Chasing Fire

warm up for the physical training test.
    It continued to baffle her fellow jumpers that she never drank coffee unless it was her only choice. She liked the cold and sweet. After she’d dressed, Rowan hit her stash of Cokes, grabbed an energy bar. She took both outside where the sky was still shy of first light and the air stayed chill in the early spring of western Montana.
    In the vast sky stars blinked out, little candles snuffed. She pulled the dark and quiet around her, found some comfort in it. In an hour, give or take, the base would wake, and testosterone would flood the air.
    Since she generally preferred the company of men, for conversation, for companionship, she didn’t mind being outnumbered by them. But she prized her quiet time, those little pieces of alone that became rare and precious during the season. Next best thing to sleep before a day filled with pressure and stress, she thought.
    She could tell herself not to worry about the run, remind herself she’d been vigilant about her PT all winter, was in the best shape of her life—and it didn’t mean a damn.
    Anything could happen. A turned ankle, a mental lapse, a sudden, debilitating cramp. Or she could just have a bad run. Others had. Sometimes they came back from it, sometimes they didn’t.
    And a negative attitude wasn’t going to help. She chowed down on the energy bar, gulped caffeine into her system and watched the day eke its first shimmer over the rugged, snow-tipped western peaks.
    When she ducked into the gym minutes later, she noted her alone time was over.
    “Hey, Trigger.” She nodded to the man doing crunches on a mat. “What do you know?”
    “I know we’re all crazy. What the hell am I doing here, Ro? I’m forty-fucking-three years old.”
    She unrolled a mat, started her stretches. “If you weren’t crazy, weren’t here, you’d still be forty-fucking-three.”
    At six-five, barely making the height restrictions, Trigger Gulch was a lean, mean machine with a west Texas twang and an affection for cowboy boots.
    He huffed through a quick series of pulsing crunches. “I could be lying on a beach in Waikiki.”
    “You could be selling real estate in Amarillo.”
    “I could do that.” He mopped his face, pointed at her. “Nine-to-five the next fifteen years, then retire to that beach in Waikiki.”
    “Waikiki’s full of people, I hear.”
    “Yeah, that’s the damn trouble.” He sat up, a good-looking man with gray liberally salted through his brown hair, and a scar snaked on his left knee from a meniscus repair. He smiled at her as she lay on her back, pulled her right leg up and toward her nose. “Looking good, Ro. How was your fat season?”
    “Busy.” She repeated the stretch on her left leg. “I’ve been looking forward to coming back, getting me some rest.”
    He laughed at that. “How’s your dad?”
    “Good as gold.” Rowan sat up, then folded her long, curvy body in two. “Gets a little wistful this time of year.” She closed ice-blue eyes and pulled her flexed feet back toward the crown of her head. “He misses the start-up, everybody coming back, but the business doesn’t give him time to brood.”
    “Even people who aren’t us like to jump out of planes.”
    “Pay good money for it, too. Had a good one last week.” She spread her legs in a wide vee, grabbed her toes and again bent forward. “Couple celebrated their fiftieth anniversary with a jump. Gave me a bottle of French champagne as a tip.”
    Trigger sat where he was, watching as she pushed to her feet to begin the first sun salutation. “Are you still teaching that hippie class?”
    Rowan flowed from Up Dog to Down Dog, turned her head to shoot Trigger a pitying look. “It’s yoga, old man, and yeah, I’m still doing some personal trainer work off-season. Helps keep the lard out of my ass. How about you?”
    “I pile the lard on. It gives me more to burn off when the real work starts.”
    “If this season’s as slow as last, we’ll all be sitting on fat asses. Have you seen Cards? He doesn’t appear to have turned down any second helpings this winter.”
    “Got a new woman.”
    “No shit.” Looser, she picked up the pace, added lunges.
    “He met her in the frozen food section of the grocery store in October, and moved in with her for New Year’s. She’s got a couple kids. Schoolteacher.”
    “Schoolteacher, kids? Cards?” Rowan shook her head. “Must be love.”
    “Must be something. He said the woman and