Lily spent a restless night, her dreams punctuated not by fireworks, but by flames. She woke up with a choking sensation a few minutes before her alarm was due to go off. Smelling smoke, she shot upright, her chest tight, her heart pounding.
Think, assess. Don’t panic.
Lily took a deep breath, blinked the night’s clouds from her eyes, and scanned the room. Nothing. Nothing but the remnant of a dream.
Rising, needing to be sure, she pushed the window open wide and leaned out, both hands braced on the sill. Thunder Ridge, an unbroken collage of green beneath a steel-gray sky not yet giving way to the dawn, rose unmolested above her. Somewhere beyond that pristine ridge, fire devoured the forest. Somewhere out there, Chase and dozens of others stood in the fire’s path and denied it passage. How close was the fire? How long before Chase and the others battled it into submission?
She’d resisted the urge all evening to find Sarah and pester her for an update. Sarah would come to her with any news as soon as she could, and reminding her—reminding them both—of their helplessness was simply cruel. Folding her arms across her chest, Lily suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the damp morning mountain air, an anomaly that would disappear by noon when the day lay heavy as a cloying blanket beneath the blistering sun. That discomfort barely registered now, not when somewhere out there—where she wasn’t exactly sure, considering her natural compass was sorely lacking despite a summer tramping through the surrounding forests—Chase was undoubtedly hard at work. She would be hot and dusty and tired beyond anything Lily could imagine, facing one of nature’s most violent displays of temper. Had she slept? Had she eaten? Was she whole and uninjured?
“Damn it,” Lily muttered. She’d had moments—hours verging on days that hazed into weeks—of frustration and rankling impotence over the last few years, but unlike now, she’d had weapons of her own with which to fight back. Now she was sidelined, helpless, and the stakes were personal. She was tucked away here, safe and secure, and whatever Chase faced out there, there was absolutely nothing Lily could do to help her.
Lily lifted her chin and turned her back from the window to gather her clothes. She had a full schedule ahead, and a camp full of kids who would still benefit from what she could help teach them. Chase was doing her job, and she’d do hers.
She carried her coffee and a slice of toast that she had no real appetite for over to the clinic, unlocked the door, and then sat on the porch. For the last two weeks, her early morning clinic hours had been pretty quiet. The campers had all acclimated to the various challenges of living in the mountains, had become accomplished, almost despite themselves, at wildland lore and procedures, and rarely fell prey to the common injuries that seemed to beset so many day-trippers who flooded the trails and lakes all summer. She’d already updated all her pertinent records and entered them into the statewide medical system for reference. Should one of the campers have medical difficulties in the future related to anything that had happened at camp, her treatment would be documented.
At a little before seven, Marty and Ford walked down the trail from the cabins, saw her, and waved.
“Morning,” they called in unison.
“Headed to breakfast or a swim?” Lily called.
“Food first!” Ford called back.
“We want to be ready for the simulations,” Marty said, their grin quicker and easier the last few weeks. “Do you happen to know our assignments yet?”
Ford gave them a playful push. “Will you relax. You know you’re going to get to be one of the medics.”
“Maybe I want to get airlifted into a helicopter,” Marty said archly.
Lily laughed. “I’m not sure that’s going to be a volunteer position.”
“It will be if Marty has a say.” Ford snorted. “Come on. I want a Coke.”
Marty groaned. “When are you going to start drinking coffee like a grown-up?”
“When I’ve lost my sense of taste or the stuff stops tasting like stewed tennis shoes.”
“You just haven’t had good coffee. The coffee here…”
Amused, Lily watched the two teens amble off, arguing about the caffeine benefits of Coke versus coffee, weighed against the taste or lack thereof, and thought how glad she was to have watched them both, especially Marty, grow strong, confident, and happy over the summer. At her first meeting with Marty after she’d received the anonymous note about the bullying, she’d been struck by Marty’s resilience and maturity but had sensed their loneliness too. Over the course of the summer, they’d changed. Marty laughed more easily and had connected with quite a few of the other campers. Ford’s friendship no doubt had a lot to do with Marty’s happiness, but Marty’s natural wit and subtle magnetism drew others to them too.
For a while, Lily had thought Ford might have been the one to leave the note reporting the bullying, but Ford’s friendship with Shannon at the beginning of the summer had made that seem unlikely. When Lily had learned from Suwallia’s family on the Fourth of July cruise that Suwallia and Marty went to the same school, she’d suspected Suwallia had been the author of the note. Now, Marty and Suwallia were friends as well.
