The Redemption mountain range towered across the lake, huge and imposing. The snow that would linger in the moraines and ridges above the timberline for at least another month gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and the lake was that pure, vivid turquoise usually seen only in shallow Caribbean waters.
Her job as one of six full-time officers in the Haven Point Police Department might not always be overflowing with excitement, but she couldn’t deny that her workplace surroundings were pretty gorgeous.
She spotted the first tendrils of black smoke above the treetops as she turned onto the rutted lane that wound its way through pale aspen trunks and thick pines and spruce.
Probably just a nearby farmer burning some weeds along a ditch line, she told herself, or trying to get rid of the bushy-topped invasive phragmites reeds that could encroach into any marshy areas and choke out all the native species. But something about the black curl of smoke hinted at a situation beyond a controlled burn.
Her stomach fluttered with nerves. She hated fire calls even more than the dreaded DD—domestic disturbance. At least in a domestic situation, there was some chance she could defuse the conflict. Fire was avaricious and relentless, smoke and flame and terror. She had learned that lesson on one of her first calls as a green-as-grass rookie police officer in Boise, when she was the first one on scene to a deadly house fire on a cold January morning that had killed three children in their sleep.
Wyn rounded the last bend in the road and saw, just as feared, the smoke wasn’t coming from a ditch line or a controlled burn of a patch of invading plants. Instead, it twisted sinuously into the sky from the ramshackle barn on Darwin Twitchell’s property.
She scanned the area for kids and couldn’t see any. What she did see made her blood run cold—two small boys’ bikes resting on their sides outside the barn.
Where there were bikes, there were usually boys to ride them.
She parked her vehicle and shoved open her door. “Hello? Anybody here?” she called.
She strained her ears but could hear nothing above the crackle of flames. Heat and flames poured off the building.
She pressed the button on the radio at her shoulder to call dispatch. “I’ve got a structure fire, an old barn on Darwin Twitchell’s property on Conifer Drive, just before Riverbend Road. The upper part seems to be fully engulfed and there’s a possibility of civilians inside, juveniles. I’ve got bikes here but no kids in sight. I’m still looking.”
While she raced around the building, she heard the call go out to the volunteer fire department and Chief Gallegos respond that his crews were six minutes out.
“Anybody here?” she called again.
Just faintly, she thought she heard a high cry in response but her radio crackled with static at that instant and she couldn’t be sure. A second later, she heard Cade’s voice.
“Bailey, this is Chief Emmett. What’s the status of the kids? Over.”
She hurried back to her vehicle and popped the trunk. “I can’t see them,” she answered tersely, digging for a couple of water bottles and an extra T-shirt she kept back there. “I’m going in.”
“Negative!” Cade’s urgency fairly crackled through the radio. “The first fire crew’s ETA is now four minutes. Stand down.”
She turned back to the fire and was almost positive the flames seemed to be crackling louder, the smoke billowing higher into the sky. She couldn’t stand the thought of children being caught inside that hellish scene. She couldn’t. She pushed away the memory of those tiny charred bodies.
Maybe whoever had tripped Darwin’s alarms—maybe the same kids who likely set the fire—had run off into the surrounding trees. She hoped so, she really did, but her gut told her otherwise.
In four minutes, they could be burned to a crisp, just like those sweet little kids in Boise. She had to take a look.
It’s what her father would have done.
You know what John Wayne would say, John Bailey’s voice seemed to echo in her head. Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.
Yeah, Dad. I know.
Her hands were sweaty with fear but she pushed past it and focused on the situation at hand. “I’m going in,” she repeated.
“Stand down, Officer Bailey. That is a direct order.”
Cade ran a fairly casual—though efficient—police department and rarely pushed rank but right now he sounded hard, dangerous.
She paused for only a second, her attention caught by sunlight glinting off one of the bikes.
“Wynona, do you copy?” Cade demanded.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand out here and wait for the fire department. Time was of the essence, she knew it in her bones. After nearly five years as a police officer, she had learned to rely on her instincts and she couldn’t ignore them now.
She was just going to have to disregard his order and deal with his fury later.
“I can’t hear you,” she lied. “Sorry. You’re crackling out.”
She squelched her radio to keep him out of her ears, ripped the T-shirt and doused it with her water bottle, then held it to her mouth and pushed inside.
The shift from sunlight to smoke and darkness inside the barn was disorienting. As she had seen from outside, the flames seemed to be limited for now to the upper hayloft of the barn but the air was thick and acrid.
“Hello?” she called out. “Anybody here?”
“Yes! Help!”
“Please help!”
Two distinct, high, terrified voices came from the far end of the barn.
“Okay. Okay,” she called back, her heart pounding fiercely. “Keep talking so I can follow your voice.”
There was a momentary pause. “What should we say?”
“Sing a song. How about ‘Jingle Bells’? Here. I’ll start.”
She started the words off and then stopped when she heard two young voices singing the words between sobs. She whispered a quick prayer for help and courage then rapidly picked her way over rubble and debris as she followed the song to its source, which turned out to be two white-faced, terrified boys she knew.
Caleb and Lucas Keegan were crouched together just below a ladder up to the loft, where the flames sizzled and popped overhead.
Caleb, the older of the two, was stretched out on the ground, his leg bent at an unnatural angle.
“Hey, Caleb. Hey, Luke.”
They both sobbed when they spotted her. “Officer Bailey. We didn’t mean to start the fire! We didn’t mean to!” Luke, the younger one, was close to hysteria but she didn’t have time to calm him.
“We can worry
