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Chapter One

CONNOR MACKENZIE slid his rental car into the gravel driveway behind the old log cabin and was pulling the keys out of the ignition when the cheap ainst his palm He swore as it bit into the buht every time he flexed his hands or made a fist

Still, today was one of the good days All through the flight and the two-hour drive fro back roads he'd been able to feel everything he touched

The worst days were the ones where the nuht back the angry roars, when he felt like a wounded lion cra for the chance to escape and run free again To be whole and king of the jungle again

His hand stung as he pulled off his seat belt and slaet out to where he could see the water, breathe it in Calrip

This lake, deep in the heart of the thick Adirondack woods, would set hiht

It had to

He'd come from another lake, fro wildfires But he couldn't stay there another summer, couldn't stand to watch his brother and friends head out to fight fire after fire while he went to physical therapy and worked with rookies in the classroo not to notice the way they stared at the thick scars running up and down his arrafts

Co to Blue Mountain Lake had been his brother's idea “Dianna and I want to get married at Poplar Cove endof July,” Sa for late fall, at the end of fire season, but now that Dianna was pregnant, their schedule had moved up several months “After all these years, especially with Gram andGramps down in Florida full-tiood project for the next feeeks

Better than hanging around here, anyway”

Connor had wanted to careed to sign his umpteenth round of appeal papers, the papers that would put hi through one Forest Service hoop after another for two long years, working like hell to convince the powers that be that he was ready — both mentally and physically — to resume his duties as a hotshot Up until now they'd said there was too ht it was too likely that he'd freeze, that he ht not only take himself out, but a civilian too

Bullshit He was ready More than ready And he was sure this time his appeal would be approved

But he could see what Sa cabin with a saw and haoing for long, cool swiitation that had been running through his veins for two years

Things were going to be different here This su to be better than the last, a sure bet it would be a hell of a lot better than the two that he'd spent in a hospital

This summer the monkey that had latched itself onto his back, the persistentConnor, was going to finally hop off and leave him the fk alone

Moving off the gravel driveway, Connor walked past the grass and through the sand until he was at the water's edge He looked out at the cal the thick white clouds and the greenfor the release in his chest, for the fist to uncoil in his gut

A cigarette boat whipped out froe wake on the silent h, up over Connor's shoes, soaking him to the knees

Fuck

Who was he trying to kid? He wasn't here for laughs this su pain in his hands and arms

He was here to force himself into peak physical shape, to prove his worth to the Forest Service when he got back to California after Sa

He was here to renovate his great-grandparents' one-hundred-year-old log cabin, to work such long, hard hours on it that when he slept he would outrun his nightod-awful reminders of the day he'd almost died on the mountain in Lake Tahoe

He was here to be alone Completely alone

And noto find the inner calm, the control that had always been so effortless, so innate before the Desolation fire

Turning away fro cabin The words POPLAR COVE were etched on one of the logs, the naiven the Adirondack camp in 1910 He forced hi he'd need to tear down and rebuild this su beneath the screened-in porch on the front where the storles were askew

But even as he worked to be dispassionate, he randfather had put into the cabin a hundred years ago: the perfect logs holding up the heavy corners of the building, the ss that framed the porch almost artistically

Eighteen summers he'd spent in this cabin Ten weeks every su eyes of their grandparents The only peoplewere his parents One time he'd asked his otten that funny, breathless, watery-eyed look that he hated seeing — the sa to his dad about his long work hours — so he'd dropped it

He couldn't believe it had been twelve years since he'd stood here

After signing up to be a hotshot at eighteen, Connor's su wildfires Any normal July 1st this past decade would have seen him in a west coast forest with a 150-pound pack on his back, a chain saw in his hand, surrounded by his twenty- crew But the last couple of years had been anything but normal

Connor had never thought to see the word disability next to his naht in a blowup on Desolation Wilderness and he still couldn't

Still, even though he belonged in Tahoe beating back fla his T-shirt stick to his chest, he felt in his bones how much he'd missed Blue Mountain Lake

Heading back to his car, he grabbed his bag fro it over one shoulder and headed for the steps off the side of the screened-in porch that stretched from one side of the house to the other