Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [133]
He sipped from a Styrofoam cup, grimaced, and tossed the last inch of coffee onto a wild rosebush edging the airport ramp. “Fresh caffeine, my treat.” He headed toward the crowded catering tent.
Ever since Garrett had suggested Devon was with Deering, Clare had been dwelling on what he’d said last night. Deering had been called to the scene of a fire, where people were supposed to have been trapped. Why had hikers even been permitted into the backcountry?
The orange juice she selected, in a plastic cup with foil top, tasted sour.
She tried to focus on Steve and Karrabotsos’s small talk, but her mind spun scenarios.
Deering and Devon had crashed in a fireball of aviation fuel. They’d lost power and come down in the burning forest. They had landed, thinking they saw the hikers, and been overtaken by fire on the ground like Steve and his fellow scientists had nearly been.
How she wished Devon had left the park on one of those buses and was somewhere in Montana.
Karrabotsos evidently knew the dangers of fire. Those scars on his face bore the slick look of burns. Realizing she’d been caught looking at them, she averted her eyes.
“Vietnam,” he said. “Chopper crash.”
“And you still fly.”
Black eyes fixed her with a look of disbelief. “You can’t let something like that scare you off.”
Thinking of her own experience in losing faith, she was fiercely glad she’d fought the firestorm at Old Faithful. Having done that, she still wasn’t sure she could return to the station in Houston. Being out there in the parking lot was far different from fighting fire in close quarters. What if someone who trusted her to watch his or her back ended up in a tight spot? Could she be sure she’d act without thinking to save them?
Karrabotsos cast another look at the brightening sky. “May as well start my preflight.”
Clare imagined the Huey disappearing into the haze. She’d sit around the airport with Steve and drink endless cups of black bitter coffee, wondering what was happening to Deering and Devon.
She set her jaw. “I’m going with you.”
Steve swallowed and looked across the ramp at the helicopter Karrabotsos planned to take. Another Huey like the one Deering had flown. Just the sight of it started a griping in his gut.
He admired how the tough part of Clare continued to assert itself even as she warred within over her friend Frank and the young soldier Billy Jakes. She could handle this while he stayed behind.
The way she spoke to Karrabotsos and did not even turn to him said she couldn’t imagine him willingly getting aboard the helicopter. Competent pilots would accomplish the search and Steve couldn’t bring anything to the party.
Competent? Clare thought Deering was a good pilot and he’d crashed twice. Craggy veteran Karrabotsos must believe the same for he’d hired him. Hell, the older man had been burned in a crash, yet he was one of the most respected in the air charter business. Even after going down, he thought the idea of being deterred by it preposterous.
Steve tried to deep breathe, but the sensations he’d felt on this tarmac back in July surged up. Heart pounding, sweating palms, and a fierce anger that he had to fly, although it had been his decision. Again, on Mount Washburn when he’d flown on Black Saturday to save his place in Yellowstone. He’d had to grab a barf bag for the same nausea that gripped him now.
Deering and Karrabotsos might keep getting back in the air, but Steve couldn’t do it.
Clare put a hand on his arm. Her amber eyes were steady and without blame. “You wait for us.”
He didn’t deserve her. How could he spend a night like the one they’d shared and not stay by her side for this? If, God forbid, Devon was hurt or . . .
Clare might end up the first responder on an unimaginable scene.
In the deepest part of night, he’d held her to him and wanted more. At the first sign of dawn, he’d made a promise that she would not face this alone.
Hadn’t he coached