Chapter 2
CALLUM
“Is that everyone?” Dylan calls to me over the rush of noise and confusion that fills the town square. I look down at the papers in my hand, flipping through them quickly to see if every name has been ticked off.
“Nearly,” I reply. “Tell the transport to get these people out of here. Anyone else, we’re going to have to find them ourselves.”
Dylan grimaces, but ducks back behind the bus to tell the driver to get going. I can smell the smoke in the air, and in the distance, the flicker of flames against the late afternoon sky threatens to close in at any moment.
When I chose this profession, I never imagined that it would be my own hometown we were tending to.
So high up in the mountains, Devin Ridge is usually safe from the worst of the fires.
The winds blow them away from the highly populated areas if they even get close at all.
But now? I know the town is in serious trouble.
And without a decent firefighting force close at hand, it’s on us to do what needs to be done.
“Who’s missing?” Joe demands as he strides across the square toward me. He has just finished helping an elderly couple into a people carrier that is equipped for their wheelchairs, his face glistening with sweat from the exertion and the heat that’s already filling the air.
“I don’t know,” I mutter, tracing my finger along the names.
There are a few missing, but the addresses and names are handwritten and difficult to read, and I can’t make out exactly what they’re meant to say.
That’s the problem with small towns like this one; they rely on records kept by people who never thought they would actually come to mean anything, which means that we’re left sifting through impossible-to-parse pages when we need them most.
“Are you looking for someone?”
A voice cuts through my distraction, and I look up to see Margaret, the owner of the town grocery store, standing before me. She’s been running that place for as long as I can remember, and judging by the badge affixed to her shirt, she’s still doing it now.
I nod. “You know something?”
“I saw the Brown girl heading off in the direction of her place,” she replies, jerking her head toward the East side of the city. “She’s got a little house on the edge of town now, not far from where the fire is…”
I mutter a curse under my breath.
Before I can say a word, Carlisle is at my side. “She didn’t hear the announcement about getting out of the East side?”
“It’s her family home,” Margaret shoots back. “You can’t blame her for it.”
Carlisle and I exchange a glance. We both know what needs to be done. We can’t risk anyone being left in this town, let alone so close to the fires. Whatever she was thinking when she decided to return to her home, it doesn’t matter. She has to get out.
And if we have to drag her ourselves, then so be it.
“Thanks, Margaret,” I tell her, gesturing for her to get on one of the buses which are waiting to whisk the populace out of town. “Stay safe, alright?”
She nods, scrambling onto the bus without another word. I’m beyond relieved that everyone seems to be taking this seriously, apart from…well, the Brown girl, whoever that might be.
I know exactly what Carlisle is thinking, even if neither of us will say it out loud, even if it’s the last thing that should be on our minds in this moment.
We both remember the night we spent with Angelie Brown, on the evening before she left for college, in the weeks before everything changed for good.
That night has been burned into my brain ever since, a part of me unable to forget the way it felt to be with her for her first time, even if we’ve never seen each other since.
“Okay, let’s get over to the East side and get her out,” Carlisle announces, gesturing for Joe and Dylan to join us.
They close ranks, and he swiftly fills them in on the matter at hand.
Neither of them let it show on their faces, but I can tell from the slight tension that rises in Dylan’s shoulders and the cool expression on Joe’s face that they’re thinking it too.
Is it her? Could it be her? She left this town, as far as we know—it could just as easily be her sister there instead. Whoever it is, what matters is getting them the fuck out of here in any way we can, and that means making a move, now.
“In the van,” Joe orders, striding over to our vehicle. “We have respirators, hoses, water?”
“Ready to go,” I reply, following him. We’re still waiting on the arrival of the full complement of fire trucks, but we have enough to contain the worst of the fire for now.
If we can keep it from reaching the town, that will be a victory.
I can smell the sharp, acrid stench of smoke in the air, and for the first time in a long time, I feel my stomach tense at the thought of what we’re walking into.
