Page 21 of Into the Fire

“The book’s not wrong for Teller. In a first season, the tree is a failure because he doesn’t know how to read one yet. You’re asking when he gets to stop believing that. I’d say a couple hundred jumps.”

Hollis nodded slowly. He had eleven seasons behind him, and he asked the man who’d just come back. It had only taken days for Dante to establish credibility.

“When your name goes back on the board, I want you on my stick,” Fellhauer said. “You can actually land where the spotter puts you.”

Shep took offense. “I land where Nash puts me.”

“Eventually.”

“I can’t wait for October,” Fellhauer continued. “Good, you’re back for it. Larch turns, everybody else’s season dies, and we’re still jumping the late stuff. Prettiest work there is.”

“October,” Dante said, and lifted his beer half an inch off the table.

“Wait, how long are you around?” Shep asked.

“Through requal,” Dante said. “Getting the card’s the mission. Six weeks if your boss passes me.”

I was silent and drank my beer.

The conversation continued, and I left after a second bottle.

“There he goes,” Dante said. “It’s not even eleven.”

“Some of us work for a living.”

“You’re the one who signs off on whether I work for a living.” He looked up at me, and for a half-second it was just the two of us with the table talking around us. “Drive slow, Hatcher. Deer are moving.”

I put money down for a round I wouldn’t be there for, told Shep to make sure Fellhauer drove, and walked out into a chilly August night.

My valley was dark except for yard lights. A doe and two yearlings stood at the edge of Wallen’s field, eyes green in the headlights, and I slowed. I tried to remember the last time anyone told me to drive carefully. Dutch, probably.

I turned up the spur, and the house appeared in my headlights.

Inside, I put the keys in the enamel dish and hung my jacket on a hook.

I still wanted him in my bed.

That wasn’t what I’d watched most at the Sawtooth. When October came, I wanted him to be there for the entire month. I wanted his name back on the board in my handwriting and his boots inside the ready room door with everybody else’s.

He’d told the table the truth tonight. He needed requal, and that was his mission. Six weeks.

I turned off the kitchen light and stood for a moment in the dark.

Wanting him in my bed was easy.

Wanting him to stay frightened me.

Chapter six

Dante

Iwas back in the tower on the first Tuesday of September, and Boone had decided that five clean refresher jumps hadn’t provided enough opportunities for him to kill me.

The jumps had come over the last two weeks, out of the Otter into a meadow east of the base. The first exit put my heart in my throat until the canopy opened. Then somewhere between two thousand feet and the ground, I was a jumper again, and my heart steadied.

Nash spotted every jump. By the fifth, I was putting my feet where he pointed.

What was left was the part Boone ran personally: malfunction drills and one last tower check before he could put me back on the jump list.