Chapter 45
Jenna forced herself to stay limp as her body bumped through the darkness.
Consciousness was slowly returning, and her mind scrambled to make sense of things.
The drug she’d been given was still in her, pulling at her thoughts like a current that wanted her back under. She had to fight it, to remain lucid.
With her eyes still closed, she took stock of her situation.
Someone—that man who’d grabbed her—had thrown her over his shoulder and was carrying her through the woods.
Smoke teased her senses. Heat warmed her left cheek, close enough to sting.
Light cut through her eyelids. Orange light that climbed and flickered against the dark behind her eyes.
The fire, she realized. It wasn’t behind her anymore.
The flames were beside her. They were moving in.
They were close—too close.
Fear cut through her, and her eyes flung open.
Memories flooded her, and she remembered the face of the man who’d grabbed her.
Sutter. Sutter had grabbed her.
Roderick’s righthand man.
Her stomach turned to ice, and she must have shifted. Sutter seemed to sense her consciousness had returned, and his steps slowed.
“There you are.” He set her on the ground. “You can walk if you want. Otherwise, I drag you. It’s faster and less painful if you walk.”
Before she could think, he grabbed her arm and began to walk. She had mere seconds to get her feet under her. But her legs wobbled. Her foot—the one that was missing a shoe—hurt as rocks and sticks cut into her flesh.
Sutter was leading her into the fire.
Leading her toward something.
There was no other reason they’d be going this way unless Sutter had been instructed to do so.
Which meant that something more terrible than the fire awaited her just out of sight.
Despair tried to grip her. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to keep a clear head.
The kids were safe. That was the most important thing.
“This fire wasn’t your doing, was it?” Her voice came out cracked, raw from the smoke as she tumbled through the woods.
He scowled. “No. And it’s unfortunate—but an obstacle I’ll push through.”
He gripped her arm, fingers digging in until tears pushed to her eyes. She stumbled again as he forced her to walk faster, and the heat hit her like a wall.
The hotness came off the fire in waves, baking the side of her face and drying her eyes until each blink scraped.
Smoke poured down the slope ahead of them, thick and low, and the air she pulled into her lungs came hot and tasted of ash.
Somewhere close a tree went up with a roar, and the light of it threw everything orange.
Sutter knew the danger they were in. He had to. He felt the same heat she did, breathed the same poisoned air. The flames were climbing, spreading, eating the ground on both sides of them.
He hauled her toward through the woods anyway.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. They were walking toward the fire—toward the heat, toward the roar, toward the place where the inferno was worst. Every step closed the distance to something she couldn’t see past.
Her legs wanted to lock up. She forced them to keep moving. The grip on her arm gave her no other choice.
After what felt like miles had passed, the trees thinned.
Ahead, headlights bored a tunnel through the haze, the beams solid with drifting smoke. A man waited beside the car. He stood in the middle of a burning mountain as if even the flames knew better than to touch him.
And Jenna understood, with a cold that cut straight through all that heat, that this was the moment she’d spent years running to keep from ever facing.
She knew in her gut who that man was.
It was Vito Barone.
He’d come himself to make sure this job was done right.
Luke darted into the woods behind Freya.
The dog stayed on Jenna’s scent, her nose down.
Brush crashed behind him. He didn’t slow until Caleb’s voice landed at his back.
“Luke. I’m with you.” His brother fell in beside him, breathing hard. “I called Micah. He’s sending crews out. Wyatt is on his way, and Max has all the dogs out. Everyone’s safe.”
Everyone except Jenna.
He didn’t say those words aloud. But they caused nausea to roil in his stomach.
For a while the scent held. Freya continued forward, steady and certain. Luke kept the dog in sight, and the three of them ran through the trees.
The heat built as they ran.
Then the wind swept through the forest. The orange that had been a glow on the far slope roared to life in front of them. Smoke rolled around them in a wave that ate the flashlight beam whole.
They kept going, though every instinct said to turn back.
He couldn’t do that to Jenna.
If he let her go now, he might not ever see her again.
Visibility dropped to twenty feet, then ten, then nothing. He couldn’t even make out Caleb’s face beside him.
Luke crouched low to where the air was cleaner.
Freya hurried ahead, nose to the ground. She worked a slow loop before coming back to him, her ears down.
The scent she’d carried since the garage had burned off the ground or buried itself under the reek of woodsmoke. There was no getting it back.
“It’s not on you.” He rubbed the dog’s head, sensing her guilt.
“Luke.” Caleb had an arm thrown up against the heat, his face slick and lit orange. “It’s a draw. We climb out now, or we don’t climb out at all.”
His resolve only hardened. “Jenna is out here somewhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The fire road.” Luke didn’t have a reason to know that—only gut instinct. “It’s the only place that make sense. If whoever took her intends to drive her out, that’s the only place he could do so.”
Caleb took in the wall of flame on either side of them. Luke knew his brother was running the math, weighing the risks.
He finally nodded. “Then we go now.”
They hurried forward. The scramble east along the slope was hard. Loose rock slid underfoot, and branches clawed at his arms in the dark. Freya kept ahead of them, low to the ground. Caleb labored behind, his breath sawing loud enough to hear over the fire.
They dropped down through a grove of hemlock the flames hadn’t reached yet, where the air came a degree cooler, and Luke gulped it like water. It didn’t last.
They continued.
The smoke thickened as they went. It poured through the air, a dark river that stung his eyes and coated the back of his throat. Every breath came shallow and scorched.
Beside him Caleb coughed hard enough to stagger. Freya pressed close against Luke’s leg, panting, her coat gritty with ash. He kept a hand on her to keep from losing her.
When they finally broke out lower on the slope, his lungs were raw and the night roared.
He searched the dark for any sign that Jenna had been brought this way. The fire’s crackle had become a steady, swelling growl, close enough now that he could feel the heat of it on his face like an open oven door. Freya’s ears went flat. A low sound built in her chest.
Then Luke saw why.
A wall of fire stood between him and the bottom—a roaring curtain that cut clean across their only route.
Somewhere past the flames was the fire road. He had no way through. No trail on this side. No scent.
He had nothing but fire . . . and his faith.