Hot Spot by Carl Bowen

Author:Carl Bowen [Bowen, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction; Stone Arch Books; Firestormers; action & adventure-general; science & technology; nature & the natural world-environment; smokejumpers; hotshots; firefighters; firefighting; fire; chapter books; fire stormers 9781496533074; 9781496533111
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2019-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

“Bigger fish to fry?” Smalls said later in MacElreath’s office. “You know you’re a fire chief, right? Could you have thought of a more sensitive way to say that?”

“I considered it,” MacElreath said. Smalls wasn’t quite as annoyed as she sounded, but the chief knew that she’d just made Smalls’s day ten times harder. “You talked him down, I assume.”

“Oh sure,” she replied. “But it took me half an hour of my day I’m never getting back.”

“All right then. Did he go home at least?”

“Oh no. He’s been hammering away on his laptop all morning, rallying his subscribers. But you want to know the worst thing?”

“Not really.”

“After you left, a couple of the new guys started asking him questions — Smith. They wanted to know about these birds he’s so on about. I steered the briefing back off the rocks as best I could, but when it was over, half of them left the room with their heads together.”

“You think this is a problem?”

“Not yet,” Smalls said, “but it could be. These local guys report on wildfires all the time, and it’s always pretty much the same. If this whooping crane business spices the story up for them and it looks like we don’t care… Yeah, that’s a problem.”

“Well then, I have the perfect solution,” Chief MacElreath said. “I’ll let my talented public information officer stop the bleeding.” MacElreath smiled, mostly because she knew that Smalls could handle it. Smalls did remind the chief of her younger self, after all. “Meanwhile, I’m going to put out an eleven-thousand-acre fire before people start losing their homes. Sound good?”

Smalls took a long, deep breath, and then nodded respectfully.

“Sometimes, we all have to play the hand we’re dealt, Smalls,” offered the chief before burying her face in her laptop again, checking in on Lieutenant Garrett’s progress.

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