Burn It Down

by Jess Anastasi

  “Hallie,” Buck supplied, voice heavy with disapproval.

  “Hallie,” he repeated, looking carefully at the boys. “Wait with her and don’t move a muscle until Del arrives. And this time, I’m serious as shit. You guys were lucky today. And we’re going to have a long discussion about that when this is all over.”

  They both nodded, looking at him with trepidation. He sent them what he hoped was a reassuring smile, even though he was struggling to stay afloat in the apprehension surging under the thin ice of control he was keeping frozen over it.

  “This is what I’m trained for, kids.” He tapped his name patch sewn into the front of his turnout gear. “I’m just going to go make sure Troy doesn’t need any help, and we’ll all be home by dinnertime.”

  Not all of it was true—he’d be out fighting this fire for hours, if not all night. But right now, the boys clearly needed a bit of hope and normality. And if he could get Troy out and send him back to Everness along with everyone else evacuating the park, then all the better.

  “I’m coming with you,” Buck announced in a way that said he expected no arguments.

  Jared clenched his jaw over an automatic refusal. But this was Buck’s backyard; he knew the park better than anyone. In the thick smoke and glowing embers of a forest fire, it was easy to get turned around. Taking Buck along was probably the smart idea, even if he didn’t like the possibility of putting the senior ranger in peril.

  “Okay, you boys get on now.” He gave Lewis a gentle nudge to get them walking. “I’ll see you later.”

  They both mumbled goodbye before hurrying along the side of the road, passing the vehicles still exiting at a snail’s pace as they headed for the gate. Buck sent Hallie a wave when the pair stopped next to her and introduced themselves. She returned the gesture and then obviously decided to enlist the pair, handing Aaron a bright baton from a pile of equipment next to her and Lewis a high-visibility vest.

  Relieved the boys were safe and in good hands, he and Buck hurried over to Troy’s SUV. Buck got in behind the wheel, while Jared had to remove his helmet before getting in the front passenger seat.

  As Buck started turning the SUV around—a feat in itself considering the traffic jam on the narrow road—Jared noticed a folded piece of paper sitting on the dashboard.

  Curiosity got the better of him and he reached out, remembering Troy had said something about Benny Sadler leaving a threatening note under his wipers.

  When he unfolded the page, however, he almost dropped it, as though his fingers had been burned, sucking in a sharp, audible breath.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Buck cut him a worried glance. “Something wrong?”

  “This threatening note Troy got, did you know about it?” He held it up, and Buck snatched a glance at the paper between navigating around the oncoming traffic taking up the entire road.

  “He told me about it, but I hadn’t seen it until now. Why?”

  “He thought Benny Sadler left it for him. But I can tell you this isn’t Benny’s handwriting, because I know whose handwriting this is.”

  “Who?” Buck asked, brow creasing in concern.

  “It belongs to my ex. Kevin McDowell.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TROY ARRIVED at the secondary campground to find it abandoned, all except for two lone figures sitting on a fallen log and sharing a bottle.

  How un-fucking-surprising.

  He pulled the ATV to a stop a few feet from Hal and Benny Sadler, then tugged the almost dry towel down from around his face. Hard anger settled like a weighted block on his chest as he stared at the man responsible for all this. He’d have thought the guy would be long gone, but obviously he’d overestimated his intelligence.

  “What do you want?” Benny demanded before spitting on the ground.

  Charming.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, the forest is on fire and everyone is evacuating.” He swung a leg off the ATV and cast a searching glance around the grounds. It was hard to see much through the billowing clouds of smoke, but he was pretty sure no one else was there. Once he got the Sadler brothers moving, however, he would take one last search of the area.

  “So?” Benny asked, sounding bored.

  “So, unless you’re looking to get burned alive today, you might want to get on while you still can.” Part of him wanted to say fuck it and leave the pair to their fate. Benny had lit this fire, it was probably no less than he deserved. But the recent memory of Lewis and Aaron’s desperation to find their fathers meant he couldn’t easily wash his hands of them.

