Chasing Fire: An I-Team/Colorado High Country Crossover Novel

by Pamela Clare

  Conrad caught her with a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think you should drive.”

  “Saint Barbara’s has a bus we can borrow for the kids,” Deputy Marcs called out to them. “Let’s get everyone together there.”

  “You can ride with me,” Conrad said. “One of the counselors can drive the van to the church. We’ll regroup there and get you all to safety at the fairgrounds.”

  Naomi nodded, barely aware of what was happening around her as Conrad led her toward his SUV. Then Kat was there.

  There were tears on Kat’s cheeks, but she smiled and hugged Naomi tight. “We’ll get through this together, no matter what. You won’t be alone.”

  In that moment, Kat’s words meant everything to Naomi.

  Her eyes filled with tears, her throat tight. “Thanks.”

  It took what seemed like an eternity to reach the parking lot at St. Barbara’s, where the priest, Father Pemberthy, stood waiting for them beside a big yellow school bus.

  Naomi fought to pull herself together, fear making her feel sick. But she didn’t know anything for certain yet, and right now, the children needed her. She couldn’t fall apart.

  Chaska!

  Conrad parked his vehicle, the hollow look in his eyes telling Naomi that he was suffering, too. What had Chaska said to her about getting through the inipi when she’d freaked out over the darkness and the heat?

  When it gets tough and you don’t think you can take it, pray for the person next to you. They’re having a hard time of it, too.

  Naomi sent up a prayer for Conrad, for Megs and Ahearn, for Kat, for Chaska and Gabe and Grandpa and all the camp counselors and the kids. It didn’t take her pain away, but praying seemed to bring her back to herself.

  She reached out, touched Conrad’s arm. “Please don’t blame yourself. I know you did everything you could.”

  Conrad squeezed his eyes shut. “We weren’t even sure anyone was still at the camp, not after Julia and Kat passed us on the road. The fire got ahead of us on the way out. If I had known they were still there … But even then … Shit. I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s nothing more you could have done. Like you say, there’s still hope.”

  Naomi clung to that hope, somehow managing to walk to where the kids stood in a neat line to board the bus. “Settle down, everyone.”

  She took a quick headcount to reassure herself.

  Thirty-nine children, not counting Kat and Gabe’s kids.

  No, that couldn’t be right. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She’d gotten it wrong.

  They couldn’t have left a child behind. They couldn’t have.

  Fighting to keep calm, she started counting again.

  Tina, one of the counselors, ran up to her. “Dean is missing. One of the kids saw him run and hide in the tipi when we were loading the van.”

  Naomi’s heart seemed to shatter.

  Chapter 13

  Teeth chattering, Austin waded on stiff legs to the water’s edge, treading on blackened reeds and tripping on charred, fallen branches until he stepped on dry, scorched earth. The fire had passed to the northeast, rolling onward like a tsunami, the roar distant, gray smoke blotting out sunlight.

  Holy fuck.

  He was alive. Apart from hypothermia and a touch of smoke inhalation, he was fine.

  He glanced around at the changed landscape, charred trunks standing where there had once been forest, scrub and duff burned down to the soil. Flames lapped at smoldering logs, smoke twisting in the wind, the air still acrid. Out in the middle of the lake, the moose was now grazing, the fire already forgotten. Apart from that, there was no sign of life—no birds singing, no animals, no Bear.

  Austin trudged along in wet clothing and boots, making his way toward his truck, slowed by bone-deep cold. It had to be eighty degrees outside today. If he kept moving, he’d warm up.

  Okay, so that’s not how hypothermia worked.

  He needed help.

  Once he reached his truck, he would check in with Dispatch and head back to town. He’d drowned both his handheld radio and cell phone in the lake—not that either of them worked up here anyway.

  Yeah, Sutherland wasn’t going to like his losing a radio. He’d probably take money out of Austin’s paycheck to replace it.

  Shit.

  Then again, a few thousand bucks wasn’t a bad price to pay for being alive—and saving the journal and photograph from destruction.

  God, it had been close.

