Page 117 of Tracking Safety

They’d made it through the worst of the flames!

He paused for just a moment to take in their surroundings.

They’d made it to the other side of the fire road, he realized.

It stretched below him. The fire had already passed over it.

Emergency vehicles were there waiting.

His heart leapt with joy and relief.

Then people ran to meet them. Hands reached for them. Voices sounded over the fire.

He glanced behind them.

The strip that had allowed them an escape route was now closed. The corridor they’d come through was gone—just a wall of flame now, solid, end to end, where the four of them had stood.

A few seconds slower, and the fire would have had them all.

CHAPTER 50

Luke turned back to the emergency crews in front of them.

A fire crew had a tanker truck angled across the gravel. Hoses already ran toward the tree line, and men shouted numbers and directions Luke couldn’t follow.

Micah spotted them and broke out into a jog, his radio already up.

“They’re out!” he shouted into it. “I’ve got Luke, Jenna, and Caleb. I need a medic—” He took in Travis hanging off Luke’s shoulder and the driver zip-tied beside them. “Over here. Now.”

Two paramedics broke away from the trucks and met them halfway.

One took Travis and eased him onto a stretcher, going to work on his leg without wasting a word. The other reached for Caleb, but Caleb waved him off and pointed him toward Jenna instead.

The paramedic settled an oxygen mask over Jenna’s face. She let him, her shoulders dropping as the clean air hit.

Freya planted herself against Luke’s leg. He crouched and ran a hand down her side, checking for blood. All he found was ash. Relief washed through him. He was thankful the dog hadn’t been harmed.

Someone pressed a mask on his face too. He took it, pulled in a single breath, then lowered it. “I’m fine.”

“You need air,” the paramedic told him.

Luke knew the man was correct. He gulped in several more breaths.

He watched as another paramedic placed a cone-shaped mask over Freya. The dog seemed to realize it was for her own good, and she didn’t fight the paramedic.

As Luke sat there, he reached for Jenna and gripped her hand.

She sat on the tailgate, soot streaked down one side of her face. He stood close enough that his knees touched her legs.

“I thought the fire had you.” His own voice came out raw. “Standing at that fire wall, I didn’t know which side of it you were on.”

She pulled the mask down again to answer. “I didn’t know which side you were on either.”

The truth hung between them. It wasn’t the old grief they’d both carried the past two years. It something underneath it, something neither of them had said out loud yet.

They’d stood on opposite sides of the same wall of fire, each one certain the other was already gone.

She gripped his hand harder, as if she were making sure of him all over again.