But they were our one chance at survival.
“Let’s do this,” I gritted out, immediately dropping my pack on the ground and hunkering down.
“Yeah, we can. Then we’ll get the fuck of here.”
We pulled out the shelters and I checked over my shoulder. “Let’s hurry, Axe.”
He noticed and said nothing, but I could almost taste his fear. It was the sooty, salty hint of everything we’d been through.
When the shelters were arranged, I offered one last look. “Today is not a good day to die.”
“No,” he offered. “You’re right.”
One last-ditch attempt at letting people know where we were. “Base. Rock. This is Viper. We are now four point two miles from the summit. If the GPS is correct, we are southwest from the M. But I can’t be certain. We’re hunkering down. There is no other choice. See you on the flip side of hell.”
Even as we zipped ourselves in, I could still feel the breath of the dragon as he approached. He was hungry and we were fresh meat.
I thought about nothing but Grace as the fire approached, the roar drowning out everything else including my thudding heartbeat.
We would get through this.
Because we had to.
CHAPTER 23
Grace
Silence.
While there could be no such thing inside a bar filled with at least three hundred people with country music playing in the background, there was an utter, undeniable moment of silence we’d all shared.
If only for a few seconds.
Maybe there was something fitting, or some crazy karma about the fact I was standing in a bar devoted to smokejumpers. There were pictures of local heroes going back twenty-five plus years, members of former teams, most of whom had retired.
But not all.
Every television was on, the volumes turned up, the most trusted news source providing up to the minute information about what people feared would end up being a tragedy.
It wasn’t every day the smokejumpers were battling a raging fire in their own backyard. The footage of the mountain burning was horrific, a reminder that life was precious. Although there was no concrete evidence of any kind, I’d already heard the old timers with their speculations that the fire was due to an act of arson.
I hadn’t realized just how close the fire had come to the university, so close a portion of their football field including one of the buildings had been torched.
I’d stopped drinking the moment Landen and Shannon had confided in me. Nothing would make me feel any better. Nothing.
Except for having Viper’s arms around me.
As I stood huddled in the group with my friends, it felt as if I was standing outside of myself, high up in the air, staring down at the kind of event that brought people together. A blip in time where animosities were foregone, differences no longer mattering. Where the rich and poor mingled together, every nationality, every religion, every political party couldn’t care less if the person next to them was someone they wouldn’t ordinarily talk to.
Since we’d yet to learn who’d been stuck on the mountain, although it had confirmed there were two smokejumpers missing, the two men were everyone’s sons.
I’d heard laughter, which had seared a hole in my heart at first until I’d realized their joy wasn’t about something frivolous but about the stories being told about former or current smokejumpers, including the Beckett brothers, current legends in town.
The town was still recovering from the loss of William Beckett, far too young to have lost his life. Yet he’d done so doing what he loved.
Being a member of the Zullies.
There were other tall tales that could hold no real truth, but they were comforting.
