Chapter 5 #3
He would. He watched it and her as they continued to hike along the perimeter of the fire, with him occasionally adding notes in his phone, sometimes coming close enough to the flames to feel the heat of it on their exposed skin, sometimes able to stay so far back it was hard to believe the mountainside was burning at all.
They had no trail to speak of through the bush for another half of a mile.
Then suddenly they came to a rock cliff—miraculously, the northern tip of the fire.
Griffin eyed the rock. Not so high, maybe forty feet, it had a jutting point, and he figured he could get an excellent view from up there.
The burning was behind them now, to the south and west. “I’ll be able to see everything from up there. ”
Lyndie craned her neck, too. “Right.” She glanced behind her at the bush. They couldn’t see the flames, but they could hear them, crackling and popping, accompanied by the whistling wind coming through so eerily and the faux darkness of the day.
Uneasiness flickered over her face, the first sign maybe she wasn’t quite as tough as she wanted him to believe. “Stick with me,” he said, and pulled her by the hand close to his side.
“Yeah.” With her free hand, she rubbed her chest as if her lungs ached. His certainly did. “I’ll be so close you’ll be wondering if I’m attached.”
They began their climb. She scrambled up the rock beside him, their shoulders brushing, their legs brushing.
He had the inane thought that she smelled…
soft. A bundle of contradictions, this woman who was hustling up the rock cliff as if she did it every day, stumbling here and there but still meeting him inch for inch.
The climb wasn’t for beginners. Rocks interspaced with dry, rough, scratchy vegetation that clung to their arms and legs and exposed faces as they went up.
And up.
“Here.” He pointed out her toehold when she kept slipping. He reached down for her ankle to put her foot in the right place.
Her gaze flew to his, surprise there, as if she wasn’t used to being helped.
He took his hand off her ankle and put it around her wrist. “Reach here—”
“I’ve got it.” She turned her head away to survey the climb, tickling his nose with her hair.
“Hold here—”
“Really,” she said tightly. “I’ve got it.”
He looked into her face as they hung there, some thirty feet above ground. “You’ve got some trust issues, don’t you?”
Hanging there by her own sheer will, she frowned at him, her chest rising and falling. “I don’t need to trust you. I’m just here to translate.”
“Yeah.” He sidled even closer on the rock they clung to.
Beneath them and to the west were the flames.
Above them, more rock. She was at his right, and at her right the cliff jutted out in a peak, though they couldn’t see the other side.
“So you’ve mentioned a hundred times or so,” he said, thinking they needed to stay away from that jutting edge, where the rock and sand would be uneven, and therefore dangerous to be hanging from.
She squinted at him. “What does that mean, so I’ve mentioned?”
“It means you want me to think you’re only here because you have to be. Well, I don’t buy it.”
“Thank you, Dr. Griffin. Should we examine your head now?”
“I’m just trying to make sure you don’t fall, Lyndie.”
“I won’t.”
Not if sheer will counted for anything. But this wasn’t about sheer will, it was about the elements and the exhaustion on her face. He was responsible for her out here, and hell if he’d lose another person on his watch. Ever.
She shifted sideways, away from him, and around the jutting edge.
Just where they shouldn’t go. “Lyndie—”
“Hey,” she called back. “There’s better rocks over here on this side, and softer—”
“No—wait.” He reached out to grab her but she scooted out of his way and around the corner faster than he expected.
“Shit,” he muttered, going after her. “Slow down, damn it—”
But she wasn’t listening and had gone completely around the jutting edge so that he couldn’t see her until he followed.
Right onto the unstable hill. Christ. “Lyndie, stop. It’s unstable, you’re going to—”
Her body slipped a little, and she gasped.
Fall. Heart in his throat, he scrambled further along the slippery hillside to catch her and felt the difference in the hold immediately.
From their weight and movement, several rocks loosened, both above and behind him, and hundreds of little pebbles pelted them, falling to the ground below.
Lyndie took a hit on her shoulder and winced, just as he took a heavy hit on his chest. “Lyndie—” He reached for her, but before he connected, she let out a little ooph and lost her hold.
He snagged her by the wrist, barely. “Don’t move.
” His other hand clung to a rock he could feel was about to give way, and his heart slammed against his ribs.
“Lyndie, listen to me,” he said urgently, eyeing the more gradual slope beneath them on this side of the rock.
Thank God. “I’m going to let go of you.”
She choked out a response that he didn’t catch.
Probably a good thing.
“It’s okay,” he said as calmly as he could. “There’s more sand here, and more of a slope than a sheer drop. You’ll slide,” he said into her wide eyes.
At the last fire he’d fought, in that hellish event that he relived every night, he’d looked into Greg’s eyes and yelled, “run.” Griffin had, and it hadn’t been until it’d been far too late that he’d realized Greg had momentarily frozen in shock. A terminal mistake.
No freezing and no hysterics for this woman, she simply braced herself and let out a tight nod.
But he couldn’t let go, he just couldn’t do it. He looked into her amazing green eyes for a long moment, longer than he should have, and she jerked her head again, impatiently this time.
He got the message—she knew what she had to do, she trusted what he’d decided they had to do.
She did trust him. Hell of a time to realize the burden of that. One last time, he looked into her eyes.
And then let go of her.
He let go of his own perilous hold as well, following her down, desperately trying to make sure he didn’t kick or fall into her.
Dirt went up his nose. He heard her cry out as he hit his hip on a rock. A branch raked across his face.
And still he slid.
He could smell the smoke, it choked the air out of his lungs.
More dirt deposited itself in every part of his body.
He could feel the heat in the ground, but it was the sound of a sudden and viciously hot wind that got him as they slid, because behind it came the ominous crackling of the actual flames.
They were sliding to the west of where they’d climbed up, and by the sound and feel of it, right into the fire.
“Lyndie!” he yelled, but he heard nothing but his own whoosh of air as it left his lungs.
And he figured he knew right then.
In all the fires he’d worked on, he hadn’t died.
All through last year when he was so grief stricken, he hadn’t died, not even when he’d wanted to.
And yet now, out in the middle of nowhere, with only an oddly thorny, oddly irresistible woman at his side, he was going to.