Though, to be fair, that might have more to do with her than anything else.
We scramble into the van and take off through the abandoned streets to the East side of Devin Ridge; one good thing about this going down in a place we know well is that we don’t have to stop to look at the map.
Joe, who’s driving, knows this town like the back of his hand, same as the rest of us do.
It might have been a while since we set foot here, but muscle memory never fades, no matter what might have happened between then and now.
And God knows I’ve experienced enough for a whole lifetime since I left this place.
Finally, we pull up to a small contingent of houses that sit on the East side of town. A young woman, who I half remember as Angelie’s little sister, leaps out onto the road to flag us down.
“Help, please!” she yells out. “My parents and my sister are in there—and so are the children…”
The words seem to falter on her tongue when she realizes that we are the ones coming to her rescue.
For an instant, I find myself wondering if Angelie ever said anything to her sister about what happened between us, but I brush it aside.
I can’t think about the past right now, can’t let my mind go there for a second.
I have bigger things to worry about for the time being, and as Joe screeches to a halt, I know that the others are on the same page.
Carlisle throws open the door of the van, grabbing a handful of respirators and tossing one to me. I place it over my head, securing it in place. The smoke might not seem too bad right now, but long-term exposure to this kind of thing is only going to end in disaster.
“Nathalie, right?” I greet the young woman. She nods. I jerk my head back toward the vehicle.
“Get inside,” I tell her. “Joe will get you up to the muster point…”
She does as she’s told at once, clearly glad not to have to stick around for another moment. Carlisle and Dylan follow me toward the house as Joe guides Nathalie toward the van—the sooner we can get people out of here, the better.
The fire is audible now. Loud cracks of tree boughs breaking and dropping to the forest floor punctuate the air as I hammer on the door of the house. A second later, it flies open, and before me stand an older couple—they must be Angelie’s parents.
“Go to the van!” I insist, stabbing a finger over my shoulder. “Now!”
“Our daughter and our grandchildren—”
“We’ll get them out,” I promise them. “You need to get out of the way.”
They finally step aside, rushing toward where Joe is waiting for them. I hardly have time to take in what they said, but it strikes me—daughter and grandchildren. That means Angelie is in here…
And she isn’t alone.
“Top floor,” Carlisle barks to me from behind his respirator, pointing toward the staircase. “I’m going to take the ground. Dylan, you check outside, make sure nobody has been stupid enough to wander out and get a look at the fire.”
We move out, following his orders—no point getting uppity about the chain of command when there are more important things for us to worry about right now.
I take the stairs two at a time, moving through the corridor at the top and checking behind each door in turn.
One, a bedroom, is empty. Another, a bathroom, has had the window left open and is already starting to fill with smoke. And the third…
When I throw open the door at the end of the corridor, I freeze for a second. Because after all this time, there she is. Angelie. Just the way I remember her. Long light-brown hair pulled back from her face, blue eyes catching the late afternoon light as they turn, panicked, toward me.
And the grandchildren her parents mentioned—it’s not two. Not even three.
Four toddlers surround her as she desperately tries to get them into carriers.
“Callum?” she gasps, rising to her feet.
“Stay there,” I bark at her, pushing aside the shock that threatens to grasp me by the throat. If I let something happen to her just because I was too stunned to respond when she needed me most, I knew I would never be able to forgive myself.
I back out of the room, looking down the stairs toward Carlisle, and gesture him up to join me. I don’t think he can hear me over the crack of the branches and the rush of the flames starting to approach outside, but he moves up to join me.
“Four kids,” I tell him, nodding toward the bedroom. “And her, Angelie. You take two, I’ll take two, okay?”
“Got it,” he replies, though I can see a flicker of surprise in his face as he follows my orders.
I know that the shock must be rocking through his system just as it is through mine.
Children? Angelie wasn’t even intending to stay in town for much longer when we last saw her, so coming back here to have kids, it’s… it’s something, to say the least.
