Chasing Fire

around with?”
    “He’s on the Flathead fire.”
    “Let’s go check with Ops, see how they’re doing.”
    “I want him back safe, want all of them back safe. Even though I’m pissed at him. Especially pissed because I think he had a point about a couple things.”
    “I hate when that happens. Besides, who does he think he is, having a point?”
    She laughed, tipped her head to his shoulder. “Thanks.”
     
     
    SHE KEPT VIGIL in Operations, helped update the map tracking the crew’s progress and the fire’s twists and turns, and watched the lightning strikes blast on radar.
    Sometime after two while a booming thunderstorm swept over the base, and up north Gull and his crewmates crawled into tents, she dropped into bed.
    And almost immediately dropped into the dream.
    The roar of thunder became the roar of engines, the scream of wind the air blasting through the plane’s open door. She saw the nerves in Jim’s eyes, heard them in his voice and, tossing in bed, ordered herself to stop him. To contact base, alert the spotter, talk to the fire boss.
    Something.
    “It is what it is,” he said to her, with eyes now filled with sorrow. “It’s, you know, my fate.”
    And he jumped as he always did, taking that last leap behind her. Into the mouth of the fire, screaming as its teeth tore through him.
    This time she landed alone, the flames behind her snarling, throaty growls that built until the ground shook. She ran, sprinting up the incline, heat drenching her skin while she shoved through billowing clouds of smoke.
    She shouted for Jim—there was a chance, always a chance—searching blindly. Fire climbed the trees in pulsing strings of light, blew over the ground in a deadly dance. Through it, someone called her name.
    She changed direction and, shouting until her throat burned, stumbled into the black. Charred branches punched out of smoldering spots and beckoned like bony fingers. Snags hunched and towered, seemed to shift and sway behind the curtain of smoke. The scorched earth crackled under her feet as she continued to run toward the sound of her name.
    Silence dropped, like a breath held. She stood in that void of sound, dismayed, disoriented. For a moment it was as if she’d become trapped in a black-and-white photo. Nothing moved, even as she ran on. The ground stayed silent under her feet.
    She saw him, lying on the ground the fire had stripped bare, facing west, as if positioned to watch the sunset. Her voice echoed inside her head as she called his name. Dizzy with relief, she dropped down beside him.
    Jim. Thank God.
    She pulled out her radio, but like the air around her, it answered with silence.
    I found him! Somebody answer. Somebody help me!
    “They can’t.”
    She tumbled back when Jim’s voice broke the silence, when behind his mask his eyes opened, behind his mask his lips curved in a horrible smile.
    “We burn here. We all burn here.”
    Flames ignited behind his mask. Even as she drew breath to scream, he gripped her hand. Fire fused her flesh to his.
    She screamed, and kept screaming as the flames engulfed them both.

     
    ROWAN DRAGGED HERSELF out of bed, stumbled to the window. She shoved it up, gulping in the air that streamed in. The storm had moved east, taking the rain and the boiling thunder with it. Sometime during the hideous dream the sky had broken clear of the clouds. She studied the stars to steady herself, taking comfort in their cool bright shine.
    A bad day, that was all, she thought. She’d had a bad day that had brought on a bad night. Now it was done, out of her system. Put to rest.
    But she left the window open, wanting that play of air as she got back in bed, and lay for a time, eyes open, looking at the stars.
    As she started to drift something about the dream tapped at the back of her brain. She closed down to it, thought of the stars instead. She kept that cool, bright light in her mind’s eye as she slipped into quiet, dreamless sleep.
     
     
    ROWAN AND A MOP-UP TEAM jumped the Flathead mid-morning. While grateful for the work, the routine—however tedious—she couldn’t deny some disappointment that Gull and his team packed out as she came in.
    While she did her job, Special Agent Kimberly DiCicco did hers. She met Quinniock at a diner off Highway 12. He slid into the booth across from her, nodded. “Agent.”
    “Lieutenant. Thanks for meeting me.”
    “No problem. Just coffee,” he told the waitress.
    “I’ll get right down to it, if