Bronx Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by Tess Oliver

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover image: WANDER AGUIAR

  Cover design: Nikki Hensley

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  KING

  About the Author

  1

  "A song. Someone suggest a fucking song or I'm going to start singing "Who Let the Dogs Out" and this weekend when your hot babe is beneath you, moaning in pleasure and whispering your name, all you'll be hearing is that fucking song playing over and over again in your head."

  "Ah come on, Angus, we're all too damn tired for one of your tantrums. Sing whatever the fuck you want. We've still got four miles to go before we reach the truck, and it's going to be a hundred and ten up here on this mountainside." Colin stomped his massive feet along the dirt path. The dry air and remaining wind kicked puffs of dust up with each of his heavy steps.

  Colin, also known as Kaos because he loved trouble and trouble felt the same about him, was built like a medieval Highlander. Jane, our pilot, claimed the plane sighed with relief after Kaos jumped. After being brought up in a strict family with military parents, he was so fucking fearless, we'd actually considered changing his nickname to Beserker, after those monstrous, fearless Norse fighters, but after a litter of three stray kittens had been dumped on his front porch, the giant, unflappable guy got up three times a night to feed the tiny critters. All of us had a flood of kitten photos filling up our phones as Kaos sent daily pictures of the little buggers. No one with a photo album dedicated to three abandoned kittens could go by the name Beserker so Kaos it was.

  Angus (no nickname needed when your name was fucking awesome) started singing Bob Seger's "Like a Rock". There was no denying the guy was a helluva singer. He could chime out "Born to Run" and you'd swear you were listening to Springsteen with E Street playing right behind him.

  Angus sang with a band during the off season. The off season—a term that started to have less and less meaning in our line of work. Fire season started earlier and ended later with each passing year, leaving the beautiful west scarred and thirsty and desolate like the hundred plus acres we'd just left behind. We managed to cut the destruction short with our axes, chainsaws and hands, but we all knew, as we trudged along the dusty, hot hillside to our pickup location that we'd be parachuting to the next burning wilderness in a week's time.

  "Wait up, Bronx," Kingston called from behind. We called him King because just like Angus, no need for a nickname when your parents did the right thing and handed you a fucking great name. Unfortunately, that was probably about the only thing King's parents did right. After two miscarriages, mom and pop Bristow had decided their only child was nothing short of a miracle. They decided Kingston, King, for short was an appropriate name.

  When you had a hundred pound backpack slung over your shoulders on a steep trail, stopping and glancing back was not an option. I kept my focus on the trail in front of me. "Hurry up, granddad," I yelled back to King.

  King caught up to me once the trail widened, although it was far from a trail. A brutal, endless drought had left the surrounding oaks and sagebrush dry and brittle, just hovering between life and death. The thirsty branches poked and grabbed at us as we traversed the uneven ground, leaving behind the first ever human footprints. Smokejumping allowed us to see and travel places that were beyond the edges of civilization. While some people spent their work week standing behind a check-out counter or in an office cubicle, our work place was nature, areas other people had never seen. That was why it was even harder to watch some of those untouched areas, once thick with trees, brush and animals, reduced to piles of ash. Long ago, it would have been considered part of the endless cycle of nature, but that was no longer the case and it was up to people like us, King, Angus, Kaos and Mixx, the fifth member of our team, to keep the destruction at a minimum. There was no room for failure in our job. A misstep meant loss of wilderness. A careless mistake could kill you, or worse, one of your mates. Out on the mountain, we watched each other's backs more than we watched our own.

  "What are ya training for, a marathon?" King was slightly winded.

  "Nope. Faster I get to the truck, the faster I can take this damn pack off my back." I reached down to the canteen hanging off my belt loop and unscrewed the top. Knowing how terrible he was at rationing food and water, I offered it to King. "Need some?"

  "Nah, I'm good." King reached up, lifted his hat and rubbed the short stubs of black hair on the top of his head. "Shit, this buzz cut was the best decision I've ever made."

  I smiled and glanced over at him. His face was streaked with dirt, ash and sweat. "Really? The best? That stupid haircut was the best thing you've ever done in your whole life?" I laughed but the giant pack on my back reminded me to cut it short.

  King scoffed and shook his head. "Yep, you grew up with me, remember?"

