Kat settled her shoulder bag more firmly in place, and she gripped a child’s hand in each of her own. She sandwiched the loop handle of Tye’s leash between her palm and Nirav’s.
“We’ll go single file. Lily, you lead us. Head straight across.”
“I’ll fall.” Lily’s face had lost all its color, and her voice shook.
“You won’t. Be careful and hold my hand.” She turned to Nirav. “You okay?”
He nodded, but he never took his eyes from the steep drop.
Kat squeezed his hand. “I’ve got you.”
She tried to quell her own doubts. No choice, she reminded herself. No choice.
They started out. Lily, then Kat, then Tye, then Nirav, linked together and moving sideways as they faced downhill. Juni followed. Rocks and pebbles rolled out from under their shoes with each step, and for each few feet of headway, they slid downhill a foot, eliciting gasps. Nothing gave solid purchase. Lily angled uphill in an effort to keep them from slipping too far down the slope, but they still lost ground.
Kat’s sandals had no traction, and her feet slipped within the straps. Pebbles sliced into the soles of her feet. She gritted her teeth, but she didn’t stop. Little by little, they inched forward. Tye walked between Kat and Nirav, his slight body barely disturbing the loose gravel. Juni scrambled a bit, but she had an easier time than the heavier humans, with four legs to balance instead of two.
They made it a third of the way across. Two-thirds. Maybe Kat had worried over nothing.
Then Lily slipped.
She cried out, an incoherent animal cry that shook the hillside, as she fell forward. She flailed her free arm, tried to regain her footing, and jerked at Kat’s restraining arm. In a chain reaction, Kat lurched and pulled Nirav off-balance, his slick palm slipping from her grasping fingers. Lily teetered and pulled herself upright at the last possible moment, frighteningly close to sliding out of control. Kat sat down hard on the edge of a boulder, the cell phone in her back pocket making a sickening crunching sound. Nirav stumbled, tripped over Tye, landed on his side in a heap of fine gravel and at once began to slide downhill, shouting in Hindi as he went.
“Nirav!” Kat’s panicked voice echoed down the valley, and her heart sledgehammered so high in her throat it threatened to choke her.
Nirav skittered down the slope in a cascade of stones, the fingers of his good hand grabbing uselessly for purchase. At last he managed to slow himself, and he finally came to a stop on his belly, more than thirty feet below Kat and Lily and well out of reach. His feet and lower legs hung over the edge of the precipitous drop, and his arms stretched spread-eagled as if trying to cling to the loose slope. He lay there, frozen, his face scratched and bloody, looking frantically at Kat for help.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THURSDAY, 8:05 AM
The helicopter sped up the mountainside, leaving the firefighters behind. Pete, in the copilot seat, rummaged in a compartment beside him and handed back two wireless headsets. Malcolm crouched behind and between the pilot’s chairs to look through the glass canopy and slipped his headset in place. Scott held his up, turning it back and forth, trying to figure out how to put it on.
“Head south-southwest to the cottage located here.” Malcolm pointed to a map on a clipboard wedged onto the console between the pilot seats.
Scott moved forward and grabbed a handhold strap mounted on the cabin wall directly behind the pilot’s chair. The engine noise clattered through the body of the chopper at a deafening volume, and the walls, the floor, and the ceiling all vibrated steadily. The engine showed its age by an occasional missing beat, and the whole helicopter shivered. Scott flinched every time.
“Follow this road,” Malcolm went on, “in case they tried to come down the mountain and got stuck partway.”
Malcolm’s finger traced a line along the map, and Pete nodded.
“Will do,” Lou said. “Hang tight.”
The helicopter accelerated, retracing the path they had just taken down the mountainside. Visibility sucked because of the smoke, but Malcolm could make out the road below them. It took only a few minutes to reach the two lower cottages, still unscathed.
As they curved into the next hollow, they reached the point where they’d been forced to turn back, and Lou hovered in place. Malcolm sucked in a tense breath, and his empty stomach knotted. When they had left the area earlier, fires had started on both sides of the road, but now the entire length of the gully blazed. The wooden bridge had collapsed at one end, and its planks were hidden by tall orange flames. Fire ate the grasses, shrubs, and trees on both sides of the gravel road, racing uphill as if bent on destroying everything it touched.
