Page 50 of Smoke and Fire
“See if you can find anything. Look into a girl named Katrina.”
“The one that lives in LA?”
“Yeah, the documentary filmmaker. This might be her trying to capitalize on publicity and excitement with the new release. She could leverage Jess’s popularity to get attention herself.”
“Okay. I will.”
His tone dropped again. Not quite a whisper, but close. “Do you feel safe if she comes back into the coffee shop? Because I’m willing to bet she will. I can call Hernandez and have him stop by to check, just in case.”
“Uh, yeah.” The words stuck in my throat. His concern touched me. “I don’t think she plans to get out of control. She just wants to look around, I think. No danger to me.”
“Okay. Just let me or Hernandez know.”
The inane urge to ask him to send me a video rose up, but I shoved that back down. No, that felt like too mortifying of an ask. I just wanted toseehim again. I almost giggled in a deranged way, picturing him doing a selfie while coated in grime.
He pulled me back to the present.
“Keep me updated, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Just . . . steady on. Maybe she’ll let it go when she doesn’t discover anything here.”
“Any idea how she found it?”
“IP tracker, maybe,” he murmured. “Not sure. Lizbeth might. She's got a brain for computers and programming.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me. For several wordless moments, I had no response to give.
“Do you want me to ask Lizbeth to find out?” I asked. "I'm not sure I can do that without revealing Jess."
“No. The less people that know, the better.”
“Okay.”
“And . . .” he hesitated. “The wind is supposed to shift and build through the night. It’ll come out of the northwest and blow toward Pineville. There's a chance voluntary evacuations could hit.”
“Sione just texted me about it. That means the fire would be headed right for us, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So the weather report is accurate?”
“As accurate as they ever are.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and thought of Sione's text. Maybe I should get the RV prepped, just in case. One of the stablizer jacks had been having an issue retracting. I wouldn’t be able to leave with that still down.
“Okay, thanks.”
“You’ll be safe,” he added quickly. “There are emergency alerts that go out to anyone in an area, so keep your phone close and keep it turned up and loud.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“I have to go back out soon. They’re putting us on a different part of the fire tonight to try to get ahead of it. Hopefully, we can stop it at the highway so it doesn’t jump.”
Jumping over the highway, if memory served correctly, would put it on the path to Adventura.
“I hope it doesn’t,” I murmured.
