by Pamela Clare
Her biological father had been a drug dealer who had used and abused Megan, fueling her heroin addiction, getting her pregnant, then abandoning her and her unborn baby to prison. Emily had seen that bastard only once, though she’d had no idea who he was. He’d broken into Megan’s home demanding money. Emily had seen him hurt Megan. She’d also witnessed his death. Nate had found him about to rape Megan and had ended the son of a bitch’s life with a double tap. One day, when Emily was older, Nate would have to explain to her that the man he’d killed that terrible night was her biological father.
But not today.
Chase climbed up on the fence beside him to watch his cousin ride, a big smile on his face. He looked so much like his father—a mini-Marc.
“Uncle Nate said you could stay here for a week if you want to,” Sophie said. “Do you think you’d like that?”
Chase gaped at his mother. “Hell, yes!”
Nate tried not to laugh. “He’s been spending too much time with my old man.”
Sophie shook her head. “I think he may have gotten that from his father.”
Then Nate saw Chuck, the foreman, hurrying toward them.
“What’s up?”
“The fire—it’s grown a lot in the past few minutes. It’s not a column of smoke now. Looks to me like it’s turned into the real thing.”
“Shit.” Nate followed Chuck to the other side of the corral where buildings wouldn’t block his view of the mountains.
Chuck pointed, but Nate didn’t need help finding it.
“Holy hell.”
What had been a wispy column of smoke had grown into a wall.
“Get on the radio and get the men moving. My father will want us to head up to Scarlet with every horse trailer we have before they close the highways. They’ll be evacuating the areas west of town, I’m sure, and some folks won’t be home to move their horses. They’ll need our help to save their animals.”
“On it.”
Nate turned back toward the corral to give his daughter the bad news that her ride was being cut short. He would be driving one of the trailers.
But Sophie stood behind him, her gaze fixed on the smoke, fear in her eyes. “Marc and Julian are still up there.”
Nate knew what Sophie had been through this past year and a half. He’d grappled with PTSD himself thanks to an IED and third-degree burns. He knew how it felt when your mind believed you were just another breath away from some new terror.
He rested a hand on her shoulder. “They’re with McBride and Sheriff Pella. They’ll be safe.”
Chapter 7
Brandon worked the hose, dousing spot fires, while Hawke drove the brush truck. The air was choked with smoke now, the heat intense as upcanyon winds breathed life into the blaze.
He heard in his earpiece when Hawke again pushed Robertson and Sheriff Pella for state and federal support.
“We’re losing any hope of containing this thing. Initial attack is going to fail. We need a couple of type-one crews and aircraft now!”
This time Roberson agreed. “We’ve got ladder fuels igniting, spot fires popping up across the road and—”
Jenny Miller’s voice cut in. “A tree just ignited about ten yards upslope from the fire. It’s spotting up the mountainside heading west.”
Hawke answered immediately. “Get out of there, Miller! Now!”
Brandon looked to the west, saw another tree go up and another, flames rising into the forest canopy, trees becoming torches, the fire moving in Miller’s direction.
The wind had it. The fire was about to run.
Another spot fire.
Brandon hosed it down as Hawke drove slowly forward. The brush truck held only three hundred gallons. It wouldn’t last long.
They went on like this for another few minutes, smoke at times making it hard for Brandon to see.
Hawke spoke into his mic. “Miller, are you down yet?”
Silence.
“Miller, do you copy?”
The area where she’d stood lookout was engulfed.
Son of a bitch.
A burst of static.
“Sorry, chief. I was using my hands to downclimb. I’m almost out.”
Brandon let out a relieved breath, aimed the jet of water through the smoke toward the glowing orange of open flame. The water slowed to a trickle … and stopped.
He reached for his hand mic. “Hey, chief, we’re empty.”
It was the deafening sound that turned his head, the jet-engine roar of a fire blowing up.
He watched, unable to do anything, as the mountainside to the west of the creek went up in flame, the fire seeming to roll and leap uphill, a living thing, bathing the scene in an eerie orange glow. For a moment, all work ceased, the raw force of the fire turning firefighters into powerless spectators.
What the hell good were forty men and women with hand tools against this?
Hawke’s voice sounded in Brandon’s earpiece, breaking the spell. “We’ve got a blowup. This thing is making a run up Tungsten Peak and spotting to the east of the creek and north up the valley. We need air support now! Miller, where the hell are you?”
A human form in yellow and green moved toward them through the smoke, waving. “Here, chief.”
Brandon closed the dump valve, disconnected the hose, Miller joining him to help fold and stow it.
Her gaze met his for just a moment, and he could tell she was shaken. “I’ve never seen anything move that fast.”
“You did great. Way to haul ass.”
They listened to the radio traffic as they worked. Hawke ordered his crews to grab their gear and get the hell off the line. Robertson called his crew off the fire’s flanks and asked the sheriff to order a mandatory evacuation via reverse 911 of Ski Scarlet and all areas to the west of town up to the highway, including Camp Mato Sapa.
But Brandon’s mind went to one person.
Libby.
She was safe at Knockers, but her house was inside the mandatory evac zone. When she heard about the evacuation order, she would probably rush home to rescue her vinyl collection. She was impulsive like that.
