Protector

  Protector

  A Novella in the Protectors Series

  Nancy Northcott

  New York Boston

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  An Excerpt from Guardian

  An Excerpt from Renegade

  Also by Nancy Northcott

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  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Meeting a writer whose books I admire is always a pleasure.

  Taking a class from one is an inspiration, and having her take an ongoing interest in my work is an honor.

  This is for A. C. Crispin.

  Acknowledgments

  When I got the chance to write this novella, I needed a plot right now. Jeanne Adams and Cassondra Murray jumped in to brainstorm the story with me, and Donna MacMeans helped refine it.

  The 2011 Honey Prairie wildfire in the Okefenokee Swamp inspired me to use a similar incident as a setting. Because I have no firefighting experience, I needed help creating Josh and Edie’s world. Les Hunter, a registered forester, provided valuable information. Bill Gabbert, a former wildland firefighter who runs the Wildfire Today (http://wildfiretoday.com) and Fire Aviation (http://fireaviation.com) blogs, patiently answered questions and provided details about firefighting. Any errors are due to my failure to ask the right questions, not to any mistakes of theirs.

  The Romance Bandits, as always, are an invaluable source of support. So are my local chapter, Carolina Romance Writers, and my homes away from home, Heart of Carolina Romance Writers and Georgia Romance Writers. The DC2K Writers offer not only encouragement but a place to try out fantastic theories. PJ Ausdenmore, Ann Wicker, Sid Barrett, Judy Rosenbaum, Mike Flynn, Roxann Pearson, Becke Turner, Judith Stanton, and the Davidson Wild Women Beach Crew never let me forget they’re in my corner.

  This year has taught me how different being an unpublished writer really is from being a published one. I’ve had excellent advice from Patricia Rice, Nancy Knight, Sandra Chastain, Berta Platas, Michelle Roper, Jana Oliver, Anna DeStefano, Barbara Monajem, Dianna Love, Virginia Kantra, Gerri Russell, Eilis Flynn, Haywood Smith, A. C. Crispin, and Jessica Andersen.

  I’m deeply grateful to my terrific editor, Latoya Smith, for this opportunity and for her contributions to the Protectors manuscripts. My wonderful agent, Beth Miller, continues to provide invaluable career advice and support.

  None of this would be possible without the love and support of my family. My husband, Mark, and our son, Gavin, have never wavered in their support of my dream. Thanks, guys, with all my heart.

  Author’s Note

  The Okefenokee Swamp is a blackwater peat bog that encompasses about 700 square miles. Most of this vast acreage lies within the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, which was created in 1936. The refuge opens shortly before dawn and closes overnight, and anyone wanting to camp overnight must first obtain a permit. In the Protectors series, I’ve created areas of the swamp that lie outside the refuge so I could avoid having the characters run into these and other restrictions.

  1

  Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia

  Present Day

  Of all the helicopter pilots who could’ve flown this medevac run, why did Josh Campbell have to be the one who showed up? Edie Lang snatched a sidelong look at him. His tall, broad-shouldered form seemed to take up more than his share of the cockpit space. Or maybe her unwelcome awareness of him caused that crowded sensation.

  His headset and tan ball cap hid most of his sun-kissed, light brown hair but emphasized his profile. Josh’s straight nose and strong chin might’ve graced a classical statue. Intently tracking the burning landscape, his eyes were green today, like his flight suit, but an intriguing mix of green and brown when he wore street clothes.

  He still looked as sexy and, unfortunately, as aloof as he did three years ago, when they’d last worked together. They’d been part of a helicopter firefighting crew in Wyoming until she’d left.

  Not that their history mattered now.

  At least he would get her to the injured firefighter in one piece. Josh had his faults, but no one flew wildfire rescue better than he did. Although fire-generated air currents buffeted the chopper, his piloting skills, combined with a bit of magic, kept it steady above the flaming, smoky swamp.

  It was his skill at other things that made her edgy.

  She suddenly felt self-conscious about her grimy face and the smoke and ash stains on her fire-resistant yellow shirt and green pants, not to mention her hair that probably looked more gray than blond by now. She’d fought the wildfire until she got the injury call and switched her brain to paramedic mode.

  So what if she and Josh had almost done the deed once when they worked together? That’d been a freak incident, a mistake he’d realized before they made it worse by going all the way.

  It was just her bad luck this fire was so big that her crew from Colorado and his from…wherever had been rotated into Georgia to fight it.

  Unfortunately, their one intimate encounter had etched itself into her memory. She knew every warm, sleek contour of the sculpted form under that flight suit. Those hard, smooth shoulders of his flowed into a firm chest and muscular, well-toned arms. The man was good with his hands in ways that had nothing to do with aviation.

  Edie shifted in her seat. Best to get her mind off what had so briefly been and never would happen again.

  If only his spicy aftershave didn’t remind her.

  The magic they shared resonated between them, but Josh projected all the warmth of a steel door in a freezer. He probably hadn’t expected to see her again any more than she’d expected to see him.