He’d counted on reaching Kat’s cottage well before the fire, but for the first time, cold logic argued against it. What if we’re too late? He pushed the thought aside. If he dwelled in that space, he’d never be able to function.
Lou moved the helicopter to a higher altitude to avoid the thick column of smoke, and they lurched suddenly sideways.
“Updrafts.” Lou compensated instantly, and her voice was dead calm, but Scott paled and took an even tighter grip on his handhold.
“Head up the mountain,” Malcolm said. They started forward again, following the burning road. All of them peered ahead.
“Almost there,” Scott said. “They should hear us by now. They should be standing out front.”
Malcolm wished it were so. They had reached the top of the ridge. Directly below them was the broad patch of gravel at road’s end, the stone bench, the overlook. Everything that surrounded it was in flames, shrouded in smoke. No one standing anywhere. “Stop. This is it.” His voice belonged to a stranger. A wave of nausea rocked him, and his eyes burned even though they could barely smell the smoke in the enclosed cabin.
Nirav. He would have been safer left to beg on the streets of Islamabad. All of Malcolm’s hopes for a new life, all his good intentions, gone. Nothing left but fire and smoke.
Lou circled the area at slow speed. Pete glanced her way and shook his head.
“Why are you stopping?” Scott’s voice was shrill and panicked. “Kat’s cottage is higher up. Above the fire. We need to keep going.”
No one answered. Malcolm couldn’t form the words to tell Scott he was wrong.
Fire was consuming everything below them—trees burning, shrubs burning, bright yellow flames mixed with the red glow of hot coals. An endless expanse of fire had surged directly up the steep mountainside, and it had already swallowed this whole stretch of land.
A shift in the breeze cleared the smoke for a moment. The cottage, what was left of it, sat directly below them, its roof and all four walls blazing. Scorched dirt, littered with burning branches and debris, replaced the yard the children and dogs had played in.
“Oh my god.” Scott’s face turned sickly white, and his whole body shook. He glared at Malcolm. “You said we would rescue them. You said we would beat the fire. What if they’re trapped? We have to go down. We have to get them out.” His voice screeched as it reverberated into the headphones.
Malcolm rested a hand on Scott’s shoulder. He had lost a son, and Scott had lost a daughter, but their feelings changed nothing. He shook his head. “We can’t go down. It’s an inferno.”
“You bastard, we can’t abandon them. What if they’re down there?”
Pete twisted in his chair to look at Scott. “No one’s alive down there.” His face showed his sympathy, but his flat voice emphasized his seriousness.
Malcolm had known that truth the instant they arrived, but hearing the words spoken out loud made it difficult to breathe. Then again … “No one would sit still for this fire.” His voice grew stronger. A faint glimmer of hope. “Kat must have taken the children. Left the cottage. We should search uphill—they would head directly away from the flames.”
“I hope not,” Pete said.
“What do you mean?” Malcolm asked. If only he knew more than the basics about forest fires.
She glanced back at both Scott and Malcolm, brown eyes in a worried face, and she must have seen their confusion.
“Picture the way a match burns when you hold it flat.” She held her left hand flat, palm down. “Then picture what happens when you tip it with the flame at the bottom.” She tilted her hand.
Malcolm could indeed picture it. Uphill would be a deathtrap, even if Kat and the children could have forced their way through. That tangled undergrowth needed a machete, and they had no skills to tackle something like that.
“A fire’s speed doubles with each ten-degree increase in slope.” Lou seemed to think they needed more detail.
Malcolm closed his eyes for an instant, the sharp reality slicing deep. Kat’s cottage had been the one with the view, the one with the steepest slope at its doorstep.
“TMI, Lou,” Pete said quietly. “TMI.”
Lou looked away, the back of her neck bright red. “Sorry.” She stopped talking.
Scott jostled Malcolm’s arm, leaning forward, searching the scene below as the helicopter continued to hover. Everything on fire. Nothing untouched. Soon there would be nothing left. Nothing at all.
