Chapter 8 Carlisle
CARLISLE
“Where next?”
“Take this road, to the right.”
“There’s no road to the right—”
“You need to go past the trees,” Angelie tells me sharply, stabbing her finger across me to point to a path that leads through the thick foliage beyond. “See? You can make it out where it pulls away from the road, just drive!”
A part of me wants to shoot back with something smart, but I know she’s here to help us, and the sooner I get that through my head, the better. Gripping the wheel, I spin it to the right, and the van swerves off the road and nudges past the trees to open out onto a path beyond.
“See, told you,” she mutters, running one of her hands through her hair. She’s pulled one hand free from the gloves Dylan gave her, and I can’t help but notice how delicate her fingers are, how small they look compared to our equipment. Well. Not that it’s the first time…
“Just past this gate at the end,” she tells me, leaning forward and squinting through the foliage. She seems to carry herself with certainty in this place, and I guess maybe she had a point when she said that she knew this area better than any of us, even if we did all grow up here.
“I’ll get it,” Dylan barks out from the back of the van, springing out with his gloves pulled on to open the metal gate.
Angelie watches with a frown as he pushes it open, her brow furrowed. “Why does he have to wear the gloves for that?”
“The heat from the fire spreads pretty fast,” I reply, flexing my fingers on the wheel. “Could have reached the metal of that gate and he’d get a nasty burn off of it if he didn’t take precautions.”
She draws in a sharp breath, as though it hasn’t crossed her mind till now just how serious this is. I roll down the window and stick my head out to lead the van past the gate, and I can smell the bite of smoke in the air.
“How far is it to your parents’ place from here?”
“Maybe a few hundred yards?”
“You think you can point us there?” I ask. “I don’t want to bring the van too much closer—this fire spreads fast, we need a quick getaway…”
“No, but I can take you there,” she offers, and I grit my teeth. I don’t want her there at our side, racing into the fire, even if she so clearly thinks she’ll be able to handle anything and everything that’s thrown in her direction.
Dylan strides to the van, leaning in the window. “Get the water tank,” he tells me. “I can see some flames at the edge of a property through the trees—looks like the fire diverted from down near the marsh and found its way up here, instead.”
The blood drains from Angelie’s face. “That’s my parents’ place,” she breathes. “I have to come with you. Please, let me—”
“You’re staying right here,” Dylan insists.
“No, the hell I am not!” she exclaims. “Trust me, they’re not going to leave unless I can convince them to. My mother, she’ll want to stay in the house as long as she can, but—”
“We don’t have time to argue,” Dylan snaps back, running a hand through his hair. “Carlisle—is she coming or not?”
She locks eyes with me, and I can tell at a glance that she’s going to follow us whether I allow her to come or not. Better that I know where she is than leave her running around the woods by herself, and besides, she’ll have a better handle of the landscape than we do.
“Fine,” I mutter, climbing out of the cabin and unhooking the water tank from where it sits on the side. “Dylan, take the hose. Angelie, grab a couple of fire extinguishers. If you’re going to come with us, then the least you can do is make yourself useful.”
She does as she’s told at once, hefting a couple of the fire extinguishers into her arms and cradling them like they’re infant children.
I brush aside the thoughts that image draws to my mind, and gesture out through the woods. “Quickest way to the property?”
“To the left and then follow the path to the gates,” she replies, taking off before I can say another word. “As the crow flies, we’ll hit some rocky ground, and you don’t want to drop the tank…”
Dylan and I exchange a glance as she takes off ahead of us, and we race behind her to catch up before she can put any distance between us.
Sure enough, as we move through the trees, the branches snagging at my face, I can smell the smoke growing thicker in the air and eventually hear the sound of the crackling fire as it cuts through the trees.
Dylan is right—it must have caught between the branches of the tightly packed trees and made its way here when the marsh stymied its progress toward the town.
As far as I know, everyone has been evacuated from these houses and it’s just Angelie’s damn stubborn family who have decided to make life more difficult for us than it needs to be.
“There, the gate!” Angelie calls out, stabbing her finger through a clearing and toward a mottled old wooden gate that hangs half off its hinge where it sits at the far end of the house.
All of a sudden, a loud crack rings through the forest, and a tree branch crashes down onto the gate, bringing with it a flood of flames that immediately have the gate exploding with fire before us.
“Angelie, get back!” I roar.
Dylan aims the hose and hits the gate with a heavy blast that takes it entirely off its hinges. It sprawls to the side as Angelie leaps backward, her hand on her chest, the jacket protecting her from the worst of the heat.
We don’t have much time.
“This your parents’ place?” I ask, closing the distance between us. She nods. “You go in,” I tell her. “Dylan and I will deal with the fire out here, make sure it doesn’t get any closer. You find your parents in there, you say whatever it takes to get them the hell out, you understand?”