  Still, his silence was aggravating. One aborted night together didn’t give either of them a claim on the other, but they weren’t strangers. Damned if she’d put up with his attitude any longer.

  “So,” she began, “when did you leave Wyoming?”

  “Couple of years ago.” His offhand tone signaled boredom.

  Tough for him. “Any special reason?”

  “Got a better job.”

  “And that would be…?”

  He glanced at her, green eyes baffled and brows raised. “Does it matter?”

  “We worked together for two summers,” she reminded him, trying not to sound as hurt as his reticence made her feel. Had he really blocked off their time as helitack crewmates so thoroughly? “I’m interested.”

  He shrugged. “I wanted a change.”

  “So what are you doing now?” Besides irritating her with his minimal responses—deliberately, she suspected.

  “Jesus! You just don’t give up.” But his glance this time held wry humor and warmth that might’ve been affection.

  It made Edie’s heart turn over. Momentarily speechless, she stared at him, and his gaze softened and warmed. His vibe in the magic between them seemed less distant.

  Josh wrenched his eyes to the side, barriers rising again. His abrupt withdrawal left Edie feeling bereft. She swallowed hard, waiting for the needy quivers in her gut to settle. It was so not fair that he could make her feel this way after three years of noncommunication.

  “I fly combat missions and medevac for the Southeastern Shire Collegium, better known as the Georgia Institute for Paranormal Research,” he said.

  The mageborn organized their governing districts by shi
res, disguising the combined headquarters and government centers they called collegiums as Mundane businesses. The deception allowed them to live and work safely amid their Mundane neighbors. She hadn’t visited Georgia before and had never heard the Southeastern Shire Collegium’s cover name.

  “So they loaned you and this chopper to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and reconfigured the rear for medevac?”

  He shrugged. “The wildlife refuge has a helicopter service contract, but that bird was already working another fire. The Collegium mages like to be good neighbors, and some of us hang out in a little town near here, Wayfarer.”

  “Yeah, I stopped there on the way in,” she managed around the lump in her throat. “Nice place.”

  She might be better off if he hadn’t shown her that flash of warmth, hadn’t underscored the brief, bittersweet memory.

  Wildland firefighters shared a rare camaraderie. For Edie and Josh, being mageborn should’ve created an ever deeper trust, but the man kept her at the same distance he maintained with every other woman on the fire line.

  Except for that night at Compadres Gulch, when grief ripped through the firefighters’ encampment because they’d lost three of their own in a deadly burnover. She and Josh had briefly found refuge in each other’s arms, but his pager had interrupted them, summoning him to make an emergency retardant drop. He hadn’t kept his promise to return afterward.

  If only she could forget that incident. He clearly had. The next day, he’d treated her with his usual cool courtesy. As though nothing had happened between them.

  What an idiot she was, to regret that after so long.

  Edie looked down at the burning landscape. An alligator fled a line of flame consuming the grassy area below. As she leaned closer, worried, ready to help it with just a bit of magical shielding, the big reptile slid into the water. Not that the canal provided much of a refuge with a gray layer of ash covering its surface.

  Below the helicopter, charred, blackened cypress trees lined the water like ghostly sentinels. Flames would soon reach the ones the alligator had hurried past and turn them into the same sad specters.

  Josh glanced down. “I saw a bear and a couple of deer running from the flames yesterday. The wildlife is suffering.”

  Edie nodded. He’d always had a soft spot for the creatures of the wilderness. Too bad she remembered, because that made her soften further toward him, the last thing she needed.

  “The smoke’s hard on the people in the nearby towns, too,” she said. “Bad news all around.”

  He grunted in agreement, his eyes on the ground below and his barriers still up. Edie stifled a sigh. If only the fire hadn’t cut across the road. Otherwise, an ambulance could’ve come in on the track the bulldozer had made last week, sparing her and Josh this difficult encounter.

  Well, difficult for her. He showed no sign of being bothered at all, and wasn’t that a smack in the ego?

  The Incident Command Team had thought this area was clear, but fire could travel long distances underground in peaty soil, erupting unexpectedly where there was no one to counter it and making firefighting abominably difficult. This blaze had started from a lightning strike in the expanse now charred and blackened below them, then burned westward, only to surprise everyone by popping up at the tree line to the north near here.

  “Coming up on the dozer line. I’ll set down in the middle of it,” Josh informed her.

  His deep, smooth voice generated warm ripples of awareness in Edie’s chest. Blast. She focused on the ten-foot-wide, rutted track below. As the helicopter descended, adrenaline banished the warm, fidgety feeling and the memories it triggered.

  The rotor wash kicked up ash from the area below the chopper and sent embers, smoke, and debris whirling through the air. Landing here was making the line crew’s job tougher, but with water on one side and fire on the other, the helicopter was the injured man’s only way out.

  “Good thing this area’s sandy,” Josh said, “not that damned peat.” The tingle washing over her skin signaled his throwing out a magical shield to protect the helo from burning debris.

  “That’s one lucky break. Though it switches to peat where that grass is over there.” In the direction she needed to go, blast it. If not for the summer’s drought, the sedge-covered, peat prairies would be underwater, and the fire wouldn’t have spread so easily.