  I nodded. "Yeah, you're right. That haircut was a highlight." Kingston Bristow and I grew up in a little, crap-ass town called Westridge. Back then, if someone would ask us where the hell Westridge was, we'd answer with 'it's the small asshole in the middle of the Rocky Mountains'. Neither of us had much of an early childhood. King's mom tried but she was always spiraling into a deep depression, and his dad decided the best way to deal with it was to ignore her. I had it a little better because my mom was grounded and always ready for whatever shit thing life threw us. My dad left us when I was three and my big brother, David was thirteen. I looked up to my brother even after he'd let me down more than once. The final blow to the pedestal I'd placed him on came when he turned eighteen. We spent the night of his birthday eating macaroni and cheese and the day old tray of brownies Mom found on the bargain shelf at the bakery. We laughed at fart jokes, and David played tag with me on the front lawn until it got so cold our breath was making clouds. I couldn't wait to give him the used Walkman I'd found at the thrift shop. I'd wrapped it in a wrinkly piece of Christmas wrapping paper I'd dug out of Mom's closet. We didn't have tape so I used glue. He told me he loved the gift, and being eight, I was sure I'd just given him the coolest damn gift in the history of brotherly gifts. I didn't want the night to end. But it did. The next morning I woke to my mom crying. David had packed up and left. 'I've got to get out of Westridge, or I'll be dead before I'm twenty,' he'd written on the back of the wrinkly wrapping paper.

  "Shit, at least you got away from that town," King muttered, another sign that he was spent from our long days at the fire line. The mutter might have also come from the anger he felt every time he thought about me moving out of Westridge. I never felt right leaving him alone in our shitty little hometown, but one fortuitous day a man named Vick Devlin walked into the diner where my mom was working, one of her three jobs. As Vi
ck told it, one sweet smile from my mom and he'd been swept off his cowboy boots. And so, at the age of twelve, I packed up my paltry possessions, hopped into the back seat of Vick's Ford truck and Mom and I started a new life in the country. Vick owned a horse ranch in the flatlands east of the Rockies. I spent my teens getting bucked, kicked and tossed off unbroken colts. I loved every second of it, but it didn't leave me with a lot of life skills, just a permanently tweaked shoulder and a scar on my jaw after being thrown into a barbed wire fence.

  My history of breaking colts had earned me the nickname Bronx, even before I joined the smokejumpers. King wouldn't let the team call me anything else. "He's Bronx and there's no point arguing about it," King told them. Vick let me keep the mare who'd tossed me. I named her Barbie.

  Vick was a good stepfather, and one day, when I asked him if he could be my dad, he decided right then that he would adopt me and give me his name.

  "Hey remember the Jensen twins?" King's question pulled me from my thoughts. Even though I'd broken free of Westridge, King and I stayed best friends. He was always bringing up the Jensen twins, mostly because he always thought the earth and stars circled around Kenzie Jensen. Every guy in town had a hard-on when it came to Kenzie Jensen. She knew it and thrived on that knowledge. I, myself, preferred her sister Sutton. She was just as pretty but far more down to earth. Unfortunately, much like my brother's prophecy, neither of them had made it to the age of twenty. Their deaths nearly rocked the small town off its already crumbling foundation.

  I handed my canteen to King. "Here drink this. You must be dehydrated because you asked me about the Jensen twins . . . again. You know whenever you start dredging up shit about our childhood, it means you need water."

  "Yeah, whatever." He snatched the canteen from my hand.

  "See, the grumpiness is a sign too." I glanced over as he dropped his head far back and guzzled the water. Some of it trickled past his mouth, leaving a clean streak of pink in his ash covered face.

  "Didn't mean for you to drink all of it."

  He sighed loudly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Crap." He stopped, leaned over as far as he could with the heavy pack and spit out the dirt he'd just pushed into his mouth.

  I took back my canteen and shot back the few dribbles he'd left behind.

  "The truck is delayed. Jane just texted. They won't be at the meet-up site for another hour," Mixx called from up ahead. We relied on satellite phones when we were out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't. Things never felt too stable when we were cut off from the base camp, but you carried on and hoped that Mother Nature was looking after you.

  "Fucking hell," Angus groaned. He had given up on the tunes, which meant the heat, the smoke and the arduous trek had finally zapped him of his enthusiasm for music. "Hey, Mixx, let's stop at the next shade spot. I need to adjust some shit in my pack. Something's stabbing me right between the shoulder blades."

  Mixx had been given the reins for the trip back to the pickup spot. We took turns being in charge of communication with home base. The task usually fell to the person with the most unspent energy, and that was almost always Mixx. Deke Hutton had earned the nickname Mixx because of the incredible trail mix he always carried in his pack. It was his mom's homemade recipe complete with all the secrets a homemade recipe maintained. His mom, Atalia, was bubbly, energetic and an amazing cook. She'd immigrated from Jamaica and fell in love with Frank Hutton when they both tried to buy the same refrigerator at a yard sale. In the end, Frank let Atalia take the thing home on the condition that she give him her phone number. It was a story she told us at every end of season barbecue, where she did most of the cooking. Mixx had his dad's dark copper hair and his mom's dark flawless skin. The women were nuts about him, only he was too flaky to settle on one. He had a different girl every month, and every time she was 'the one' until she became 'not the one', something that was inevitable for Mixx.

  "All right," Mixx called back to us. "We'll stop at the first spot of shade. If we can find one," he added wryly.

