25. We Can Reach It #2
His fingers felt thick and clumsy on the tack, familiar buckles turning into complicated pieces of engineering while Red circled whenever the smoke shifted. Harris came beside him without taking over, one hand steadying the saddle while Jay worked the cinch loose.
“Slow your breathing.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
Only then did Jay notice how quickly he was pulling air in. He forced one breath deeper, regretted it immediately when smoke scraped his throat, and got the saddle free.
Harris removed the radio from Rain’s bag and clipped it to his belt. Jay took the first-aid pouch and one bottle of water from Red’s gear; Harris retrieved another from Rain’s.
That was everything they’d carried from the truck.
Two ordinary bottles of water. A radio that had produced nothing but static. A kit designed for cuts, sprains, and bad decisions occurring under circumstances in which emergency services remained a meaningful concept.
“That’s it?” Jay asked.
“That’s it.”
“Excellent. I was worried we might be overprepared.”
The joke landed nowhere. Making it still helped.
They removed the bridles. Harris turned Red toward the opening beyond the trees.
“If we let them go, how do we know where they’ll run?”
“We don’t. They know this country. They’ll look for open ground.”
“Better than we can?”
“Right now? Probably.”
Jay placed one hand against Red’s neck. The gelding’s coat was damp with sweat, ash collecting along his mane.
“Go on.”
He slapped Red’s neck and sent him forward. The gelding hesitated before moving toward the exposed ground beyond the timber. At the edge of the trees, he stopped and looked back.
Rain had not moved.
She stood with her shoulder pressed into Harris’s chest, her whole body trembling while every part of her remained oriented toward him. Harris held one hand against the side of her face, the loose bridle hanging from the other.
“Come on, girl.”
Rain pushed her nose into his chest.
Harris closed his eyes for half a second.
The fire roared below them.
Jay understood before either of them said anything.
Rain would not leave him.
Harris had spent years teaching her that he was the safest place she knew, and now, at the worst possible moment, he needed her to believe safety existed somewhere else.
His fingers tightened in her mane. “Told Nell I’d keep her safe.”
There it was.
Rain was not only a horse. She was one of the promises Harris had been left holding when Nell died, another piece of his sister he had turned into work because work was something he knew how to carry.
“This is how,” Jay said. “You can’t keep her safe under that rock. Let her use what she knows.”
A tree came down somewhere below, its impact disappearing inside the approaching roar. Rain shied and pressed closer.
“She won’t go.”
“Then make her.”
For one suspended moment, Harris stood with his forehead against hers.
Jay did not need access to Harris’s thoughts to recognize what was trapping him there. The same instinct that made him useful in every crisis had become the thing he had to fight: the certainty that protection meant staying close enough to control the outcome.
Jay touched his arm. “Harris. We have to go.”
Harris stepped back and struck Rain hard on the rump. “Go on!”
She bolted.
Red turned with her, and both horses disappeared through the opening toward exposed ground.
Harris took one step after them.
Jay caught the back of his jacket. “Harris.”
He stopped, though his body remained angled toward the place where Rain had vanished. For one horrible second Jay thought he might pull free and follow her.
Then Harris turned.
Whatever had shown on his face was gone almost immediately, his attention narrowing onto Jay.
“You stay with me.”
“I am.”
“No matter what you see, you don’t run downhill. That puts you back into fuel and smoke. Stay close.”
“Got it.”
Harris caught the back of Jay’s neck. His grip was too hard to be affectionate and unsteady enough that Jay felt the tremor through his skin.
“Say it.”
“I’m with you.”
Something eased by a fraction.
“Stay that way.”
The granite outcrop was not shelter in any comforting sense. It was simply better than everything else: a massive slab breaking through the ridge, with a shallow recess on its lee side where the ground was mostly bare stone and mineral soil.
Harris headed toward it. Jay followed through smoke thick enough that the rock disappeared and returned with every gust, fixing his attention on Harris’s back and the pale strip of shirt above his collar.
Something struck Jay’s shoulder.
Heat bit through the fabric. He slapped at the spot, but Harris was already there, sweeping the ember away with one bare hand.
The smell of scorched skin reached Jay even through the smoke.
“Harris.”
“Keep moving.”
Jay caught his wrist. “Your hand.”
“Later.”
Harris pulled free and slid beneath the granite, but he stopped too close to the exposed edge.
Jay caught the back of his jacket and hauled him farther in. “There’s room.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. Get in.”
Even now, Harris was apparently considering whether three additional inches of his body between Jay and the fire might accomplish something useful.
Jay yanked again.
This time Harris came with him, flattening himself beside Jay until they were both as far beneath the granite as the shallow recess allowed.
There was barely enough height to turn comfortably.
Harris lay partly on his side, one shoulder pressed against Jay’s, their legs overlapping where the rock narrowed around them.
“Thank you.”
“Was already getting in.”
“Sure.”
The first real wave of heat reached them before Jay could say anything else.
It struck the exposed side of his face, immediate and shockingly dry. Harris flinched beside him, and Jay remembered the hand he had used to knock the ember from Jay’s shoulder.
“Let me see.”
“Ain’t the time.”
Jay pulled one of the bottles free and wet the corner of his shirt before holding it toward Harris. Harris looked at the water, then at him.
“We both need it.”
After a second, Harris wet the fabric at his own collar and handed the bottle back.
They drew the damp cloth over their mouths and noses and pressed themselves closer to the ground as smoke began curling beneath the granite.
“Slow breaths,” Harris said.
Jay nodded.
Then the fire reached the ridge.
The sound swallowed everything.
Wind became part of it, roaring across the granite while embers streamed past the opening in violent bursts of light.
Darkness beyond the rock flashed orange and white too quickly for Jay’s eyes to assemble into anything coherent.
When a blast of heat drove through the recess, both men instinctively flattened themselves farther against the stone.
There was nowhere else to go.
Jay’s knee knocked against Harris’s thigh, his shoulder wedged hard beneath Harris’s arm, and when another gust sent sparks skittering across the rock outside, Harris’s hand closed around his forearm.
Jay grabbed Harris’s jacket in return.
The contact helped. Not because Harris could protect him from what was outside; he obviously couldn’t. They were two men squeezed beneath the same piece of granite with the same fire trying to get at them.
But Harris was still there.
Jay tried to breathe through the damp fabric.
Nothing felt like air.