Page 66 of Smoke Season

At the door, they met with yet another gatekeeper, this one checking evacuees off a list. Mel gave their names—Sam Bishop, Melissa Bishop—and the man wrote them down on the clipboard. Mel barely registered any of it, focused on how nice it felt to say their names in tandem again, her mind, now that they were out of the worst of it, having room for only what felt most essential.

But then the man looked back up, a frown on his face.

“Did you say Bishop?”

“That’s right,” Sam supplied.

“There’s been a request that you report to Sheriff Paulson just as soon as you get to the shelter,” he said.

Sam looked confused. “Me?”

“No, her. Her, and a ...” The guy looked at his clipboard again. “A Kristina Truitt. Paulson needs a statement regarding John Fallows’s arrest.”

Mel’s gut instantly tightened, but she tried to press forward again with a vague nod to acknowledge she’d heard. This man and his requests did not constitute essential in Mel’s book. Not right this second, anyway. She needed to get to her girls. And she needed to keep Sam by her side.

But he’d stopped. “What arrest?” he asked. “What about Fallows?” His eyes narrowed as he glanced from Mel to out across the chaos of the room, seeking True, the look of suspicion on his face eerily similar to the one she’d caught the other night in the Eddy. “What on earth could be important enough for the sheriff to request a statement in the midst of this insanity?”

When she didn’t answer him immediately, she felt that suspicion slide toward anger. Justified as it was, it made Mel’s stomach constrict again.

“I have the right to know what’s going on,” he told her through a clenched jaw.

Of course he did, but their girls were waiting for them. Astor was upon them already, launching herself at them from a cot near the door.

“Mommy!” she yelled, and Mel didn’t miss the significance of the extra syllable, which she had been adamantly declaring babyish for months now, rolling right off her tongue. The sound of it threatened to undo her the moment she laid eyes on her.

She assessed Annie next, who still appeared listless but otherwise unscathed, hugging her tightly as Sam relieved Claude so the old man could ride out with the other evacuees. The second she released Annie, Sam’s eyes were on her again, seeking answers.

But could she give him what he needed? The chaos of the past three days made it impossibly difficult to determine just where she’d gone wrong and he’d gone right, and vice versa. Health decisions, money, property ... it had all combined and combusted in her head somehow, fueled by their decisions during this fire.

She managed a nod, and, catching her intent, True ushered both girls out of earshot with a murmured “We’ll get everything all organized to go.”

Once they were alone, or as close as they were going to get, with volunteers and public-service personnel still dashing here and there, herding people toward the door, Sam said firmly, “Start at the beginning.”

And so, with her heart still in her throat, Mel cast her mind back to the initial spark that had spurred her and True to action so many months ago, with Kim’s nephew’s arrest. At the end of this sordid tale, would he still have any respect for her?

“The opportunity just opened up, right before my eyes,” Mel told him, beseeching him with her eyes to try to understand. She explained the symbiotic timing of True’s rafting trips with Fallows’s trafficking needs, the relief that had washed over her each week as she’d deposited the cash that would fund Annie’s next round of prescriptions. “I thought I’d found a solution after so many setbacks.”

“But you kept me in the dark,” Sam said, betrayal in his eyes. Mel had to look past it to answer him.

“I had to.”

Her meaning simmered in the air between them. Any firefighter worth her salt knew that every spark needed an ignition factor, and Fallows’s nefarious business operation hadn’t been the sole element involved.Oxygen, heat, fuel.All three were necessary to ignite a fire such as the one she and True had stoked. The whole thing had gotten completely out of control, yes, but it hadn’t happened in a vacuum.

Sam had a blind spot when it came to Fallows, and in his attempt to course-correct and find his own path, his pride got smack in the way, placing obstacles in Mel’s path, too. Obstacles she’d had to make her own way around.

Sam didn’t contest the point. “But how did all this lead to an arrest tonight?”

Mel exhaled. This would be the hardest part. She picked her way carefully as she told him about finding the stash at the grow site and the confrontation on Highline Road, but Sam’s agitation grew with every word anyway.

“Itoldyou to never have anything to do with that man,” he interrupted, color rising hotly in his cheeks as it always did when he felt the threat Fallows posed to his family. Mel didn’t argue. Here it came, the moment when Sam lost trust in her altogether, just when she’d learned to trusthim. “Iknewsomething was going on,” he continued, and then his voice broke as something else occurred to him and he asked, “Was Chris ...”

“Chris wasn’t there,” Mel told him. This, at least, would bring Sam a small measure of relief.

Instead, he spun the wheel of blame to point the needle at himself ... so characteristic of Sam, Mel could have cried. “I should have trusted what my gut has been telling me for days,” he told her. He took a step toward her. “But you’re all right? Tell me you’re all right.”

The distressed little boy he had once been stood right in front of her, the decorated veteran of two deployments smaller, somehow, than Mel had ever seen him as he scanned her up and down, taking full measure of her battle-worn self. Mel knew he couldn’t possibly distinguishbetween the bruises Fallows and his men had placed there and the soot and grime that had preceded them, but that didn’t seem to matter.

“Oh, Mel,” he said. “I get how you would be willing to do anything for Annie.” His voice sounded striated, like something vital had been excavated from somewhere deep within him. “God knows I getthat. But what if I had lost you, too?”

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