He finished stowing the hose and climbed into the brush truck, coughing at the smoke that filled the little valley. He searched for his cell phone to warn her not to do anything crazy. The phone wasn’t in any of his pockets or his PG bag. He’d probably left the damned thing at the firehouse when he’d been making calls trying to find Bear.
Shit.
He probably wouldn’t have gotten any signal here anyway.
“What’s the plan now, chief?” Miller asked.
Hawke started up the engine, glowing embers blowing past the vehicle’s windows and skittering across the hood to land on the east side of the road where they ignited grass and shrub and stump and tree.
“We head back to the station, refill the truck, and move with everything we’ve got to the parking lot at Ski Scarlet to set up fire camp. Then we’ll try to get a backburn going off Piñon Road. We are not letting this thing take our town.” He called for Taylor over the radio. “Have you found Bear?”
“Negative. I’ve been ordered to close county parks and…” Static made the rest of Taylor’s words unintelligible.
“Damn it!” Hawke drove through thick smoke back the way they’d come.
Brandon watched out the window as the landscape they’d tried to save quickly succumbed to flames.
Jesse had his earplugs in and his chainsaw running when the call to evacuate went out over the radio, so he didn’t hear it. He only knew something was up when Kevin, one of the senior patrollers, rode up on an ATV and motioned to Jesse’s radio.
Jesse cut the saw, pulled out his earplugs. “What’s up?”
“The fire is headed our way. We’ve been ordered to evacuate.”
“Shit.” Jesse put his saw on the back of the ATV, grabbed his gear bag, and took a seat next to Kevin. “Who else is still out here?”
“Travis hasn’t replied either. He’s our
lookout.”
They found Travis playing air guitar on top of a rock on the west side of Eagle Ridge, earbuds in his ears.
“Travis!” Jesse bellowed in the voice he’d used to terrify E4s in the army.
Travis whirled to face them, jerked the earbuds off his head. “Shit! You scared me.”
Kevin wasn’t happy. “Be glad Moretti and I found you and not the boss. You’re supposed to be watching our backs.”
Travis motioned toward the west. “I’ve been watching. The fire—”
Jesse pointed. “If you’d been paying attention, you’d have noticed that the little wisp of white smoke is now a dark mushroom cloud.”
Travis turned to look, the wind blowing off his baseball cap. “Whoa.”
Kevin pointed to the ATV with his thumb. “We’ve been ordered to evacuate. Get your shit, and get on.”
Travis jumped off the rock, ran after his hat, grabbed his gear, and piled on.
On skis, they’d have been back down to the ski patrol office in ten minutes. Riding a damned ATV over bumpy ground took much longer. By the time they reached the lodge, trucks from Scarlet FD, the county, and the National Forest Service were rolling into the parking lot—brush trucks, a couple of Type 3 wildland apparatus, a big pumper tanker with a ladder, and a mobile command center.
The sight of so much hardware had Jesse looking over his shoulder.
“Jesus.”
Thick gray smoke filled the sky to the northwest of Eagle Ridge.
Jesse stowed his gear while Kevin parked the ATV and then jogged out to the parking lot in search of Hawke. Jesse spotted him near the command vehicle.
He was covered with sweat and soot and shouting into his cell phone. “What about Colorado National Guard? They’ve got helos that can be outfitted with buckets and tanks. I don’t give a goddamn how much they cost!”
Hawke made eye contact. “We’re talking about homes and human lives here.”
Jesse held up his red card—his wildland firefighting certification.
Hawke nodded, pointed to Brandon Silver, who stood about twenty yards to Jesse’s left, drinking from a water bottle.
Jesse showed his red card again. “Got any gear I can borrow?”
Brandon nodded, sweat making rivulets in the soot on his face. “You look like you’re about my size. I’ve got a spare brush shirt in my bag.”
Jesse put the brush shirt over his T-shirt, grabbed his helmet and a Pulaski, and stood with Silver. “This thing as bad as it looks?”
Brandon nodded. “It went from six-inch flame lengths to crown fire in a matter of minutes. Hawke called it first thing this morning. He was afraid this was going to happen. He’s been trying to get ahold of air assets all day and keeps running into bureaucratic bullshit. Hey, which way to the latrines?”
“Bottom floor, main lodge.” Jesse pulled out his cell phone and called Ellie as Brandon headed in the direction he’d pointed.
“Are you on your way home? I heard the ski resort is being evacuated.”
“I’m going to stay and do what I can to help. Brandon Silver had an extra brush shirt, and they’ve got plenty of tools.”
“Oh.”
He could tell Ellie wasn’t happy about this. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to do anything crazy.”
“You? Do anything crazy?” She laughed. “Why would I ever think that?”
“You should take the kids and head with your parents down to Boulder for the afternoon, maybe visit your sister or go swimming or something.”
For a moment, she said nothing.
“You think it’s that serious?”
Well, she’d read between his lines, hadn’t she?
“With this wind and as dry as it’s been … It might be.”
“I should stay to help in case the hospital has to evacuate. They’ll need every hand they can get.”
