CHAPTER SEVEN
The Burn
Renz
The hazard-reduction burn had been on the roster for a month, the kind of routine seasonal job the crew did a dozen times every autumn without much drama attached to it — clear a firebreak, drop a controlled line along the ridge behind the caravan park before the fuel load got dangerous, mop up, go home for lunch — and Renz had volunteered Pip for the support crew without really thinking twice about it, the way he'd started, lately, volunteering the two of them for things together without examining the pattern too closely.
"You don't have to be there for the whole thing," he'd told her, the night before, over another one of their not-dates that both of them still refused to name properly. "It's mostly standing round with a rake watching grass smoulder. Not exactly thrilling."
"I like watching you work," Pip had said, plain as anything, and he hadn't had a ready answer for that either, so he'd simply let it sit there, warm and unclaimed, the way he was slowly learning to let things sit rather than immediately converting them into the next useful task.
The morning of the burn came up clear and still, exactly the conditions the burn plan called for — light wind, low humidity but not dangerously so, the whole crew moving through the familiar choreography of a routine job, Jax running the briefing with his usual flat economy, wind direction confirmed, containment lines walked and checked, water tankers positioned at both ends of the ridge.
"Standard drop-and-hold," Jax said, running through the briefing with the map spread across the bonnet of his ute, forty-odd volunteers and crew gathered round in the cool early light.
"Eastern line's the priority containment, western line's backup only, shouldn't need it if the forecast holds.
Renz, you're running the eastern crew, you know that ground better than anyone.
Wes, western. New volunteers stick with an experienced hand at all times, no exceptions, and if anyone hears a wind-shift call over the radio, you move to the nearest safe ground immediately, no hesitating to finish whatever job's in front of you first. Clear? "
There was a general murmur of assent, the specific low-key readiness of a crew that had done this particular dance dozens of times and knew exactly how seriously to take a briefing that sounded routine but never fully was, not with fire, not ever.
Pip had been assigned to Renz's eastern crew as general support — fetching tools, running water to the crew working the actual line, the unglamorous ordinary labour that kept a burn day functioning — and had listened to the briefing with the same careful attention she brought to everything, filing away the wind-shift protocol the way she filed away most safety information, thoroughly, in case it ever mattered.
It mattered by mid-morning more than anyone had planned for.
For the first ninety minutes, the burn went more or less exactly as briefed — a controlled line of fire working steadily along the pre-planned break, smoke rising thin and manageable into a clear sky, everyone exactly where they should be, Renz moving along his section of the line with the unhurried competence he brought to every job, checking containment, checking crew, checking wind, the same methodical rhythm he'd have brought to setting a table or squaring a tablecloth, just with considerably higher stakes attached.
The wind turned at eleven-forty, faster and harder than the forecast had promised, swinging thirty degrees in the space of about four minutes and picking up pace as it went, the specific betrayal every fire crew in the country learned to fear more than almost anything else — not the fire itself, which behaved predictably enough when the conditions held steady, but the moment the conditions stopped holding.
"Wind's shifted," Jax called over the radio, already moving, his voice gone flat and fast in the register Renz recognised from a dozen genuine emergencies. "Everyone off the eastern line, now, it's about to run faster than we planned for."
Renz was closest to the eastern containment line when the call came through, working alongside Wes clearing a fallen branch that had snagged in the firebreak, and he felt the change before he consciously registered the radio call — a shift in the smoke's drift, a new heat on the back of his neck that hadn't been there thirty seconds earlier, the specific sensory alarm system eleven years on this crew had built into his body without him ever having to think about it.
"Wes, go," he said, already turning, already scanning the ridge for anyone else caught on the wrong side of the shifting line, and that was when he saw Pip — forty metres further along the break than she should have been, having gone to retrieve a rake one of the newer volunteers had left behind, entirely unaware that the fire's whole behaviour had just changed underneath her.
