Austin was safe. Bear was safe, too.
Eric exhaled. He wasn’t sure he could have lived with knowing he’d sent his best friend to his death. “Camp Mato Sapa?”
The smile left Vicki’s face, giving Eric his answer. “No news yet. The Team is heading out to search for them soon.”
“Jesus.” Eric knew what they were going to find—charred bodies twisted in positions of agony, the last writhings of friends. Hours had gone by since the fire burned through Mato Sapa. The fact that no one had seen them and no one had heard from them could only mean one thing.
“It’s not your fault. You did everything you could.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting not to imagine how much his friends had suffered. “Tell that to Naomi and Kat.”
“Oh, my poor, sweet man.” Vicki stroked his hair again. “Please don’t do this to yourself. You’ve been through hell already.”
Slowly, the story came out of him. The argument with Robertson. The first backburn. The news about Taylor and Camp Mato Sapa. The chopper crash.
“I thought we were dead. We were spinning, heading straight for the fire, but John, the pilot, held on. The man is a hero in my book.”
“I can’t wait to meet him.”
“When I realized we were alive, the job became survival. The fire was headed straight for us. Silver knew what to do, but John and Ramirez, the photojournalist, didn’t. We grabbed our gear from the chopper and ran. I chose a deployment site. Silver cleared it, while I told the other two what to do.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to be afraid.”
He told her how he’d been the last to deploy and how he’d noticed too late that the plastic package that held his shelter had been slashed in the crash. “I knew that meant the shelter might be compromised, but I didn’t have time to run back to the helicopter and search for another one. The fire was on top of us.”
Understanding dawned on Vicki’s face. “That’s why your shelter failed.”
“I crawled in and hoped for the best, but …” The memory of unbearable heat and excruciating pain made his skin shrink, goosebumps prickling his arms. “I knew the moment the shelter failed. I thought I was dead.”
Vicki cleared her throat as if fighting not to cry. “It must have been so painful.”
“Worse than anything I could have imagined. I screamed and fought not to thrash around. I knew if I moved, I’d let in more hot gas and maybe lose my grip on the shelter.”
Tears spilled down Vicki’s cheeks now, distress on her sweet face. “You just had to lie there and burn? Oh, God, Eric.”
He told her how the shelter’s failure let in hotter air, how he’d clawed at the earth with his fingers while still keeping his hands in the straps just to reach soil that was cool enough to enable him to breathe.
“The last thing I remember was taking a breath with my face in the dirt and feeling the darkness close in.” Eric’s throat went tight. “I asked God to watch over you and Caden and the new baby.”
Vicki smiled through her tears. “He took care of you, too.”
“The next thing I knew, Silver was staring down at me.” He told her about the terrible thirst and how Silver and Ramirez had given their morphine to him. “How are they doing? Have you heard?”
“They’re on another floor. They’re going to be okay, too—thanks to you. I met the photojournalist’s wife. She’s a nice person. She’s about to have their first baby.” Then Vicki’s face crumpled. “I thought I’d never see you again, that our kids would have to grow up without you. It was bad enough believing that I’d lost you, but knowing you’d died such a horrible death… I just couldn’t bear that.”
“Come here.” He reached for her, drew her head against his chest, let her cry it out, her tears seeming to wash away his anguish, too.
Kenzie satin the passenger seat as Harrison followed Rescue 1 and Rescue 2 and the Pine Ridge Hotshots up the road to Camp Mato Sapa, Marc and Julian and the rest of the Team following behind. The hotshots had asked to be a part of the rescue when they’d heard Lakota people from Pine Ridge were involved.
“They’re our people,” Tall Bull, the superintendent, had told Megs. “Chaska Belcourt and I went to high school together.”
Megs had agreed.
Kenzie had done more than a few searches for human remains in her career as a search dog trainer, but she’d never done a search like this.
Seven people. Three of them her friends. One a child.