  2

  We traveled another mile, all of us too worn out to share much conversation. Shade was at a minimum on this side of the mountain, but we finally turned a curve that was cool and protected from the sun's harsh rays by a steep, sheer side of rock.

  "Check for rattlers before you set your sorry asses down on any of those boulders," Mixx reminded.

  "Sure thing, ma," King said, adding in a weak salute.

  "All right, someone give King some water," Mixx suggested. "He's getting the grumpies."

  "Fuck off, Mixx. I'm not grumpy. Just how many times have we been up in these snake infested hills? We know there are damn rattlers up here. We probably know that better than anyone else on the whole fucking planet, including the snakes themselves."

  Angus stomped over and shoved his canteen toward King. "Mixx is right. You're grumpy."

  "You can fuck off too," King grumbled as he begrudgingly took hold of the canteen and gulped down the water.

  I found my perch, a fallen log, snake and red ant free from my vantage point. I let the heavy pack slide off my shoulders. It landed with a thud, kicking up a fair amount of gritty dust. I could still taste the faint remnants of smoke in my charred throat. My shirt was plastered to my back with sweat. The faint breeze blew against my wet skin giving me a moment of relief from the brutal heat.

  King trudged over with his pack and let out a loud groan as the heavy load fell off his shoulders. The sound sent several birds skittering from a nearby Manzanita shrub. He plopped down next to me and stretched out his legs. I followed. My legs felt like wet noodles, ready for a rest and ready to be off this damn mountainside. Like every other inch of us, our boots were caked with ashes and dirt.

  Mixx pulled out his satellite phone for another text. "Yeah, we've got time, so we might as well rehydrate. I've still got trail mix in my pack if anyone needs some food energy."

  King shifted his eyes my direction for a second. "He's like the world's most peppy camp counselor. How does he still have energy? I feel like I've got a pile of bricks connected to each ankle."

  "Maybe it's all that trail mix," I muttered.

  He elbowed me. "So are you going to the one year memorial?"

  I leaned a little away from him, one, to show him I was annoyed and two, because he was beginning to reek like something that got dragged out of a swamp. "Why the hell wouldn't I go?" My tone could not have been interpreted as anything but pissed.

  "Jeez, don't get yourself in a twist. It's a perfectly legitimate question. We all know that you and Bulldozer had—had differences. Or maybe you forgot the fist fight that left both of you with black eyes and you with three broken ribs."

  "That was—just an off day." I thought about the day when Bulldozer and I came to blows. I hadn't seen it coming and I wasn't entirely sure I'd deserved it. Or maybe I had. He outweighed me by fifty pounds and had been a boxing champion in high school so I was on the losing end. He could be such an asshole. He had been a damn good firefighter and I trusted him as a teammate, but it didn't erase the fact that he was an asshole. "He treated Layla like shit, and it really tore me up. If I had a—"

  King smiled. His skin was so dark from the ashes and dirt, his teeth looked neon white. "Ah ha, go ahead, buddy, spit it out."

  "Forget it. Just forget it. I'm going to the memorial. Bulldozer, for all his faults, he was one of us. It hasn't been the same without him, and that day on the East Fork fire—fuck, none of us will ever forget it."

  King kicked absently at some loose dirt. "Yeah, worst day of our careers."

  I was relieved we'd dropped the subject of my contentious relationship with Adam Rafferty, or, Bulldozer, as we'd always called him. The guy could bulldoze through a cluster of burning trees, swinging his Pulsaki like fucking Paul Bunyan.

  The topic had conjured up other memories, including one in particular. One I needed to get out of my head. "Hey, do you remember Millie Price? Robb
ie's mom?"

  King chuckled. "Look who's bringing up our childhood. Sure I do. Poor thing was always late bringing Robbie to school. She'd be dragging him along, spitting on her finger and trying to tame down that spike of hair on the back of his head as she hurried him to class. What the heck brought her to mind?"

  I shook my head as if it had just been random. Only it wasn't. "You know how those really shitty days stay with you, crystal clear, like the day Bulldozer died? Well, the opposite is true, you know?"

  "Not following you but then I'm grumpy and dehydrated according to my crew mates."

  I ignored the mix of sarcasm and self-deprecation and continued. "Admittedly, perfect moments are rare, but I can always recall, with detail, no matter how short the duration, whenever everything seemed amazingly right. Millie Price was part of one of those memories. It was one of those extra cold days in Westridge."

  King scoffed. "When wasn't it extra cold?"

  "Yeah, well this was the day of the fifth grade track meet, and even though the thermometer was dipping down to zero, the teachers decided not to cancel. I had those shitty secondhand running shoes. My toes were basically sitting in the wide open. That same week, my mom's car had to be repaired and the fridge was basically empty so no breakfast. Then I got in trouble in third period just before lunch—"

  "Seemed to happen to you a lot," King commented.

  "Looks who's talking. Principal Harrison used to tell you he was going to have your name painted on one of the chairs in detention."