Page 101 of Until We Come Home

I sink into the couch, and Laila hops up beside me and rests her heavy head in my lap. I run my fingers through her golden fur, eyes glued to the screen.

“…now estimated at over three thousand acres,” the news anchor reports, her tone severe. “Officials report extreme fire behavior, driven by erratic easterly gusts and record-dry fuels for this time of year. Regional strike teams continue to arrive to assist local crews…”

“Three thousand,” Emma whispers, resting a hand on Theo’s arm. “It was barely four hundred this afternoon.”

Whenever the anchor mentions the crews on the ground, all of us lean in. Every time the broadcast cuts to footage of the rigs lined up along the ridge, I scan the screen for a broad-shouldered frame, a familiar tilt of the head, a helmet I’d know anywhere.

It’s irrational—the camera is shooting from a helicopter thousands of feet up, where the rigs are barely distinguishable from the timber.

All the stories I’ve heard about Mateo over the years keep circling back. He’s always been a bit reckless, the kind of man who cares less about his own safety than anyone else’s. There’s something almost self-destructive in him. Maybe it was always there, or maybe it started after Lindsey, when he decided his own life counted for less. I’m not sure.

That part of him has always scared me. But some of it is just who he is, and it’s part of what makes him such a good man. I love him for it. I also hate it, and I wish he could be that brave without the carelessness that comes with it.

The five of us stay clustered in the living room as midnight approaches. It’s pitch black outside, and knowing he and the rest of Station 7 are up there in the dark fighting that thing makes my stomach twist.

Emma brews a pot of herbal tea, and I take small sips, hoping it might quiet the adrenaline while we watch the same updates loop again and again, exhausted but far too restless to sleep.

The reporter’s tone shifts, fast and urgent, and I sit up as Laila slides off the sofa.

“…receiving confirmation of a major wind shift along the northern flank,” she says, adjusting her earpiece. “Emergency dispatch reports the fire has made a rapid push toward the Ridgeview district on the east end of Dark River, where crews have been working to protect structures. Residents in Ridgeview and surrounding roads are now under a mandatory Level 3 Evacuation. That is a GO NOW order. Evacuate immediately…”

The aerial camera pans back. Where the mountain was a web of scattered burns a moment ago, a solid sheet of orange now surges down the slope toward a cluster of house lights below. Structures. A neighborhood. People who were supposed to be out by now.

And the firefighters who stayed behind to hold the line.

“That’s where Station 7 is staged,” Calvin says, his voice barely a breath.

No one says a word after that. Theo turns up the volume. Emma reaches for Maren’s hand. Calvin gets up, paces to the window, then sits back down, staring out like there’s something to see, though there’s nothing out there but black water reflecting an orange sky.

I open my texts with shaking fingers and type out a short message.

Mia: Please just tell me you’re okay.

I hit send. The small Delivered tag appears underneath.

I watch it for one minute. Then two. Then five. The display goes dark, and I tap it back, and it dims again, and I tap it back.

It never changes to Read.

On the screen, the fire sweeps down the mountain toward Ridgeview, and somewhere inside all that orange is the man I love, and there is nothing I can do but sit on Theo’s couch and wait.

CHAPTER 32

Mateo

Ollie yanks his shelter from its pouch, fingers trembling so hard the casing nearly slips from his grip into the dirt.

“Hold off,” I tell him, grabbing his wrist before he can pull the tab. “Not here.”

He gapes at me, wide-eyed behind his filthy goggles, while the fire roars down from above and creeps up from the neighborhood below. The cut line is barely fifteen feet wide, a strip of bare dirt flanked by thick brush that’s about to ignite all at once. If we pull our shelters here, the radiant heat off both sides will cook us alive inside the foil.

“Mateo, we have to make a run downhill,” Ollie says, tugging toward the lower houses, toward the orange glow blocking our route back to the trucks. “The engine is right down there. Rebecca’s right there. If we break through where it’s low, we can hit the road.”

Where it’s low. I follow his gaze down toward Ridgeview Court, where the spot fire shows a narrow gap in the wall of brush, a patch where the flames only reach ten feet instead of thirty. A few years ago, I’d have made that exact gamble.

I’d have put my head down, charged straight through the heat, and trusted dumb luck to carry me out, the way I always did. Plenty of firefighters have made that same call. Most of them have their names etched into brass plaques.

So I look back up the mountain instead, toward the water tank.