King (Western Smokejumpers Book 2) Read online

  KING

  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: FuriousFotog

  Cover model: Robert Kelly

  Cover design: Nikki Hensley

  ISBN: 9798542552842

  Imprint: Independently published

  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

  ANGUS

  About the Author

  1

  "Come on, Bronx! I'm growing old up here waiting for ya."

  Bronx was hunched over his mountain bike, seriously pumping the pedals, but he took a second to lift his death grip from the handlebars and flip me off. Angus came round the corner behind him, face beet red and panting like a pudgy dog on a hot day. Kaos was nowhere in sight. The guy was a fucking unstoppable beast on a firefight but was always slow and plodding on a bike, mostly because he couldn't find a bike big enough for his massive frame. We loved to tease him when he was out riding, telling him he looked like one of those circus clowns on the tiny tricycle. Poor guy was caught inside a miniature world just like Gulliver.

  Bronx reached the top of the trail where there was just enough tree shade and large slabs of granite to take a water break and store up energy for the downhill. "Holy shit, that's a lot of work just to have a three minute downhill. They should have lifts out here like they have for skiers."

  I pulled out my bag of trail mix. "All right, crybaby, you've had your little spasm. Drink some water." I laughed. "Shit, I sound just like you. We've been hanging out together so long, I'm turning into you. Hope I don't start looking like you, you know, like those old men who start looking like their bulldogs."

  "You should be so lucky." Bronx rested his bike against a tree and took a drink of water. "My legs are like wet noodles."

  I threw a raisin at him. "Guess that's what happens when you and your lady fuck like rabbits. You've got to slow down, buddy, or you're going to burn yourself out."

  He chuckled. "You mean I'm going to burn myself out on having sex?"

  I rethought my statement. "Yeah, guess that's not really a thing, is it?"

  "Holy motherfuckin' hell hill," Angus blurted, then turned to the side and puked. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. The puking didn't stop him from continuing his rant. "Why the hell is it, King, that when you pick a trail, you always pick the ones that are all rocks and are literally perpendicular to the ground. I was scared to stop, sure I'd roll back down and right into the human slab behind me. By the way, I don't think we'll see him for a bit. There was a loud thump, like a boulder hitting the ground, followed by a lot of choice words. I didn't dare look back because, well, I was fucking perpendicular to the ground." He tossed his bike unceremoniously aside and trudged on shaky legs to an outcropping of granite. The red in his face had been replaced by some greenish tint around the mouth.

  I held up my bag of trail mix. "Snack?" I teased.

  "Fuck you and your trail mix." Angus rested back on the rock and crossed his arms, somewhat like a mummy in a sarcophagus.

  The same analogy must have popped into Bronx's mind. He laughed. "Hey, King Tut, we could just leave you here and let the ravens pick your bones dry."

  "Yep, sounds like a plan," Angus muttered. His eyes closed but popped open the second Kaos's grunts and groans rumbled up the trail. He sat up. "Got to see the big guy make his way up that last steep-as-fuck stretch."

  We all got to our feet to enjoy the sight of our massive friend on his ill-fitting bicycle as he struggled to climb the last fifty feet of trail. It was satisfying only because in normal circumstances the guy was invincible. In the wilderness, his extra long stride, towering view of the landscape and unmatchable strength made us all feel inferior, as if he was some super human put on this earth by an alien power. But on a mountain bike, he slipped back to mortal status, and the rest of us took a small sliver of joy in that.

  Naturally, Kaos did not disappoint. Rather than the bicycle carrying Kaos, he had the bike under his arm, like he was carrying a purse up the hill. The front of his shin was torn up pretty badly, with blood starting to cake in a deep cut.

  He hiked up to the top and tossed the bike down. It bounced on the hard ground. "Now you see what that fucking feels like, you stupid bike." He kicked the tires for good measure.

  "Uh, Kaos," Angus was looking green again as he stared down at the injured leg. "Don't know if you know this or not, but you seem to have lost some flesh back there on the trail."

  "No shit." Kaos yanked off his helmet and wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt. "Thanks for stopping. I know you heard me fall."

  "Yeah, I think the whole hillside heard that," Angus said. "If I had stopped, I would have rolled all the way back down to the bottom. No way to stop when you're going straight up to the sky."

  "You exaggerate," I noted.

  Bronx had pulled a first aid kit out of his backpack. Grumpy and tired, Kaos snatched it from his hand and found a place to sit down.

  "Better get that patched up before we head downhill. You don't want all the trail debris to jump in there," I suggested, then offered Kaos my bag of trail mix.

  He grabbed it from my hand without looking up, then he held the end of the bag to his mouth, dropped his head back and tossed all the trail mix into his mouth. His cheeks were filled like a hamster's as he crunched away on my snack. He held out the empty bag for me.

  I plucked it back from him. "Geez, you're like the fucking Grinch when you're tired."

