He closed his eyes, in the tuck position, savoring the few seconds of free fall, the blissfully mind-numbing silence. Goddamn. Allowing his lips to curl into a rare smile, he exhaled a contented breath. No better place existed than this limbo between earth and sky. Once out of the plane there were no take backs, only total commitment. The buzz gave way to a moment of absolute clarity. It was about being alive, about—
A sharp jerk wrenched him back into the present, knocking his teeth together.
He twisted, glancing up. What the shit? His head rang as his heart rate soared. Streamer malfunction. The parachute hadn’t opened right. Bad news. Really fucking bad news. He yanked the reserve but they had jumped low and at a thousand feet, there wasn’t time to do much before he slammed into the earth at a hundred miles an hour.
This was going to go either of two ways: a lot of hurt or game over.
Impossible to gain orientation amid the gut-twisting free spin. Landscape flipped past in a nauseating kaleidoscope, blue sky, green forest, blue sky, green forest, a river, fuck—the river? He’d careened too far from the jump site, over the steep gulch. An inferno now separated him from McDonald. The scenic beauty of this stark, lonely landscape was a steep and jagged catch-22. Crashing into the roughest terrain east of the divide would make it damn near impossible for a quick rescue.
If there was anything left of him to save.
The tree canopy closed in. Got to relax. If his muscles remained rigid, the impact would destroy vital organs. Better to keep his legs moving to avoid locked limbs, cover his head with his arms, elbows forward, lacing his fingers behind his neck. Wind roared in his face. Strange how his life didn’t flash before his eyes, only smoke and flame.
Figured.
A crash, a snap of bone or branch, followed by an agonizing pain through his lower leg and then nothing at all.
WILDER BLINKED BUT the world remained upside down. He tested his jaw. Not broken. His back ached while his left leg had a complete absence of feeling. Willing his rattled brains to come to order, he swung forward as silvery stars cascaded past his field of vision. Looked like he’d gotten strung up in a lodgepole pine. How long had he swung from his ropes like a pendulum, blood pooling in his head? He waited until the vertigo passed and took a shuddering breath. The main chute had tangled in the branches while his left leg was caught tight in the reserve’s line, cutting circulation off below the knee. Not good.
The forest was silent except for the branch creaking under his weight. No one else was around for miles. He’d blown too far off course.
If he was going to escape then it was up to him—for once it would pay to be a stubborn S.O.B.
Getting down wasn’t going to be a picnic, not with a headfirst, ten-foot plummet to anticipate. No choice though, especially not when the ridgeline above exploded in an avalanche of flame.
Aw shit.
His whole body reacted against the impending doom. A pulse ticked in his throat as cold sweat sheened his chest. He hadn’t survived the fall to be roasted alive. No. No. No. His thoughts screamed until he realized it was his own voice chanting the single word.
No man in his sound mind longed for death, but he’d idly hoped for a car accident or disease when his time came. Even a gunshot or poison.
Anything but fucking fire.
Wilder fumbled for the compact utility knife clipped to his Kevlar jumpsuit and after a few clumsy attempts, his trembling fingers popped open the blade. There were a shitload of cords and he ground his wrist hard, sawing back and forth, going through one after another.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered. The initial fall’s impact left him with as much strength as a baby. “Stay in control.” Hard to believe the pep talk given the pathetic rasp undercutting his voice. The forest thickened with choking smoke.
After he cut some ten cords, he dropped an inch, two more and then a foot while embers drifted past, devilish fairies, bright with hypnotic beauty. He couldn’t afford to screw up this landing because in another minute it was going to be out of the frying pan and into the—damn it—he recoiled from the explosion as the fire jumped from the ground to the tree canopy with a noise like a freight train taking a corner too fast.
His blade popped through the final filaments and he plummeted to the pine needle duff with a muffled thud, automatically rolling away from the encroaching blaze. He pushed to his feet and keeled over. Something was wonky with his left leg, the one still wound tight in the reserve parachute line. He lurched up and fell again, panting. A few large scattered boulders ahead where the trees thinned. A clearing.
The Lost Moose Gulch landslide.
He exhaled, a jolt of purpose shooting through his core, open space meant a shot at survival.
If he could crawl, there might be a chance.
His radio crackled from his backpack. “Kane, are you there? Fucking copy, man.”
McDonald.
A crash. Wilder froze as a doe and fawn hauled ass through the underbrush. They each had four working legs to their advantage. The air was devoid of birdsong, even the radio’s static couldn’t compete with the roar—the same nightmarish sound that haunted his dreams for over twenty years.
Fire had always held a strange sort of destructive beauty, dazzling in its doom. He learned that lesson as a six-year-old, while his little brothers, Sawyer and Archer, clung to his hands, whimpering while their family home transformed into an inferno, trapping Mommy and Dad inside.
The two younger boys had cried when the roof caved, after the police and firefighters arrived too late to do anything but sort through the smoldering rubble. They sobbed until Grandma Kane had showed up in her flannel pajamas, hair tightly rolled in pink curlers, offering stiff but heartfelt hugs.
Wilder hadn’t said a word. He didn’t have the right to tears.
Not when everything was all his fault.
This job, this life, was a way to atone.
But he came from a long line of gamblers, and every debt must eventually be paid, right?
Wrong. The fire wouldn’t win. Not today.
He tore open his backpack and grabbed the radio. “Copy, McDonald, I’m here, but things are getting hot.”
“What are your coordinates, over?”
The embers lit the underbrush around him, a dozen tiny spot fires stood between him and the clearing. Time was almost out. He scrambled faster.
“Can’t check the GPS,” Wilder panted. “Got to deploy the fire blanket pronto. My location is the southern perimeter of the Lost Moose Gulch landslide, over.”
The heat was all consuming. It was too much. Too far. He heaved onto his back, to glimpse a last patch of blue, a final shred of sky, but nothing remained except for an ashy haze.
Death would come quick and there was a certain mercy in that knowledge. Maybe on the other side his parents waited, and he could finally say sorry.
Or he might burn forever.
Either way he’d soon find out.
The sound of mad thrashing grabbed his attention and he turned, raising his head. The baby deer from earlier had run headlong into a thicket on the rockslide’s edge, trapping itself among the bramble in its panic, abandoned by a terrified mother.
The pitiful sight forced him to gather the dregs of his nonexistent strength. Just a little farther. Hand over hand, ignoring the coals branding his palms, the sweat stinging his eyes, he reached the fawn. It struggled for a moment before stilling, as if understanding this was the only choice.
Wilder couldn’t feel the thorns, not through the red-hot pain radiating across his palms and shooting up his arms. “Go,” he growled at the fawn, ripping down the branches and slapping its spindly leg. “Get out of here.” He tugged the fire blanket from his backpack. Survival odds were statistically nil. The blanket might protect him from the fire’s caress but the heat could easily scald his lungs, incinerating from the inside out.
The young deer didn’t budge, instead it stared transfixed by the approaching horror.