  If he had tripped, if he had kept running for his truck instead of the lake…

  The thought made him shiver—or maybe that was the hypothermia.

  He knew more about wildfire now than he’d ever wanted to know—the unbearable heat, the deafening roar, the way the trees seemed to scream and groan as flames consumed them. When heat radiating off the blaze had become too hot for him, he’d ducked all the way under, only to inhale smoke when he’d come back up for air.

  In that moment, he’d thought it was over, that he was a goner. He’d coughed his lungs out, thoughts of Lexi and Emily racing through his mind. How much he was going to hurt them by leaving them like this. How Emily was almost the same age as Lexi had been when her mother had died. How he’d always thought that he and Lexi would have more children.

  What a lucky son of a bitch he was. Lexi still had a husband. Emily still had her father. And he and Lexi could still have more children. Unless he collapsed out here and went into a fucking hypothermic coma.

  He found himself grinning at the idiotic thought of freezing to death on a hot summer day because of a fire, except that it wasn’t funny.

  Keep moving.

  His legs were sluggish, his feet clumsy as he stumbled over the blackened ground like a drunk. If he stopped now, he might not get moving again. He needed to get to his truck, call in, get help.

  Then it struck him.

  They probably thought he was dead.

  They knew where he’d gone. They must know that the fire had burned through here. They would expect him to have hauled his ass out of here by now. Though they knew his handheld radio couldn’t reach them, the radio in his truck could. They would know from his silence that something had gone wrong.

  Maybe they would send help.

  And maybe you’d better get out your first-aid kit and grab the emergency blanket.

  Okay, he could do that.

  He lowered his pack to the ground and found it singed, small holes burned through the fabric by embers, some of the straps partially melted. He opened the front pocket and pulled out the folded square of reflective fabric. Cold must have dulled his brain because it took him a few minutes to figure out how to unfold the thing.

  It could be worse.

  He could be lying dead here.

  He slipped on his pack again, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and set off toward the truck once more. With no forest to block his view, he could see part of his truck where it sat to the west and up on the road. It wasn’t too much farther now—maybe three hundred yards.

  He could make that—no problem.

  One foot in front of the other.

  His boots stepped on something that snapped. He stopped, looked down, saw bone and quill. The remains of a porcupine. It never had a chance. It had probably taken shelter in a tree. There’s no way it could have outrun a conflagration like this on its stubby little legs.

  Damn it!

  Fire was a natural part of this ecosystem. Austin knew that. But he’d become a ranger because he loved the mountains, the forests, and all the creatures that lived here. This felt like standing over the corpse of a murdered friend.

  God, he hoped the sheriff caught the bastard who’d started the blaze. All of this death and destruction because some asshole refused to follow the rules.

  “I’m sorry, buddy,” he said to the porcupine.

  He moved on, stepping over charred branches, avoiding patches of brush that were still burning and trees that looked like they might topple. He clim
bed up the embankment toward the road. It would be easier and safer to follow it back to the truck than clambering around through the charred and smoldering remains of the forest.

  He reached the road, and then he saw it clearly. “Son of a bitch!”

  His truck was burned out, a smoking hulk.

  He jogged toward it, hoping to find the radio still intact despite the damage. He reached the vehicle and glanced through a shattered window, holding his breath against the toxic fumes of methyl-ethyl-badstuff coming from burned wires, plastic, and upholstery.

  Fuck!

  The radio was slag.

  He hoped Hawke or Sutherland had sent help. If not, it was going to be a long damned walk back to Scarlet Springs.

  Kenzie handed the cage with the adorable little skunk kittens to Jack. The little creatures were curious, glancing around them, but they didn’t seem afraid—thank goodness. No one wanted to get sprayed.

  “Where’s your mama?” Jack asked them.

  “She was hit by a car.” Winona walked up behind Kenzie, holding an aquarium with a snake inside. “Someone found them sitting near their mother’s body up on the highway and brought them in.”

  “What happened to him?” Jack motioned toward the snake with a jerk of his head.

  “A bicyclist ran over his tail—on purpose, they say.”

