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A relationship with someone. She could see that in his eyes, too. She didn’t even need her special powers for that.
A yellow glow peeped in from the curtains, and she looked at the clock radio beside her bed. How long had she been lying awake? The sun did not rise at three in the morning. Even if it did, the cloudy sky rarely allowed it to shine through like this.
She caught her breath and stumbled out of bed, yanking the curtains back from the window.
Her eyes widened at the view—flames danced among the trees outside her cabin, sending a cloud of black smoke into the air.
With her heart pounding, she ran into the living room and grabbed her purse and yanked her phone off the charger. Jim had been right. She needed to make this call now but had to run out to the road to call 911.
She rushed to the front door and threw it open. Tripping to a stop, she smacked a hand over her mouth.
The blaze had spread to the trees in front of the cabin, too. She jumped off the porch and turned in a circle. Fire licked at the entire copse of trees surrounding her place.
She was trapped—and someone had made sure of it.
Chapter Eight
The pounding in his head drove Jim outside. He should’ve never spilled his guts to Scarlett. He needed to keep his demons to himself. He’d seen the horror and the pity in her eyes...and something else. Maybe it was that something else that kept drawing him to her.
As he headed into the clearing around his cabin, he sniffed the air. The acrid smell of smoke permeated the mist.
Tilting his head back, he scanned the dark sky. An orange glow appeared over the top of the tree line—in the direction of Scarlett’s cabin.
He scrambled back inside, grabbed his jacket and keys and jumped onto his bike. The smoke grew thicker and he could see dark clouds of it billowing up to the sky the closer he got to Scarlett’s place.
He roared past her mailbox onto the access road leading to her cabin and stopped well behind the ring of trees that encircled her property. The ring of trees that was burning up like kindling in a fireplace.
The flames could easily jump from the trees to her cabin given their proximity to each other.
Was she even awake? He called 911 on his phone for the second time in three days. The emergency operator assured him that the fire engines would be on their way in minutes.
Scarlett didn’t have minutes.
He edged around the fire to see if he could get in around the side, but the wall of flames continued around her entire property.
How the hell had that happened?
He scoured the ground and found a long stick. Then he covered his head with his leather jacket and beat a path through the fire.
He stumbled into the clearing and dragged in a smoky breath.
As he peered at the front door of the cabin, it burst open and Scarlett appeared on the porch like a ghost, a white T-shirt floating around her.
He yelled, “Scarlett, you need to get out of here.”
“Oh, my God. The fire’s everywhere. I couldn’t breathe outside anymore. How did you get through?”
“Very carefully.” He charged past her into the cabin. “We could use some wet towels. The fire department is on its way.”
She grabbed three towels from the floor and held them up as they dripped water. “I already thought of that. I was going to put these against the doors.”
“We’re going to use them to get through the burning copse instead. As the tree branches burn and break away, it’s actually creating some space.” He grabbed one of the sopping wet towels from her. “Put this over your head. Wrap the other one around your arms. I’ll lead you out.”
“What about you?”
“This wet towel is more than I had coming in. I’ll be fine.”
When they got to the line of fire, Jim draped the towels over Scarlett’s head and face. “Just hang on to me and I’ll get you through the fire.”
He tucked the other towel around her arms and hands and created a tent over his head with the third towel.
Using his stick again, he beat out a swath through the smoldering areas of brush with Scarlett clinging to his back.
They broke free to the clearing just as the fire engines came wailing up the road.
“Move to the road, Scarlett. I’m going to back my bike out of here.”