She’d miss that, when she started back in the ER—the chance to know people on a deeper level, to watch the people she cared about change and triumph. The absence of long-term patient relationships was the trade-off, she supposed, for no office hours and no late-night calls when she was off-call. Just another thing she’d learned about herself that summer, and something else she’d miss.
Her coffee cup was empty and the toast a distant memory, and with a long, physically demanding schedule ahead, she opted for a real breakfast. Hungry or not. She passed on the invitations to dine with Alisha and Philippe and several of the other counselors. Her mind was too distracted, her thoughts elsewhere, to make her reasonable company. At eight thirty, she joined the rest of the staff outside to await the arrival of the team from the regional medical center who would be staging their field training sessions with the help of the campers. Supervising the ER residents, PA students, and campers as they’d resuscitate the pseudo accident victims and ready them for transport would keep her busy for the next two days. Lily welcomed the work, but no matter how busy she was, nothing would dispel her worries over Chase and what she was going through.
* * *
Chase flagged down the driver of one of the equipment carriers headed down to the base camp. The big trucks hauled ATVs, power saws, and hoists, even backhoes, and followed the line crews as they pushed to stay ahead of the fire front. “Got room for a passenger?”
The driver, a young guy with a two-day beard, shadows of fatigue riding his cheekbones, and a weary grin, motioned her around to the passenger side. “Climb in.”
“Thanks,” Chase said. “Fielder, DEC out of Bolton.”
“Michael James—Fire Rescue from Fort Ann. How’s it going out there?”
“We’re holding,” Chase said as she leaned her head back. “But we’re not winning yet.”
“Reports say the wind’s coming up overnight.”
“Yeah.” Chase sighed. She hadn’t had a shower in thirty-six hours, and not much more to eat than a few rushed cups of coffee, a couple of prepackaged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, countless bags of Cheetos, some kind of meat on a bagel, and a power drink. She had charge of one of the twenty-man hand crews cutting timber, clearing underbrush, and digging the fire lines behind the hotshots working up close who constructed firebreaks, doused hot spots, and directed the flyover retardant drops to help suffocate the fire. The front was less than a mile away from the incident command post, on the other side of an unpopulated valley with a narrow stream running through it. They were clearing both sides of the stream and deploying as much of the water as they could pump to stop the advance of the fire. Chase’s crew, being closest to the hotshots, also had to maintain the evac routes in case the wind picked up and the front moved faster. A really hot wildland fire could move ten miles an hour or more, and they’d all need to get out in a hurry. Her hunger vanished as she considered what might happen if the teams could not reach secure trails and strategically located vehicles.
“Thanks,” she said when she jumped out of the truck. She needed to be back on the line in an hour. She stopped at the mess tent and grabbed a plate of fried potatoes and something with gravy on it from one of the assistant rangers maintaining the supply lines. Carrying the food, she located Nat in the command center.
“I was just about to radio you,” Nat said.
“Something happened?” Chase said, pausing with a forkful of food on the way to her mouth.
“Jumped the line at Eagle Peak,” Nat said.
Chase’s stomach clenched. “Anybody hurt?”
“No, they saw it coming and evacuated, but the front has moved upslope, and we need to get around it.”
Chase glanced at the geographic images up on the wall, but she didn’t need to. She knew Eagle Peak. She’d climbed all over there as a kid. That’s where she’d taken her last fall. “I wouldn’t have thought it could get past that rock face.”
“The wind kicked up enough to send a few fireballs upslope.”
“If it keeps moving in that direction, it could crest Thunder Ridge.” Chase’s stomach churned.
“It’s a good fifty miles from the lodge, but I’ll let Sarah know to be on notice.” Nat pursed her lips and pointed to a new red line just below the crest of Eagle Peak. “We’ll need your crew and Charlie and Delta to reform up here.”
“Tell Sarah to evacuate,” Chase said.
Nat’s brows rose. “That’s pretty premature.”
“The kids will all be going home at the end of the week. Why risk it?”
“You’ve got a point. I’ll talk to her about it.”
“Thanks.” Chase hesitated. “Give Sarah a message for me, will you?”
“Of course.”
“Tell her to make sure Lily goes home.”
“That’s it? Will she know what that means?”
