His back tensed as Rich checked him. These worries about the baby and what would happen to her if something happened to Brandt kept dogging him, arriving at the least opportune moments.
“Do you ever get scared?” asked one of the older kids, a girl in a plaid shirt.
“Nah,” a younger smoke jumper answered. One of Bronco’s crowd, those too-cocky young guns who hadn’t yet lost a buddy, hadn’t really confronted near-death experiences.
Hartman made a scoffing noise and shot him a pointed look. “Of course we do. We’re jumping out of planes. And fires are scary. It’s only normal to be afraid. But it’s what you do with that fear.”
“Yeah,” Brandt echoed weakly. Fear. That was what those worries were. And he well knew how deadly panic could be, but finding a balance between concern and calm was proving hard.
Somehow he managed to shove all those thoughts aside to demonstrate some basic air positioning, trying not to glance over at Shane too much.
“Now, why don’t all of you wave goodbye to the jumpers who’ll be taking that plane you saw earlier.” One of the supervisors addressed the audience. “We’ll continue your tour while they circle back around.”
Shane made Jewel wave again as they followed Reid and the other supervisors out. There goes my heart. And it wasn’t one of Shane’s fanciful lines, but the truth. Brandt was as close to the two of them as he’d been to anyone else in years. And a few weeks ago, he would have laughed at the notion of getting attached to a tiny baby, but he was. Already she owned a huge chunk of his heart, and he hadn’t thought he had one left to give. Kindness sure, good times certainly, but not all these deeper emotions that kept slamming into him at the least opportune time.
“Let’s give them a good show,” Hartman said as they boarded the plane.
“Will do.” No more stray thoughts. No more looks back over his shoulder. Brandt had to stay focused. And he did. Triple-checking his gear one last time, listening closely for the signal.
Textbook.
Right up until the moment his chute didn’t open.
Chapter Twenty
“Are they here yet?” One of Cameron’s kids, Colt, a blond boy who kept asking to see Jewel, bounced up and down, kicking up a mini dust cloud as he did so. Shane shared Colt’s impatience as they all waited at the edge of a clearing for the arrival of the jumpers. His stomach felt all slushy. Not dread precisely, but not excitement either. Cautious anticipation maybe.
“No. Obviously. We can’t hear the plane yet.” Tabitha, the other kid, a gangly tween girl, had made it clear she was not impressed with the goings-on at all. Both kids looked more like Cameron than her more weathered smoke jumper husband. Tabitha knew almost more about the smoke-jumping protocols than the people giving the tour, but she kept her knowledge to biting quips rather than her brother’s boisterous outbursts.
“Watch the sky.” Cameron straddled the line between sharing Tabitha’s boredom and having admirable patience for Colt’s endless stream of questions. The two kids were like a window into what the next few years could hold as Jewel grew into a kid. Would she be talkative? A showoff? Aloof? Smart? Waiting to find out made Shane almost as impatient as Colt. And he wanted to be there, wanted to see her go from baby to one of these little persons like the kids in the school group, full of personality.
“I don’t see anything yet,” Colt complained after ten seconds of sky scanning.
“Keep watching.” Cameron ruffled his hair.
In Shane’s pocket, his phone buzzed, but no way was he fishing it out now and missing the arrival of the jumpers. Whoever it was could wait.
The drone of a distant plane made Shane’s heart speed up, hand tensing against Jewel’s little back.
“Here they come!” someone called as a dark speck came into view. Then a few more dots, hazy on the horizon, gradually getting bigger. Shane’s pulse sped up and he jiggled the baby a little. It was pretty cool, waiting for the moment when the parachutes took on recognizable shapes.
“Why is one parachute a different color?” he asked Cameron. On the ground, there was a flurry of activity from the other jumpers and supervisors watching the parachutes float down.
“Oh crap. Oh...” Trailing off, Cameron kept her mouth a tight line as she motioned Shane closer so she could whisper in his ear. “Someone had to use their reserve chute. That’s why they’re scrambling. In case there’s a hard landing or a medical situation.”
“Oh.” All the excitement of watching drained away on the single syllable, replaced by clammy skin and a thumping heart. Even Jewel seemed tenser in her sling.
“Please be okay.” Cameron’s voice was barely audible, a whispered prayer as she kept her hand on Colt’s hair and pulled Tabitha close to her. The little family looked so vulnerable that Shane’s breath caught. Everything could change for them in the next few seconds. And Cameron had to live with this worry day in and day out, fire after fire. He’d always appreciated first responders, but now he saw the toll that life took on the families too. This job asked so much of Cameron and the kids too.