Once I’d packed everything and loaded my car, I sat on the back porch, just staring across the lake.The orange glow behind the mountains brightened.The wind howled through the pines with a sound like distant freight trains, bending the trees into dark, frantic shapes against the burning sky.I called maintenance again.Again, they assured me there had been no evacuation order and that the fire wasn’t as close as it seemed.
I listened to the creak of stressed timber, the skitter of small animals fleeing through the underbrush.The silence where there should have been night insects frightened me more than the fire’s glow.
I checked my phone.Eleven forty-three.Oktober was still hours away.The fire was getting closer.And the wind, that treacherous, shifting wind, showed no signs of dying down.With a shudder, I went inside and stared out the window and waited for dawn.
Chapter Nine
Oktober
At a hundred and ten miles per hour on the interstate, the air made the helmet quiver against my skull, the noise and vibration numbing every thought.The pulse in my jaw and the broken white line on the road reflecting from my headlights slicing the dark ahead registered only vaguely as I concentrated on getting to Mia.Only getting to Mia mattered.Noose’s headlights flashed in my mirrors, never more than three bike lengths off my tail.He rode like he didn’t know fear.Pain and Inferno followed behind us in the Bronco, driving with no less urgency.How the fuck we didn’t get pulled over I had no idea.I’d have likely gone back to prison if the cops had tried to stop us, because there was no way I would pull over for anything until I reached Mia.
My phone vibrated again.Even through the thick leather of my cut, I felt the buzz against my chest, hard and angry.I wanted to check it, but we had sixty miles of night ahead and the mountains in the distance glowed a bright, angry orange.I told myself to focus so I didn’t end up with my brains all over the pavement, but my mind kept feeding me images of Mia alone in the cabin.Keeping panic at bay proved more difficult than at any other time in my life.
Noose gunned ahead and signaled a lane shift, moving us toward the off ramp.He probably needed gas.Or maybe he saw my focus slipping.Either way, I welcomed the excuse to take a couple minutes but still begrudged even a few precious seconds that stood between me and Mia.
We pulled into the first gas station at the exit.I cut the engine and ripped off my helmet.Ash already floated in the air here, fine gray flecks drifting across the yellow cones of light from the station’s sodium lamps.I had to clench my fists a few times before my hands would stop shaking.The phone buzzed again, urgent enough that I nearly fumbled it.The screen glared up at me.Six missed calls from Mia.I felt a cold flush work down my arms.The last call came only ten minutes ago.
I dialed her back.Straight to voicemail.My fingers gripped the phone too hard and I forced myself to loosen them, thumb trembling on the screen.I called again.Nothing.
Inferno and Pain pulled into the parking lot in the Bronco as Noose topped off my bike before fueling his own.I continued to try Mia while the others filled their tanks.
Inferno got out of the truck and went to Noose, bumming a smoke as the pair watched the mountains in the direction we were headed from the pumps, neither speaking.Inferno lit his cigarette.Pain came up behind me not pretending to do anything except monitor my meltdown.
“I can’t get her,” I said, not bothering to keep the fear out of my voice.“She’s been calling and I didn’t stop to fuckin’ answer.”The last sounded harsh and angry.Iwasangry.At myself.
“You could hardly answer her call ridin’ like a bat outta hell.Besides, reception’s sometimes shit in those valleys.Maybe she left early and is on the move.”Pain’s voice was steady, slow, the way he talked to gunshot victims and men losing blood.“You’d rather her leave before it got bad than wait on you to get to her, I’m sure.”
I tried Mia again.Voicemail.I wanted to throw the phone across the parking lot but didn’t dare because it was my only link to Mia.When it worked.
“Hey!”Noose called to us from the other side of the pump, waving his phone.“Weather app says wind’s shifted again.Gusts to fifty miles per hour.They finally issued the evacuation line all the way to the ridge.”
Inferno exhaled smoke and squinted at the distant horizon.“That’s less than four miles from the cabin,” he said.“Maybe less, if the fire crowns.”
I dialed Mia one more time and let it ring until her voicemail clicked on.My phone buzzed and, again, I nearly dropped the fucking thing, but this time it was Knight.“Ja,” I answered, voice flat.
“You stopped.Are you off the interstate?”
“Yeah.Needed fuel before continuing on the state highway.We’re about twenty minutes from the cut off to the cabins.”
Knight’s voice dropped, low and fast.“Brother, I’m looking at the satellites.This is not the fire they’re reporting on the news.The main blaze jumped containment two hours ago.Secondary fire’s moving fast toward the northeast.If Mia’s where you said she is, she’s in a pocket.And the wind’s going to close it off well before sunrise.”
A cold sweat hit me.“Her last call was twenty minutes ago.”
Knight’s keyboard clattered through the speaker.“That entire zone lost cell and Internet.There’s a hardline repeater at the ranger station five miles past the cabins, but if the lines are down, it’s blacked out.”
“Send me the updated map,” I said, already knowing what it would show.
Knight sent the image.My phone pinged with the attachment.I opened it with hands that didn’t feel like they belonged to me.The red and orange splotches told a story faster than Knight’s words could catch up.The fire had grown in a crescent, wrapping around the lake.Mia’s cabin sat in a shallow inlet, the only access via a logging road that cut directly through the burn zone.If she was still at the cabin, she was boxed in on three sides.If she tried to take the main road out, she’d be driving straight into the teeth of the fire.
My voice came out strangled.“We have to go around.We have to get in from the other side.”
Knight said, “Don’t stop for anything.I’ll keep monitoring.I’ll call if there’s any break in the weather or cell coverage.”He hesitated.“Don’t be a fucking hero, Oktober.Get her and get out.”
“Danke, Bruder.”I pocketed the phone, then turned to the others.I forced myself to sound steady.
“Fire’s ahead of what they’re reporting.If Mia’s still in the cabin she won’t be able to get out on her own.We take the logging road east of the ridge, cut through the old strip mines, then drop down to the lake.It’s the only way in or out and probably not for long.”
Noose and Inferno nodded without question.Pain just looked at me, eyes steady behind the soot on his brow.
