a voracious, bloodthirsty beast. It had consumed over ten thousand acres in two days. With no rain in the forecast—and another front grinding down from the north—there was no relief in sight.
Buzz spread the map out on the makeshift table and cradled the cell phone to his ear. “How far is the front line from Woody Creek?” he asked the firefighter on the other end of the line.
“The leading edge is parallel to Woody Creek and runs east for about twenty miles.”
Cold fear compressed his chest. “That’s impossible. I was just there yesterday afternoon.”
“The winds are pumping this fire along at an incredible speed. We’re probably going to have to let this one burn itself out or else wait for rain.”
Sick with fear, Buzz hung up the phone. He couldn’t believe things had gotten so serious in just a few short hours. Last night the fire had been under control. If what the firefighter had said was true, that meant Kelly was less than a mile from the front line. A fire like that could eat up a mile of dry timber in a very short period of time.
“Any place you can think of where we can go in and set a chopper down?” he asked the park ranger standing across from him.
The park ranger was a young man with a crew cut and shoulders like oversized hams. “Negative. You know as well as I do the only way to make an extraction at this point is a swoop and scoop. Anything else would be insane in these winds.”
Buzz cursed. The fear pressing down on him turned cold and ugly and thrashed inside him like a dangerous, wounded animal.