Page 159 of The Fire Line

The old burn lay only a few hundred yards uphill. The earlier fire had stripped most of the timber and brush from that section of ridge, leaving open granite, short grass, and far less fuel for tonight’s fire to work with. More important now, it was exposed to the wind. Whatever smoke crossed it would have somewhere to go.

Here, beneath the ledge, it had nowhere to go at all.

Another gust pushed a dense sheet beneath the granite. Jay coughed against his sleeve, the sound starting low in his chest and taking too long to stop.

Harris watched the smoke thicken between them and the opening.

They had to get out.

The problem was getting Jay there.

He had folded against Harris sometime during the worst of the heat, forehead tucked near his shoulder, one hand still twisted into the front of Harris’s jacket. Harris kept his palm over Jay’s ribs because their movement had become the only measurement he trusted.

The next breath came shallow.

Then another.

The pause afterward lasted long enough to make Harris count.

“Jay.”

A faint sound answered him.

Harris caught the back of his neck and shifted far enough to see his face. Soot darkened the skin beneath Jay’s eyes, and his gaze drifted before it managed to settle on Harris.

“We have to move.”

Jay looked toward the smoke rolling past the opening. “Where?”

“Old burn. Above us.”

“How far?”

“Few hundred yards.”

Jay nodded, but the motion looked delayed, as though the answer had needed to travel farther than it should have before making sense. When he tried to push himself up, he made it halfway before his eyes closed.

Harris caught him before his head struck the rock. “Hey. Look at me.”

Jay opened his eyes again. There was irritation there for a second, familiar enough to loosen something in Harris’s chest, and then even that slipped away.

“Stay awake.”

“I’m trying.”

The words were quiet, with none of Jay’s usual argument tucked inside them, and Harris hated that more than he would have hated a joke.

Harris had no idea whether keeping him awake was actually the right thing to do for smoke inhalation. He knew getting harder to rouse was bad, and that was about the limit of his medical expertise. Mostly, he couldn’t stand the thought of Jay slipping somewhere Harris couldn’t reach him. As long as Jay opened his eyes when Harris said his name or tightened a hand around his arm when Harris touched him, there was something Harris could ask of him. Something Jay could give back.

So he kept touching him.

A hand at the back of his neck. Fingers against his cheek. His palm over Jay’s ribs, counting each breath as it came.

Then Harris forced his attention back to the things he could actually do: cleaner air, higher ground, water, movement.

Harris found the intact bottle beside them and held it to Jay’s mouth. “Small drink.”

Jay swallowed once, coughed, and turned his head away. Harris didn’t push him. The second bottle had split against the granite, leaving only a shallow mouthful trapped at the bottom, so he poured that into the first and checked what remained. Less than a third. Enough to matter, not enough to waste.