Page 43 of Burning Secrets

Turn!

The wind of the fire seemed to catch the chute, then suck it into a spiral, and then the jumper disappeared into the smoke.

He stood up on the posts of the ATV, chest tight, searching.

Nothing.

Please, no?—

Still no jumper. He sat down and gunned the ATV toward the fire, heading into the smoke as it funneled out of broken windows, the front door.

What if the fire had sucked him in?

What if it wasn’t a him but—JoJo. Oh no…no…

He sped down the length of the building, smoke fighting through the roof, flickering out of windows. It was nearly impossible to see in the haze of the fire.

And then he spotted it—the chute, hung up on the weathervane of the barn, still at the apex, near the back. Ripped and now burning, the lines fluttering in the wind.

Please—

He rounded the back, shooting through the corral, and there, on the backside of the barn, the jumper struggled, cutting the chute strings, hanging some twenty feet from the ground. But their pack was clipped on the haymow hook, the old pully system rusty and broken.

Fire burst from a nearby window.

Crew pulled up, leaped off the ATV.

The jumper had cut their strings, now fought the harness, the pack imprisoning them against the burning barn.

“Hang on!”

He’d seen a wooden ladder leaning up against the barn earlier, and now he pulled his shirt up to his mouth and headed to the back.

Flames shot out of the half-open door, but he spotted the ladder, now singed, in the dirt along the back.

He jerked on it, but it fought him. “C’mon!” He kicked at it, worked it free at the top, coughed, kept wrestling it.

C’mon!Now, Jesus, now would be?—

The ladder broke free.

He sprinted around the house, coughing, eyes watering.

The jumper had climbed half out of the harness, the shoulders off, trying to work out of the thigh straps.

“Hold on!” He slammed the ladder against the barn. It just barely reached to the second story, but enough for the jumper to get his feet on the top rung. He pushed up, balanced on the pack, and pulled his thigh free. Then the other.

Turned and started down the ladder.

Crack!

The top rung broke, then the next, and the jumper hung, feet scrambling for purchase. Crew held the ladder against the barn, his head turned from the flames, nearly unable to see.

But the ladder shook, and the jumper had gotten his feet back on the rungs, now scampering down?—

Another crack, this time from the roof. The building shook?—

“Hurry!”

---