picture.
“I should bring something by the station again,” Kim murmured as she peered over Avery’s shoulder at the photo.
“What?”
“I know it’s not enough,” Kim said. “That there’s really no way to thank them for saving my kids. But I’ve been taking cookies and brownies to them when the Huron Hotshots are here in Northern Lakes.”
Avery smiled. Kim was so like their mother, who’d headed up every church and school bake sale in Northern Lakes. Their parents had moved downstate when Dad traded his high school teaching job for a college position. Apparently Kim had taken over for Mom. “You’re thanking them with baked goods?”
“You have a better idea?”
Avery stared at that face—and the heavily muscled body that went with it. His arms bulged, his chest pushed against the thin material of his damp soot-stained yellow T-shirt. He was in the front row, so he was hunched down, his thighs straining against the pants that matched his T-shirt. Oh, she had some ideas how she’d like to thank him...
Kim had known her too long and too well. She smacked Avery’s shoulder. “Hey! You shouldn’t be thinking like that.”
“I’m not married,” Avery said. “I can think like that all I want.”
Kim sighed. She’d been married since she was twenty—when she’d gotten pregnant during her sophomore year of college. Rick had dropped out and started driving a truck to support his new family. He was gone a lot. Fortunately Kim still missed him when he was away.
Avery had never missed any of her past boyfriends much after they’d broken up. But then she’d always been so focused on her career—and chasing down the next big story—that she hadn’t had any serious relationships. She couldn’t imagine being as settled as Kim was, in the same small town where they’d grown up. Or at least Kim had been settled before she’d nearly lost her children.
Her sister giggled. “They might appreciate your thank-you more than my cookies...”
Avery narrowed her eyes and studied the photo. “I don’t want to thank all of them, just the one who really rescued them.”
Dawson...
He’d only told the boys his first name. Kim had shared that they sometimes whimpered it in their sleep, when they had nightmares about the fire.
“The Hotshots worked together to rescue them,” Kim said. “They’re a team.”
The media hadn’t focused on the team, though. They had focused on Wyatt Andrews. He was the Hotshot who’d disobeyed their superintendent’s order to leave the fire. Wyatt Andrews had found the campers first, but he wouldn’t have been able to save them on his own.
It was Dawson the boys had pointed out who had brought enough extra shelters for all the campers. It was this man who’d enclosed the boys in one of those special shelters with him. Dawson was the one who’d calmed their fears when they’d been terrified that the fire was going to consume them.
He deserved more than cookies in appreciation for risking his life to save theirs. He deserved credit for being a hero. And, if he was single, maybe a kiss as thank-you, too.
* * *
“THANKS,” DAWSON HESS said as Wyatt Andrews set a pitcher of beer on the table in front of him, Cody Mallehan and Braden Zimmer. They had commandeered their usual back booth in the Filling Station, the bar around the corner from the firehouse in Northern Lakes. It was the home base for the four of them—when they weren’t out fighting wildfires in other states with the rest of their twenty-member team.
Wyatt flipped him off.
“Hey, you know the rule,” Dawson reminded his teammate. Whatever member of the team got interviewed or singled out in a press photo had to buy for the rest of them.
Wyatt slid into the booth next to him. “Is that why you dodge the press?”
Dawson had his reasons, and they had nothing to do with buying rounds of beer. But he pushed the past aside and just laughed.
“He doesn’t have to dodge them,” Cody said. “You’re so busy hogging the limelight nobody’s interested in the rest of us schmucks.”
“Jealous,” Wyatt teased. He and the younger firefighter had a friendly rivalry. It used to be over women—until Wyatt had fallen in love with a little redheaded insurance agent. Now it was over the job.
“It’s bullshit,” Cody said. But amusement instead of jealousy flashed through the blond firefighter’s green eyes. He enjoyed needling Wyatt. “You and those kids would have roasted in that fire if Dawson and I hadn’t come back and saved your asses.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Hey, I offered to set the record straight but the boss told me to refuse all interviews.”
Which Dawson suspected his teammate had gladly done. Like Dawson, Wyatt had probably had enough of reporters when he’d been a kid, too. The media preyed on tragedy. Now that they were adults, and had a job to do, reporters were a different kind of nuisance, putting themselves in danger to get the best shot. Dawson had had to rescue too many from nearly getting burned alive.
Cody turned toward their boss—Superintendent Braden Zimmer.
Braden pushed his hand through, or rather over, his brush-cut-short brown hair. “We want this story to die down,” he reminded them. “And you all know why.”
Wyatt cursed, and pitching his voice low, murmured, “The arsonist...”
So many of these fire bugs started blazes for the attention. They needed to starve him of attention, just like the Hotshots starved the fire of fuel when they cut down trees and tore out vegetation for the breaks. They had been successful in putting out the fires, but they hadn’t caught the arsonist yet. And Dawson was pretty sure the guy hadn’t stopped setting fires.
He didn’t have the notorious instincts of their superintendent, who had predicted the big fire that had nearly destroyed their town. But he was smart enough to figure out that those hot spots weren’t starting back up on their own. The ground had been too scorched and their breaks too thorough for that to be the case.
“It’s not working.” Cody confirmed what they’d all been thinking.
Braden shook his head. “We don’t have confirmation that the others fires were deliberately set.”
The superintendent wasn’t talking about the hot spots, but the other serious blazes they and other Hotshot teams had had to battle. Maybe they hadn’t been deliberately set.
Lightning could have struck a tree. Or a campfire hadn’t been completely extinguished...
The Hotshots only knew for certain that the Northern Lakes fire had been intentional. That was where accelerant had been found at the origin—gasoline poured over dried vegetation, maybe hay bales. There hadn’t been much left—just enough to prove that the fire had been no act of nature.
Anger filled Dawson at the thought of someone deliberately setting that fire and endangering all those innocent people. Those kids...
He