  “We only just got set up—” Hal started to complain, glancing at the ramshackle tents that were half falling in on themselves and nowhere near as neat as they’d been put together at the main campground. He’d bet his last dime Lewis and Aaron had been the ones to set up the first time around.

  “And I’m telling you if you don’t leave now, you might die. You’ve been pretty shitty fathers to this point, but are you really going to do that to your sons? Make them go to your funeral and be the kids whose dads were killed through sheer selfish stupidity?”

  Because he knew exactly what that felt like, and it was a stain on his soul that never quite went away. At least he could say his own father hadn’t taken anyone else with him when he’d crashed his car. If the fire Benny had lit caused any deaths, then Aaron would never be able to say the same thing.

  Maybe they weren’t as drunk as he’d first assumed. The two men shared an uneasy look, reminding him a little of the way Lewis and Aaron often did the same. There was a beat-up old Toyota next to the tents that he presumed belong to them.

  “You’ve still got time. If you leave now, you should be able to make it out.”

  Not mentioning the fact he was about to text the sheriff and make sure Benny was arrested before he could leave the park. In jail was better than dead.

  Benny abruptly pushed to his feet and tossed the almost empty bottle he’d been holding.

  “Come on, Hal.”

  “But what about our stuff?” Hal glanced over his shoulder, but Benny grabbed him by the shirt collar and hauled him up.

  “Never mind that. We’ll come back for it later. We’re out of booze anyway. I’d rather be sitting at the bar in Everness than out here breathing all this goddamned smoke.”

  Benny let his brother go to fish his car keys out of his pocket and burped loudly as he ambled over to the Toyota like he had all the time in the world. Troy shook his head, watching as they drove away and the taillights were quickly swallowed up in the smoke. The fire chief had said an hour. That’d been forty minutes ago. He’d spend exactly five minutes checking no one else was here, and then he’d be on Benny and Hal’s tail down the track to finally leave the park. It felt like the smoke had leeched into his skin, while his hair felt gritty with soot. He honestly didn’t know how Jared put up with this for a living. He felt like he needed ten showers just to wash off all the sweat and ash.

  He got back on the ATV and did a slow lap of the grounds, calling out every so often. All he saw were a few deer bounding out of the trees and heading for the lake. Unease at the sight made his stomach churn. He remembered seeing a nature documentary once, something about if you see animals fleeing, then you know you’re in serious danger. He could also see a glow nearby of what he suspected was a spot fire. The smoke was getting impossibly thicker as well, the muted roar he’d been able to hear all along getting more intense. It was impossible to tell where the main fire front was or what direction it was heading, but he decided time was up.

  He stopped the ATV to quickly check no one was hiding in the single toilet block, more than ready to leave. When he came back out, however, he skidded to a stop when he saw someone leaning casually against the ATV like the forest wasn’t literally burning around them. The surprise was quickly overtaken by a deep loathing.

  “McDowell, what the hell are you doing out here?”

  McDowell sent him a nasty smile as he straight
ened. “Following you, of course. I’ve got to say, it’s been fucking entertaining, watching you run around and be the hero all afternoon. But I’m bored now, and I’ll admit, the fire I set got a bit bigger than I thought it would. Time I got out.”

  McDowell reached out and pointedly patted the handles of the ATV while Troy’s mind snagged on one little detail McDowell had carelessly thrown out.

  “You lit the fire?” he demanded, knowing he sounded struck dumb but unable to help it.

  McDowell laughed. “Your expression is priceless. Yes, cockhead, I lit the fire. All the fires, actually. The dock after I saw you kissing Jared there. Oh, and I let the air out of your tires that night as well. I thought for sure Jared wouldn’t want to see you again after making him hike around half the forest in the middle of the night, but he always was a dumb bitch.”

  Troy took an automatic step forward, hands fisting, anger blazing up within at both McDowell’s words and from what this asshole had put Jared through, but McDowell pulled a gun from the back of his jeans, freezing him in place.

