Page 22 of Igniting Her

Ellie took three people and did.

The fire reached them twenty minutes later. Flame bent along the slope, ran out of brush at the widened line, and folded back into its own black. The heat drove everyone two steps into the safety of the burn. The line held. Cassie’s gloved hand closed briefly over the back of Ellie’s neck as she passed behind her. It was a fireground touch. A check that Ellie was upright and present. Her body did not care.

They were released to camp at twenty-two hundred with demobilization scheduled after the morning briefing. The overflow shelter had filled with incoming crews, and Station 12 had three two-person tents in its deployment cache. Teak and Priya took one. Jamie and Mo took the second. That left Ellie standing beside Cassie with the third tent rolled between them and every member of the crew suddenly devoted to private business. Nobody commented. This meant everyone had noticed.

Exhaustion made embarrassment inefficient. Ellie drove stakes while Cassie assembled the poles. They managed the work in silence, hands sometimes reaching for the same section of nylon and withdrawing without ceremony. Inside, the tent was low, dark, and barely wide enough for two sleeping pads with a strip of groundsheet between them. Their line gear stayed by the entrance. Boots came off last.

Ellie sat with one knee raised and worked at a lace that had baked itself into a knot.

“Here,” Cassie said. She shifted closer and pulled the knot loose with two patient movements. Her knuckles brushed Ellie’s ankle. Neither of them reacted quickly enough to pretend it hadn’t happened.

“I could have done that.”

“Eventually.”

“Your faith in me has changed my life.”

Cassie made a tired sound that might have been a laugh if either of them had possessed more strength. Ellie took off the boot. The relief was so immediate she nearly apologized to her foot. Cassie released her hair from its twist. It fell past her shoulders, flattened in places and threaded with ash. Ellie had spent nearly two months imagining what that hair might look like loose and had not once pictured it looking so human. She turned toward her own sleeping bag before Cassie could catch her staring.

They changed only what modesty and fatigue allowed: outer shirts for clean T-shirts, dirty socks for marginally less dirty ones. Cassie faced the tent wall while Ellie changed. Ellie returned the courtesy and saw Cassie’s shadow move across the nylon instead. That wasn’t better.

They lay down with their heads at the same end and the tent roof a foot above their faces. Outside, generators throbbed. Boots crossed gravel. Someone laughed too loudly near the meal tent and was answered by three exhausted voices. The fire’s glow touched the smoke above camp, turning one corner of the dark faintly orange.

Inside the tent, rank had very little room to stand.

Ellie folded one arm beneath her head. Her shoulders ached, her palms burned, and one hip had begun complaining for reasons she could no longer remember. Across the narrow strip of groundsheet, Cassie lay on her back with her eyes open. “You were right about the rock shelf,” she said.

“I was planning to have that embroidered.”

“On what?”

“A pillow. Something tasteful for the bunk room,” Ellie said with a soft laugh.

Cassie turned her head. Even in the dark, Ellie could feel the shape of her attention. “Why did you really leave Los Angeles?” The question came without command. Almost without defense.

Ellie’s humor rose on instinct, quick enough to stand between them before anything else could. “I’d exhausted the dating pool.”

“At twenty-six.”

“I’m efficient.”

Cassie’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile, but tiredness had taken the discipline out of hiding it. “That isn’t an answer,” she said.

“It’s an excellent answer. It contains youth, tragedy, and a flattering implication about my social life.”

Cassie’s gaze stayed on her. “I read what the department gave me.”

Ellie’s body tightened before she could stop it. “Hope you enjoyed the redactions. They’re my best work.”

“It was incomplete.”

“That’s the elegant word for sealed.”

“I didn’t ask you because I want the missing pages.”

Ellie looked at her.

Cassie had spent weeks treating the file as a boundary she would neither cross nor pretend not to see. In the tent, with dirt still beneath her nails and the wildfire breathing beyond camp, her face held none of the suspicion Ellie knew how to fight.