Page 212 of Smoke and Fire
Some of them walked by and laughed the fire off. "We'll leave once Jess shows up," one woman reassured a friend as she headed out the door, probably to head to the loft entrance in the back. "I promise!"
The locals kept an eye out and muttered about animals at home. Everyone waited for something, but it wasn't the same tension.
In between orders, I checked my phone for new texts and worried over Bastian. Wind gusted outside from the northwest, as if driven from hell. It blasted the side of the coffee shop and sent leaves scuttling by.
What were the odds that such terrible weather could happen right when an epic fire waited to engulf us all? It felt as if the weather actively conspired to make everything worse.
Sometime around ten, my phone vibrated with a text.
Sione:We evacuated from camp last night.
Dahlia:Lizbeth mentioned that. Where are you staying?
Sione: At a hotel in Jackson City. Did you get the stabilizer jack fixed?
Dahlia:Not yet.
My RV was good and stuck at the campground. At this point, I’d have to hope the fire didn’t come this far south because I couldn’t move my trailer. If the fire came this far south and burned up the RV, I wouldn’t be penniless thanks to insurance.
I would be homeless.
Sione:Sorry, cuz. We didn't have much time. We even had to let the horses loose.
My stomach flipped when another message came through right then, this one an alert. Red bars blinked on the top of my phone in warning, giving a low, annoyingbleepwith it.
Mandatory evacuations in progress for the Lower Pinegulch Area.
I blinked, read it again, and frowned.
A quick search for the local Pinegulch area made me gulp. According to the map, Pinegulch was the canyon where the fire had originally started. Now it raced to the east.
My finger trailed along the canyon, which led right to a marked highway. Right across the highway lay Adventura. But there was more, because the whole Pinegulch area now under mandatory evacuation encompassed several miles south of there as well.
Including my campground.
Ugly.
This morning when I drove to the Frolicking Moose, I’d brought the most important essentials in my backpack. Computers. Hard drives. Pictures. My purse.
Walking away from my RV and not knowing if I’d ever see it again left a hollow spot inside me. Until now, I hadn’t let myself think about it. Katrina and Jess and the shop had distracted me too much. Now, I felt the potential sorrow all the way in my gut.
My hands trembled when I opened up the text message to Sione again.
Dahlia:Glad you're safe.
Sione:Do you have access to a truck, by any chance?
My eyes flitted outside and off to the left. Not far away was the fire station, with the hotshots attached. Bastian's truck waited in the parking lot, barely visible through the smoke. A spare truck key was on the house key he'd given me.
Yes, I had access to a truck.
Whether I had permission to use said truck was another question entirely.
Dahlia:What do you need?
Sione:A truck to pull a horse trailer. A hotshot crew reported that some of the horses had returned to the stable at Adventura. No fire has spread that way yet, so they said Mark could get them if he hurries. He's in Pineville, so I can't help him. He's borrowing Maverick's truck and needs another one. Everyone else in Pineville is already loading up their stuff or using their trucks.
My breath caught. The hotshot crew might be Bastian's. To run to Adventura and help with the horses would give me a chance to see him. Maybe even clear the weird air between us.
