Flash of Fire Read Online Free Page B

again, as Vern riposted the next smokejumper tease.
    Ballerina or workout instructor didn’t get you in the cockpit of an MHA Firehawk. And especially not the lead ship. To do that, she had to be fantastic. So what did she bring?
    At that moment, she turned to look at him.
    * * *
    Robin concentrated on not shifting foot to foot while she waited. Would the new commander hold her first-day tardiness against her? For getting lost in the goddamn rabbit warren of a barracks? And then gawking like a schoolgirl at the trees and the drone launcher and the line of Firehawks and…
    The men.
    Enough time had passed that everyone should have stopped staring at her by now and she could turn to scan the crowd. Time to assess just who she’d signed up with.
    And the first place she looked, there was a guy staring at her from the far side of the crowd. No one else, just him.
    And then another, whom she vaguely remembered meeting yesterday, looked over the man’s shoulder. No comparison.
    Blue eyes, short—almost crew-cut short—brown hair, and one of those friendly faces that looked like it smiled too easily and too often.
    At the truck stop, they were the one kind of guy you could never figure out. The ham-handed ones were easy to spot and all of the women knew to look for the extra pair of straws that were always dropped along the outside edge of such tables, a clear sign that “This table sucks.”
    Most of the truckers were fine, decent guys, and there were a lot of couples rolling down the roads, way more than in Mom’s youth. She’d been able to pick out any of those types easily by the time she was ten and wiping down tables after school.
    But then there were the ones like this guy on the far side of the crowd. Flying solo, looking nice…very nice, and wholly unreadable. Mr. Nice Guy or Mr. Jerk? It was hard to tell, because at the moment, he had a rather bug-zapped expression.
    * * *
    Mickey tried to look away, but that so wasn’t working. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, the color of the morning sky now shining above them. High cheekbones and a chin that made him wonder what it would feel like to run his fingers along its lines.
    â€œTold ya,” Gordon whispered behind him.
    Mickey offered her a friendly nod. She returned it. Not cautious or calculating like you’d expect from a newcomer, but a short, assessing greeting. Then she turned her attention back to Mark as if Mickey had suddenly ceased to exist.
    A soft “Damn” was all he could manage. Hot didn’t begin to cover this lady.
    â€œTold ya,” Gordon repeated himself beneath the last of the back-and-forth banter. The crew was feeling good, ready for the start of the season.
    â€œMount Hood Aviation sightseeing tours will be next. I’ve been telling Mark that’s all you air jockeys are good for anyway,” Akbar teased them.
    Mickey had been feeling good too. A final glance to the blond and he felt even better now.
    â€œWe have”—Mark raised his voice to quash the last of it—“a little lightning-strike fire east of nowhere in Alaska. It’s in an area classified for limited to no intervention. Normally they’d just let it burn, as there are no nearby towns. However, it has grown up in the last twenty-four hours and thinks that it has a passport and entry stamp to cross into Canada.”
    â€œThat’s our kind of export problem,” Mickey shot back at Akbar. First fire call of the year always felt great. It wouldn’t be until they’d had a month or two of impossible hours and crappy camps that the feeling would wear off. Even then, it beat the dickens out of any day job he could imagine.
    â€œI thought Canada wouldn’t mind,” Jeannie asked. “They’re into sustainable forest burn now.” Jeannie was getting good. Of course she’d have track of all of that, what with her fire management degree and working along with Carly the