Those Who Wish Me Dead

37

Tango was slowing but still steady when they reached the burnout. Allison and Jamie had entered the mountains and two sides of the world were lit with two different deadly lights. Up above them, lightning was working on the mountaintops. Below, to their right, the forest fire glowed in the woods just south of Silver Gate. The wind fed it and drove acrid smoke toward them. Allison could also see the lights of a large campsite-that would be the firefighter base. There they’d have the ground crews and pump trucks and all those who were prepared to defend Silver Gate and Cooke City from a threat that had arrived here because of the two women who now rode silently into the hills like ghosts.

“There will be police down there,” Allison said. “I think. Maybe not. Maybe just the firefighters. But they still might be able to help.”

“No,” Jamie Bennett said.

Allison pulled back on the reins and brought Tango in. He seemed grateful for the stop. She eyed his foreleg and waited to see if he would try to shift away from it. He stayed balanced.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. “But I told you why. I thought you understood-”

“I do.”

Yes, she understood. You whispered the wrong word in the wrong ear-hell, maybe even the right ear-and two wolves arrived at your door in the night. Lives were lost, good men were burned on mountainsides, boys vanished. There were plenty of reasons that there was no trust left in Jamie Bennett’s world. She was, after all, part of the system that was supposed to be able to keep people safe. And she hadn’t been able to do it for her own son. Not against those two.

So how are we supposed to do it, Allison thought, if the best she could do led to this?

“You don’t have to come,” Jamie said, as if Allison had voiced her doubts aloud. “You can go down to them. All I’m asking is that you let me go on.”

They were silent, Allison thinking and letting the horse rest and watching the fire below and the lightning above. She nudged Tango back into motion. He started slow.

“How fast can it burn?” Jamie Bennett asked. She was turned in the saddle, watching the flames. She didn’t need to be told to hold tight anymore-once the fire had come into view, her grip on Allison became painful. Each of Tango’s steps hurt Allison as well, jarring her. Allison tried to distract herself by watching that foreleg, studying it for any sign of weakness. His pace wasn’t quick, but each step was firm and confident.

“I’m not sure,” Allison said. “But it looks like it went through here pretty fast.”

“So we’re safe here. It won’t come back, even if the wind shifts?”

“It doesn’t have fuel here. Where we’re going, it does.” She pointed into the shadowed tree line of untouched timber above where the flames were burning now.

“Jace will be up there?”

“I have no idea, Jamie. The trail he was told to take out of these mountains in an emergency is up there. Whether he…” She caught herself before saying Whether he made it and instead said, “Whether he decided to take it, I don’t know.”

Jamie didn’t say anything to that, and so they rode on in silence, and Allison tried to imagine where Ethan might be. If he’d started at Pilot Creek, then he’d be well into the mountains now, up at the elevation where the lightning was hunting for fools.

Her eyes left the peaks when Tango balked. It was the first disruption she’d felt in his stride, and she was sure it was his leg. When she looked down, though, she saw all four feet planted firmly on the ground. He was trying to back up. Her mind went to snakes then, wondering if he’d somehow seen a diamondback in the darkness, even though they were never up at this altitude, but then she saw the faint cloud that his hooves were raising.

Fire had passed this way, and not all that long ago. Recently enough that the ashes were still warm.

She coaxed him forward, watching to see if it was too hot, if it hurt him or frightened him. There was no sign of that, even though there were glimmers of crimson amid the gray.

“This is where it was yesterday,” she said. “We’ll get up on the rocks above and follow the ridgeline.”

She winced when Tango moved off the trail and into the rocks. The footing here was much more treacherous.

He didn’t break stride, though, just kept climbing. Below them, charred trees lined the slopes like fallen soldiers, and the wounded among them cried out in pops and snaps as smoldering flames found pockets to feed on. Each step raised ashes that were promptly swept back by the wind.

“What if Jace was here?” Jamie said. “When the fire passed through? Could he have been here?”

Maybe, Allison thought, and if he was, then we’ll ride over his bones and not much else, but she said, “He couldn’t have made it this far that fast. Not even if he just dropped the pack and ran. If he took this trail, he should be on his way down it now.” She paused and then added, “You keep your hand close to your gun, all right?”

