Page 52 of Smoke Season

“I had to report what happened,” Lewis told her. “You heard Hernandez. White’s field lead, even if he’s remote.”

Mel nodded numbly. This explained White’s use of the shared line. Technically, Lewis was her inferior, but Mel had flipped the script on them both back at Wonderland. He held out his hand for the keys to her rig, and she handed them over on autopilot, amazed at how, even when everything around her was falling utterly apart, small muscle memory remained intact.

Because what recourse remained to her now?

The shame of her actions at Wonderland had soured her stomach for any further attempts at an ammo-can grab, but it didn’t protect her from the full impact of the blow of her defeat at Temple Bar. Without their cut of that cash, Annie’s prescription would run out before her surgery, compromising her eligibility. And of even more imminent concern, Fallows could become violent. She’d failed her daughter, and now she’d fail True. Mel gripped her middle, sure she was about to be sick again.

Lewis drove fast, trying to paint the lines between the shoulders of the road while squinting through the gloom. Mel rode shotgun, tryingnotto count the continual—if intermittent—flares of lightning or the number of misguided choices she’d made today. Hell, all summer.

She had no cell service right now, but back in town, Mel would head directly up the hill to Highline, just about the only place this fire stillwasn’t, and connect with True to warn her off her property. Once she was safely out of the river corridor, they’d make a new plan, Plan C, if they had to. And Plan D after that. She’d tell Sam to pack the SUV, power everything up, and drive Annie all the way up to Seattle, if needed.

She formed her plans without interruption, Lewis’s mouth set in stony determination to carry out his directive to deliver Mel to Carbon. And in a last-minute changeup, Deklan had departed with a hotshot with an ankle injury headed directly for the closest health clinic in Eagle Valley. They passed first one Forest Service road, then another, the silence in the cab unbroken until they passed near the cell tower by Buck Peak and both reached for their phones. Mel didn’t dare try True, not with an audience, and her call to Sam failed. She reminded herself the connection was always spotty on Highline, swallowing a fresh wave of nerves.

Lewis’s call to his family went through on his second try, and the relief in his voice was palpable. The conversation was short.

“Susan okay?” Mel asked, when it ended.

“She made it to her sister’s house in Eugene,” he said curtly. “Jacob will meet her there.”

Their college-aged son. Mel nodded. “Good. Good.”

They were still a good ten miles from town and achingly, frustratingly close to the turn to True’s place when something caught their eye: a solid form emerging from the smoke. Lewis hit the brakes and let loose an expletive: a woman ran along the side of the road, waving at them to stop in a frantic sweep of her arms. Lewis yanked the wheel to skid out into the gravel of the shoulder.

Mel’s seat belt bit into her clavicle at the sudden stop, and the woman was at her window before she could even roll it down. “What’s happening?” the woman shouted. “Is it close?”

“Level 3,” Lewis shouted at her. “Didn’t you get the alerts?”

The woman shook her head and said, “Not out here. Just have a landline.”

“Do you have a vehicle ready to go?” Lewis asked her, and the woman nodded. “Follow behind then!”

“But my neighbors,” she shouted back. “They’re trying to round up their horses. And the farms further back ... I don’t even know if they realize ...” She trailed off, her face contorted in a show of anxiety.

“We’ll get ’em,” Lewis told her, already on his radio. He waved down a Forest Service truck that had splintered off from the rest of the fire convoy, directing the driver to hang back to guide the woman and her car out. She ran back up the long driveway she’d emerged from, barreling down the road a minute later, her Subaru loaded to the gills, a frantically barking Chihuahua making itself known in the back seat.

Lewis waited until the truck had swung out ahead of the Subaru, lights now flashing at top visibility, then nosed down the dirt road to warn the woman’s neighbors. Mel leaned forward in her seat, not daring to voice her approval for fear that Lewis would second-guess himself and resume their direct course for Carbon.

They crossed paths with two additional families already evacuating, and Lewis gave each a short blip on the siren, an auditory thumbs-up. A third neighbor refused to leave his home—or even open his front door to “the Feds” to discuss the matter when Mel ran up the steps—and a fourth needed help coaxing a wild-eyed mare into a stock trailer before departing in a cloud of dust and smoke.

When they eased back out onto the road, Lewis paused, then swung into the next Forest Service road over with a muttered, “We can’t justnothelp.”

They swept the road, then the next one over as well, continuing until the occasional rows of mailboxes—sure signs of inhabitance—became fewer and farther between; this deep into the wilderness, the maintained Forest Service roads faded into overgrown logging roads that spiderwebbed into the trees. Before Mel quite realized it, they werejust yards from the back acre of True’s place, somewhere through the haze.

“One more detour,” Mel said as they approached an unmarked Y in the road that she recognized. “Please, Lew. It’s my friend’s place. I just need to make sure she’s not there.”

He looked like he might argue, but he swung the wheel anyway, and they lurched to the right, bumping over potholes the size of small boulders. A moment later, the forest opened up onto a small clearing, True’s yurt in the forefront flanked by carefully fenced-in gardens and her pretty stone walkway. As Mel feared it might be, True’s truck idled beside the road, and True herself wielded a hose aimed at the canvas stretched tight over her dwelling. She cursed under her breath, then called out to her.

“True!”

When she turned, the relief on her face slid right into Mel’s soul, washing away her frustration. “I’ve been trying to call your cell!” True said. “Do you have the—” She shut her mouth midsentence, spotting Lewis in the driver’s seat of Mel’s rig. Only the heavy smoke in the air saved her from telegraphing far too much.

“C’mon,” Mel yelled. “Leave the place. It’s time to go!”

True hesitated only a moment more, then cranked off the water. She made to follow them in her truck, but Lewis objected.

“Just jump in with us! Too many evacuees on the road as it is.”

She turned off the engine and pocketed the keys, and they took True’s private drive back to the Y, where Lewis turned back toward the river road and Carbon. Apparently, he was done delaying the inevitable. But before he could make the turn, True stopped him.

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