Page 154 of Smoke and Fire
“Am I supposed to know her? I can’t even see her in that picture.”
“No.”
“Oh.”
I spun the computer back around. “Just helping with emails and PR stuff. I like it. It’s kind of fun.”
He quirked an eyebrow, and instant suspicion crawled up my spine. He would only bethatinterested if Mom had been fretting to him over my life choices because she didn’t want a direct approach to question me. Which she always did.
Mom had more deeply mourned the break with Jakob than I had—at least at first. She’d loved us together, as platonic as our relationship had been over the years. In hindsight, I think she loved the idea of grand babies on her hip.
“You wanna do this for a career?” Sione asked.
I shrugged. “I’ll see what happens. The online job thing is cool though, because I could move back to California and do it there, with the family. I’ve never tried that before. Receptionists need an office, you know? This offers more freedom.”
“After the summer.” He put a hand on his chest, as if offended. “Wait for your favorite cousin, speedy!”
Laughing, I said, “Agreed. We’ll move back together.”
His expression softened. “When you’re ready. Of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed with a smile.
He stood up, jostling the RV with his large body. “Gotta go back and make sure my camp isn’t burning to the ground, or that Mark hasn’t made another bad investment.”
“I thought that was Stella’s job.”
“It’s a two-person thing these days. Talk later, cuz.”
He gave me a kiss on the cheek and gracefully disappeared outside, leaving an empty air in his wake. With a little sigh, I checked my phone, saw no message from Bastian, and disappeared back into book six.
If I couldn’t hang out with Bastian, his characters were the next best thing.
12
BASTIAN
Although I had no reason to believe that Dahlia would send a second video, hope still flared within.
The next evening we returned to fire camp, grabbed dinner, and retreated to our pads to crash. I rinsed off with a rag and some water from a bottle, satisfying myself with the quick spit bath while others dropped onto their mats, half asleep.
Twelve hours digging line, with a few breaks for food or weather checks, left me another weary wreck. My hands had almost gone numb after half the day on the chainsaw, then half the day swamping—pulling tree branches and other wreckage away.
Updates on the fire weren’t promising, either.
Continued growth pushed the fire to the east, closer to the highway. Winds made it hard to create a fire line. Another hotshot crew had just arrived to dig line and stop the fire from going north. Meanwhile, we stayed south to protect Pineville, anticipating that a flank of fire could race toward town. A few cabins had been evacuated in the close hills, and volunteers set up sprinklers around houses and cut down brush to prepare.
With all that going on, Pineville remained at the forefront of my mind. My thoughts drifted to Dahlia during the day more than I’d actually like to admit. Even if it was just to myself.
Once I finished wolfing down an extra protein bar, I settled on my pad, grateful to stop moving for more than a few minutes. My phone brightened to life. Each muscle in my arm protested while I rubbed them out, but it gave me something to do while I waited.
Less than a minute after the phone booted up, one measly bar of reception appeared. What felt like an eternity later, a notification showed on the screen.
1 new text message.
Relief spread through me as I tapped on Dahlia’s message and a video downloaded. Once it finished, I held the phone close so I could hear, then hit the play button.
A grainy picture emerged at first, eventually settling into something clear. Dahlia stood at the reservoir. No wind down there. The breeze had been a steady twenty miles per hour in the hills all day. The lake was a calm blue band behind her. She sat on a camp chair, aviator sunglasses swamping half her face.
