Page 29 of Light My Fire

The line the firefighters had cut up the ridge had turned the blaze back on itself, but even out of the corner of her eye, she could see the flames still gnawing away to the east, smoke drizzling up into the sky.

“At least we turned it away from the camp!” Tucker said into her ear, and she supposed he was referring to the Boy Scout camp some three miles southeast.

It hadn’t occurred to her that March might be headed that direction, and for a moment, she slowed the bike down to a stop, stepping a foot out to balance it.

Ahead of them, to her right, a mountain rose, jagged and pricked with forest. Not snow peaked yet, it wasn’t an impossible climb, and five miles due west March would run into the highway.

But he’d be exposed then. And yes, tourist season kept the highway busy, but…

“What’s wrong?” Tucker asked.

“I’m just…I’m not sure.”

He leaned back and pulled out a set of binoculars from his pack. Set it to his eyes. “They’re on foot. They won’t have gotten too far yet.”

He scanned the mountain, then the landscape ahead of them.

Roughed out with dry riverbeds, alpine meadows rife with goldenrod and blue forget-me-nots, and spires of white spruce and aspen, thickets of white birch heavy with willow brush, the forested terrain could hide someone standing ten feet from them. Below them, south, the forest thickened, with black spruce and tamarack closing in like a wall.

Brutal, unforgiving country, not made for dirt biking, at least not at the speeds she wanted to achieve.

Breathe, Stevie.

“I think I see something.” He pointed to the southwest and handed her the binoculars.

She followed his gesture. The world loomed large, almost indecipherable, and she panned too quickly, nearly missing—

A flash of orange.

She pulled the binoculars away, stupidly thinking she could spot it with her naked eye, then raised them again. A large man, he was trekking into a nest of forest. “That looks like Darryl.”

She passed the glasses back to Tucker, staring at the route. They had to cut down the ridge, into the meadow, then along the canyon riverbed to the opposite forest.

How March had covered so much ground…

She shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

Tucker’s hands settled back on her hips, his feet on the ground to steady the bike. “Go.”

She edged the bike forward, moving it along the rocky edge, toward the ravine. From here, the rocks stairstepped down the side of the mountain, the edge narrowing as it descended. “Don’t lean. Let me do the work,” she said. “And stay on the bike.”

He took his hands off her waist and gripped the back of his seat. His thighs tightened around her. “Once we start going, we don’t stop until we hit the bottom.” Hopefully in one piece.

She eased the bike forward, throttled, and they moved over the edge, down the wall. A hard drop—she put her feet down to steady them, even as she banged on the seat. Tucker grunted but didn’t release his hold, and she kept going, over another lip, across a bumpy path, then down a steep wall that shucked out her breath. They were moving too fast toward another set of stairsteps, and she hit the brakes.

Tucker just barely stopped from careening over her, his chest tight against her back as he reigned in his momentum.

She kept the speed steady as they maneuvered down, then back up the trail, and veered back into the mountain along a fifteen-foot wall. She slowed, and at the precipice of another run, put her foot down. Stopped.

He put his foot down beside hers.

She glanced behind them.

They’d traveled a good fifty feet, maybe more. The meadow spread out below them, another thirty feet down.

And between them and escape lay a jagged wall of tumbled rock, not steep enough to jump, too vile to traverse. But if she could get enough speed and run them down the trail farther, they could fly off the edge, clear the wall, and land on the meadow below.

Or kill them both.

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