Rushing In (Bailey Brothers #4) - Claire Kingsley Page 0,4

it, he knew it. I was the little brother. The screw-up. The wild one. If we’d been sitting at home, or in a bar, or driving down the road, he’d have blown me off. But when it came to a crisis situation, if danger was involved, my instincts were… well, they were fucking weird is what they were. I was almost always right.

I radioed Chief.

“Go ahead.”

“Chief, just a heads up, I think the fire’s going to turn.”

“Understood.” Chief knew it, too. “Do you think it’s time to move out?”

I glanced back at the house. Wayne and Mary Risley’s house. They’d lived there for thirty years. We couldn’t let it burn. “Not yet. We can finish up here.”

“Okay. Helitack crew will be there soon with a bucket drop.”

A fresh wave of smoke blew over us and the guy next to me coughed again. “Maybe tell them to hurry up with that.”

“I will. Don’t do anything crazy, Gav. That’s an order.”

My mouth hooked in a grin. “Course not, Chief.”

I never did anything crazy. Not by my standards, anyway. Other people seemed to disagree, but as far as I was concerned, the things I did were completely sane.

Going against my instincts—now that would have been crazy.

Levi came back. “Dirk radioed the Incident Commander. Helitack crew should be here soon.”

“Yeah, Chief told me.”

“We should—shit!”

I whipped around to see what he was looking at.

Down the line, a group was working on a snag—a dead tree clinging precariously to the edge. The sawyer had lost his balance and dropped his damn chainsaw. The guy downslope from him shuffled his feet, trying to get out of the way of the deadly blade.

He slipped.

The chainsaw clattered against the rocks, spitting dirt into the air. It missed the guy below, sliding past him. It roared its way down the slope and dropped off the edge.

I was already running. Because the guy on the slope was going to fall.

My feet ate up the ground between me and the sawyer at the top. He stood, dumbstruck, his hands open at his sides.

“Gavin, wait,” Levi called behind me.

The guy on the slope bent at the waist and grabbed at the scrubby ground, his fingers digging for purchase. His feet scraped against the dirt, like something below had reached up and clutched his ankles. A fire demon lashing out with red hot rage, pulling its next victim to his demise.

Fuck that.

Turning sideways, I scrambled down the slope toward him, keeping my feet angled for maximum grip. Rocks tumbled down the hill, jarred loose by my boots. There was almost nothing to grab onto, save some thin roots and a few dry shrubs clinging to the rocky ground, but I’d been rock climbing for years. I’d be fine.

“Hang on, buddy,” I shouted.

He turned his feet outward, slowing his descent almost to a stop. His hands braced against the ground and he looked up at me, his eyes wide with fear.

I let gravity do the work, pulling me down, and the friction from my boots kept me from sliding out of control. My heart beat hard in my chest and the heat of the day, the smoke, the fatigue in my arms were gone. Nothing. Unimportant. Adrenaline washed it all away, like icy cold river water.

I was going to get this guy out. Safe. I knew it.

So I wasn’t scared.

He was, though, and that was not good. Rescuing someone in a panic was always dangerous.

I slowed down when I got close to him and found a rock to wedge my foot against. “Hey, brother. Don’t move, okay? What’s your name?”

“Robby.”

“How long have you been on the wildland crew?” I asked, just to get him talking while I pulled a coil of nylon rope out of my pack.

“First season.”

“No shit?” Smoke billowed around us, stinging my eyes. “You’re going to have a badass story to tell when you go home. Chased down the slope by a runaway fucking chainsaw.”

His mouth started to hook in a grin but his eyes widened, and before I could take another breath—let alone reach him—his feet slipped.

Primal fear contorted his features as he fell backward.

I heard him hit the bottom. “Fuck.”

People shouted at me from the top. Probably telling me to climb back up. No one wanted Robby to die—whether they knew his name or not—but I was just one guy without proper rescue equipment, clinging to a too-steep slope with a raging forest fire below pumping smoke into the air.

“Robby!” I called.

“Here,” he answered, his voice distorted with pain. He