“Silas?” I answer. “You good?”
Static. Wind. Then his voice, rough and clipped.
“Jess, where are you?”
“Ranch. Moving animals.” My stomach tightens. “Why?”
“The wildfire jumped again.” His tone sharpens. “Wind shifted. You’re directly in the line of it now.”
My heart stutters. I look across the field toward the smoke, thicker, darker, curling upward as angry fists.
“Shit,” I breathe. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough that the chief sent a warning to all ranches east of the ridge. Willow is the closest. You need to be ready to potentially move. Tonight.”
My pulse kicks into high gear.
Marshall looks over at me, sensing something wrong even from across the pasture. “What’s goin’ on?”
I hold up a finger, turning away so I can hear.
“Silas,” I say, “what do we do?”
“You need manpower,” he says. “I’m bringing Cody and Duke. We’re on our way. Twenty minutes.”
“Silas, you don’t have to?—”
“I’m not letting your damn ranch burn,” he snaps, and it’s so purely Silas that I almost laugh. “You’re family. Family doesn’t ask. Family shows up.”
My throat gets tight all over again.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “Okay. Just drive safe. Please. The smoke’s bad tonight.”
“We’ll be there soon,” he says. “And Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t panic.”
Too late.
But I exhale through it. “Got it.”
He hangs up.
I turn back toward Marshall, who’s standing stiff as a fence post, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth.
“What happened?” he asks.
I swallow. “Silas says the fire jumped again. Wind pushed it toward us. Him and his brothers are heading over to help.”
Marshall goes still.
Not the calm kind of still. The storm-building-behind-the-eyes kind.
“Evacuation?” he asks.
“Not ordered yet,” I say. “But… we need to prepare like it could be.”
