Page 13 of Sparks with the Firefighter

Still nothing.

"Drew!" His name rips out of my throat and lands in the chaos around me.

Thoran's hands close around both of mine. He gets right down into my eye-line, the way he did with my son on a concrete floor that day.

"Get yourself to safety." He’s steady with not one thread of panic in him anywhere. "I've got this. Drew will meet you up here. Promise me you won't leave to find him."

"What are you going to do?"

"I’m going to get him. But you have to stay here. Keep everyone off the lagoon." His thumbs press into my knuckles. "Promise me."

"Okay." My stomach lurches. My eyes are already going back to the crowd, hunting a small head in a red shirt. "Okay, I promise."

Without another word, he goes.

I watch Thoran move, herding people up the slope with both arms out. He’s calling names, he’s hauling somebody's grandmother up off a folding chair and he’s going straight into a fire to find my son.

CHAPTER TEN THORAN

I run for the log roll.

It’s downhill, hard soil, and boots skidding in the trampled grass the whole way. I can taste the smoke before I'm halfway there. It’s not wood stove smoke. It’s the other kind… Sharp and green and wrong. The brush and pitch going up together isn’t good.

Three boys are out on the pond dock and from the look of it, they’re clueless. One of them is windmilling his arms on a log like there isn't a wall of black coming up behind the trees a hundred yards off. One of them does a cannonball into the water.

The third is Drew.

"Off the water!" I shout and hope my words carry.

It takes three tries before he turns. Drew’s face does something when he sees me running toward him. It’s relief, then the beginning of an argument, then it lands on something that looks like confusion.

"Now, off the water. All of you. Look behind you. Look.”

The boys turn and I watch realization flash in their eyes. After that, they come. I get a hand in the back of Drew's shirt and point them up the slope toward the arena.

"Up the hill. Straight to your mother. Don't stop for anybody. In a straight line, don’t zigzag."

"Are you⁠—"

"Go."

He goes. He looks back twice before the three of them scurry up the hill.

It’s another five minutes before the rig comes down the access road with the guys hanging off it. Five minutes, from a cold start. That’s one hell of a turnaround time. I could kiss every one of them when I see them coming.

We stop short of the tree line and I get my first honest look at the fire.

It's running through the brush in front of the lagoon and it's moving toward town. There's a hundred years of duff on that ground and nobody's touched it. The head of it is maybe four hundred yards off the festival grounds. Behind me there are children and hay bales and a food tent full of propane and every single person I care about in this world.

Today is not the day the fire wins.

The black is so thick I can't see the ridge anymore. The heat comes off it in a wall you can feel in your teeth. But I've got eleven men behind me, and I've been running drills on that empty concrete floor since March. This thing doesn't stand a chance.

"Take the tank. Grab the line off the pumper, flank it left, work the edge, don't get out in front of it." I'm already pulling my helmet down as I shout orders to the guys. "We're not fighting the head. We're pinching the flanks and cutting it off from town. Watch that breeze. If it swings, you back out, no arguments."

From there they move and it’s a blur.

The wind is behind it and it's fast, but we're faster.