“She’ll know.”
“If we weren’t in the middle of this,” Nat said quietly, “I’d ask what’s going on. But there’s no time for it now.”
“No,” Chase said. “No time at all.”
There’d never really been enough time. She just hadn’t wanted to see that.
“I’m headed back to spike camp,” Chase said. “We’ll need to hike all night to get up on that ridge before the fire does.”
“Radio your location if you stop early. I don’t want a crew getting cut off out there,” Nat called as Chase carried her half-finished plate back outside.
“Copy that.”
Fifteen minutes later, she was showered, had donned her spare Nomexes and a clean shirt, had replenished her water and food, and was back in another truck, headed up the mountain. She had a fire to fight and a crew to safeguard. With Lily out of danger soon, she didn’t need to worry about what Eagle Peak had in store for her this time.
* * *
“Did you talk to Chase?” Lily said after Sarah related the details of the call from Nat.
“No, and I don’t expect to. Cell service is nonexistent up there. Everyone’s family knows no news is good news—sometimes it’s a week or more between contacts. We’re lucky Nat is a friend or we might not hear anything at all until Chase shows up back home.”
Lily gritted her teeth. “So how bad is this news—about the spread, I mean? Is it more dangerous for them?”
“No more than usual,” Sarah said. “Sometimes it takes weeks to contain the fire, and that’s if it’s small. With a hundred thousand acres burning like they have on the West Coast at times, it could be months.”
“So we just wait,” Lily said, her voice tight with frustration.
Sarah nodded. “They’ll be there at least another week, at the soonest, I would think. Even if they contain it within a day or two, there will be small hot spots to put out, brush that needs to be cleared, new trails cut for access. They don’t just need to put out the fire. They need to secure and restore the area too.”
“Well, can’t they send someone else in to do that? So they can relieve the crews that have been working for weeks?”
“Did they send in reinforcements when you were working two or three weeks straight in the ER?”
“Not when it was all hands on deck,” Lily said quietly, “like it is for them now.”
Sarah squeezed her shoulders. “Nat didn’t sound particularly worried. So you should try not to too.”
“What about the kids?” Lily asked. “What do we tell them?”
“We’re putting out calls to all their families to pick them up earlier if they can, starting tomorrow. We’ll be done with the field trauma exercises then, and they won’t miss much after that.”
“Not all the parents will be able to change plans,” Lily said. “Some of the kids will probably still be here until the end of the weekend. I’ll stay until then at least.”
Lily turned to leave, another night of restless sleep all she could look forward to.
“Lil,” Sarah called after her.
Lily turned back. “Yes?”
“You should get out of here too. We can manage here without you.”
Lily bit back a sharp reply. Sarah wasn’t the cause of the anxiety squeezing her heart into a painful weight in her chest. “I’m staying until the kids are gone, and until—”
“She’s not going to be back right away.”
“I’m sure I can arrange another week or so off before I need to get back,” Lily said quickly.
“Why, Lily?” Sarah asked flatly. “So you can say good-bye again?”
Lily’s temper did flare then. “What does it matter, Sarah? It’s our business.”
“I know, you’re absolutely right. It’s probably better you stay until Chase gets back anyhow—that might head off any rash decisions.”
Lily frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”
“By the way, you probably realize this, but rangers have to live where they work.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“There are a lot of postings in the New York City area.” Sarah snorted. “In fact, they’re always looking for people down there because, well, it’s not exactly the kind of posting most rangers are looking for.”
Lily narrowed her eyes. “Why are we talking about this?”
“Chase has a history of making pretty impetuous decisions, and if she thought there was some kind of possibility, long-term, I mean…” Sarah shrugged. “I can see her transferring.”
“Chase would hate that.” Lily couldn’t even imagine Chase living and working in a metropolitan area. The mountains were as much a part of Chase as she was of the mountains. This wasn’t just Chase’s life, this was her life’s blood. “Don’t even mention it to her,” Lily said. “It’s not possible.”
“Oh,” Sarah said quickly, a note of apology in her voice. “Sorry. I misunderstood. I thought you loved her.”
“Of course, I…” Lily caught her breath. “That was low, Sarah.”
“I know,” Sarah said with a hint of a sigh. “But I couldn’t think of any other way to tell you that it would be better if you weren’t here when she came back.”
Lily turned away. The message had been devastatingly clear. “Good night, Sarah.”