  “What the hell is wrong with people?” Jack disappeared inside his trailer with the baby skunks, Winona following him with the snake.

  The trailer was almost full of animals of all kinds—mountain lion cubs, baby skunks, rabbits, raccoons, raptors, and now a snake, too. Kenzie didn’t know what she and Winona would have done without Jack and Nate West or Marc, Julian and their friend Zach, for that matter. She and Winona wouldn’t have been able to move all the animals on their own.

  The plan was to transport the wildlife to the fairgrounds in the trailer, together with two dogs from Kenzie’s vehicle, who would ride in Jack’s cab, making room for Shota’s crate in the back of Kenzie’s truck. The wolf wasn’t going to fit in Winona’s old car. That much was certain.

  Julian stepped out of the clinic carrying a large crate in which rested a wounded bald eaglet, a hood covering its eyes to keep it calm. “I think this is the last of the carriers. Hunter and McBride should be coming along in a moment with the moose calf.”

  He grinned, as if the thought of this amused him.

  Then Harrison pulled up to the curb in his SUV.

  Thank goodness!

  She smiled, and waved to him, relieved to see that he was safely back from the rescue. But one look at his face told her something had gone terribly wrong.

  He climbed out, walked over to her, the anguish in his eyes making her pulse skip.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  He looked behind her as if searching for someone, then lowered his voice. “We never made it. The fire burned through the camp, chased us out.”

  Kenzie’s heart sank, her stomach knotting. “All those children.”

  “Most of the kids got out. One is missing. But Belcourt, his grandpa, Rossiter, and three camp counselors volunteered to stay behind because there wasn’t room for everyone in the vehicles.”

  “Oh, God.”

  The Belcourts, Gabe Rossiter and Kat—they were friends, people she’d known for years.

  “Kat and Naomi know. I told them.”

  Kenzie took her husband in her arms. “God, you’re brave.”

  “If I had known there were still people at the camp… The fire had burned down to the road and got ahead of us. For a minute or two, I thought we were dead.”

  She held him closer, sickened by the thought. “Thank God you’re safe.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kenzie knew some part of him would blame himself for this. He’d lost his best friend on Mt. Everest and had gone through hell in the aftermath, traumatized by the accident, wracked with survivor’s guilt. The grief had almost destroyed him.

  And now this…

  A helicopter passed overhead, flying toward the reservoir to refill its water tank, hose dangling from its belly.

  He drew back. “I need to tell Winona.”

  The knot in Kenzie’s stomach tightened, her heart breaking for Win.

  Kenzie turned toward the trailer, pointed. “She’s in there. She’s been so worried about them. God, I can’t believe this. It doesn’t seem real.”

  Winona walked down the ramp, saw Harrison—and stopped.

  Kenzie’s chest ached. She tucked her hand in Harrison’s and followed him to where Winona stood, trepidation in every feature on her face.

  “Did you get everyone out?” Win’s voice was even, steady, calm.

  Harrison shook his head, held Kenzie’s hand tighter. “All but one of the kids and most of the counselors escaped. Chaska, your grandfather, Gabe Rossiter, and three counselors stayed behind because there wasn’t room in the vehicles. We tried to get to them, but fire had already burned through the camp. We barely made it back ourselves.”

  The breath left Winona’s lungs on a little cry, and her shoulders sagged, her eyes going wide. “So … they’re all … dead?”

  That last word was a whisper.

  “We don’t know that for sure. Maybe they found a way—”

  “Did you say Gabe Rossiter?” Julian was there now, stunned surprise on his face. “He and Kat are good friends of ours.”

  Harrison repeated some of what he’d told Winona. “He, Chaska Belcourt, Grandpa Belcourt, and some camp counselors chose to stay so that others could escape. One of the kids is missing. The boy apparently hid when they evacuated the others. Hawke has asked a chopper to check for survivors.”

  A muscle clenched in Julian’s jaw, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. “Fuck.”

  But at the word “survivors,” Winona sank to the sidewalk.