Her eyes still seem a little hazy from how close she came to being taken out by that branch, but I grab her shoulder, forcing her back into the moment. “Angelie, tell me you understand.”
“I—I understand,” she replies, gripping one of the extinguishers tighter to her chest.
“Be back here in five minutes,” I tell her, slipping off my watch and sliding it onto her wrist. Tapping the time, I raise my eyebrows at her. “Any later than that, and we’re going to come in after you, understand?”
She nods again.
“Good. Go!” I gesture for her to head inside and she does as she’s told, taking off toward the old farmhouse that looks as though it’s been standing for as long as the town has.
I can’t help but feel a twist of panic, seeing her running toward the house.
What if the flames have already reached it from the other side, and we’re sending her into the lion’s den?
Should we check it out before we let her get close to it?
“Carlisle.” Dylan’s curt voice cuts through my reverie.
I blink and turn to face him. “Yeah?”
“We deal with this,” he reminds me, positioning the hose so it’s pointed at the flames licking through the kindling of the tangled branches above us. “And she deals with that. Remember?”
I nod without a reply, heaving the water tank around so I can move it along with Dylan’s hose.
I have to keep my head in the game right now.
I came here to deal with a fire, not to get drawn in to the memories of everything that might have happened between us in the past. I focus my eyes ahead, my hands sweating within the gloves as I struggle to keep my grip tight.
Inside the house, every now and then, I’m sure I can make out the sound of voices, and I find myself looking back to see what’s going on there, trying to figure out if I can see movement inside the windows or if it’s all just my imagination.
Dylan moves methodically through the trees, taking out the snatches of fire one at a time until we’ve driven it a little further down the hill.
The water is starting to run low, even with Dylan’s conservative use, and we’ll have to get another tank up here to really get it under control—though, by the time we come back, I can only hope that the real fire department has sent a few tankers out here to help manage this chaos before it spins any further out of control.
“Dylan! Carlisle!”
I turn to see Angelie rushing toward us, lifting one gloved hand in the air as she approaches the fence.
Behind her, an older man who has to be her father has his arm around a woman who I recognize from the earlier evacuation.
It looks as though Angelie’s mother is being coaxed out without her consent, but at least they’ve managed to force her out of the house.
“Any damage to the building?” I ask as Angelie draws up at the gate again, out of breath. She’s still carrying one of the extinguishers, dangling it from her hand like it’s getting too heavy to carry.
“The front door had singed a bit, but I managed to put it out,” she replies with a note of pride to her voice.
“I’m not leaving this place to burn!” her mother exclaims, an edge to her voice that tells me she isn’t going to make this easy for us.
“We’re not asking you to,” Dylan steps in to assure her, putting an arm around her shoulders and steering her toward the van. “We just need everyone out of here so we don’t have to worry about getting pulled away from fighting the fires…”
She seems to soften slightly at the sound of those words—Dylan has always had that effect on people, especially women, the stark ability to cut through whatever hand-wringing stress they’re dealing with and convince them to do what needs to be done.
“There’s a van just through the woods,” he continues. “Angelie brought us here—she thought you would have come back to the house and she didn’t want you getting caught by the fire.”
“You really thought to come and check on us?” her father asks, sounding a little surprised. Angelie glances at him over the top of her coat as we make our way back toward the van, like she can barely believe that he would ask something like that.
“Of course I did,” she replies. “I wasn’t going to leave you here. I knew Mom would never just let the evacuation take her away from this place, not with how much history is wrapped up in it.”
“And you’d be right,” her mother cuts in. “I won’t be away from here for more than a few days, you understand? And if there’s even a singe on this place—”
“Mom, they’re not the ones who started the fire,” Angelie tells her, her voice slightly sharp, as though she’s not going to take any more of her attitude. Finally, her mother seals her lips, her mouth set in a hard line, but at least she has stopped complaining.
“Good job getting them out of there,” I mutter to Angelie.
I can smell that distinct scent of burned, soaked wood, a sign that our job has been done at least for now.
“Thanks for letting me come,” she replies, her voice a little shy. “I know how it sounds, but they would never have come if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Guess I know where you get your stubbornness from, then,” I shoot back.
Over the top of the oversized collar of the jacket, she gives me a slight smile. “Guess you do.”
For just a moment, everything else seems to fall away around us.
As she looks back at me, I could swear that we’re the only two people in that forest, despite the fact that her parents’ grumbling still rises above the sound of our footsteps, along with Dylan doing his best to soothe them before they work themselves into too much of a state.
It might have been years since I last saw Angelie, but at this moment, I could convince myself that we haven’t skipped a single day together in all that time.