  Kaos set to work cleaning the large scrape while the rest of us found places to sit. It was a late fall morning. The sun was peering through thin spots in the clouds. Down the mountainside, deciduous trees were morphing into blasts of fiery colors. Two turkey vultures perched in a tree next to the trail, eyeing some sort of morsel below.

  Angus pulled a stick of beef jerky out of his backpack. "Hey, King, didn't you and Bronx grow up somewhere around here?"

  Bronx and I exchanged that look we used whenever someone brought up our hometown. "Yeah, just over that ridge." Westridge was one of those things Bronx and I had between us. It was set in the Rocky Mountains, a green valley between two peaks and bordered by a waterfall and river. It was an idyllic location. The town, itself, was anything but. It was like a trash heap on the middle of an otherwise flawless landscape, and life there was interesting, only not interesting in a good way. There were more scandalous secrets in Westridge than there were tree squirrels. Bronx escaped the place when we were twelve, but he knew enough about the town to sneak a look my direction whenever anyone brought it up.

  "You still heading over to your folks' house after this?" Bronx asked.

  "Yep, don't see any way out of it. I haven't bee
n up there in six months." I'd invited him to go along to visit my parents but he'd politely declined, just as I'd expected. Visiting Malcolm and Virginia Bristow was not exactly a picnic in the park, or a weekend on the ranch. Growing up, I'd spent numerous weekends at Vick and Sandy's ranch, but Bronx had never once returned to spend the weekend at my house in Westridge. And I was glad of it. After all my formative years were screwed up by a mom who was so steeped in depression and anxiety she had no time for her only child, she had finally found a good therapist and the right medicine to give her a semi-normal existence. Visits weren't nearly as daunting now that she had pulled herself together. And her better outlook on life had brought my parents closer. My dad had all but ignored my mom's depression, seemingly deciding it would just go away on its own. The real slap in his face came the day she tried to commit suicide with over-the-counter sleeping tablets. Dad was so ashamed he'd told everyone who'd witnessed her leaving the house on a gurney that she'd had appendicitis. She'd been unsuccessful at killing herself. For a good six months, I hated myself for having a glimmer of a thought that maybe it would have been better if the pills had worked. She was always so miserable, and, in turn, my life was miserable.

  Once I was old enough, I spent most of my free time out on the streets, hanging with other kids from dysfunctional families and getting into plenty of trouble. We were a motley crew of misfits, all looking for some purpose, some smidgen of the good life. Those were the few good memories of Westridge that still stuck with me, hanging with my friends at the river, the park, the back of the school, anywhere we could escape the disapproving scowls of our parents.

  "Well, biking buddies—" I got up and shoved the empty trail mix bag into my backpack. "Who's ready to breathe in the smoke from my tires as I shred the downhill trail?"

  Angus got up next. "You go ahead. I'm going down behind Kaos. I don't want to be in front of him when gravity takes hold and rolls him down that hill like a granite boulder. I'd rather go slow and easy like a grandpa than be flattened by a downhill racing Yeti."

  "This Yeti is going to stay right here and wait for a helicopter to pick him up." Kaos looked at each of us. "Did y'all remember to hire a helicopter?"

  Bronx pulled on his backpack. "Sorry bout that. Looks like you'll have to ride down like the rest of us. Maybe you can work toward a matching scrape on the other leg."

  We all chuckled as we climbed onto our bikes.

  "You're all as funny as the blister on my heel." Kaos peeled himself off the rock he was resting on. "Guess I'll go first so I don't bowl the rest of you down."

  "Too late," I said, "I'm off. See you suckers at the bottom and watch for low tree branches. Especially you, big guy." I pushed off. The wind cooled my face and little gnats bolted out of the way as I flew down the trail.

  2

  I pushed my truck into low gear as I descended the road into the valley. Smoke curled up from a few chimneys on some of the older homes in Westridge. Although homes was hardly the word to use for the stucco walls held together by patchy roofs. Road Six was the first street you came to when you passed over county line into Westridge. Like the town itself, the street names were dull and sad. No one had bothered with real names. Instead, the town streets were numbered, starting, for no apparent reason, with six. And that road, the one that would normally welcome people into a town was filled with the crummiest houses. Considering the rest of the neighborhood that was saying a lot. Most of them were abandoned now, boarded up and waiting for nature's fury to erode them into rubble. But a few, like old Dick Peterson's house, were still occupied. Dick had died just before I moved out of town, but his son, Jeremy, a guy who was older, the same age as Bronx's brother, David, had moved back into the house after his dad was buried. As far as anyone knew, he lived off a small inheritance and spent his days playing video games.