  Kenzie hurried to her side, knelt next to her, wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders. “Chaska and Gabe are smart. If anyone can find a way out of this alive, they can.”

  Winona held tightly to her hand, her eyes squeezed shut.

  “What about Kat? Does she know?” Julian asked.

  Harrison nodded. “I told her. She’s in a bus heading down the canyon with Chaska’s wife, Naomi, and the counselors and kids from the camp.”

  Jack stepped out of the trailer, the lines on his face telling Kenzie he’d overheard. “What a damned awful thing.”

  A bawling sound brought everyone’s heads around

  Zach and Marc stood there with the moose calf on a makeshift halter, grim expressions on their faces.

  “What happened to Rossiter?” Marc asked, an edge to his voice.

  Kenzie hadn’t realized all these people knew each other. She listened, still holding Winona’s hand as Harrison repeated what he’d told the others.

  Marc bent almost double at the waist as if someone had kicked him in the stomach, while Zach turned away from them, his head down.

  “Winona’s brother, Chaska Belcourt, and her grandfather stayed behind, too.”

  “What a damned awful thing,” Jack said again.

  The moose calf let out another cry.

  Winona’s head came up. With a single breath, she seemed to swallow both fear and grief. “He’s scared. Let’s get him inside.”

  She stood and, with tears still on her cheek, led the little moose into the trailer, speaking softly to it in Lakota and working with Jack to secure the little guy in one of the horse stalls. “Let’s get the fawns. Then I need to tranq Shota.”

  Eric listened while Dispatch gave him the sitrep on rescue operations, struggling to hear over the engine of the SEAT as it flew overhead with a belly full of flame retardant.

  “The rescue pilot says they’re grounded. Engine trouble. He cannot get airborne.”

  Damn it!

  If there were survivors at Mato Sapa, they needed urgent medical help. So would Taylor.

  If he’s still alive.

  There wasn’t time for engine repairs�
�or for another helicopter to fly in from Denver or Colorado Springs.

  Eric clicked his mic. “Have Helicopter Ninety-Eight Echo meet me on the hospital’s helipad. I’ll head to Camp Mato Sapa and Haley Preserve myself. I’m transferring Incident Command to Superintendent Tall Bull.”

  The helicopter wasn’t big enough to carry lots of wounded, but he could at least start first aid and evacuate some survivors.

  Tall Bull loaded his guys up for the drive to the top of Dead Man’s Hill, which he and Eric had decided was the critical holding point. It was the last ridge overlooking Scarlet. Their combined crews would start another backburn and work with the Skycrane and the two SEATs to stop the main head of the fire there. Tall Bull had called NIFC and the Rocky Mountain Control Center and asked for another Type 1 crew and the Supertanker—a 747 jet that could drop almost 20,000 gallons of flame retardant at a time.

  Whether they would get it in time was anyone’s guess.

  If the blaze got around them this time, there would be nowhere for them to fall back to without surrendering the town.

  Eric called for his best paramedic. “Silver!”

  Silver stood not far away, refilling his water bottles. “Yeah, chief?”

  “Load a couple advanced first-aid kits and a few burn kits into my truck, and let’s roll. I’ve got a helicopter on its way to meet us on the hospital helipad.”

  Silver set off at a jog.

  Eric walked over to Tall Bull, who’d overheard his exchange with Dispatch. “I’ll be back on the line as soon as I can.”

  Tall Bull nodded. “Good luck.”

  Eric met Silver at the brush truck. “Did you find what we need?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eric motioned to the photographer. “You coming?”

  “Hell, yeah.” Ramirez followed him and Silver to the truck, camera bag on his shoulder.

  Eric didn’t know any other way to say this, so he just came out with it. “If we find human remains, I won’t let you take photos. These are our friends.”

  “One of them is my friend, too. If there are human remains, I wouldn’t even try to take photos. I’m not an asshole.”

  Eric liked this guy. He, Ramirez, and Brandon climbed into the truck and started down the mountain toward town. The sheriff had closed the westbound lanes in Boulder Canyon, opening both to eastbound vehicles and resolving the traffic jam.