“Ellie…” What could he say?
He wanted to help, and so did she. But if she stayed, so did Dylan. He was only three months old and breastfed. He couldn’t be away from his mother for long.
“Please go, Ellie. I’ll be able to concentrate on doing my job if I know you and the kids are away from this and safe.”
“Okay. I’ll call my parents and Claire and see if they mind us invading this afternoon.”
Claire, Ellie’s sister, lived with her husband, Cedar, in Boulder.
“Good.”
“You truly believe we could be in danger?”
“It’s happened before, right? Scarlet burned to the ground once before.”
“Right.”
“How are the kids?” Jesse missed them when he was at work. There was nothing better than stepping through that door at the end of the day and having the twins shout, “Daddy!”
“Dylan is sleeping. Daniel and Daisy are in the yard playing dinosaurs. I hear lots of scary roars.”
“Kiss them for me.”
“I will. I love you, Jesse. Be safe. We need you.”
“I love you, too.”
Ellie had lost one husband already, and Jesse would do his damned best to make sure she wasn’t widowed a second time.
Joaquin Ramirez removed the lawnmower’s dirty air filter and took the new one out of its packaging. “I like Matías.”
“What about Alejandro?” Mia sat on a reclining patio chair, scrolling through baby names on her smartphone and looking sexy as hell—and very round—in a bikini top and sarong, her red hair piled on top of her head.
“Nah, man. My cousin would think we named the baby after him.”
Mia was thirty-six weeks pregnant now, so it was time for them to get serious about this naming business. They’d known it was a boy since their 20-weeks scan, and they still hadn’t settled on a name. Then again, Joaquin still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that he was about to become a father.
He’d met Mia almost a year and a half ago while shooting a crime scene. She’d been a person of interest in the case, but he’d looked into her angry blue eyes and had known she was innocent. He’d been in over his head from that moment, and now…
A wife who loved him, a son—that was something that happened to other guys.
“But I like Alejandro.”
“The name or my cousin?”
Mia laughed. “Both.”
Joaquin fit the new air filter into its cover, slipped the tabs into place, and screwed the cover back on. “Now try to stall on me, cabrón.”
“How about Rafael?”
Rafael Ramirez.
“It has a ring to it, but it makes me think of ninja turtles.” Joaquin put away his tools and got to his feet.
“Sebastián?”
“Maybe.” He pushed the lawnmower out to the spot on the lawn where it had stalled on him and yanked on the starter cord, gratified when it started.
“Oh, come on! Sebastián is a nice name.”
He finished the back yard, which Mia had transformed from a big rectangle of shitty soil to a lush garden. Okay, so Joaquin had helped, but she was the horticulturalist in the family. She had forgotten more about plants and flowers than Joaquin would ever know.
That chore done, he pushed the mower into the shed and had just locked the door when he heard Mia call for him. He turned to find her holding up his cell phone.
“It’s Tom.”
Shit.
So much for a relaxing weekend.
He walked back to the patio and took his phone from Mia, who had that “I’m going to kill your boss” look on her face. “Ramirez here.”
“Hey, I need you in the field today.” Tom Trent, the editor-in-chief of the Denver Independent, was the best editor Joaquin had ever known.
He was also a pain in the ass.
“What’s up?” As the paper’s senior photographer, Joaquin was no longer expected to be on call on weekends—unless something major happened.
“There’s a wildfire burning out of control west of Scarlet Springs. There’s a mandatory evacuation in effect for the
ski resort and the mountains up to the highway. I need someone up there—now. This might be the fire that burns Scarlet Springs off the map.”
“Who are you assigning to the story?”
“I tried reaching Alton and James. They share the environmental beat. James isn’t answering, and Alton has her kids. I guess her husband is already up there doing some kind of damned police exercise.”
Alton was Sophie’s maiden name, but Tom still used it as if she’d never married. As for Kat James, she and Gabe often went to visit Kat’s family on the Navajo Reservation.
“Marc Hunter is already up there?” He and Joaquin were good friends.
“That’s what I said. I’m sending Leah Tanaka, a rookie from the news side, to report on this. She’ll meet you at the municipal airport in ten. I cut a deal with Channel Twelve. You’re flying up in their helicopter with their news crew.”
It wouldn’t be Joaquin’s first time in a helicopter.
“Got it.” Joaquin ended the call, turned to Mia, saw the disappointment on her face. “Sorry, but there’s a big fire west of Scarlet Springs.”
“That’s not good. Isn’t the Cimarron up that way?”
“It is, but it sounds like this fire is burning west of town. The ranch is north of Scarlet. He drew her into his arms. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Be safe up there, okay? Don’t take any risks.”
He kissed her hair. “I won’t.”
He hurried inside, changed into a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and grabbed his camera bag, which he kept ready to go at all times.
Mia met him at the door with a filled water bottle and a bag of snacks—an apple, a couple of energy bars, some trail mix, a cheese stick. “You might need these.”
“Thanks.” He stuck the bag and the bottle into the outside pocket of his camera bag, kissed his wife, and grabbed his keys. “Sorry about this.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’ll keep in touch.”
“Cell coverage is probably spotty up there.”