Page 166
No answer.
“Everyone, Mac. Anyone heard from Harold North in the last hour?”
For the next minute, Mac had nothing useful to do but stand there while radio traffic passed through three different voices before somebody finally came back with an answer. No one had seen or heard from Harold recently.
But then a more urgent message came through from one of the BLM people named Scott.
“Possible spot fire. Units are aware. Wind is throwing embers ahead of the main front.”
Dana cut in. “Scott, Dana. Do we have a confirmed perimeter on the new ignition yet?”
“Dana, Scott. Not yet, over.”
Mac moved the radio battery, the roll of duct tape, somebody’s half-empty water bottle—everything Jodie had used to weigh the papers down—until he uncovered the site map. By now, Hank had joined them.
“Virgil, I—”
“Save it until we’ve got Jodie back.”
“Hank, Virgil,” Mac said. “Can either of you tell where that plume might be?”
Virgil stepped closer to the table and pointed at a spot on the map. “If it’s down in this drainage, not far. If it’s behind the ridge, farther than it looks.”
“Roads?”
“County road’s still good to here.” Virgil tapped the map. “After that you’re on mine. The north fence track runs this way, then the two-track follows the boundary west.”
Hank came around the table beside him. “There’s another way in from the east pasture, but not with that gooseneck behind Mac’s truck.”
“We’ll drop it,” Ben said.
Mac barely heard him. He was looking at the map and seeing the terrain he’d studied with Jodie weeks ago. Ridges. Draws. Dead ground from the roads. Places a radio could become useless five feet after it had worked fine.
Places she could be.
Kyle pointed at the map. “Nobody goes past whatever incident command gives us as a turnaround. I don’t care if you can see her truck fifty yards beyond it. We don’t make two emergencies.”
Mac knew that.
He also knew exactly how much he wanted to tell Kyle to go to hell.
Don’t.
He took a drink from the bottle he’d brought back from Hank’s. The water was already warm. So was he. Too warm. He’d been working in smoke and heat for hours, and the adrenaline running through him had made it easy not to notice until now. His shirt clung between his shoulder blades. His pulse was faster than it should have been for standing still.
Not now.
The thought came automatically, and with it, another memory of heat pressing down and the partner force looking on. Knowing he needed to stop and deciding he could get through one more thing.
No.
Mac looked at Kyle.
“I’m running hot.”
Kyle’s gaze locked on him immediately. Mac wanted to take it back.
Jodie was missing. A new fire was building somewhere near the country she’d gone into, and he had just handed his boss the one fact that could keep him from going after her.