“You don’t have to come with me,” Jamie said. “You don’t have to go any higher. I’ll be fine with the horse.”

“You don’t have any idea where you’re going.”

“Tell me, then. Just tell me where to go. I’m not going to make you stay with me.”

“I want to be there,” Allison said, “when you see your son.”

And, oh, how she did. How she wanted to bring about that reunion. As they went on up the mountain and through the smoke, Tango beginning to labor beneath them, Allison became certain that she was going to bring about a reunion, at least. Maybe it would be between Jamie and Jace, mother and child.

Maybe between herself and the brothers of blood and smoke.

Jace dropped to his hands and knees when he heard the gunshot. For an instant he waited on the impact, as if the bullet were taking its time reaching him, but there was none, and then he waited for the next shot.

“Connor,” Hannah said. “Connor, it’s all right.”

“They’re here! They’re shooting!”

“It’s the stumps,” Hannah said. Her voice was gentle but confident. “Hon? It’s just the stumps.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen,” she said.

A few seconds passed and there was a muffled pop and a plume of smoke rose from one of the charred tree stumps that lined the slope below them.

“They trap the heat,” she said. “The fire hides in them, long after most of the rest of the flames have moved on. Then it pops through. That’s all you’re hearing.”

He didn’t think she was right. What he’d heard sounded like a gunshot. But then another stump went off with a dull crack and he got slowly to his feet.

“You’re sure?”

“It sounded like a gun to me too,” she said. “But if somebody was shooting, why didn’t he keep at it?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. He turned and looked back the way they’d come, saw nothing but shadows and smoke in the pale dawn light. Republic Peak was silhouetted above them, but none of the shadows moved. If there was anyone else with them on the mountain, there was no sign.

“Let’s hurry,” he said. He had a bad feeling all of a sudden. He tried to remind himself that it had been only an unexpected noise, no different than the backfiring of an engine, and that he needed to keep his mind calm, but all the same, his heart was hammering. “Let’s keep moving.”

“We’re going to. We’re almost there.” Hannah had paused for a sip of water and her face was turned away from him as she looked down at the gulch where the fire was burning freely. Jace didn’t like the way she was looking at the fire.

“How close are we?” he said.

“You can see it as well as I can.”

“I mean how close to the firefighters?”

She took the loose end of her shirt and lifted it to her face and wiped the sweat away. Her stomach was visible for a moment, and he was surprised by how thin she was. Her pants were cinched by a belt, as if she hadn’t always been that size.

“A half mile brings us to the outer edge,” she said. “Then we skirt the burnout side and keep working down toward the creek. That’s where they’ll have camped. They’ll be using the creek as a natural boundary and that’s where they’ll fight it. How far they go depends on what the wind does before we get there. I’d say we’ve got forty-five minutes to go. An hour, tops. We’re almost out, buddy.”

“Okay.”

They began walking again, and Jace was aware of a strange smell. It reminded him of the summer some kids had dumped trash in the quarry and tried to burn it out but it had just smoldered, and eventually Jace’s dad went down to deal with it. There’d been a stack of tires at the base that put out thick black smoke, and the flames hadn’t wanted to quit. The smell trailed him now as he walked, and eventually he looked down and stopped again.

“Look at my shoes,” he said.

Hannah turned. “What about them?”

“Get closer.”

She knelt near his feet and this time she saw it-there were wisps of smoke rising from his shoes. The rubber soles were melting. She reached out with one palm and he said, “Careful!,” afraid that it was going to sear her hand. She touched his feet one at a time with her palm and then stood and said, “They’re melting, but not fast.” She sounded far too casual about his feet being on fire.

“What do I do!”

“You can’t feel it yet, can you?” she said.

“No. I just saw it. But…they’re melting.” Her boots, however, were fine. He wanted to trade for them, and the thought was so childish that it embarrassed him.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

“Of course not. It’s just what happens, but they aren’t going to catch fire, they’re-”

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She stared at him. Not getting it. He tried to swallow and coughed and then tasted more smoke. He was thirsty and he was tired and his shoes were literally melting off his feet and this woman didn’t understand.