  “You must have a huge dick,” McDowell continued with a bitter laugh. “Because he went back for more. I thought for sure the two of you would get arrested after you put on that little show in the front seat of your SUV and I called the cops, but that faggot deputy let you off.”

  “How long have you been following us?” he demanded, nauseated that McDowell had apparently been witness to some of their most intimate moments.

  “Not you. Not at first.” McDowell sent him an ugly sneer. “I was checking up on Jared. I wanted to see how miserable he was without me and plan the best way to get him back. I’d call him, you know, and not say a word when he answered. I just wanted to hear his voice.”

  “You were stalking him, you sick fuck.” It all made a twisted kind of sense. And they’d completely missed it, instead blaming Benny Sadler for the fires. “And the rangers’ station? Was that you as well?”

  McDowell grinned, the expression cold and somehow all wrong. The guy was clearly unhinged.

  “That was just fun, really. I needed to let off some steam after what the two of you got up to behind the picnic shelter. I couldn’t see much, of course. It was pretty dark. But I heard the way Jared begged for it like the whore he is. I hate to admit it, but I was almost as turned on as I was angry. So I set fire to the rangers’ station and jerked off while I watched it take.” McDowell shuddered, and Troy swallowed down the bile rising in the back of his throat. “Maybe I should thank you for that one. It was amazing.”

  “You need help, McDowell.”

  The bastard seemed to find that hilarious, spending a long moment laughing his ass off while the smoke thickened around them. The seconds were ticking by too fast. It had to be fifty minutes now since the fire chief had given him the warning. There was every chance it was already too late to leave. Except with McDowell next to the ATV with a gun pointed at him, all he could do was stand there and try to come up with some way to talk the other man down.

  “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve got planned here, but if we don’t leave—”

  “Leave?” McDowell repeated, still highly amused. “What makes you think you’re going anywhere?”

  Troy’s breath caught in the back of his throat, and he couldn’t help dropping his glance to the gun.

  “Oh, I’m not going to shoot you,” McDowell said reasonably, as if they were talking game scores or weather patterns. “Well, I don’t want to shoot you. But I will if you don’t cooperate.”

  “And what exactly do you want me to do?” he asked, voice coming out unsteady. Shit, but he couldn’t think of a way out of this. It was like all rational thought had fled his mind and he could only worry about what McDowell was going to do to Jared once he left here. Somehow, he had to warn Jared, to tell him everything. He could feel the slight heft of his cell phone in his pocket like it suddenly weighed a ton.

  “It’s simple. You’re going to step into the toilet block behind you and I’m going to lock the door. Then unfortunately a fire is going to catch right outside and you’re going to burn. Just like I said in my note.”

  The damned note that’d been left under his wipers. The one he’d thought Benny Sadler had written. And as for the suspect the witnesses had seen running off after lighting the fire behind the picnic shelter, it’d obviously been McDowell.

  “And if I refuse?” he asked with far more bravado than he felt.

  “Then I guess I will have to shoot you.” McDowell gave a shrug as though he didn’t care what happened. “Either way, as soon as I leave here, I’m going to find Jared.”

  “You’re not going anywhere near him.” The thought of Jared getting hurt tore past any hesitations or self-preservation instincts. He’d taken two angry strides forward before he’d even realized he was going to move. McDowell closed the rest of the distance and shoved the muzzle of the gun into the middle of his chest, leaving his heart pounding wildly.

  “He’s mine!” McDowell shouted, anger twisting his features. “I’ll do whatever I fucking want with him. Now get inside.”

  He stared McDowell down, too many thoughts racing through his mind. Should he try fighting McDowell for the gun? Or call his bluff and try to run, hoping the guy either didn’t pull the trigger or was a lousy shot?

  “You’re not getting out of this.” McDowell pressed the gun hard enough into his chest to leave a bruise. “Now move!”

