Without making eye contact with his former teammates, who were mostly bear, wolf, and big-cat shifters, Carl had finished his briefing with, "And for God's sake, stay at least twenty-five yards away from all wildlife, except for the bears—you'll want to put a minimum of three hundred yards away between you and a bear. Grizzlies can run 35 miles an hour, and they like fresh meat when they can get it."
At that, Mike had traded smirks with Thor Swanson, the other bear shifter on his team. Any grizzly who tried to pick a fight with them would be in for a big surprise.
Now it was time for the smokejumpers to load the cargo nets with all the equipment and supplies for helicopter pickup, to clean up the campsite, and to pack their personal gear.
Mike had always enjoyed packing out after a mission. At that point, he'd usually been busting his butt for days, working long shifts doing intense physical labor like cutting brush, digging firebreaks, and smothering flames with dirt, all of it in filthy, smoky, hot conditions.
But once the job was done, it was customary for jumpers to split up and hike to the pickup-up spot at their own pace.
With his shifter strength, the usual pack-out backpack, that weighed a hundred pounds plus, was no big deal. And the rendezvous schedule usually gave Mike time to stop and go for a swim in a pristine lake or river or to do some fishing and berrying.
Mostly, he considered it well-earned free time when he could let his bear out to enjoy itself and take a break from his daily routine, as long as he made it to the pickup spot on time.
The Ordinary smokejumpers considered pack-out the hardest part of a mission, since hiking to a pickup point through unfamiliar territory sometimes took twice as long as their briefings led them to believe, and it set them against natural obstacles not mentioned in those briefings. On rare occasions, the jumpers were able to use an existing trail, which made for an easier hike. But that didn't happen very often in the remote and mountainous areas where they normally operated.
And of course, there was always the danger of getting lost, even with compasses and GPS. Dense woodland interfered with signals, electronics' batteries failed, and even analog compasses tended to behave wackily in broken terrain.
This was a well-known hazard, but that didn't mean your teammates wouldn't give you shit if you missed a pickup. It was all good-natured, but you'd be the keeper of a battered stuffed goose that served as the "Wrong Way Award" until the next time someone was late to the rendezvous point.
Which brought Mike back around to his reasons for following Kara. His bear had nagged at him that she needed protecting.
If I’m wrong, and nothing dangerous happens on this hike, she'll never need to know, he told himself.
He had given her a forty-five-minute head start, then set out after her. Against his bear's protests—it wanted to stick to her like a burr to a sock—Mike had decided to maintain a respectful distance. He suspected that Kara might take his protectiveness the wrong way if she found out.
And if there was one thing he'd learned while working with her, it was "Never get on her bad side." She could be extremely inventive in extracting revenge.
Hell, on the trip out to Alaska, Thor had annoyed her by joking that she needed to watch out for giant carnivorous roadrunners roaming Denali, because apparently coyotes were their favorite snack.
Sometime during the next twenty-four hours, she had somehow managed to remove all the packets of Thor's favorite dried mango snack from his personal gear bag. She'd replaced them with saladitos, rock-hard salted dried plums flavored with anise and a bit of sugar.
When the practical joke came to light, Steve Lopez, the jaguar shifter on their team, had been overjoyed to see a favorite snack from his youth. But no one else except for Mike took more than one, and they all spat them out again almost immediately.
For Mike, the saladitos reminded him of his childhood summers spent at his grandparents' home in Hawaii. There, the salted plums had been called li hing mui, and their flavor brought back a rush of nostalgic memories of warm days spent snorkeling and playing on the beach.
Pleasant memories aside, Mike suspected that Kara would be equally inventive in getting revenge if she realized that he was tailing her.
Now, as he raced to try to avert disaster, he cursed himself for not sticking closer to her. He prayed that he could reach her in time.
Chapter 2
Breakup
Ft. Wainwright Smokejumper Base
Fairbanks, Alaska
Ten days earlier
Kara Latrans's phone vibrated with an incoming text message as she stood at her tall, bright-orange locker in the smokejumpers' standby shack, packing her personal gear bag with protein bars, beef jerky, dried fruit, and cashews.
All around her, sixty smokejumpers from all over Alaska and the Lower 48 crowded the interior of the big locker room.
All of them were busily checking their gear, packing their PG bags, and greasing their logger boots. The high-ceilinged warehouse-like space was filled with a cacophony of men and women talking and joking as they waited for roll call to begin.
When Kara's phone began vibrating, she cast a quick, irritated glance at the clock high up on the locker room wall. God, I hope it's not Mom asking about one of those news reports again.
Time was running short, and she still had a bunch of stuff to prepare. She didn't have the bandwidth to try to soothe her parents' ongoing worries about her job.
Besides, after seven fire seasons, they should be used to it.
Her name was currently in the number three slot on the jump list, so Kara knew that she'd be going out on the first planeload of jumpers after roll call.
When the alarm sounded its deafening blare, she and the other jumpers would have two minutes to suit up. They were required to be on board their plane and ready to roll within seven minutes of the alarm sounding.
Kara pulled out her phone, unlocked it, and saw that the text was from her boyfriend Eduardo Flores.
Her heart gave a sickening lurch when she read what he had sent.
I don't think we should see each other anymore. You're a lot of fun to be around but this isn't working for me. I know I said I was okay with your job, but I didn't know that you'd be gone all the time. You're a great person, and I’m really sorry that things didn't work out. All the best, and stay safe.
He ended the text with a string of emojis, including a female firefighter emoji and a good luck emoji.
Feeling like she'd just had the wind knocked out of her after a hard landing, Kara stared down at her phone. He's breaking up with me?
She couldn't believe it. Sure, Ed been upset because she’d had to cancel their romantic weekend getaway after the Rocky Mountain Smokejumpers team had received the call to fly to Alaska and assist in fighting the massive wildfire burning in Denali National Park. He'd tried to pin her down on a new date for their weekend, and she had sensed that he had something special in mind.