“I was just…playing,” he said. He wiped his eyes and coughed again, spit into the ashes. “I got home from school and went out to play. That’s all it was. That’s all I did. And now…” He looked away from the ashes and into her eyes and said, “They want to kill me.”

Hannah reached out and took him by his shoulders. Her hands were stronger than he would have expected for someone so thin.

“Connor, we’re almost out. No, damn it, don’t look away. Look at me.”

He looked back. Her eyes were wet and shining.

“Where do you want to be?” she said. “Go ahead and say it. Tell me.”

“Home,” he said, and he was about to cry and he didn’t want that. He was supposed to be as strong as her. Then he remembered that she’d cried earlier, he’d seen her, even if she’d lied about it. “I want to see my dad,” he said. “I want to see my mom. I want to be home.”

He hadn’t said it out loud before, not once.

“Okay,” Hannah said. She gave him a squeeze, and it was the closest thing to a hug he’d had since his parents brought him to Montana, and he found himself hugging her back even though he didn’t want to. He didn’t want her to think he was weak.

“You’ve come so far,” she said. Her voice was soft, her lips not far from his ear, her head resting on his. “You’re almost there, I promise you, you are almost there. We’re going to walk to that creek and we’re going to get across it, and then…then you’re going home.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just so tired, and I don’t know-”

“Connor? Stop apologizing.”

“Jace,” he said.

“What?”

“My name is Jace. I’m Jace Wilson. Connor Reynolds was my fake name.”

“Jace.” She said it slow, then smiled at him and shook her head. “Sorry, kid, but I think it’s too late now. You’re Connor to me. Let’s get you back to where people know you as Jace.”

He nodded. “Forty-five minutes?” he said.

“At most.”

“Let’s not stop again. I won’t make us stop.”

“Then we won’t stop,” she said. “It’s been a long walk, but what’s left is short. I promise. And don’t worry about your shoes. It’s good news.”

“How is it good news?”

She turned back to the smoke and gestured at the fire below.

“Hotter it gets, the closer we are,” she said.

38

Jack Blackwell found his brother halfway down the western side of Republic Peak. He was pinned against a boulder, and Ethan Serbin was no longer with him, but a clear track of loose dirt and scraped stone and streaks of blood indicated his path on down the mountain, rolling farther, rolling faster. Jack strained his eyes to find him but could not. The slope was very steep. It had been difficult to reach his brother, and it would be more difficult to pursue Serbin.

“Patrick. You hear me? Patrick.”

Patrick Blackwell’s eyes opened. Their gaze dull but alive.

“Bad,” he said, and he tried to spit but succeeded only in bringing forth a bubble of blood. “Pretty bad, isn’t it?”

Jack rocked back on his heels and studied him. Took his time. Patrick’s face spoke for itself: broken jaw, shattered teeth, not much of a cheekbone remaining on the right side. The flesh was already distorted by swelling. There was clean white bone showing in his left hand too; at some point, trying to stop the fall, he’d bent his hand double, and the bones broke before his momentum did.

“Pretty is the wrong word,” Jack said. “But maybe not so bad. Maybe not so bad.”

Patrick coughed and more blood came, and that’s what was truly bad. Jack braced himself on the slope and leaned close, set his pistol aside, and touched his brother gingerly. Rolled him just a fraction, and then closed his eyes when Patrick tried to scream and got nothing for his efforts but a strangled howl. Jack felt along his ribs and found the problem. There was plenty of trouble on the inside of his brother. The outside looked bad, but Patrick could endure it. Jack knew that he could. The edges of those sheared ribs, though, could have done a great deal of damage. He was not certain that even the likes of Patrick could endure what was wrong on the inside.

It wasn’t until Jack moved his hand away and leaned back that he saw the lower leg. No bone visible here, but Patrick’s left foot was bent to the side in a way that suggested he no longer had control over it, and the swelling was already pronounced and grotesque.

Jack sat down in the dust and looked into his brother’s blue eyes and said, “Pretty bad.”

