That I loved them more than my own life.
5/
interruption
BOONE
Late spring was officially here, but winter was still being a sonuvabitch about leaving.
It was early May, and I woke up to the weatherman bitching about it still being in the low 30s all morning.
Fine by me. My polar bear didn’t mind an early morning dip in the lake on my multi-acre spread.
At temps that low, there was less chance a human would wander past and wonder why the hell a polar bear was swimming in Walker Boone’s private lake.
That cold spring morning, I toweled off after shifting back to human, threw on cargo pants and a SMOKE HAPPENS tee, then cast my line into the crystal-blue water.
Yeah, this was exactly how I liked it, I reminded myself.
No more coworkers asking me for their real orders because they didn’t trust the latest asshole with a Masters of Management diploma on the wall. Only thing that dude knew how to dowas peck out weekly newsletters full of corporate phrase-fuckery like “ensuring best outcomes,” “limiting liability,” and, my personal opposite of favorite, “keeping our insurance premiums sustainable.”
Didn’t matter that I didn’t need human medicine to heal the very few injuries I’d ever sustained in nearly three decades of being a smokejumper with a polar bear hidden underneath. That dipshit was a desk-riding insult to the men who put their lives on the line every day to battle wildfires in the lower forty-eight.
Probably shouldn’t have punched him, though.
Losing my temper had punched me right on back with a forced retirement package. They called it “accepting an early pension,” but everybody knew that’s corporatese for “get the fuck out before we fire you.”
Anyway, I refused to get too upset about it. Bought myself a nice spread in the middle of nowhere, Montana. Had my lake. Had my quiet and a cabin I’d built with my own two hands, just like the old days when I thought I’d be going into construction and settling down in Bear Mountain—the Canadian town that had hired my father to build them a bunch of cabins to go along with the totem caves the Ayaska had exclusively lived in as far back as any of them could remember.
But forget that old dream. I was happy—okay, if not happy, I was fine. Fine with how my life had turned out. Barely even thought about all the stuff that had gone down back in Canada anymore—about the life I didn’t get, thanks to my shit-stain of a brother.
Which was why I frowned when yet another peaceful day of fishing alone on my lake was interrupted by an electronic chirping sound.
My phone.
Thought about ignoring it. For a half a second.
Only a handful of people even had my number, and one of them had been a member of my old unit. He’d warned me that he’d be calling me the second a wildfire broke out that needed extra hands.
With something I refused to call excitement beating in my chest, I switched the pole to my other hand to answer the phone.
Only to frown even deeper when I saw the Canadian country and area code rolling across the device’s screen.
What the hell?I hadn’t gotten a call from Canada in years…. Not since my brother’s ex died and my half-polar-bear nephew had called to tell me he was the new Tuk’Mara. Probably expected me to say his father would be proud or some bull like that.
I just said “Okay” and hung up.
But now Canada was calling again.
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to answer. If they wanted to tell me about another funeral I wasn’t planning on attending, they could just leave a voicemail.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t any of my business. And I didn’t want it to be.
I watched the phone continue to beep, rolling that unfamiliar number.
Bear dammit.
At the last minute, I jabbed a finger onto the answer button. Just so I wouldn’t have to bother trying to get into my voicemail system later on.
