Page 152 of The Fire Line

“I’m still here,” he called.

“I know.”

“You don’t have to keep—”

A tree cracked below them.

The report exploded through the timber, followed by branches tearing through branches and the violent impact of something massive hitting the ground. Red lunged sideways. Jay’s left boot slipped partly from the stirrup as the world tilted beneath him.

“Give him his head!” Harris shouted. “Don’t lock your hands!”

Jay loosened the reins on instinct more than understanding. Red found his footing, surged forward, and nearly collided with Rain before settling behind her again. Jay recovered the stirrup and forced his knees to unclench.

“I’m good!”

Harris looked back anyway.

“I said I’m good.”

“I heard you.”

There was no disbelief in it. Harris simply seemed incapable of accepting the statement without seeing the evidence himself.

They rounded the shoulder of the ridge and saw fire.

Jay had expected a wall. There was no wall.

That was worse.

Fire appeared everywhere separately: grass flashing orange and vanishing beneath smoke, brush igniting in sudden bright bursts, individual trees catching one after another until the mountainside seemed to be burning in pieces. The lack of order made it impossible for Jay to understand where the danger began or ended. A wall might at least have suggested a boundary. This moved according to rules he could not see.

“Harris.” His voice came out thinner than he intended. “How fucked are we?”

“Keep moving.”

“Harris.”

Rain danced beneath him, but Harris’s hands remained steady. He looked at Jay once and held his gaze long enough that the answer became unnecessary.

Quite fucked, then.

Fantastic.

Jay tried to slow his breathing and discovered that smoke made the exercise mostly theoretical.

The roar behind them grew until it stopped sounding like separate trees, wind, and falling timber and became one continuous violence beneath everything else. Red’s fear traveled directly through the saddle. Every muscle beneath Jay remained rigid, foam gathering around the bit, and Jay had the unnerving sense that he was borrowing the gelding’s panic while contributing plenty of his own.

Ahead, Rain balked.

Harris brought her around and asked her forward again. The trail narrowed beneath a granite outcrop, constricting between exposed rock and a steep drop into timber. Rain planted all four feet and refused.

Jay looked downhill. Flames climbed higher through the trees, and the spaces between them were disappearing.

“Harris.”

“I know.”

His gaze moved from the choke point to the granite above them. Whatever decision came next arrived fast enough that Jay understood Harris had already been considering it.