Fire season was good for overtime.
Dillon Yates loved overtime nearly as much as he loved having the money in his pocket. The more change in his drawers, the more territory he could cover and the more chicks he could bang. Because when it came to the ladies, he just couldn’t be confined to Imminence, Montana, anymore. Dillon was pretty sure he’d tapped every available, good looking woman in town (and a few not...so...good looking). He’d even shared a few ladies with Cole McDaniels, his best friend, roommate, and coworker. Dillon didn’t mind a good ol’ threesome now and again, but the same options were getting tiresome.
So he had a plan to branch out to the “big city” of Billings for new pussy. Branching out seventy miles away required money, though, and Dillon didn’t have a lot of it as an employee of the Bounty County Sheriff’s Office.
Yeah, Dillon was glad it was fire season. Roadblocks usually meant overtime and hazard pay, so he was excited for the money. But this particular fire was a little too close for comfort. It wasn’t very far outside of his beloved town and it had already grown to 100,000 acres. The hot, dry summer conditions were doing nothing to help. New fire crews were being bussed in from all over the West to help get things under control. Multiple helitack crews, hand crews, and Type One hotshot crews were already in place and they were sending more. Hotshot crews were made up of twenty firefighters. And those firefighters were the best of the best. The elite. If they couldn’t get this shit under control, evacuation of Imminence would be Dillon’s next order of business. He’d never had to evacuate a town before. It sounded like it would get him even more overtime, but mostly it just sounded fucking awful. He loved this town. He loved these people. He didn’t want to have to tell them to leave their homes. Where would they go? He didn’t even want to think about it.
The South Twenty Dump Fire was turning into a shit show. So much so, they’d started calling it the Dumpster Fire down at the sheriff’s office.
Dillon had been a deputy with Bounty County for the past two years. He’d always known he was going to be a cop. His dad was a cop in his hometown of Livingston, Montana. His grandma had been a cop in Bozeman until just a few years ago. He fuckin’ loved watching the show COPS. So what else was he going to be?
He’d gone to University of Montana, majored in criminal justice, and got his Bachelor of Science degree – because, yeah, he considered crime fighting a science and not a fucking art – and then found a job in Imminence.
And he fucking loved it.
Dillon currently stood at a security checkpoint about twenty miles outside of Imminence. He wished he had a more exciting job at the present moment, but it was an important one, nonetheless. They were trying to keep all unnecessary traffic out of town. All the sightseers and fire seekers could wait until the evacuation risk went down. He’d spent most of the day turning cars around and letting the locals pass by. The U.S. Forest Service buses and crummies – hotshot crew haulers – had been trickling through since morning, but they’d picked up in the past hour. There were going to be a ton of firefighters on this fire within a few days. It was a relief to know the extra help was here, but it was still scary.
Another bus approached, no doubt headed to fire camp and then on to the Dumpster Fire. Dillon waved it through the checkpoint and gave the driver a nod, tilting his chin up to give the driver the clear to pass.
A hotshot hauler approached next. Dillon had no idea why anyone would want to be a hotshot firefighter. It sounded like a super shitty, dangerous job. But he was damn glad that someone wanted to do it. Otherwise, the whole state of Montana would have burned up by now.
He was thinking about how grateful he was that his job was running away from fire and not into it when he saw her through the small square window.
Damn.
The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was sitting near the back, staring out into the forest that surrounded them. She was gorgeous. Too gorgeous. Black hair tied up in a ponytail. Beautiful blue eyes. Bright red lips. She couldn’t be a hotshot. No way. Dillon figured with that face she had to be the communications director. Something media related.
Why would she be in the crew rig then?
There was no making sense of it.
He’d never seen a hotshot wearing lipstick.