Page 67 of Heat Advisory

“We’ve got you,” Anna said, and my sisters all took turns dishing out advice, moral support, and offers to send me door delivery of pints of ice cream for my emotional wellbeing.

“Are you still coming here tonight?” Iris asked me.

“Yes, I’m packing up and getting ready to head to the airport soon,” I replied.

Monsoon season was upon us, and the Las Vegas Weather Service office was short-staffed right now, so I’d been asked to come down and support and coordinate with their office for temporary duty.

I hated to leave, though, because there’d been yet another fire and another burn scar assessment to do, but Jade has assured me she would take care of it.

“I’ll have Nancy join us for dinner, and we can get her opinion too,” Iris added, and I chuckled nervously.

I loved Nancy, but I wasn’t sure her advice was the kind I needed right now.

However, the advice my sisters had given was good, and I felt more confident than I had before. I knew I was falling for Jay—and hard. I thought I was just letting fear stand in the way of letting him fully in.

There were burn scars everywhere.

They dotted the landscape in every photo Jade sent me. She’d already gone out with the BAER crew to assess yet another suspected arson wildfire while I was in Las Vegas.

I was FaceTiming with her, the camera shaking as she walked around, making it hard for me to see some of the details she was narrating. Darren and his crew moved behind her, stepping carefully through the ash and scorched landscape. I even caught a glimpse of Jay in the background with his team.

“What’s Darren so upset about?” I asked, hearing him bitching off to the side about something.

“This whole lot was lodgepole pines, which are being destroyed because of logging, so he’s upset about losing them,” Jade informed me. “It’s one thing to lose a few of them due to the fire, because they will grow back, but this was a lot.”

I mean, I got it. Trees and nature were his thing, but he was in for a world of hurt every time he covered a fire if he kept getting this upset about the trees.

“How’s it going down there?” she asked me. “Any big storms causing problems?”

I glanced toward the southern horizon from my view in the Weather Service parking lot, where towering cumulonimbus storm clouds were stacking higher by the minute.

I knew she was asking because most storms lost their punch before they made it from Las Vegas up to Reno, but this was a potent storm. If any system had the muscle to survive the journey north, it would be this one.

Monsoon season was here.

So was fire season.

Most years we just hoped they both didn’t hit at the exact same time.

Unfortunately, today looked like it was going to be one of those times.

Wildfires didn’t just burn vegetation—they altered the soil chemistry. Extreme heat could create hydrophobic layers, causing the ground to actually repel water instead of absorbing it. So, when you had heavy rain on a fresh burn scar, the water just rushed over top. A flash flood after a fire didn’t undo damage—it multiplied it.

“Not good,” I told her. “You’re going to need to keep an eye on the radar.”

“Will do,” she said, knowing that a post-fire flood could undo everything the BAER team and fire investigators were trying to stabilize for the investigation.

Three hours later, my shift was finally over. Since Iris worked the same shift, we left at the same time and decided to pick up some dinner on the way back to her apartment complex.

I usually stayed with my sister when I visited, but now that Hector was there with her, as their new house wasn’t finished being built, I didn’t want to hear them screwing like rabbits all night. So, I’d opted to stay with Nancy in her spare bedroom next door.

Once we arrived, Iris helped me carry in all the stuff—including my overnight bag—to Nancy’s.

“Come in, ladies! I’ve got such a fun night planned for us,” Nancy greeted as she swung open the door. “Did you get my hot wings?”

Nancy was pushing eighty years old, but she could put away some of the spiciest wings on any menu and not even flinch at the heat.

I aspired to be her when I grew up.