Slow Burn (Smoke Jumpers) by Anne Marsh Read Free Book Online Page A

making its taxi down the runway. There was a cheer from the men on the ground when she cleared the tarmac and got air beneath her. Jump team was en route, off to save the day. God, he wanted to be up there, one of the team headed out to the jump site.
    Instead, he was here, parked on the fifty-five-gallon drums of fuel lined up beside the hangar. Nothing fancy here, no underground tanks or bulk fuel storage. When Spotted Dick bellowed orders, everyone lent a hand to roll those heavy motherfuckers out to the plane. Being hand crew and therefore a temporary firefighter meant he had a ringside seat for the start of the party—but no invite to what came next.
    “You think we’ll get called out?” The firefighter next to Hollis didn’t even bother looking over when he shoved off the drum he’d perched on. Small and wiry, the guy couldn’t have been a day over twenty. He was too wet behind the ears to recognize that Hollis, already on his third fire season, had the edge on him.
    Dumb-ass.
    Hollis kicked his way back over to the camp kitchen, trying to figure out how come he was always on the ground when what he wanted was to fly. Twenty-three, and he’d put in his time, right? He deserved a chance. He was always first on the truck, too. He pulled his weight.
    It wasn’t the money he was after, either, although the money was good. Real good. He liked knowing he had cash in the bank, waiting for him when the season let up some. More fires meant more hours worked. Still, he’d started out pretty small on the other crews he’d worked, careful not to set too many fires. He’d let himself have one, maybe two, each season.
    Now, after three seasons fighting fire, he had himself a break. The fire camp in Strong was his ticket to the big leagues. If he worked hard enough, the Donovan brothers would have to notice him. He’d finally get his chance to join the jump crew.
    Fighting fire was the first job he’d had where the work mattered . He got to be a goddamn hero. Not often enough, but sometimes. Even his father had had to admit that, maybe, Hollis was on to something important. Thirty years selling a laundry list of cheap-ass products no one really wanted or needed, and his dad still hit the road every week. He had quotas to make, he’d say, and that meant there wasn’t time to sit home and chat it up with family. Out there, on the road, he had business to take care of, and take care of it he would.
    His dad understood quotas and checks from the companies who hired him to shill and then paid out a miserly commission for each sale his dad had wrung from the folks he met and solicited on the road. His father hadn’t been able to sell the program to his mother for long, because Mommy Dearest had up and left when Hollis was a baby. After that, he had been raised by an uncle. Uncle Roy had done his best, but kids weren’t his strong point.
    None of them ever figured Hollis would amount to much of anything.
    He’d learned what a high firefighting was when he was still a kid. The old lady down the street had been inside her trailer when the place went up. Hollis had kicked in her door, thrown her over his shoulder, and gotten her out of there, exactly like it was a movie or something. The people watching him had shouted and cheered. For the first time, he’d been someone, someone good, someone who mattered. He wasn’t Roy’s screw-up nephew or the son his father couldn’t be bothered to call.
    You’re nothing, boy. Never have been, never will be.
    No . He didn’t need his father’s voice trumpeting in his head and he damned sure didn’t want those memories. Fighting fires mattered. He had made something of himself, so the old bastard could take his dire predictions and shove them right where the sun didn’t shine. Maybe Hollis hadn’t finished college, and maybe he didn’t sit a desk job, but he got out there every fire season with the best of them, and he made a difference. The rest of the year, after the crews shut