Page 138 of The Fire Line

“Three hours if traffic’s good.”

“Then let’s go.”

Five minutes earlier, they had been half naked in bed discussing the state of Jay’s ass. Now Harris checked wind direction while packing with abrupt, efficient movements, and the transition felt almost violently complete. Private Harris had not disappeared; he had been pushed beneath the work requiring him. Jay knew the other version remained because he had woken beneath the weight of his arm.

Nobody at the ranch would see any evidence of him. The thought arrived without accusation. The ranch needed Harris as he had always been there: controlled, competent, and available to everyone. Jay simply knew, now, how much that version concealed.

Jay slung the camera bag over his shoulder. Harris gave the room one automatic final scan for anything left behind. They were out of the hotel twelve minutes later, the meetings abandoned without discussion.

* * *

For the first half hour, the morning looked disconcertingly normal. Jay might have wondered whether the alerts sounded worse than the reality if Harris had not spent most of the drive talking to Evan. The sky was clear, traffic moved easily, and fields passed beneath sunlight with no visible indication that a fire had crossed containment somewhere beyond them. Harris’s phone was connected to the truck, and Evan’s voice filled the cab before they had finished breakfast.

He had already divided the work. Noah and two hands were moving the north cattle toward the lower pens. Pete had offered another stock trailer. Elise was contacting every occupied cabin while Evan staged vehicles so nobody could be trapped behind equipment if an evacuation order came.

Harris listened without interrupting. “Don’t take the north group through the creek pasture if the wind’s still coming from the west. You’ll need it clear if the east section moves later.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Good. Get the guests out now. Don’t wait on me.”

“Already happening. Elise has three families left to reach.”

“Ma?”

Evan sighed through the speakers. “Packing sandwiches.”

“Of course she is.”

“I told her evacuation does not require catering. She asked whether I planned to let Willa and June starve on the highway.”

Harris closed his eyes for half a second. “Get her in a vehicle before the order.”

“Working on it.”

The call ended. Harris kept his eyes on the highway and the trees bending beside it.

“How bad?” Jay asked.

“Fire moved farther north overnight than they expected.”

“How much farther?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“You hate not knowing.”

“Most people do.”

“Not like you.”

Harris gave him a brief look but did not argue.

For Harris, uncertainty was not merely uncomfortable. It meant work might already be necessary somewhere he could not reach—animals requiring movement, people making decisions without the one piece of information that would prove whether they were right. Jay understood that better now.

He also understood that Harris had approached sex exactly the same way: gather the available evidence, predict the required action, and complete it without burdening anyone with the uncertainty that came first.

They really were going to have that conversation, assuming the ranch did not catch fire before coffee became relevant again.