Patrick nodded. “Foot’s no good,” he said. “And in the chest…” He stopped when a rivulet of blood dripped from his mouth and choked his speech. The jaw was giving him trouble but he was getting the words out, albeit with a lot of blood. He licked some of it away and neither of them spoke until he’d cleared his lungs best as he could. “In the chest is the real trouble. Am I right?”

“It would be hard going for us,” Jack admitted.

“It wouldn’t be going much at all.”

“I can patch you up a bit. I can carry you. It’ll hurt, and it’ll be slow, but it’ll still be going.”

“Going where?” Patrick said, and this time he was able to spit some of the blood out. “Up that mountain? Down the others?”

Jack didn’t answer.

“We are a long way from home,” Patrick said.

“Yes.”

“How many dead to get here, do you think? And for how much money?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Say what you know, then. Tell me what I want to hear.”

“What’s that?”

“How many fights lost.”

“None, Patty. None.”

Patrick nodded. “Strange life,” he said.

“Took what we could from it.”

“Always. Came a time, didn’t think anyone could take it back.”

Jack looked away from his brother and scanned the rocks again, searching for Serbin.

“You see him?” Patrick asked, understanding.

“No. You fell down the wrong side of the mountain.” Here on the western slope, the rising sun hadn’t crested the peak, and around them was nothing but gloaming light and shadows. Another hour, maybe just thirty minutes, and all would be illuminated. For now, though, the darkness lingered.

“I’ll go find him,” Jack said. “Bring him back so you can see him yourself.”

“No time for that.” Patrick blew out another bloody breath and said, “You know how badly I want to see that boy dead now?”

“I’ve more of a mind to see Serbin dead, myself. And his wife.”

“It started with the boy,” Patrick said. “End it with the boy. Make him first, at least.” He hung his head down and found a few more breaths after a lengthy search and then said, “Hell with that. Kill them all, Jack. Every one of them.”

“I will.”

“You know it’s time for you to get moving.”

“Past time.”

Silence came then and held them, and still Jack Blackwell sat with his brother.

“The question is yours to answer,” Jack said finally.

“Yes.”

“So tell me, then.”

“At your hand.”

Jack looked away. His jaw worked but no words came.

“Not at theirs,” Patrick said. “And not alone. The end would probably come for me before they did, but I’d be alone.”

Jack still did not speak.

“Please,” Patrick said. “Don’t let me go alone. Not after all these years. This life.”

Jack picked up his pistol and rose to his feet. He brushed the dust from his pants, turned to look at the forest fire they’d given birth to, its smoke beginning to show in the sunrise. He stood with the burned side of his face toward his brother and said, “I’ll start with the boy, but I’ll finish with them all. You know that. You believe it, yes?”

“I do.”

“I’ve never enjoyed traveling alone, though. Not a bit.”

“You never had to. But you’ll be fine. You’ll be just fine.”

Jack nodded. “You as well.”

“Of course.”

“You’re sure of this.”

“I am.”

“And so here the paths part. For a time.”

“Love you, brother,” Patrick Blackwell said.

“Love you too,” Jack Blackwell said, and his voice was coarse. He coughed and spit into the shadowed stones and breathed a few times. The mountain was silent but for the wind. When he turned back, Patrick’s eyes were closed, and they remained closed when Jack fired one bullet into the center of his forehead and then two more into his heart.

Jack removed the black Stetson he’d worn since arriving at Ethan Serbin’s cabin and used it to cover his brother’s face so that when the sun rose above the summit, it would not shine on the blood or his dead eyes. He spun open the cylinder of the revolver and removed the three casings, still warm, touched them to his lips one at a time, and put them in his breast pocket.

Then he reloaded with fresh bullets and began to pick his way through the rocks and toward the fire and the killings yet to come.

39

Ethan was one of the dying kind now, and he knew it. He had spent his life instructing others on how to avoid joining this group and yet here he lay, bleeding into the dark rocks.

Survivor mentality: blank.

Positive mental attitude: at least he’d killed one of them.

Or he hoped he had. Here in the broad shadow of the mountain, he could not see where Patrick Blackwell had landed. For a time he had tried to watch for motion but then darkness came and he folded beneath it and when he opened his eyes, he was not certain he was looking in the right direction even, let alone the right place.

Got him good, though, he thought. Got him good.