  The cast of characters in Westridge was vast and bizarre. Most of my generation had moved out of the town. Lumber had been the main economy of the area. My dad had worked as a truck driver for the lumber company until he decided it was too stressful to move fifteen tons of cut trees along a winding road in a snowstorm. And we got plenty of snow in Westridge. Dad left the job and took a huge pay cut to become the local handyman. With the old, dilapidated houses in the area, there was always plenty of work. Unfortunately, most of his customers hardly had a dime to spare. Sometimes, he'd come home with an apple pie or dozen eggs instead of a check. That would set my mom off, if she was feeling energetic enough to complain. A loud fight would follow. Whenever they fought, I slipped out, hopped on my bike and pedaled down to the river. One of my friends was always bound to be down there, doing the same thing as me, avoiding shit at home.

  I rolled past the park, a dingy little patch of grass shaded by some tree covered hills. There were a few trailheads where you could wander into the wilderness and forget about the town behind you for awhile. It was the perfect place for all of us to hang out and not be noticed by people passing by. I'd gotten my first kiss at that park, right under the shade of the hundred foot spruce. That day stayed prominent in my hometown memories. It was just like what Bronx liked to say—we can remember perfect moments as clearly as the truly terrible. But it wasn't the crummy park or the giant spruce or even the warm breeze that seared the memory into my brain. It was the girl I kissed, Kenzie Jensen. Every guy in town had a hard-on for Kenzie, and she basked in all the admiration. Kenzie had legs that stretched on for miles, bright green eyes that could pull you into a fucking trance and a wild streak that left you spinning. She had a twin sister, Sutton, the quieter, tamer version of the long legged Kenzie. Sutton preferred to practice piano and study wildlife, while Kenzie preferred practicing how she could make every guy in town fall in love with her. When it came to wildlife, Kenzie was more of a participant than an observer. Kenzie was the girl who would pick all the wildflowers to wear in her hair, while Sutton was the girl who could name them all in Latin. The two of them, differences and all, were the two brightest lights in a shitty town, but even they couldn't defend themselves against the dreariness.

  I rolled through the tiny center of town, so small, if you sneezed you could miss it. The market and drug store were both in need of a coat of paint, but the lights were still on and the shelves were filled, at least filled by Westridge standards. That meant five oranges in the citrus bin and four cartons of eggs in the refrigerator, but considering there were only four hundred people left in Westridge, four cartons of eggs were more than enough.

  A bulldozer was parked on the road farther up. Piles of dirt and a massive garbage bin were blocking part of the street. I slowed my truck and caught a glimpse of the remaining foundation and brick chimney on the house that once stood in the spot. It was the Jensen house.

  I drove on. Dad's green pickup was in the driveway as I pulled around the corner to Tenth Street, the street I grew up on. Since she'd started feeling better, Mom had replaced the faded, torn front drapes with some lacey curtains that I was sure Dad had frowned at. But he tended to let her do whatever she wanted with the house. The two of them had eased into a sort of relaxed, semi-retirement. They were both much happier than when I was a kid. It sure would have been nice if they'd been that way when I was growing up.

  I parked just as Dad stepped out to the front yard. He waved and picked up the garden hose to water the pumpkin patch he'd planted below the front porch. As a kid, I would have been stoked to have a pumpkin patch, but I only remembered weeds in front of the porch.

  I stared down at the green orbs hanging off long vines. "Do you think they'll ripen before the first snow?"

  "I bought a tarp to cover them just in case. I've been pampering and talking to these pumpkins for nearly three months. I'm not about to let snow destroy them without a good fight." Dad was thinner everywhere except his belly. I remembered a man with big arms and massive shoulders. Now his shirt hung on bony shoulders like it was draped on a closet hanger. The gray in his temples had spread throughout his hair.

  "Talk
ing?" I asked wryly. "You've been talking to the pumpkins?"

  My mom's dainty laugh floated down from the porch. It was a sound I'd heard so infrequently, I had to glance up to the porch to make sure it was her. "I've even caught him singing to them. Come on in, Kingston. I've made your favorite, macaroni and cheese with chunks of ham."

  "What? But you used to only make that on my birthday." I climbed the steps.

  "You too, Malcolm," she called down to my dad. "Say goodnight to the squash and come inside. Oh, and bring some wood. It's getting cold in the front room." Mom put her hand on my arm. Her blue eyes had sparkle. I couldn't remember ever seeing anything but glassy sorrow in those blue eyes. Fuck what I wouldn't have given to see that sparkle when I was a kid. "You're staying the night, aren't you?"

  "Yeah, it's getting too late to drive back home and I'm beat. I was mountain biking with the guys this morning."

  "Oh was Jack with you? How is Vick doing? You should have brought Jack along. I would love to see him."

  "See who?" Dad asked as he reached us.

  "Jack," Mom answered. "It's been so long. I'll bet he turned out as handsome as ever. He was always such a good looking boy."

  "He's just as pretty as a peach," I said as I headed inside behind her.

  Mom tapped my back. "Oh stop. I'm just glad you two stayed friends all these years."

  I washed my hands as Mom spooned up the dinner. My stomach panged at the thought of food. After the bike ride and long drive through the mountains, I was ready to eat anything that didn't bite back.