Page 85 of Smoke and Roses

“Yes.”

“Is the barn on fire?”

“No. Not yet. The fire’s on the lane, between me and the road. It’s coming across the south pasture.”

“Okay.” He breathes, once. “Where’s the black? The ground that burned in September. Where is it from you?”

North toward the old stone homestead in the middle of the meadow and the ravine where we found Danielle’s car. It’s all black that way. Two hundred acres of it. Dead and gray and burned.

“North,” I say. “Behind the barn. Clear to the ravine. It’s all burned.”

“Good. That’s good, Lindsey. That’s really good.” There’s something sure in his voice now. “There’s nothing left on the black to burn. Do you understand? That black ground is the safest place on that ranch. I’m coming in on it. I’ll be there in eight minutes.”

“Eight minutes,” I wheeze.

“Eight minutes, honey. Get out of the van. Leave it running, leave it. Walk north into the black, toward the old stone house. Not the barn. The stone house. Walk, don’t run, so you don’t fall. Stay on the black. Keep your phone. Can you do that?”

When I get out of the van the wind nearly knocks me down. It’s hot. It shouldn’t be hot this late in the fall. It smells like burning grass and sagebrush, sharp and choking, and ash is falling on my hair like dirty snow.

Clinging to my phone, I put my sleeve over my mouth and start walking north across the black ground, toward the old stone homestead. My boots kick up gray dust.

“I’m walking,” I say, muffled.

“Good girl.”

I actually laugh somehow.

“You said it again,” I say.

“I did.” His voice drops. “Lindsey. I got your text.”

My feet stop walking.

“Keep walking,” he orders.

“I got it,” he says. I can barely hear him over the siren. “I read it, and I need you to know something. I’m not saying it back over the phone. Not like this. I’m going to say it to your face. In about seven minutes. So you keep walking, and you get to that stone house, and you wait for me. You hear me? You wait for me, so I can say it to your face.”

The smoke’s so thick I can barely see the stone house.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll wait.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Behind me, the fire reaches the barn.

Chapter Thirty

“Raines. Talk to me,” Caleb says over the radio. “What are you seeing?”

I’m standing on the tailboard of Engine 1 at the mouth of the Hollister lane with binoculars, and what I’m seeing is a grass fire with a fifty-mile-an-hour wind behind it, and the woman I love somewhere on the other side.

The power line is down across North Fork Road two hundred yards west of us, sparking on the asphalt, with a Weber County deputy holding traffic back. The fire started there. It’s run east from the line through the unburned south pasture in a long, ragged finger, and it’s across the Hollister lane in two places. The head of it is pushing toward the barns. Flame lengths four to six feet in the tall grass. Shorter on the gravel. Smoke laying down flat in the wind and rolling east like a brown river.

North of the barns, the ground is black. Two hundred acres of it, from the September fire. Gray and dead with nothing left on it to burn. The barns sit right on the line between the two.

“Fire’s across the lane,” I tell Caleb. “Head’s running east to the barns. North of the barns is all old black from September. She’s in the black, Chief. I told her to walk to the stone house.”