Page 79 of The Fire Line

Five minutes later, an Icelandic fisherman told Jay that everyone from the city assumed staying meant he had never considered leaving.

Jay asked, “Did you?”

The man laughed and told him to mind his own business.

Jay laughed too, and the film moved on without explaining the answer or turning it into a lesson about courage or fear or roots.

Harris watched the next several minutes with his arms folded over his chest.

If Jay thought people who stayed in one place were simple, he hid it remarkably well.

That put Harris more at ease.

Not entirely.

Enough.

His phone buzzed on the table just as the credits began.

Navarro: I can confirm the motel bed is worse than the line cabin bunk

Harris couldn’t help the tingle of excitement at seeing Jay’s name light up his phone screen.

Harris: Bullshit.

The reply appeared almost immediately.

Navarro: you’re welcome to come verify…

Harris stared at that one long enough for the screen to dim.

Harris: You wish.

Navarro: missed opportunity

A laugh almost escaped. Harris caught it, put the phone down, and carried his empty bottle toward the sink.

It buzzed again before he reached it.

Navarro: tell Red i said hi

Harris leaned one hip against the counter and typed with his thumb.

Harris: Tell him yourself Sunday.

* * *

Saturday passed slowly enough that Harris stopped pretending he wasn’t counting the time. He worked, ate dinner with the family, went back to the cabin, and discovered that four days felt considerably longer when he knew exactly who wasn’t there.

By Sunday afternoon, the crew’s return had become a fact he knew without admitting he’d tracked it. Evan mentioned at breakfast that they’d finished the final interview before noon, and Harris knew the drive took a little over three hours because he had driven those roads often enough. That was all.

Sometime after four, he replaced a stretch of western-boundary wire that could easily have waited another week. The job happened to keep him within sight of the ranch road, and Harris saw no reason to examine that coincidence too closely.

At five twenty-three, he recognized the sound of the production SUV before it appeared through the cottonwoods. Relief loosened something beneath his ribs before the vehicle had even reached the yard, so sudden and physical that he stopped with the coil of old wire still hanging from one hand.

Then the passenger door opened and Jay climbed out.

Dust marked the knees of his jeans, his hair was half falling out of its tie, and he looked tired enough that Harris could see it from across the yard. None of that stopped Harris’s body from remembering, with humiliating efficiency, exactly what Jay’s mouth felt like or the sounds he had made with Harris’s hands on him.