Page 12 of Burning Secrets

Oh no, she was a firefighter.

“Base camp?” he asked, his gut clenching.

“With the Midnight Sun fire crew. I’m a smokejumper.”

He put a hand on the table, just in case his knees decided to betray him. He kept his smile, glanced at Rio.

Talk.Now.

Because, ahem, the same smokejumpers that the Sons of Revolution wanted to track down and kill? He hadn’t been a part of the chase that’d downed the Midnight Sun jump plane, but he’d heard about it, back at their new camp.

He’d been busy moving their gear and setting up at a new camp after said smokejumpers, um, blew up their old camp.

So yeah, the entire crew wore a target on their yellow Nomex-shirted backs.

Rio had gotten up even as Crew climbed out of his seat. “Feel free to sit down. I’ll be right back,” he said to Skye, then looked at JoJo.

Maybe a little too long. Because he didn’t want to say goodbye. Didn’t want the light that she seemed to ignite inside him to wink out.

“Are you leaving?” she asked.

Was that the tiniest sliver of hope in her voice?

It opened up a terrible hole inside, and suddenly he was sucking air. He shook his head. “I’ll be back.”

“Good. Because I’m driving you back to your ATV there, champ.”

Oh.

He nearly put a hand to his chest as he walked away, the tug to stay so strong.

Walking out onto the sidewalk, he passed the pizza joint, then turned and headed down a side street, then over into the woods behind Northstar.

Rio waited in the shadows in a stand of trees.

Crew joined him, turned, and spotted JoJo talking with Skye on the patio, under the blinking lights.

Rio grabbed him, pulled him away from the sight. “What are you doing?”

He rounded on him, cuffed away his hold on his arm. “What am I doing? What are you doing bringing your wife here? Sheesh—she knows me, man.”

“And I can trust her to keep her mouth shut about our little party. But you—any one of the SOR could see you here.”

“Who cares?—”

“With a smokejumper.”

Rio wore a beard, and with his dark eyes and dark hair, the canvas jacket, he resembled every inch of the man Crew had met at the Copper Mountain Correctional Facility. Of course, Rio had been undercover at the time.

Crew, not so much.

Now Rio could be just as deceptive, just as tough, just as scary as he’d been as an FBI agent trying to protect and eke out information from an informant, way back in the day.

Except he also considered Crew to be a sort of little brother, so now he unhanded him. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Last I heard was a gunshot.”

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