LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER TWO

      AT FIRST glimpse the scene in front of him was one of utter confusion. Simon stood beside Jim’s truck in his jeans and T-shirt and new steel-toed boots, taking everything in, and gradually the various components began to make sense. The weather-beaten building on the far side of the road appeared to be functioning as dormitory, kitchen, and command post; two men with sleeping rolls disappeared inside it, and from it wafted the smell of chicken soup. Heaps of gear stood around in the dust: pumps, shovels, chainsaws, and big yellow bags of hose. He remembered those long lines of hose from the course he had so light-heartedly agreed to take. Filled with water, they were astoundingly heavy.

      From behind the building he heard the decelerating whine of a helicopter engine. Helicopters, he now knew, were used for water-bombing and for transporting ground crew to fires unreachable by road. The truck parked near Jim’s had a shiny aluminium water tank, and the volunteer fire truck behind it carried a portable tank. Two bulldozers were lined up further down the track.

      His gaze shifted, almost unwillingly, to the west. There, on the horizon, was the reason he was here.

      The smoke was yellow more than blue, a thick, ominous cloud over gently rolling hills. He had somehow expected the smoke to be lying still, crouched like a predator over its prey. Instead it was full of roiling movement, billowing high into the sky. Although he was too far away to see flames, the surging smoke alone was enough to make his heart beat faster.

      Jim was jogging back towards the truck. ‘I checked in with the fire boss,’ he said as soon as he was in earshot. ‘Four of us are going to do mop-up on the flank that’s furthest from the road—you want to take a run down to the helicopter and find out from the pilot how soon we can go? I’ll grab a couple of bunks in the meantime.’

      Glad to have something tangible to do, Simon headed across the dirt road. The dozers had pushed it further to the west, in a tumble of rocks and earth. Better a helicopter than drive on that, he thought, nodding at three men in filthy orange suits who had just come out of the command post. Their faces were covered with soot, their eyes red-rimmed, and again he felt his heartbeat quicken. London, more than ever, seemed like another world. He was suddenly, fiercely glad to be here. Whatever he was to do in the next twenty-four hours would be real and useful.

      More so than putting pigment on canvas.

      He went past the corner of the building. The engine of the helicopter had been turned off and the blades were still. It did not look large enough to carry four men and a pilot.

      Simon walked round the nose. Someone was balancing on the narrow step that was two feet from the ground, and was reaching into the cabin. With a jolt of surprise he saw that the body in the dirt-streaked beige flying suit was definitely not a male body; the curves under the cotton fabric were female curves, and the waist far too slender to belong to a man. All the warnings of sabotage so liberally posted in Heathrow Airport rose in Simon’s mind. He said sharply, ‘What are you doing here? Get out of that cabin!’

      The body went absolutely still. Then the woman turned to look at him. Her eyes the cold grey of a November sky, she said precisely, ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘You heard me—you’re trespassing.’

      In a single lithe movement that brought a frown to his face, so familiar did it seem, she jumped to the ground. ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I came here to tell the pilot that four of us need transport out to the south flank of the fire—’

      ‘OK,’ she said impatiently, ‘you’ve told her. We can—’

      ‘You’re the pilot,’ Simon said blankly.

      ‘I’m the pilot,’ she repeated, unsmiling. ‘I’m not in the mood for chauvinist remarks, either.’

      He had not been about to make any. Although his assumption that a pilot had to be a man was about as chauvinistic as he could get.

      For a moment Simon regarded her in silence. She looked tired and dirty and hot. While her hair, tawny-blonde, was pulled back into a ribbon, wisps of it stuck to her face; there were shadows like bruises under the level grey eyes. Her nose had an interesting bump in it, and her mouth was too generous for true beauty. He wanted very badly to make that mouth smile.

      He said straightforwardly, ‘I’m sorry. I should never have assumed that you had to be a man.’

      She gave him the briefest of nods. ‘OK. We can leave in about half an hour. I have to refuel first.’

      Turning away from him, she knelt down to unlatch the cargo pod in the belly of the helicopter. Plainly he was dismissed. Yet something in the way she moved, in her slimness and the curve of her back, made Simon say with a gaucheness rare to him, ‘I don’t know your name.’

      She was hauling a fuel pump from the pod. Resting it on the ground by one of the skids, she brushed her hands down her trousers and stood up. She was tall, perhaps five feet nine. He liked tall women. ‘Shea Mallory,’ she said.

      Shea...he could not have come across two women named Shea in the space of three weeks. He croaked, ‘Do you have a cabin on Maynard’s Lake?’

      She frowned at him. ‘Yes,’ she said in a clipped voice. ‘How do you know that? I’ve never laid eyes on you before.’

      She had not laid eyes on him. But he most certainly had laid eyes on her. Although his heart was banging against

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