Page 169 of The Fire Line

Good. Harris would take irritated.

“Stay awake.”

Jay gave him a look that required more energy than anything else he had done in the past hour, then faced forward again.

A shadow crossed the road not long afterward, followed almost immediately by the heavy chop of helicopter blades somewhere above the smoke. Jay lifted one arm while Harris pulled the radio free again and called their position. They shouted even though the aircraft remained invisible, and Jay kept waving until the motion sent him sideways on Rain.

Harris caught his leg. “Easy.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure.”

Jay looked down at him, apparently too exhausted to think of a reply. The helicopter continued east and faded, leaving them with the road and the smoke and no choice except to keep moving.

The road bent around the shoulder of the ridge, and something red appeared between the burned trees ahead. Harris stared at it for a second before his mind made sense of the shape: an engine, with two firefighters already climbing out.

One of them started toward them. “Shaw?”

“Yup.”

“Jesus Christ. We’ve got half the county looking for you.”

Harris barely heard the rest. “Ranch?”

“Main structures are standing.”

Not everything, maybe, but enough that the place still existed.

“Family at the evac center?”

“Everybody’s accounted for.”

Harris closed his eyes briefly as Della, Walt, Evan, Elise, Willa and June moved through his mind one after another, all of them alive somewhere beyond the mountain. Beside him, Jay let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.

The firefighter looked past them toward the horses. “Those yours?”

“Yeah. Red needs a vet as soon as you can get one up here. Call Claire Shaw—she knows the horses.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

Only then did Harris look up at Jay. Staying on Rain seemed to have used whatever remained of him; his face had gone gray beneath the soot, and when he started to dismount, his first foot reached the road before the rest of his body followed too quickly.

Harris caught him around the waist. Pain pulled viciously beneath his ribs, but he kept Jay upright until his weight settled against him.

“I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

By the time the firefighter reached them, Jay was still leaning heavily into Harris’s side. “He took a lot of smoke,” Harris said. “Lost consciousness last night. Was confused after. Still dizzy and coughing.”

Jay lifted his head. “He got hit by a tree.”

Harris looked at him.

“And burned his hand.”

The firefighter’s attention shifted immediately. “You coughing too?”