Chapter Fourteen
He was going to kill her.
Murray didn’t know how or when, but the second she came back from whatever harebrained scheme to get him out of this mess, he was going to let her have it.
He knew Aslen. He knew the guilt she carried from the fire that’d cost her parents’ lives.
He knew the truth—that she’d been the one to start it by playing with matches under her bed.
And he knew how far she would go to make up for that mistake.
Even if it meant putting her precious life in danger. “Aslen!”
Damn it. Sweat cascaded down his face and into his eyes.
Murray swiped at it, but it was no use. Salt slicked his skin, the deposits overheating, crusting his hair and face.
His body couldn’t stave off this heat forever, but the fire wouldn’t relent.
It’d gained another few feet, corralling him into a circle no more than five feet in every direction.
And closing fast. She was out there. Fighting for him when it should’ve been the other way around.
How could he have let this happen? What the hell had he been thinking in dragging her into this investigation?
He should’ve known better. She’d had no intention of keeping that promise to leave him behind from the start, but if he lost her…
That tightness that’d nearly strangled him at her small dining room table after negotiating her deal returned ten times stronger.
It curdled the acid in his gut and shoved deep into the recesses of his nerves.
Grief hit hard and fast. There was no stopping it.
No shutting it down as he had so many times in the past. When he’d lost his mom, his dad.
Jackson. He hadn’t let himself feel any of it for Aslen’s sake.
He was all she had left, and he’d done whatever it took to be there for her.
Only to die at the hands of the very element that’d ripped her life apart.
Murray tried to breathe through the physical ache threatening to crush him from the inside.
The tips of his fingers burrowed into calloused palms. She’d disappeared right in front of his eyes, put herself at risk to save him because that was what she did for the people she cared about, and that anxiety he had whenever he lost sight of her surged. Choked him.
It was the not knowing. Of where she’d gone, if she was safe.
After everything they’d been through together since middle school, Aslen had become part of him.
A vital organ he couldn’t live without. He needed her in his sights, craved her presence as much—if not more—than those pointless facts she used to distract herself.
She’d stripped free of her jacket and T-shirt and run in the direction of the reservoir.
While fire management wasn’t his area of expertise, he had to trust she knew exactly what she was doing.
That they would get out of this. Because the other option was losing her, and Murray wouldn’t accept that.
Ever. Focus on what he could control. That was what Aslen had taught him when news of Jackson’s disappearance had arrived, when she’d crawled beneath his covers that night and held him as if he would break apart into a million pieces if she didn’t.
He growled to himself. “Control. What can you control, damn it?”
Had she made it? Was she already on her way back?
The thoughts seemed to attack from every direction, but he couldn’t give them any energy right now.
Couldn’t waste what little he had left. Survival.
That was all he could focus on. Murray spun in a circle, searching for that weak spot in the wall closing in on him with every breath.
Pops and crackles sparked dangerously at his feet as debris caught fire, closer and closer.
The arsonist could still be out there. Could have gone after Aslen. Stopped her from coming back for him.
His blood burning in his veins, Murray ripped off his own jacket to stop himself from cooking to death in his clothing. In his rush to search for the arsonist, he hadn’t brought any water out here with them. Right. So what could he use?
The low hanging branches of the trees circling the clearing wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good.
They were already lost to the flames, but the thicker ones, the older ones that had maybe dried out over the years and might not hold his weight, were his best bet.
His heart thundered hard in his chest. He put any remaining energy he had into following the uneven rhythm to hone his focus to the here and now.
Not into the idea that he was about to become a rotisserie chicken.
The now-blackened boulder Aslen had tried to convince him would hold against the encroaching flames provided a break in the deadly wall heading straight for him.
He’d only have one shot at this. One chance to escape.
With Aslen out there, alone, potentially in danger, he would take it.
For her. He’d done everything he could to uphold his promise to protect her all these years, but maybe he needed to admit to himself there was a part of him that wanted more than what they had now.
Was scared of watching her walk away, finding happiness somewhere else.
With someone else. Maybe the thought of losing her hit so much harder than losing his family because he didn’t just want to protect her anymore. He wanted her.
More than he wanted anyone and anything else.
Not as his investigative consultant.
Not as his friend.
As just…his.
A different kind of fire took hold inside of him then, and he shoved his arms back into his jacket for extra protection.
A breeze cut through the clearing, riling the fire past a frenzy.
The flames licking at the boulder parted for a brief second, and Murray charged for it and the branch hanging directly above without another thought.
His heart rate climbed with every stride.
He slammed one boot against the boulder face and thrust himself upward.
Except the angle of the rock was much steeper than he’d expected.
His balance was thrown off, but he managed to secure his hands around the curve of the tree branch overhead.
He dangled over the boulder, losing his momentum.
Hands made of flame stretched and reached for the bottoms of his boots and cuffs of his jeans.
He was losing his grip as bark peeled free of the tree beneath his fingers.
Seconds. He had only seconds before it’d fail altogether.
