Fire at Gray Wolf Lookout (Firehawks Book 8) by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman [Buchman, M. L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
Published: 2015-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

10

Patty curled up on the fire tower’s bunk and tended the wolf pup. Calming the young wolf let her not think about how her eyes still stung, how much her knee hurt, or quite how close she’d come to dying.

She listened as Fireboy worked the radio through the long afternoon.

The smokejumpers fought the fire in pitched battle until it was trapped and couldn’t spread either way along the valley wall. The helicopters had contained it before it crossed the ridge. The second den would be safe.

If The Messenger lived, perhaps she’d guide Blackthorne’s pack over to join the larger one to the east.

She buried her face in Vasco’s fur and wept for only the second time since that day as a young girl when she had understood the trap that her family was in. It was the day she’d determined to find a way out.

Patty had wept that first time in Fireboy’s arms as some impossible sense of loss had overwhelmed her, even if she hadn’t known what the loss had been. And now she wept because she understood that from the first time with him, what she had left behind was the Warrior Girl fighting for freedom against all odds. In his powerful arms, she was more truly herself than anywhere she’d ever been.

A long time later, Fireboy sat down close beside her, but didn’t touch her.

The sun had gone, but she hadn’t noticed.

“Is it out?” her voice was rough and still stung from the pepper spray she’d inhaled.

“Yes,” he nodded in the soft light of the small oil lamp that he’d lit. “A ground team has arrived and is making sure it stays dead. The smokies are already being lifted out by the helos. We have another fire north of Cougar Peak that they’re needed on. How’s the pup?”

She held up the long and sharp stone sliver that she’d extracted from Vasco’s pad, “He’ll heal fine now.”

“Is he like a permanent addition to the family?”

“No, I can probably reintroduce him to his pack tomorrow. I think I know where they’ve moved to.” And Patty knew she’d find The Messenger there, she just had to.

Then his words registered.

“The family?”

He shrugged easily, “Does seem to be what I said.”

As she watched his face shifted. One moment he was casual, keeping up a cool façade. The next was a wash of emotion she couldn’t even recognize, but both his hands were crushing down on one of hers.

“I thought I’d lost you. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. I couldn’t imagine this world without you in it. To never be able to talk to you again, laugh with you again, it simply wasn’t possible, but it felt so real. I could barely help on the fire until they found you.”

“Family?” she couldn’t seem to get past the word. Was family about something more than mere survival? Hers had never been.

But she could see in his eyes that she did mean the world to him. She didn’t need his crushing grip nor his eyes glistening in the soft lamplight to know that he’d been afraid to the very core.

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