Page 74 of Heat Advisory

“This is my girlfriend, Amanda,” she said, introducing the woman beside her.

Amanda looked at me with an intriguing smile, like she had just been handed a front-row ticket to the world’s most dramatic soap opera and was living it.

“Well, his attitude has certainly changed now that you’re around. He’s far less of a stick in the mud than he was before, so thanks.”

“I do my best to keep him in check,” I said cheekily.

She laughed, loud and genuine, and I loved it. “Oh, I like her. Don’t screw this up, Rainer.”

Jay’s hand tightened on my hip—not angry, just there. Grounding.

Nicole turned to Trent, still smiling, but her eyes were sharp. “Trent, Stetson is looking for you.”

He turned to leave, but not before sending one final glare over to Jay and me.

Amanda, still grinning, leaned in toward me, nodding at Nicole. “I love this woman. She’s like a human fire extinguisher. Puts out the drama and is good to have around.”

I craned my neck to look back at Jay to see that he was finally relaxing and the tension was leaving his body.

I stage-whispered up to him and smiled. “You’re lucky she’s on your side.”

He kissed my temple. “I’m lucky you’re on my side.”

Nicole clapped her hands. “Alright, lovebirds. Enough tension for one night. Let’s all get a drink. And Cora, tell me everything. How did you meet up again after all these years? Did he try one of those cheesy firefighter lines to get you to agree to a date? How was your first date?”

I laughed, knowing she was going to get a kick out of what had happened on our first date—and second. I just didn’t have to tell her they had only occurred a few weeks ago.

23

“Flash Flooding: because rain likes surprise parties too.”

—It’s science

Cora

The last few weeks since the Firefighters’ Ball had been so stressful for both of us, but we’d also grown closer.

On the nights he didn’t work, we had dinner together and he slept at my place. When he did work, we found a few moments here and there to chat on the phone or text each other about our days.

Jay had been doing two jobs at once many days—his regular firefighter job, as well as assisting on the fire investigations since there had been two additional wildfires. There had actually been a third one, but that one had been started in the exact spot lightning was detected on radar, so it was ruled natural instead of arson. But Jay and the rest of the team still treated it like the others in the beginning because they wanted to be sure.

I was also busy, because in addition to getting all my work done for our annual water year analysis, I had been called out to several of the fires too, in order to do burn scar assessments. I’d done them before, so it wasn’t hard, but never this many back-to-back.

The thing that kept me up at night about the fires was that they seemed random but also strategic at the same time. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but I knew in my gut that I was missing something.

I was back at the scene of the Coltster Fire, walking through the charred landscape and hoping something would stand out. Investigations weren’t my thing, but I knew burn scars, and there was just something off about these fires compared to a lot of the other fires I had covered in years past.

Jay finally had gotten around to getting his truck into a body shop for the repairs to the scratches. Since I hadn’t planned to leave the house today, he had borrowed my car to take to work and was going to pick me up to go out to dinner. But then my brain had started spinning, and I knew I needed to go back to the scene of the fire. I took an Uber to get here and texted Jay my location so he knew where to get me.

Jay was already on his way to get me but was still a good fifteen to twenty minutes away—plenty of time for a video call—so I decided to call Iris and Gale to pick their brains and get some advice.

I gave them the update on the fires and told them I felt like I was missing something. We talked it out, them asking questions and me answering as best I could.

“Those are really tall trees,” Iris commented, looking at the landscape behind me. “Are those sequoias?”

“Doubt it. Usually those are found a bit farther west, but it’s not unheard of for some of those to be on the eastern flanks of the Sierra Mountains,” Gale chimed in with her botany expertise.

“Okay, well they look way taller than the other trees behind you,” Iris noted.