Page 118 of Tracking Safety

The paramedic finished his examination and stepped back. “Vitals are good. We’ll want her looked at properly, but she’s stable.”

Stable. Such a small, flat word for a woman who’d been hauled through a burning forest an hour ago and come out the other side still fighting. But Luke took it.

It was the first true thing anyone had told him all night that didn’t come with a catch. And when he looked at Jenna—sitting up under that blanket, smoke still in her hair, her eyes finding his—stable was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.

The ranger station sat low and brown against the tree line, its parking lot lit up bright as day with emergency vehicles. A cluster of rangers in green moved between them with radios crackling at their hips.

Jenna had never been so glad to see a plain government building in her life.

Micah’s SUV rolled in behind the ambulance carrying Travis. She, Luke, Caleb, and Freya were inside.

The truck had barely stopped before Jenna was out of it.

Ruby reached her first, both arms wrapping around her so hard it forced the breath out of her. Jenna held on just as hard.

For a second neither of them said anything at all.

Then small hands grabbed at her from every direction.

“Mama!” Cora grabbed her around the waist. “You came back. You said thirty seconds, and it wasn’t thirty seconds. It was forever⁠—”

“I know.” Jenna went down into a crouch in the gravel and got both arms around her.

Jonah shoved in between them both, all four-year-old elbows and no patience for waiting his turn.

The breath left her lungs when someone else flew into their huddle.

Liam.

Liam was hugging her!

He folded into her embrace, his face pressed into her shoulder and his arms locked around her neck.

More tears sprang to her eyes.

Luke joined them, putting his arms around all of them.

For a moment it was just the five of them in the middle of the parking lot, wrapped around each other, the noise of rangers and radios and idling engines fading into something Jenna barely registered.

“I’m here,” she said, into the mess of arms and hair and small, hot faces. “I’m here. All of you. I’m here.”

Liam didn’t say anything back. He just held on tighter.

Thank You, Jesus.

Maybe her oldest son had finally let her in. Maybe he’d forgive her.

CHAPTER 51

Luke drew in a deep breath, gratitude rushing through him. Things could have turned out so much differently.

A moment later, he pulled out of the huddle—one he never thought would happen. His family. Back together. All of them.

As Cora started asking questions—unrelated to the fire—Luke stepped back.

Naomi edged closer, her brow furrowed. “What happened out there? Why is Travis Henderson here?”

“He set the fire.” Luke kept his voice low, watching the ranger snap a cuff around Travis’s wrist before the gurney rolled. “Whatever he was trying to do tonight, it got away from him and turned on everybody. Even him.”