“Wait.” Scott clutched Malcolm’s arm with frantic fingers. “Where’s Kat’s car? It’s not here. Steel wouldn’t burn. It’s gone!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THURSDAY, 8:30 AM
Nirav clung to the loose gravel of the rockslide, balanced at the very edge of the sheer drop. The sky glowed an eerie orange behind him, and its gray haze of smoke moved in their direction, making it even more difficult to see clearly.
“Nirav, don’t move.” Kat yelled so loud, her voice bounced back from all sides.
Nirav nodded, and then, apparently not understanding, he tried to pull one knee up under his body, sending a cascade of small stones over the drop-off.
“Stay, Nirav.” Lily yelled. “Stay.”
This time the boy froze.
Kat wanted nothing more than to plunge down the mountainside, grab Nirav’s hand, and yank him to safety. But she couldn’t race down such a steep slope. She glanced along the adjacent forest edge, looking for a less risky way down, for a long stick that could help her reach Nirav, for anything at all she could use. Nothing. She ran through the list of things she had with her.
“Lily, come here. Be careful.” They had to act fast, but she couldn’t risk losing Lily, too.
Lily, pale and shaking, sidestepped across the slope, and Kat gestured to the boulder she had fallen against.
“Sit here and don’t move.”
She picked Tye up and plunked him onto Lily’s lap, then rummaged in her shoulder bag and pulled out Juni’s leash. She disconnected Tye’s leash from his harness and clipped the two leashes together. Twelve feet. Not nearly long enough—she needed another twenty feet—but perhaps she could inch partway down and get close enough to toss one end to Nirav.
“Keep Juni with you,” she told Lily.
Kat sat down on a boulder-free patch of gravel and started scooting downhill on her butt. She moved as slowly as possible, a few inches at a time, but the stones she dislodged bounced down the slope and hit Nirav. He buried his head in his shoulder, trying to protect his face.
“Kat, stop! You’ll hurt him.”
Kat stopped. Screwing up again. She inched sideways three or four feet and tried again to edge downhill. She inched her way along for a third of the distance to Nirav, but then she began to slide, the drop-off frighteningly close. She grabbed at the loose gravel with her fingers. She dug in her heels, her sandals skewing sideways off her feet, her ankles twisting, sliding faster, out of control. She slid another two or three harrowing feet and then finally stopped. She couldn’t risk moving any farther.
Nirav lay motionless, still too far away for the leashes to reach. There had to be another way. Kat looked behind her, where Lily leaned forward, her face pinched, her eyes darting from Kat to Nirav and back. She had a restraining hand on Juni’s collar.
“Lily, let go of Juni. Juni, come. Come here, girl.”
The Lab hesitated, but then she stepped forward, sending stones cascading down onto Kat. Juni crouched low, and in only a few moments, she reached Kat, her head down and her tail tucked tight under her belly. Kat clipped one end of the double-length leash to her collar.
“What are you doing?” Lily called.
“Juni might be able to go where I can’t.” Kat patted the dog, then called down the hill. “Nirav, call Juni. Tell her to come.”
But Nirav didn’t seem to understand, and he asked what sounded like a question in Hindi, his English lost.
“Juni, go to Nirav. Go on.” Kat pointed.
Juni whined and nuzzled Kat’s pointing finger.
“Wait, I know,” Lily called.
Kat turned to see her emptying the shoulder bag. Nirav’s bowl, her wallet, her useless car keys. With a joyous shout, Lily pulled out one of Juni’s tennis balls and held it up to show Kat.
“Give this to Juni,” she called.
Of course. The game. “Throw gently.” Kat twisted around as best she could.
Lily gave an underhanded toss that threatened to fling the ball all the way to the bottom of the slope, and Kat leaned far to the side, reaching with outstretched fingers. She bobbled the ball once, but then got a firm grasp. She held it out to Juni.
The Lab took the ball in her mouth, and then Lily called to her. “Take it to Nirav, Juni. Take it to Nirav.”
