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“Oh, buddy. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

Goblin stopped. Jodie held out one hand. He stared at it, then started crawling again. The sight was so pathetic and sweet that Jodie laughed harder, which only made her cry harder too.

Mac had dropped down beside her and pulled her to him again. His chest moved with a quiet chuckle against her back.

Goblin finally reached her and laid his head on her leg. He looked up at her with big, brown, soulful eyes.

Jodie laid her hand on his head and scratched gently behind his ridiculous ears.

Goblin huffed a big sigh. His eyes went to half-mast, then closed, and he fell sound asleep.

Later, inside the tent, Jodie kissed Mac because she didn’t want to talk anymore.

He drew back just enough to look at her. “You sure?”

“Yes.” She touched his face. “I just need you close.”

That was all she needed.

Mac kissed her slowly and pulled her against him. There was no urgency between them, nothing to prove or make better. Only warmth, skin, familiar hands, and Mac holding her as though he had all the time in the world.

At one point tears slipped from the corners of her eyes again. Mac kissed them away.

Jodie held him tighter.

Later, she lay with her cheek against his bare chest, listening to his heartbeat while his fingers moved lazily through her hair. Mac reached for a water bottle beside the sleeping bag and handed it to her. Jodie thanked him, took it, and drank.

Outside, Goblin gave a low huff.

Jodie lifted her head.

“What?”

The air coming through the tent flap smelled different now, heavier and acrid.

Jodie sat up. “Do you smell that?”

Smoke, and not the faint trace that had hung over Sand Wash for days.

Mac sat up and pulled the tent flap aside. They looked outside. The moon hung low over the Basin, blurry and orange, and the stars closest to the horizon had disappeared.

Goblin sat just beyond the tent, facing the darkness with his nose lifted toward the west.

TWENTY-TWO

Mac pulled on a pair of boxer briefs and sweats, and shoved his feet into his boots. He stepped out of the tent without taking the time to lace them and stopped.

The smoke was worse.

Not just thicker than it had been when they’d gone inside. It sat low over the ranch, dense enough to soften the outlines of Hank’s barns and turn the security light above the equipment shed into a fuzzy yellow glow. The moon Jodie had pointed out was almost gone now, nothing but a dirty orange smear above the western horizon. It was hard to tell if it was just smoke, or gathering storm clouds, too.

Goblin started pacing ten feet away, nose up, working the air in short pulls, ears swiveling at sounds Mac couldn’t hear.

“Yeah, buddy,” Mac said. “I got it now, too.”

Mac turned his face into what little breeze he could feel. The air moved against it, slow, out of the west and down. Not a wind, but more of a drift.

Drainage flow. Cold air coming off the high ground.