  McDowell used his free hand to shove him back a step. Troy let himself get hustled into the toilet block. He still had his phone in his pocket. He could at least warn Jared that McDowell was coming for him and then figure out how he was going to get himself free after.

  As McDowell finished shoving him inside, he glanced past the other man to see an alarming glow behind the dark smoke in the near distance. The muted roar was becoming more distinct, and he knew. It was too late to leave—the fire was bearing down on them. The chief had said if he got caught out here, the only thing he could do was find cover and take shelter. He really doubted the brick-and-wood structure of the toilet was the ideal place.

  “McDowell, you have to listen to me.” He jammed his foot against the bottom of the door before McDowell could pull it closed. He had no idea why he was trying to warn the guy who clearly planned for him to die and wanted to hurt Jared, but his conscience apparently couldn’t let him watch the guy ride the ATV straight into the unstoppable force of an out-of-control forest fire. No one deserved to die like that. “The fire chief told me if I was out here any longer than an hour, it’d be too dangerous to go back until after the fire front had passed.”

  McDowell scoffed and kicked at his shin. “Like I’m going to believe that. You’re obviously trying to stop me from taking the ATV.”

  “Wait,” he tried again as something occurred to him. “How did you even follow me up here?”

  “I stole a motorbike, but it ran out of gas,” McDowell answered with a shrug. “Enough stalling.”

  McDowell nailed him in the shin again, but this time it was vicious enough to make him jerk his leg back. McDowell yanked the door closed, and then there was some kind of banging as he jammed it. Troy wrenched the handle, but whatever McDowell had done kept it stuck fast. A second later, the ATV rumbled to life, then sped away.

  “Fuck!” Troy shouted, kicking the door with frustration, underlaid by a healthy dose of fear. He needed to get the hell out of this toilet block and work out where was going to be safe enough to wait out the fire.

  He coughed, the smoke so thick now, it was like he was breathing more of the acrid substance than actual air. Yanking at the cloth on his neck, he took it over to the sink and quickly wet it, all the while searching the walls and corners, looking for something he could use to break down the door, since there was only a single high narrow window he’d never fit through. With the door closed, it already felt fifty degrees hotter, and his clothes were sticking to every inch of his damp body.

  As he wrapped the cloth around his neck
and face, he spied a shaft of light coming through a wide gap in the planks. On closer inspection, there was a loose board. He practically jumped on it. He shoved his fingers into the space and yanked, but the damn thing wouldn’t come any looser. Straightening up, he aimed the heel of his boot at it, giving a few good kicks until it splintered, creating a wider gap. He paused, coughing and struggling to catch his breath for a long moment, dizziness dragging at him.

  Finally, he held his breath in attempt to stem the almost constant coughing and desperately kicked the board next to the one he’d broken. With a few more sharp jabs, the gap looked wide enough to squeeze through, except at this point it only seemed to be letting in more smoke. God, maybe it was too late. Maybe he had to risk staying right where he was. He glanced up, eyes watering, mixing with the sweat pouring off him. The heat had intensified, and a panicked thought of getting roasted alive rushed through him. He’d learned enough about wildfires to know that’s what would kill him first. Not the flames or the smoke but the radiant heat, boiling his insides.

  No fucking way was he staying in here. He’d rather take his chances out in the open. He gave one more jarring kick and broke through the last of the boards, then stumbled out into the thick smoke and crackling roar of the fire front bearing down.

  It was even hotter out there than it’d been inside the toilet block. Though he was wearing long sleeves and pants, his skin was beginning to tingle like it did with the starting of a bad sunburn.

  He wheeled around, unable to see anything but black-and-gray smoke, yellow sparking embers, and an orange glow that seemed to be coming from all around him. The roaring noise was indescribable. Pure panic hit him like a truck at full speed, and the urge to simply run almost got his legs moving before he managed to gain control of himself at the last second. His lungs ached and burned, every breath searing his insides with more heat. He needed to think. Needed to find somewhere that would protect him from the radiant heat and eventually the flames as well.