Page 140 of The Fire Line

Priya texted a few minutes later: Guests are leaving. Eli wants to know if he should film. I told him to wait.

Jay understood Eli’s impulse. The threat shaping half their documentary was moving toward the ranch they had spent months filming. Empty cabins, cattle on the road, smoke above the ridge—the sequence arranged itself automatically in his mind. That was what his mind did with crisis. It arranged images.

That did not give them the right to take them. Access granted under ordinary circumstances did not automatically include turning somebody’s evacuation into footage while the family was still trying to determine whether its home would remain standing.

He typed: Hold. Keep backing up and be ready to move. We decide with the family when we arrive.

“Eli wants to film,” Jay told Harris.

“What’d you tell him?”

“To wait.”

Harris nodded. “Good.”

The approval mattered, though not because Jay needed Harris to teach him ethics. The film and whatever existed between them had reached the conflict Priya had warned about. Jay wanted the footage, and he wanted Harris’s trust. The choice had to remain right for both reasons independently.

Smoke thickened until it erased whole sections of the mountains. Harris took another call from Evan, then one from Della, who was still attempting to carry coolers.

“Put it in Evan’s truck and get in with the girls,” Harris said.

Della’s voice came faintly through the speakers. “I am putting food in all three vehicles.”

“Ma.”

“The children need food.”

“Willa ate breakfast.”

“That was hours ago.”

Jay kept his eyes on the window while Harris said Ma in increasingly exhausted variations. Then his voice changed.

“I’m not saying you’re helpless. I’m saying I need you gone before they order everybody else out.”

The fear was slight enough that Della might have missed it. Jay did not. Apparently she didn’t either. Her answer lasted several seconds, and Harris’s jaw worked before he said, “Love you too.”

The call ended.

“Not one word,” Harris said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinkin’ loud.”

“I’m just deeply moved.”

“Navarro.”

Jay smiled, but it didn’t last. They crested a long rise, and the full scale of the smoke spread across the western sky—dark columns pulled sideways by wind, pale veils flattening the mountains beneath unnatural yellow light.

The image was too large for the frame Jay’s mind instinctively tried to place around it.

“Jesus,” he said.

Harris did not answer.

Jay finally understood that Harris was not driving home because something might happen. Something bad was already happening. The ranch was evacuating guests. Cattle were moving. Roads and pastures were being reassigned according to the wind. Della was packing food into vehicles because preparing to leave was the only version of leaving she could tolerate.