We step across the threshold, and I grab one of the carriers, lifting another toddler into my arms—she has a mess of light blonde hair, and she grips my upper arm for dear life, tears welling in her eyes.
Carlisle grabs the other two, taking one in each arm, and brushes aside his respirator for a moment so he can speak to Angelie.
“Downstairs,” he tells her. “We have a van waiting—we need to get you out of here, you understand?”
Her eyes seem a little hazy from the shock, and I’m not sure if it’s more about the fire or the fact that we’ve just appeared in her life out of nowhere.
It doesn’t matter; we can contend with those issues when we need to, if we need to.
Right now, all I give a damn about is getting her out of here and making sure her children aren’t trapped by the rush of the oncoming flames.
We make our way swiftly down the stairs, and as the girl grips my arm tighter, I steal a glance at her.
How old are these kids? They all look to be the same age, though I’ve never much been good at deducing the age of children.
Never really been around them much, what with Dylan and I being twins and not having any younger siblings or anything.
Could they be quadruplets? The thought seems crazy, even to me, but these things happen, right?
Carlisle kicks the door open and guides Angelie outside. She pauses for a moment to check on the children, her eyes watering, either from the smoke or from the fear that something has happened to them.
“They’re okay,” I tell her, pulling off my respirator. Looking around, I search for the others, and sure enough, Dylan emerges around the side of the house.
“We’re good to go,” he says.
Joe screeches the van to a halt, climbs out, and rushes over to us. “The last bus just left,” he tells me. “Everyone’s out, except…”
His gaze turns to Angelie and the four children, and for a moment, I can see him crunching the numbers in his mind.
The very same numbers that I was crunching when I laid eyes on them.
They look to be about three years old, or something close to it, and we hooked up with Angelie nearly four years ago now.
I’ve kept track of the time, the memory still just as clear as it was back then, the thought of her body against mine, against all of ours, enough to burn itself into my skin like a brand.
Which means…which means that these children could belong to one of us.
“Okay, back of the van, now,” Carlisle says, cutting through the silence as he takes control.
“We have the safe house on the other side of the mountain, we can head there for the time being. Angelie, are there any health concerns we should know about? Allergies, illnesses, asthma that they might need help with?”
Angelie shakes her head, looking distant, as though she’s somewhere else entirely.
I guess, to some extent, that must be exactly what’s going on.
Seeing us again, all four of us together, just like we were on that night, it’s like she’s been whipped back in time to a memory that I know none of us have been able to leave behind.
But we’re going to have to at least put that on hold if we’re going to get her out of here in one piece. Carlisle carefully hands off two of the kids to Joe, who helps them into the back of the van, securing them as best he can in the adult-sized seats.
“Drive carefully,” I mutter to him, as I do the same for the other two.
Not like we have much choice in our method of transport here, but I don’t want them bounced around too much in the back.
I feel a sudden surge of protectiveness at the sight of them—a protectiveness that I could just put down to them being children in a time of need, but there might be a little more to it than that.
“You next,” I insist, offering Angelie an arm to get herself into the back.
She stands there for a moment, frozen. It’s not uncommon, to be so shocked at an incoming fire that you just freeze up, but the air is growing thick and dark with smoke and every second we spend here is another moment that we let the fire draw closer.
“Angelie—”
The sound of her name seems to snap her out of her reverie, and she grabs my arm, using it to climb into the back.
Her hand rests there for a moment, and for just a split second, my senses are filled with the scent of her, just like all those years ago—the tempting musk of her skin, the berry scent of her shampoo, it overtakes even the fire around us.
She gazes at me, her teeth resting on her bottom lip, and I force myself to push that aside.
“Alright, we’re good to go!” I call out to Joe, as Carlisle and I climb into the back while Dylan joins him in the cabin. Finally, the wheels begin to turn beneath us, carrying us away from the fire.
And it seems, toward a million questions that might turn out to be a whole lot more destructive than the flames tearing through the forest right now.