The children had played this simple game a dozen times, trading off turns at throwing the ball. Juni gave a feeble wag to her tail. She once again crouched low and began picking her way down the slope, sliding and skidding a bit, but heading straight toward Nirav. The leash tumbled with her as she went, and Kat held her breath as the dog crept ever closer. Seven feet to go. Five feet. Two. At last she made it, and Nirav grabbed the end of the double-length leash with his good hand.
“Juni, come. Come here.” Kat used the most commanding voice she could muster, and Juni stopped and stared back at her, the ball still in her mouth. “Come here, girl, come on.”
Juni looked back and forth between Nirav and Kat, but at last she turned around and clambered back uphill, scrambling more than she had on the way down, slipping once to land hard on her chest and then struggling to regain her footing. As she pulled, she dragged Nirav away from the edge of the drop-off. She stopped once, but Lily and Kat both called her. Juni again shouldered into Nirav’s added weight and forged onward. Almost safe. Kat could breathe again. Between Juni’s pull and Nirav’s scrambling efforts, the two made steady progress.
When Juni reached her, Kat grabbed the leash and helped Nirav the rest of the way up. She paused to hug him hard for a moment, then urged him to move again. Nirav clung to Kat, his hand clutching her wrist so tightly it threatened to cut off the circulation to her hand, making it awkward to crawl uphill. Rocks stabbed her hands and knees. Together, they inched their way toward Lily. When they finally reached the boulder where Lily waited, Kat sagged against it.
“Good girl,” Kat said over and over to the Lab. Juni wiggled ecstatically over all the attention, still hanging on to her precious tennis ball, and Tye barked, caught up in the excitement.
Nirav’s face, arms, and legs were scratched and bruised, and his cheeks were tear-streaked, but his quiet voice joined in the chorus. “Good girl.”
“Lily, you saved us with that tennis ball.”
Lily straightened, and she gave a half smile, the first since they’d left the cottage behind. Sara used to smile like that, half pleased, half embarrassed, when anyone complimented her, and Kat choked down a lump at the resemblance.
She wiped her free hand on her shorts, leaving bloody streaks, and she glanced at a jagged cut on her knee that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. “Okay. Let’s get off this rockslide.”
She reattached Tye’s leash to his harness, but this
time she tied the other end to Juni’s collar to ensure the two dogs stayed together and out from underfoot.
“Lily, grab that stuff, put it back in my bag, and hand it to me. Then you hold on to the end of Juni’s leash.”
Kat waited for everyone to get situated, then took the ball from Juni and tossed it into the greenery on the far edge of the rockslide. Juni started forward after her toy, taking Tye with her, and Lily hung on to the leash and followed. Kat gripped Lily’s hand and pulled Nirav in her wake. Rocks still tumbled out beneath them, each step precarious, but Juni’s forward pull helped them keep their balance. When they finally stepped onto ordinary dirt, Kat pulled both children into her arms and hung on tight, her body shaking in relief at making the crossing. Too close to disaster. Far too close. She’d probably been wrong to even try to bring them across.
She turned them loose reluctantly.
Lily glanced down. “Oh no—Kat—your feet.” She pointed to Kat’s sandals. Rocks had torn their soles ragged, and blood oozed from the edges to stain the ground.
Kat kicked off one shoe and hung on to Lily’s shoulder to peer at the bottom of her foot. Cuts crisscrossed the sole, dripping steadily, and the blisters that had formed under the straps had ripped wide open. She had hardly felt the damage while trying to reach Nirav, but now that she could see her shredded foot, the pain exploded. She slipped her sandal back on and didn’t bother to inspect the other foot. No water to clean the cuts. Nothing to wrap her feet in. She didn’t even have enough energy left to freak out over the blood.
“You can’t walk. You’re bleeding.” Lily’s voice trembled in a mix of sympathy and fear.
“Give me a minute.” Walking would be torture, but as they stood there, a shift of wind carried a particularly dense cloud of smoke and cinders toward them. Kat and Nirav both coughed, a needless reminder that the fire still chased them.
Kat reached into her back pocket and pulled out her cell phone to see if that first hard fall had inflicted any serious damage. She held her palm over the screen for a moment, afraid to look. Then she uncovered it.
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