On the way to the hospital, another helicopter was heading in with a full load of water. Squeezing Tammy’s hand, he smiled and said, “If the crew works fast, the fire may not move beyond your outbuildings and they’ll be able to save your house.”
“I don’t care about my house,” she said, her voice even weaker. “All I want is a healthy baby.”
It was all he’d wanted for himself, too. “I know,” he told her. “We just need you to hold on a little longer, okay?”
Piper was holding tightly to her mother’s hand. “You’re going to be okay, Mama. And so will my baby sister.”
He swallowed hard, the ache in his chest threatening to split wide open. If things had turned out differently for him, he would have had a kid Piper’s age.
Seconds later they arrived at the hospital and Sam was incredibly glad to see that there was still no bleeding. A nurse came to wheel Tammy away, but Piper remained standing beside him.
“You saved my mom. And the baby sister I’m going to have, too.”
Her smile was a ray of sunshine and then, suddenly, her skinny arms were around his legs and her face was pressing hard into him. Just as quickly, she released him and was gone, running down the hospital hallway after her mother and the nurse.
Everything was going to be all right. Tammy and her husband would be the proud parents of a new baby girl. Piper would be a great big sister.
But still, something dark and hard squeezed his chest, the dull pain he’d never been able to crush completely.
He found Joe chain-smoking in the smoking area in the side parking lot.
“I can’t decide if what you did today was incredibly brave or mind-numbingly stupid,” Joe said. “That fire was moving fast. What if it’d run right over you before I could land and get you out?”
The truth was, in all his years as a hotshot, while Sam had been in equally dangerous situations, he’d never dealt with one so close to his heart.
And he’d never had to work so hard to keep his shit together and stay on task.
Not planning to admit a damn thing to his friend, he simply said, “I did what I had to do.”
Joe took a few quick puffs on his cigarette, then dropped it onto the cement and lit another. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t nerve-racking as all hell knowing you were out there in the middle of a firestorm.” His mouth moved into a half grin. “Would have sucked if you died on my watch.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, trying to shake off the lingering tension still weighing down his shoulders. “You would have never lived it down if you flew back to the station minus one.”
After confirming via radio that they’d caught the last of the fires, Joe flew Sam back to the Tahoe Pines station. Flying over Lake Tahoe, Sam stared down into the bright blue water and reflected on the fact that coming to Lake Tahoe had changed his whole life.
He’d been a fenced-in suburban kid with a tagalong little brother, a mom who tried too hard to act like her marriage didn’t suck, and a dad who was never around if he could help it. By the time Sam hit his teens, his mother’s veneer had finally cracked wide open and the fights began. Endless, self-obsessed screaming matches between his mother and father that he tried to block out by turning his stereo speakers up as loud as they would go.
Sam didn’t know what to do with his growing anger, his frustration, the fact that the adults clearly didn’t have any answers. So he drank. He partied. He cut class. And then he got busted for driving with a six-pack of beer.
Thank God his football coach had stepped into his father’s empty shoes and dragged his ass up into the Sierras for community service. Coach Rusmore had pretty much saved his life by showing him another way to let out his aggressions, how to consistently hit the level of adrenaline he needed to survive.
Very quickly, Sam had become a capable outdoors-man. All year long, the huge lake was cold and wild. When Sam wasn’t deep in the mountains—for work or pleasure—he was on the water. Fishing, boating, kayaking, river rafting, kiteboarding. Despite the huge surge of tourists every winter and summer, and the more unsavory aspects of the casinos, Sam still couldn’t believe he’d considered leaving Lake Tahoe behind ten years ago.
For a woman.
Chalk another one up to being young and stupid.
“Looks like Connor’s here,” Joe said as they flew over the station’s parking lot and saw Connor’s truck near the helipad.
Sam was glad his brother had dropped by the station. He didn’t come by nearly often enough. Of course, it wasn’t hard to guess why he was keeping his distance.
After a series of painful skin grafts and ongoing physical therapy to regain the full use of his hands and fingers, Connor was well on his way to recovery, but the big question remained: Would he ever fight fire again?
Because no matter how hard Connor worked, regardless of how much he wanted to get back out there on the mountain, his future as a hotshot wasn’t entirely up to him. The Forest Service had the final say. And the last thing they wanted was a crippled firefighter out in the middle of a wildfire.
Joe shook Connor’s hand in greeting, then headed back for the showers, but when Sam caught his brother’s troubled expression, he instantly knew something was wrong.
“Hit me with it.”
Connor put a hand on his arm in warning. “Sit down, Sam.”
Hell no, he wasn’t going to sit down. He’d seen Connor look this way only once before: When Dianna’s car had been hit on Highway 50 ten years ago.
When she’d lost the baby.
“It’s Dianna, isn’t it?”
When he didn’t get an answer quickly enough, Sam got in his brother’s face and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. Connor mirrored Sam in weight and height—both of them broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, and muscular—but Sam had fear on his side.
If his little brother didn’t start talking fast he was going to start beating the information out of him.
“Tell me what the hell has happened to her.”
“She was in another car accident. Last night, in Colorado. Vail. I just saw it on the news. I didn’t want to hit you with it over the radio. I needed to tell you in person.”
Sam dropped Connor’s shirt, stumbling back against a row of metal storage cabinets. “Is she …”
He swallowed the word “dead.” His brain wouldn’t let him think it. His mouth wouldn’t let him say it.