Wildfire Griffin (Fire & Rescue Shifters: Wildfire Crew #1)
Zoe Chant
Chapter 1
The bolt of lightning came, without warning, out of a clear blue sky, straight into the heart of a dry, dead pine. With a sound like a cannon, the towering tree blew apart in a cloud of flaming splinters.
That’s impossible.
For a long moment, Edith simply stared down at the thin plume of smoke rising from the distant trunk. She’d been outside cleaning the windows of her fire lookout tower, and had happened to be glancing straight at that part of the forest at the moment of impact. Even with the after-image of the dazzling flash still dancing on her retinas, she couldn’t believe what she’d witnessed.
She knew the weather in these mountains better than the rhythms of her own body. There wasn’t a cloud in the vast Montana sky; not a hint of electric ozone in the air. The lightning bolt had simply materialized out of nowhere, as though the poor tree had suddenly offended some petulant god.
Heart hammering, she dashed back inside her tiny dwelling. The tower’s firefinder stood on a plinth in the precise middle of the room—a circular map, with a mechanism for triangulating the precise location of any fire visible outside the windows.
She hunched over the device, swinging the viewfinder around until it was precisely lined up with the smoke rising outside the window. Locking the angle, she triple-checked the reading before walking her fingers across the firefinder’s map to the coordinates where the fire must be.
Only a mile away. Edith relaxed a little. Her fire tower was smack in the middle of nowhere, miles from any popular hiking trails. There wouldn’t be any campers in the affected part of the forest. No one would be at risk.
No one, she belatedly realized, except her.
“It’s okay,” Edith said out loud. She always fell into the habit of talking to herself during the long, lonely months of fire season. “Everything’s still wet from spring. Even if it does catch, it won’t burn fast.”
Nonetheless, one hand started tapping nervously against her thigh. She focused on the familiar rhythm, using it to shut out the rising clamor of anxiety. With her other hand, she fumbled for the radio.
She had to wait for five agonizing minutes, repeating her call sign over and over, before someone responded. “Base here, Officer Warren on duty. Edith, this had better be important.”
The deviation from protocol threw her. Words jammed in her throat. Of course it was important—why would she call if it wasn’t?
Warren muttered a curse as she sat in frozen confusion. “Edith, I don’t have time for you today. Some of us have actual work to do.”
Warren had never bothered to hide his opinion of manned fire lookout towers—archaic, primitive systems that served no purpose in today’s modern world of satellite surveillance and reconnaissance drones. She’d once overheard him refer to her as “that charity case in Tower Thirteen.”
Edith took a deep breath, forcing her chin up. She wasn’t a charity case. The work she did was real, not some made-up position thinly disguising a government handout for people who couldn’t cope with regular jobs.
“I’ve got eyes on rising smoke near Tower Thirteen, Base.” With effort, she managed to keep her voice smooth and calm. “A lightning strike. The exact coordinates are—“
“Lightning?” he interrupted her. “Are you kidding me? This is a hell of a time to suddenly start trying out practical jokes, Edith.”
Her shoulders tightened at the barely-restrained irritation in his voice, obvious even to her. She’d never known how to defuse his simmering hostility at the best of times. Her free hand beat harder, faster, trying to push back panic.
“Negative, Base,” she said, hoping that formality would magically make him believe her. “I personally witnessed the lightning strike the snag. The fire is well on its way to becoming established.”
She heard computer keys tapping. “Edith, meteorology shows nothing but sunny skies in your area. Lightning is only formed by thunderclouds. There aren’t any clouds near you. Are you sure you aren’t looking at some mist?”
He sounded like he was talking to a five-year-old. Edith gritted her teeth. She was tiresomely familiar with that particular condescending tone. She was autistic, not incompetent.
“Base, I’m a qualified firefighter. I know smoke when I see it. The wildfire is small at the moment, but we need to get a team out here before it becomes a problem.”
Edith prayed that he had a team to send. It was only early June, a week before the official start of fire season. Most of the smokejumpers and wilderness firefighters would still be scattered across America, at home with their families or relaxing on vacation. She might hate every minute of off-season, and return to her remote outpost as early as she was allowed, but she knew she was an anomaly.
Let’s hope someone else started work early too.
Warren blew out his breath as though she had personally started the fire just to annoy him. “It costs money to deploy firefighters, you know. I’m going to need additional confirmation before I dispatch anyone. Hold on.”
If it had been any other fire watcher, Edith suspected he would already have been scrambling a plane of smokejumpers. The nervous twitching of her hand spread through her body and down her leg. She stared out the window, the toe of her workboot drumming against the worn wooden floorboards. The wind was definitely blowing the plume of smoke straight in her direction.