of smoke.
* * *
It was the dust that gave away the intruders, dust rising from the dirt road leading to the East Two Hundred. Thick as it was, the cloud lay heavy along the horizon, reminding Zach of smoke as he raced toward it, hell bent on throwing the reporter and her cameraman off his land before Jessie Layton found the proof that could upend all their lives.
If he was right in his suspicions, that same proof might end his mother’s. Even if it didn’t outright kill her, the web of lies she’d told could easily lead to lawsuits or even prison if the wrong jury got hold of the case.
The thought of his frail, grief-stricken mother in a cell turned his guts to ice water, and his skin grew clammy beneath the jacket he was wearing. But as horrible as it was imagining himself unable to protect her, the possibility that she hadn’t actually lied but somehow believed what she’d been claiming disturbed him even more.
Could Ian’s death have pushed her beyond the bounds of reason? Or was Zach himself the crazy one, imagining that his mother would spin such a tale? Back when he and Ian were kids, nothing would get them sent to their rooms (or whipped with their dad’s belt, if he happened to hear them) faster than telling lies, and Zach had never—not even in these past few stressful months—seen any signs that she might be delusional. Fragile and often ill, yes, but never out of touch with the sad reality of their recent losses.
As he lowered the window, the ashen odor filtered into his truck, and his heart lurched at the realization that what he’d been seeing really was smoke, not dust, and that the flickering glow could only mean one thing. Fire. Had the Layton woman and her cameraman somehow accidentally set it? Or was she so upset about what had happened with his mother and then later in town, she’d taken out her frustrations with a lit match?
Furious at the thought that the flames might spread to the drought-plagued pasture and threaten his livestock, he mashed the pedal to the floorboard and crested a low hill.
From that vantage, he saw flames leaping from the collapsed front porch of the structure. Just as he’d suspected, he spotted a car there, too, the same blue hybrid he’d watched Jessica Layton and her cameraman climb into before leaving his house this afternoon.
A new worry goosed his heartbeat. Could the two still be inside?
He reached for his phone to call for help a split second before he started around a curve and was blinded by the high-beam headlights of a fleeing pickup. The blare of a horn followed, flooding him with adrenaline as he wrenched the wheel to the right.
The two speeding trucks came within inches of colliding head-on, but Zach didn’t have a moment to celebrate his survival as his vehicle careened down the steep side of a gully. He fought to regain control, to steer or brake to halt the bone-jarring descent, but the truck slid sideways until the right front tire struck something unyielding and the wheel crumpled, the axle snapping audibly.
After that, there was a single, confused moment as the pickup leaned, then started over, and before he understood what was happening, there was a tremendous crunching and the sounds of shattering glass and screaming metal, followed by a pain shooting through his jaw as it struck the steering wheel.
It might have been five seconds or an hour later when his senses returned and his eyes opened. Though his dash lights remained on, the stars above had vanished, and blood was running the wrong way, dripping from the top of his head....
He was hanging in his seat belt, he realized, upside-down in the darkness. But as he blinked, he spotted a glow on the horizon. A glow that looked like firelight.
Had Jessie and her cameraman gotten out, or were they still inside the burning bunkhouse? Fumbling for the seat belt latch, he depressed the button and dropped down with a thump. For several minutes he struggled to extricate himself from the tangled belt before crawling out through the open window. His body aching with the effort, he rose to his feet, dizzy and wobbling but relieved that he could still stand.
A few steps later, a fresh wave of dizziness had Zach staggering to a stop. He bent forward, resting his hands above his knees before reaching up to probe his bloody chin. When his finger found the spot where the steering wheel had split the skin, bursts of color exploded in his vision and sirens wailed, so loud and so close he covered his ears with his hands.
It took him several moments to remember that he’d never called anyone for help. The sirens, maybe even the fire and smoke he had been seeing, couldn’t be real. Instead, they were from there, he realized with a shudder. Another crash, another time.
Only that time, he had parachuted down to safety, watching his jet nosedive, watching a second explosion blossom, a lethal flower that consumed houses, cars and twenty-two lives, including that of his best friend. Lives lost while he hung helpless in the air above them, his chest split in two by a howl of pain and grief. The echo of that cry still woke him some nights, two years later, along with the sound of sirens in Kabul and the sense of utter helplessness.
But that time wasn’t this one, he understood as the phantom sirens abruptly fell silent. Here, there might be something he could do, not only for himself but for anyone still trapped inside the bunkhouse....
His burning bunkhouse? He drew in a breath of air, and quickly understood that it was real smoke he smelled.
Remembering his phone, he pulled it out and was grateful to discover it hadn’t been damaged in the accident. He punched in 9-1-1 and quickly got out his location to the dispatcher who picked up.
With a glance toward the glowing horizon, he added, “Send an ambulance along with a fire crew. Send everything you’ve got. I think there might be people trapped inside a burning building.”
“I’ll have first responders there as soon as I can,” the dispatcher promised. “You need to wait for them outside, sir. Well beyond the fire’s radius.”
“I understand,” he told her, cutting off the call before he could say more. Before he could lie to her, because there was no way in this world he was letting it happen again, allowing himself to waft downward on a gentle breeze while others burned to death.
Shaking off his swirling vision, he lurched forward through the dry grasses, desperate to get there as fast as possible, to change the outcome of his nightmares, if only he could keep focused on the here and now.
He dropped the phone into his pocket, then dragged out a wadded bandanna. Holding it to his chin, he broke into the fastest pace he could manage with his vision fraying like an old rug at its edges. Unsteady as his gait was, his long strides quickly ate up the distance, and soon he crested the hill—and saw the reporter’s Prius parked there, its headlights trained on the last few flickering flames licking lazily up the side of the bunkhouse doorway. He stared for a moment, confused to see that the blaze had died down considerably from the initial glow.
Why? Had some accelerant burned off before it had had time to soak in? An accelerant meant to burn the evidence of a crime?
Angry as he’d been about the reporter trespassing, he thought of the fleeing truck and felt a rush of apprehension. For the rising moon revealed there was no sign of either the Layton woman or her cameraman. No sign of life at all, save for the distant yipping of coyotes.
Zach approached cautiously, relying on the same instincts and training that had kept him alive through three deployments. His mind was clear, his senses sharp as he pushed back both the pain of his injuries and his emotions to circle the bunkhouse at a distance, alert for any sound or movement.
Seeing
