Chapter 43
Luke was halfway across the yard when Caleb caught up. Max came behind with a phone to his ear, already calling it in.
Up the slope, past the tree line, the fire glowed.
It had a front edge now—a low, moving line of orange working through the timber on the ridge, throwing light across the underside of the smoke.
Far enough off that the cottages still stood dark and whole.
Close enough that Luke could smell it, that the wind carried the first dry breath of heat down to him across the open ground.
If that wind held, the fire would come down the slope and find the dead grass at the edge of the property. The cottages sat closest to the tree line. The house stood right behind them.
Behind him the kennel woke all at once, a wall of barking and bodies hurling at the chain-link, rising even over the distant roar.
“Max—get the dogs out! Then soak down the grass between the trees and the cottages. We hold it there.”
Luke didn’t watch him go. Instead, he grabbed the water hose.
He and Caleb worked the line where the grass met the gravel. The water soaked the ground the fire wanted. It beat out the embers that made it across.
Luke’s lungs felt raw. Sweat ran into his eyes and stung worse than the smoke.
Behind him, toward the front of the house, his mother’s voice cut clean through all of it. “In the car—now. Cora, hold your brother’s hand. Naomi, get Grace in her seat. We’re going down to the gate where it’s clear.”
Luke risked a look back.
Headlights flared at the front of the house. Small shapes moved toward them through the smoke—his mother with a hand on each child, Naomi curled around the baby, Hamilton and Good Body circling their heels.
The whole frightened knot of them was pulling away from the fire, toward the open drive and the gate.
His chest loosened a fraction. The kids were getting out. That was the thing that mattered.
And Jenna was with them. Of course, she was. She’d have gone straight to the children, the way she always did.
He turned back to the flames, took the hose from Caleb, and put his whole body into the fight.
Jenna had the back door of the SUV open and Jonah halfway into his booster when she turned for Freya. The dog wasn’t there.
Freya had been at her heel all evening. Somewhere between the porch and the driveway, she’d lost her. Hamilton and Good Boy were already in the back, panting with anxiety.
But no Freya.
“Where’s Freya?” Cora had her seatbelt off and one foot already reaching for the ground. “Mama, where’s Freya? I have to—”
“No.” Jenna caught the door before Cora could push past it.
Her daughter’s determined face came up white in the dome light.
Cora would go herself, Jenna realized. That girl would run straight back into the smoke for Freya the second Jenna’s back was turned.
“I’ll get Freya.” Jenna eased her back into the seat and clicked the belt across her. “You stay with Grandma. All three of you. I mean it.”
Ruby was already behind the wheel. “Jenna—”
“Thirty seconds.” She was moving before she finished. “She won’t have gone far.”
She jogged back across the front yard.
As she did, the heat of the fire pressed the right side of her face, and smoke drifted gray through the headlight beams. At the tree line, the men were dark shapes against the orange, and the roar ate every other sound.
“Freya!” She rounded the corner of the house into the side yard, into the deep black between the garage and the porch where the headlights didn’t reach. “Freya, come!”
A low growl answered her.
Jenna went still.
Every nerve flared at once, and she turned.
A figure stood between her and the corner she’d come around.
A man had picked the one black gap on the whole property, the one place no one would look while the fire pulled every face toward the trees.
He’d been waiting.
For her.
And he was holding a gun.
Jenna opened her mouth to scream.