Chapter 1
Grady
Copper Ridge sprawls across the valley like it settled in and never bothered getting up.
The van crests the last hill on Route 12 and there it is, the whole town spread below us, tucked between mountains that look like they showed up first and the town built itself around them as an afterthought. Trees everywhere. A river cutting through the south end, catching the afternoon sun. Neighborhoods climbing the slopes in no particular hurry. A main drag with actual storefronts, a church steeple poking above the tree line, and somewhere down there, a firehouse with our names on it for the summer.
“That’s it?” Navarro says from the back seat.
“That’s it.” Diaz doesn’t look up from his tablet. “Station 7. Structural crew. Captain named Delano.”
“Population?” Navarro asks.
“Does it matter?” I ask him in the rearview mirror.
“It matters to me recreationally.”
“Then you’re going to have a long summer,” I say, suppressing a smile.
“Is this town big enough for a Walmart, at least?”
“No.”
“How about a Target? They have to have a Target.”
“Also no.”
Navarro sighs. “Then what do people do here?”
“Talk about each other,” Diaz says deadpan.
“And fish,” Keller adds from the third row.
“Those seem like unrelated topics,” Navarro says.
“Give it a week.”
Navarro sinks back in his seat. He’s young enough that a summer without a bar scene still qualifies as a crisis. I remember being that young. Vaguely. The way you remember a song you used to know the words to. Navarro’s survival instincts are excellent in a fire. Everything else he’ll figure out the old-fashioned way.
The Clearwater Interagency Hotshot Crew rolls into Copper Ridge on a warm afternoon in late June, three vehicles and enough gear to make the parking situation at Station 7 immediately complicated. We’re here because the Pacific Northwest is having the kind of fire season that makes the national news. Drought since spring, beetle-kill pine stacking fuel loads across the mountains, and a forecast that reads less like weather and more like a warning. District 6 wants a Type 1 crew pre-positioned, and Station 7 is the staging base.
Fine by me. Better than fine. The last deployment ended two weeks ago, and the downtime almost did me in. Two weeks in a motel in Bend, running trails until my body asked me to please stop, calling my sister Maren because the silence in the room kept getting louder. Which isn’t how silence works. My brain doesn’t care.
Fire season is the only calendar that makes sense to me.
Towns never do. Towns expect things. They want roots and routines and favorite booths at diners.
Fire season wants a duffel bag and a pulse.
We understand each other.
It’s loud and structured and tells me exactly where to be and what to do with my hands. The alternative is being in a motel room staring at a ceiling, and I’ve memorized that ceiling, and I’d rather not.
Station 7 announces itself with a hand-carved wooden sign that probably cost more than my first truck and a brick facade with STATION 7 painted in letters that have been retouched so many times the font has evolved. The apparatus bay is open, an engine gleaming inside, chrome and red, and the whole place smells like drip coffee and something ambitious happening on a stove somewhere.
Captain Beck Delano meets us in the bay. Measured handshake. Eyes that do a full scan without making a production out of it. “Delano,” he says. “Welcome to 7. Your quarters are in the back. Let’s get you settled.”
We start unloading gear, which is when Cal Larsen appears.