"PIP." He was moving before the shout had finished leaving his mouth, covering the ground between them at a dead run, the fire's new heat building fast at his back, close enough now that he could hear it properly, the specific low roar of flame finding fresh fuel faster than anyone had planned for. "PIP, MOVE, NOW—"
She turned, saw him coming, saw past him to the flame line advancing faster than either of them had accounted for, and didn't waste time asking questions, just ran, the two of them covering the last stretch of the break together, Renz's hand finding her arm and half-hauling her the final few metres across the containment line to safe ground, both of them going down hard onto the cleared dirt on the other side as the fire reached the exact spot she'd been standing perhaps eight seconds earlier.
"You right?" Renz said, breathless, checking her over with hands that weren't quite steady, an inversion of every other moment in this whole relationship where he'd been the one holding himself together while she watched.
"I'm right." Pip sat up, coughing lightly at the smoke, otherwise entirely unharmed, though her hands, Renz noticed, were shaking rather more than she was probably aware of. "Wasn't watching the wind. Should have been watching the wind."
"Wasn't your job to watch the wind. That's what the whole crew's for.
" He helped her up, both of them still catching their breath, the fire behind them now properly contained again, Jax and the water tankers already working the new line with the same practised efficiency that had handled worse than this a hundred times over. "You scared me."
"I scared myself." She looked at him properly then, something raw and unguarded in her face that he rarely saw outside of the very late, very honest hours of a night neither of them wanted to end. "Thirty seconds either way and that's a very different afternoon, Renz."
"I know." He didn't let go of her arm, not yet, some old fireground instinct insisting on physical confirmation that she was actually, entirely safe. "I've done forty of these burns. Never once had the wind turn like that with someone still on the wrong side of the line."
"Well." Pip managed something that was almost a laugh, shaky but genuine. "Glad I could make it memorable."
They sat a moment longer on the cleared dirt, neither quite ready to stand back up, the adrenaline still working its way out of both their systems in the particular jittery aftermath that always followed a genuine fright, hands not quite steady, breath not quite settled.
Down the ridge, the fire crew continued their work along the new containment line, the whole operation folding itself back into ordinary controlled procedure with the practised speed of people who'd trained for exactly this kind of correction, and Renz watched them work for a moment with the strange dual awareness of a man who could read every single thing happening on that line with total professional clarity while simultaneously feeling as though his own chest had been cracked wide open.
"I need a minute," he admitted, quietly, an admission that would have been unthinkable from him a year ago, the old reflex to immediately be useful again warring visibly with the newer, harder-won instinct to simply sit with what had just happened.
"Take your minute," Pip said, leaning into his side, her shoulder against his. "Nobody's going anywhere. Crew's got it handled."
"Feels wrong, not being up there helping."
"Feels right to me, you sitting here making sure I'm actually okay before you go back to being useful to everyone else.
" She took his hand, steadying it between both of hers.
"You're allowed exactly one minute of just being a frightened person, Renz.
The crew survives fine without you for sixty seconds. "
He took the minute. It cost him something, visibly, the specific discomfort of a man unused to prioritising his own unprocessed fear over the next available task, but he took it, sitting there on the cleared dirt with her hand steadying his, and when the minute was up he stood, offered her his hand to help her up too, and the two of them walked back up the ridge together toward the rest of the crew, considerably shakier than they'd been an hour earlier and considerably more certain of something neither of them had quite said out loud yet.
Jax found them a few minutes later, once the new line was secured and the immediate danger had folded itself back down into ordinary manageable work, and looked the two of them over with the particular quick assessment of a man checking for injury before he allowed himself to feel anything else about what had just happened.
"Everyone accounted for. Nobody hurt. Bit closer than I'd have liked, but that's a wind shift for you — no warning worth trusting, not really, not on a day like today.
" He looked at Renz specifically, something steady and searching in it.
"You were fast, getting to her. Fastest I've seen you move in eleven years, and that's saying something. "