“Can I swing by on my way home and grab it?”
“I’m actually at Hector’s place right now, waiting for him to get back, but I can bring it to work tomorrow if you want.”
“Yeah, that works,” she said. “Why are you there if he isn’t?”
“He went to check out the fire on the north side of the park,” I told her.
“There’s a fire?” she asked, seeming genuinely confused. “No onereported anything.”
“Really?” I asked, because it was usual standard protocol to report it to the weather service because it affected our warning products and the alerts we would send out to the public.
Sarge started to bark, followed by a knock on the door.
“Here, I’ll text you his number,” I told her. “Call him because he may still be driving, but he can get you some coordinates of the fire so you can get it on the maps ASAP.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’d like to get it on there before I finish my shift.”
I looked out the narrow window on the side of the door and saw Ranger Diden’s face.
“Okay, I gotta go. Hector’s co-worker, Ann, is here,” I told her.
“No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow!” she said, and I hung up just as I swung the door open.
24
“Red Flag Warnings mean dangerous conditions ahead. Same for Tinder dates.”
—It’s science
Hector
Hell, I did not want to be doing this.
I’d rather be back at my house enjoying Iris and the good time we were working our way up to. Instead, here I was, on my way to check out a wildfire—likely set by some dumbass camper. Jennings was super vague on the phone about where it was, but he said he hadn’t fully scoped it out yet and spent most of his time, unsuccessfully, trying to get in touch with Diden to help set the perimeter.
I also tried calling Diden, but it went straight to voicemail three times in a row.
I’d only been in the car driving for at most fifteen minutes when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize thenumber but knew it could be someone from the fire department, so I grabbed it.
“Madeira,” I answered.
“Hi, Hector. This is Christine from the weather service,” the woman responded. “I was just talking with Iris, and she mentioned the fire you were headed to, but we have no report of it. I was hoping you could give me some coordinates so we could get our warnings updated and alerts sent out.”
Of course, Jennings would forget to fucking call this in.
“Christine, I’m not entirely sure where it is yet, but it’s on the northern edge of the lake according to my other ranger,” I explained. “If you give me about ten more minutes, I should be up there and can give you a better estimate of the coordinates. Does that work?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” she responded.
“Good, and if this gets bad and you see it start spreading southwest, will you call Iris and tell her to evacuate my house, please?” I asked, hoping it didn’t come to that, but I wanted her to have someone watching out for her since I would likely be stuck up here on the north side until this was contained.
“Yeah, no problem, although one of your other rangers had just gotten there when I called her,” she mentioned.
What?
“Did you say another ranger was at my house?” I asked.
“Yeah, when I was hanging up with her, she said someone named Ann, I think, had shown up.”