Wood cracked and groaned under his weight. Throwing his feet behind him, he tried to gain back the momentum he’d lost, only to rip the branch clean from the tree. Wood rained down as Murray flung his hands for the top of the boulder and curled his fingers into unforgiving stone.
The hiss of searing skin reached his ears a split second before the pain registered.
It radiated through his fingers and across his palms. His scream filled the woods around him, but he couldn’t stop.
He couldn’t back down. Throwing himself over the top of the boulder, Murray lost all sense of logic as the world spun.
He slammed into the ground, his shoulder nearly buckling beneath his weight.
His chest evacuated every molecule of oxygen, lungs pulsing for the sweet release from paralysis.
Move. He had to move. Now.
Smoke-laden air charged down his throat within a few seconds.
The fire wouldn’t give him a reprieve and neither would the arsonist if given the chance to escape arrest. Knowing he only had moments to escape certain death, Murray planted blistered and warped palms onto the forest floor, barely holding in a second scream as the pain flared.
Rolling onto his side, he thrust himself to his feet and added a good twenty feet of space between him and the spreading wildfire.
Infection would set in quickly if he didn’t get the burns treated soon.
The first aid kit in the truck came stocked with burn ointment and bandages.
He carried a fire extinguisher, too, but that invisible thread in his chest that connected him to Aslen pulled taut.
Struggling to catch a clean breath, Murray took one step in the direction he’d watched her disappear.
He tucked his injured palms to his chest, careful not to aggravate the red skin peeling up in curls.
It wouldn’t take much to cause permanent damage, and he couldn’t afford to slow himself down. Not when it came to Aslen’s safety.
“Aslen!” Her name escaped as little more than a croak.
No answer.
It felt wrong to turn his back on the raging flames, to leave the fire for the incoming rangers to deal with, but time hadn’t been on their side since he and Aslen had stepped into the Lava Point campground.
Hell. The campground. The explosion. He could make out the tendrils of black smoke over the tops of the still-standing trees from here.
The arsonist must’ve set something in his RV to explode in case rangers had closed in, endangering all those people—the children—who’d returned to the campground after the evacuation order had been lifted.
He had to help them, to make sure no one else was hurt.
And seeing as how he was the only ranger on the scene with backup more than thirty minutes out at this point, Murray had to ignore that pull toward the reservoir. Had to leave Aslen.
Every cell in his body screamed to turn back as he stumbled toward the campground. Soon his legs remembered how to hold him up, the pain in his shoulder lightened and his head cleared. Faster. He had to move faster. The smoke thickened, seeping into the surrounding trees. Then he saw the flames.
The RV he’d noted when they’d first arrived at the campground was gone.
Only twisted metal and glass remained, jagged and threatening.
Four tires had somehow survived, which told him the arsonist had angled the blast to shoot out and upward to cause as much damage as possible.
Shouts reached his ears as campers rushed to fill anything they could with water from the communal bathroom and water pump to help, but putting anyone else in danger wasn’t an option.
Murray swatted one arm out to catch their attention as he charged past the perimeter of the campground.
He couldn’t risk this fire spreading. Not as another burned a mere quarter mile into the woods, heading this way with the winds. “Get back!”
He ran for the truck and tucked blistered fingers under the passenger door handle.
A hiss escaped up his throat as the pain surged, but he couldn’t let it stop him from doing his job.
He ripped the fire extinguisher out from underneath the passenger seat and raced to get the RV fire under control.
In minutes, he’d managed to hit the valve with his damaged fingers and release the suppressing foam, suffocating the flames into something more manageable.
It’d take more than one fire extinguisher to put out a fire this size, especially fed by an accelerant, but Murray would control it until his backup arrived. “Is anybody hurt?”
Low murmurs from other campgoers confirmed no one had been caught in the explosion. A miracle.
The van he and Aslen had approached earlier, belonging to the family who’d been targeted by the arsonist, was gone, the campsite empty.
They’d gotten away before the explosion.
Something in his chest released at the realization.
Except every second he fought this fire, another raged.
And left Aslen unprotected in those woods.
He mentally catalogued the families looking on in horror, mothers holding their children to their sides, fathers racing to continue to help throw water on the flames.
Murray didn’t have the energy to tell them water wouldn’t do a damn bit of good against a fire fed by gasoline or some other compound.
Sirens echoed up the single-lane dirt road just before three ranger SUVs shot into the campground, and Murray peeled his burned hands from the fire extinguisher.
Rangers spilled free of the vehicles with their own supplies as a fire truck rolled up on their tail.
Handing off his now-empty fire extinguisher, he targeted the woman climbing down the fire truck’s raised platform with several other teammates.
Danny. Aslen’s friend. Hoses were in hand, orders shouted as the team raced to meet the latest threat.
“You’re in charge of the scene. There’s another fire about a quarter mile past the tree line and spreading fast in this wind. I have to go.”
“What? Where?” She scanned the campground, her face losing color. “Where is Aslen?”
Murray forced one foot in front of the other. Allowing himself to be consumed by the wilderness all over again. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”