“Jerry!” one yelled, pointing at my new friend. They were already drunk.

“The hotel should really stop serving you guys. Stavros knows you come here shit-faced,” Jerry said, still smiling. He shook his head, keeping his voice down—not that they could hear him. “Hotshots fighting the canyon fire,” he explained.

“Oh. Is that why the sky looks like Satan is throwing a party in Heaven?”

Jerry didn’t appreciate my analogy, but he got over it. “It’s been burning for a week or so now. They’re all at the Colorado Springs Hotel.”

“I have a friend staying there too.”

“So you’re not new?” Jerry asked, surprised.

“We came here together. Both doing the same job.”

“What job is that?”

“Security.”

Jerry was unconvinced. His eyes scanned the curves of my arms, deciding in the moment I could pass for security. “So you’re military?”

“Used to be.”

“What branch?”

“Do those look like they came from the Air Force to you?” a woman said, gesturing to my arms.

Jerry laughed out loud. “Hey, now. My brother is Air Force. He’s pretty mean-looking.”

“Terrifying, I’m sure,” I said, taking a swig.

The woman ordered a beer, then slid onto the stool next to me. I scanned her quickly before facing forward. Didn’t want her thinking she was about to make a friend. She was about my size, wider in the hips, wearing a dirty, once-white tank top and olive-green coveralls tied around her waist by the sleeves.

She nodded once in my peripheral, so I did the same without making eye contact.

“Logan Reese,” Jerry said, clearly disappointed. “It’s been a while. I thought you’d finally listened to me to quit hanging with those goons.”

“Don’t call me Logan in front of the guys,” she snapped.

Jerry smiled. “Why not?”

“Because Sanchez took a twenty-two-year-old stripper home last job, and it’s become a running joke.”

“What is?” he asked.

“Her stage name was Logan.”

“Your fault,” Jerry said. “You turned down a perfectly good job offer in Tucson.”

“It wasn’t perfect actually.”

“Because of the job or that you didn’t want a new partner?”

“I have a new partner,” Reese said. “Bobby is new, remember?”

“New to you,” he teased.

Reese rolled her eyes and took a drink. “I like hanging out with the guys, even if I had a choice,” Reese said. “I work with them, and I work too much to meet anyone else.”

Jerry sat a bottle of beer in front of her after popping the cap. “You escaped tonight, huh? How’s your partner?”

“Who cares?”

Jerry rested his elbow on the bar, leaning toward her with a sly grin. “Word on the street is you do.”

She narrowed her eyes at him before taking a swig.

“So,” Jerry said to me, “Reese is an aviation mechanic for the US Forestry Service.”

I raised my bottle to her, and she did the same.