She pulled back and swiped at her eyes before keying the radio. “Unit seven, go ahead.”
He stood there and watched her reassemble herself into the SAR team leader, the handler, the woman who had nine years of flood scenes in her muscle memory and could recalibrate in a breath. She was already turning away, already responding to whatever crisis was coming through the radio, already somewhere else.
But then she stopped and glanced back at him, and in that brief moment, he saw everything she hadn’t had time to say and everything she hadn’t found words for yet.
“Don’t be stupid again, Sasquatch,” she said, then walked away. Atlas dropped from the running board to her side as she rounded the corner of the firehouse and was gone.
Bear stood at the back of the Jeep in the gray morning.
He looked at the cargo door, still open, her soaked vest on the bumper. He looked at his hands, dried creek mud in the creases of his knuckles, and thought of the sobriety chip in his pocket.
He reached in and closed his fist around it.
Don’t be stupid again.
That had been his motto since he got out of prison, and he’d been doing a damn good job of it until recently.
Now he was stupid on a regular basis. Because of her. And Logan. And he didn’t know how to be smart when it came to them.
He sighed, dropped the sobriety chip back into his pocket, and went back inside to find out what still needed to be done.
twenty-three
The last time Logan had been in this kitchen, it had been chaotic, but not like this.
Johanna had three burners going and a pot of chili big enough to drown in, and she was delegating as she cooked.
Oliver’s mom, Nessie, also worked in the kitchen while other women he didn’t know passed out dry clothes and blankets to every new person who wandered in from the flood.
He’d been at it, helping where he could, since Bear had dropped him off on the porch.
“Stay where Walker can see you,” Bear had said, “and do what Johanna says. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Why do you have to go?” He hated that his voice came out so whiny, but the thought of Dad going back out into the dark and sheeting rain terrified him. That was how Mom had died—a rainstorm, a slick road, someone not paying attention, and plowing through a red light.
Bear had met Walker’s gaze over his shoulder, then bent down so that they were eye-to-eye. “Because I have medical skills people are going to need out there.”
Logan had stood there in his hoodie with the rain ticking on the porch roof and watched the taillights of his dad’s truck go until Walker had said, “Kid, come inside.”
That was six hours ago.
He hadn’t heard from Dad since.
“Here.” Nessie shoved a plate of cornbread into his arms, bringing him back to the present. “Take that out and let me know if anything is running low.”
He carried the cornbread into the dining room. The big table had been pushed against the wall and stacked with folded wool blankets and grocery bags from Nessie’s Place — bread, jars of jam, an absurd number of muffins. There were people in the great room he didn’t recognize. An older woman from town in a wet pink robe and slippers. A young couple with a baby asleep against the father’s chest. A man Walker called Pete, who’d lost his roof.
He set the cornbread on the buffet between the chili and the soup and surveyed the other plates. Everything looked topped off, for now, but he doubted it’d stop Johanna and Nessie from cooking more.
“Hermanito.” X appeared at his elbow and held out a pair of work gloves. “Sandbags. Come on.”
He took the gloves and followed.
The line ran from the south wall of the barn to the lower fence, forty feet of people passing bags hand to hand in the rain, and Logan dropped into the line beside X.
River was at his other side, soaked to the bone and grinning like a crazy man. “When they write the history of this flood, I want a footnote. River Beckett: he showed up, he complained, he passed bags. A hero.”
“River,” Jonah called from further down the line, “less talking, more lifting.”