  The helicopter descended toward a clearing covered in knee-deep, yellow sedge. At the tree line to her left stood a firefighter garbed as she was, his clothes and hard hat also mottled with dirty gray.

  He waved but didn’t try to approach through the debris-laden air of the small clearing.

  Behind him lay the usual tall pines, red maples, black gums, and live oaks draped in Spanish moss. To the north, fire roared through the slash pines, devouring the oily saw palmetto ground cover.

  A crew of ground pounders in yellow and green dug a fire line or cut trees ahead of the advancing blaze. Edie, Josh, and the firefighters had to get the wounded man out before the flames reached this area.

  Josh set the bird down as easily as a sheet might float onto a mattress. “Go.”

  Edie traded the helo’s comm net headset for her hard hat, grabbed her pack, and hopped out. While she and Josh performed a quick “Helicopter 892 to Bravo unit paramedic” radio check on her two-way, she slid open the back door and pulled out the folded Stokes litter and its insert. A few quick steps brought her to the low mound of sandy soil at the plowed track’s edge, clear of the rotors though not of the mess they raised in the air.

  Her boot narrowly missed a smooth black object protruding from the piled-up soil. Its curved surface glowed faintly purple-red.

  Weird. She started to go on, run do her job, but something about the half-buried object drew her to kneel beside it.

  Cautiously, she touched it. A faint vibration penetrated her protective gloves and raised a chill on the back of her neck. This thing carried some sort of magic. They could figure out what kind later, but better not leave it for Mundanes to find. Who knew what it could cause?

  “Bravo paramedic, everything okay?” Josh’s voice crackled over her radio.

  Other voices broke in on the channel, so Edie flashed him a thumbs-up and jammed the cantaloupe-size orb into her pack. As she swung the pack onto her shoulder, dizziness blurred her vision. Crap, it was hot out here. A shake of her head cleared it, and she ran toward the waiting firefighter.

  They quickly introduced themselves. Hurrying into the trees with Rob Dawson, Edie asked, “What happened?”

  “We cut a big pine that fell the wrong way and knocked another one down on him.” The man’s dark brows drew together in his sooty face. “He’s not doing so good.”

  “Let’s get to it, then.”

  A flash of red at eye level warned them both to jump back. A burning chunk of wood landed between them, igniting the dry grass.

  “I got this.” Dawson used his Pulaski, the combination axe and hoe tool, to churn sandy soil over the flaming spot. He jerked his head behind him. “That way. His name’s Phil Moss.”

  Edie ran. Damn, but her pack felt heavy all of a sudden. No time to worry about it now, though. Through the smoke, she spotted another yellow shirt and Forest Service hard hat, a lanky, blond firefighter kneeling by a wounded comrade.

  She dropped the litter and knelt beside the injured man. Soot smeared his face and his dark hair below the hard hat. His features were tight with pain.

  “Hi, Phil. I’m Edie. I’m going to take care of you.”

  * * *

  Where the hell was Edie? Drumming the fingers of his free hand on his knee, Josh peered into the smoke. The flames to the north roared toward the frantically working crew. Their laboriously dug line wasn’t going to hold the blaze, not with the wind picking up. He’d adjusted the rotor controls on his upgraded Huey II to minimize backwash, but it still blew debris around. The sooner she finished her assessment and got her patient to the aircraft, the better.

  His t
humb hovered over the button on the control stick that would key the radio mike. He’d heard her call for help to carry the heavy litter, seen seven firefighters leave the line and run toward the trees in response. She’d be moving soon. Besides, she wouldn’t appreciate having him interrupt her while she worked. She knew they needed to get going.

  What she didn’t know, never would know, was how tough he’d found sitting here while she ran into the smoke. He’d been attracted to her for a long time, back in Wyoming, even though he’d known pursuing that was stupid.

  The loss of his mom, a deputy sheriff killed in the line of duty when he was eight, still raised an ache deep inside him. So did the memory of his dad’s descent into alcoholism afterward. No child of Josh’s would ever go through what he and his sisters had experienced.

  Never date a women in a dangerous job was his mantra. Steering clear of them cut the pool, but there were still plenty of women who didn’t go charging into danger every day. There’d been no point in pursuing his attraction to Edie.

  Until Compadres Gulch.

  Even then, he should’ve held himself back, but he’d been so damned glad she wasn’t one of the lost. Grieving for their dead comrades, he’d needed the reassurance of her living body in his arms.

  Thanks to that brief encounter, he knew every curve, every warm, smooth surface her mannish protective clothing obscured. Her faint jasmine scent under the sweat and the smoke today had evoked the memory. Her scent then had filled his nostrils while awareness of her had blown his mind and driven back the sorrow and fear.

  He’d managed not to think about that time, mostly, for the past three years, but he could still feel the firm roundness of her breast in his palm, the sweet, taut nub of her nipple in his mouth…

  And now he was sporting wood.

  Great. Just freaking great.

  Come on, Edie.