Tessa smiled sweetly, a note of sarcasm in her voice. “Yes, I’m sure they’re staying out of danger like they always do. They’re such wallflowers.”
Sophie’s brow furrowed at this. “They scare the hell out of me.”
Mia stepped inside the room again. “Your mother and grandmother are getting impatient to see you.”
“Zach is out there, too.” Sophie pulled out her phone. “We should go and give them a turn. But first a quick selfie so we can show everyone you’re alive.”
She and Tessa arranged themselves with Joaquin and Mia between them.
Click.
Sophie glanced at the photo. “Perfect.”
“We’ll get these to the paper,” Tessa said.
Sophie found a safe place to plant a kiss. “Feel better, okay?”
Tessa did the same. “I’m so glad you’re safe. Mia, let us know if you need anything.”
Mia hugged them both. “Thanks for being there. It meant so much to me.”
The two turned and walked away as Joaquin’s mother and grandmother walked in, his dear, oldabuelitaholding her rosary.
“¡Pobrecito!” His mother hugged him. “You scared your mother to death.”
Jesse climbedinto the brush truck, breathing hard. He’d been working a small backburn in the canyon on the fire’s southern flank, trying to keep the blaze from fingering off again. He was slick with sweat, covered with soot, and thirsty as hell.
Jenny Miller handed him a cold bottle of water. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He twisted off the top, drank.
He and some of the other volunteers had been pulled off the line to work with Jenny and Hawke’s A-shift in a last defense of Scarlet Springs. They would start on the western edge of Scarlet proper, spraying down houses and businesses so that embers carried off the ridge by high winds wouldn’t start new fires.
“We need to protect the town so it will be here when the head of the fire comes to burn it down,” Ryan, Hawke’s A-shift captain, had joked.
Chuckles.
But everyone was wondering the same thing: Did they stand a chance against this beast?
Thanks to the fan guns, the blaze was twenty-percent contained, but it was the other eighty percent that worried Jesse.
Jenny wet a pink bandana and wiped her face. “Any news about Hawke and Silver?”
Jesse shook his head. “Nothing since they found them.”
They drove through smoke from the backburn above Scarlet down into town, turning left to reach the western-most edge of the town proper. The houses on the thickly forested slopes above them were too dangerous to protect, but this space in the valley was defensible.
They parked in the hospital parking lot, where Ryan gathered everyone together.
“Listen up!” Ryan looked up at the smoke above them. “We don’t have much time. We’re going to roll through town starting with Quarry Street, and we’re going to water down the rooftops and the trees. Before the flaming front reaches the backburn on Dead Man’s Hill above town, the wind is going to start showering this place with embers. We’re going to put those out. But if the fire breaks past the backburn and backs down the mountainside, we will evacuate to the reservoir. Quarry Street is our get-the-fuck-out trigger. I don’t want anyone else to end up at the burn center. Is that clear?”
Heads nodded.
“Any news about the chief and Silver?” someone called from the back.
“Not since they were evacuated.”
Ryan divided them up, assigning crews to different trucks, and set them loose. “Let’s do this for Hawke!”