Ryan nudged the paperwork with one finger. “So. In a nutshell… We find ourselves the new owners of a ranch roughly the size of a third-world country, with obligations to set up search-and-rescue operations—that’s your baby, by the way, Dan—also a medical clinic and a group home. We have a year to get ourselves situated. After that, penalties start kicking in.
“It’s February right now. Calving season starts soon, but I can keep an eye on ranch business for us. We’ll have to get a jump on housing soon, too. The bunkhouses might be a bigger priority than the ranch house, although we’ll need to think about our own living arrangements.”
Dan’s head was already busy. While the US Forest Service oversaw smokejumper operations, the ranch would have to house their summer staff and any volunteers, plus provide equipment, aircraft, and space for training. Local forest service staff would need to be trained in search and rescue too, although those operations fell under the county sheriff’s responsibilities—who happened to be him.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to juggle being sheriff, help oversee the ranch, and get search and rescue and smokejumper operations up and running before wildfire season began, which was April.
For the first time in weeks, he felt a surge of excitement.
“There go our love lives,” Dallas said cheerfully.
And…
There went the surge, plunging straight to the soles of Dan’s boots. Andy had been dead for five months, yet every once in a while, at unexpected moments like this, he’d get the wind pummeled out of him all over again.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d been dancing on a tabletop and knocking back shooters at Lou’s Pub, a few days before her deployment. There’d been crowd surfing involved too, because Andy never did anything halfway. A weapons expert and sharpshooter, she was killed during a skirmish in Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa. Dan had no idea why she’d been there. He only knew she wasn’t coming back.
And he was royally pissed about it. They’d been pals since they’d started kindergarten together. They’d lost their virginity together, too—at far too young an age. He’d hoped for something more permanent between them once she grew out of her wild streak, but deep down, he’d always known it would never happen, because “wild” didn’t begin to describe her. She’d been more like a weapon of mass self-destruction—dating older men when she was a teen, giving bi-curiousness a whirl…
None of that bothered Dan. The deal breaker for him was her joining the army. He had nothing against a woman wanting to serve her country. Wild, impetuous Andy, however, never content to sit still for long, hadn’t cared one bit about serving the good old US of A. She fed off adrenaline, always in search of the next thrill. Unfortunately, whatever she’d been searching for in the military, she hadn’t found it.
Then again, maybe she had.
“Yoo-hoo. Danny boy. You in there?” Dallas waved a hand in front of his face.
Both of his friends were watching him as if they sensed something was off. Dan didn’t want to have to explain his complicated feelings about Andy to them.
“I’m trying to figure out who we can hire to get those bunkhouses built,” he said, which wasn’t a lie. He dug his car keys out of his uniform pocket. “What say we take a drive out to the Endeavour and see where they should go?”
*
Jasmine “Jazz” O’Reillyloved nothing more than these first few chaotic seconds of freefall. She flung her arms wide and tilted her weightless body, turning into a self-propelled glider, and breathed in the sweet, cool air rushing past her as her heart pumped blood through her veins.
Then, far too soon, her parachute snapped to attention. The brilliant blue sky became silent and calm as she floated to earth, using the chute’s toggles to steer her toward the tiny speck of landing site drawing closer below her. Seconds before impact, experience kicked in. She tightened her grip on the toggles, checked her alignment with the wind, fixed her gaze ahead at a forty-five-degree angle, and brought her knees and feet together.
Her feet hit the dirt. With hands, arms, elbows, and chin tucked into her chest, she stumbled forward a few steps, but managed to stay upright. The bright orange and yellow parachute gently collapsed off to one side. Not bad for her first jump of the season.
The trainer assessing her performance concurred.
“Excellent, Jazz,” he said, nodding approval.
The next few hours of refresher training passed in a blur. She’d arrived at the Missoula airport a few days ago after finishing her final shift as a firefighter in Helena. This was her eighth year as a smokejumper. Word had it she was about to be offered a base manager position and she was beyond excited.
Until she found out where the base was located.
“I don’t understand,” Jazz said. She was seated in her base manager’s office in the US Forest Service Aerial Fire Depot at Missoula International Airport. “I thought it was Rory’s position that was coming open.” Rory was the base manager at McCall Airport in Idaho—one of the major smokejumper training sites in the country.
“Rory’s sticking around for another two years,” Will, Missoula’s base manager, said. “The national program manager asked me for a recommendation for Grand and I gave him your name.”
Jazz wished she could feel flattered, but she knew what was going on. The average age for smokejumpers was thirty-five. Women tended to tap out well before that and she was now thirty. Will planned to foist her off on this new tiny outpost—run by cowboys, no less—while one of the male teammates she’d trained with for years got the prime posting. McCall would never be hers.
You’re the one who chose a male-dominated industry so you could work outdoors.You knew what you were getting into.
She had. And she’d never once regretted it until this very second.
Will watched her, his eyes kind. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
Right. “What am I thinking?”