There was something to be proud of in that, wasn’t there? All his mistakes aside, he’d swung when he needed to.

He wondered where the rifle had gone. That was the killing tool, that was what threatened the boy most, and if they got the boy, then all of this…He couldn’t think about that. Not now. He’d just let the time pass and let the end come, knowing that he’d done the best he could and lost and that there was still honor in that.

He wished he would bleed out quicker. Every time he closed his eyes he didn’t expect to open them again, but time and again he did, and then he was more aware of the pain and of his predicament and he wanted to be gone from all of that. He’d come far enough that he deserved the peace.

His eyes kept opening, though. He couldn’t control those two bastards, one went with the other, and then he was awake and almost alert and watching the sun edge toward the summit of the mountain he’d fallen from, and finally it was bright enough for him to assess the damage.

A lot of blood. That much he saw early and found some hope in. A man couldn’t bleed like that for too long before the end, so he was close; all that was required of him now was patience.

Other than the blood, it was not so bad. Bruises, yes. Breaks, probably. His left wrist had turned into a pincushion, and somewhere below it his hand remained, but he didn’t have much interest in that, because he saw no need for the hand between now and the end. His right shoulder ached in a way that suggested something broken, but he didn’t move enough to be sure because he saw no need for the shoulder either.

Damn that sun. Kept right on rising. It was hard on his eyes, even when he closed them. He’d blink back into consciousness and see the widening band of scarlet in the east and the peaks taking shape before it.

Good Lord, what a beautiful place it was.

He could smell the fir trees and pines and the rocks themselves and the cool crisp of the morning, could feel the breeze on his face, already warmer than the pocket of air he’d found himself in, promising another hot humid day, and he thought he could smell the glacier. Something colder than anything the modern age knew of, something that had weathered man for generations upon generations, but then man discovered fire and now the glacier surely could not weather many more, would melt until all that was left was rock and rumors of what covered it once. He was dying in a land carved by oceans he’d never seen and reborn by fires.

He shut his eyes again but the sun was higher and hotter and he gave up on a peaceful dark exit. That wasn’t how it came for everyone, and he deserved no better than anyone else. Let the sun rise, then, let the smoke drift his way, let it clear those clean cool smells and tastes from him. He opened his eyes. He’d still die in his mountains, and that was fine.

Except for Allison, that was just fine.

He wished that he hadn’t thought of her, squeezed his eyes shut and tried to will her away. He didn’t need her with him now, not at the end, because he knew what he was leaving her to and it brought on a guilt and sorrow more powerful than he could bear. She’d survived. She’d made it through, and now here he was, ready to die and not displeased by the idea at all, at least not until she’d entered his mind.

He opened his eyes and for the first time looked at himself instead of the peaks and the rising sun. It was important to see, because this was how the searchers would find him. This was what they would tell her they’d seen; this was all she would have to take with her into the rest of her days.

He was upside down with his head against a downed pine and his feet pointing up the slope and at the sky and he was bleeding from his left side and one of his wrists was broken and maybe a shoulder. That was what they would tell her. Because she would ask. Allison would certainly ask.

It bothered him. He blinked again and wet his lips and shifted against the tree and felt the pain from a hundred different places. It was enough to bring him to a stop. He took a few deep breaths and then said the hell with it. She’d know the full story in time, she’d know the way they found him, Luke Bowden or someone would tell her. Wait-Luke was dead. Good Lord, Luke was dead. Ethan had found the body; how had he forgotten that? Now others would find his, and then they would go tell the story. Hats off and heads bowed, they would explain the way he’d come to lie on the mountain, and Allison, woman that she was, strongest woman he’d ever known, she would ask questions. Even through tears, even through agony, she would ask some questions.

Was he dead when he hit the bottom?

No.

How long did it take him to die?

A good bit of time.

Did he suffer? Was he conscious?

Odds were, they’d tell her the truth. Ethan always had. And Allison, who had set herself on fire to survive these same men, would know exactly what sort of man Ethan had been.

The dying kind.

No; worse.

The quitting kind.

Survivors, Ethan had told this last group of boys while his wife listened from the stable, do not quit. Ever. They STOP. They sit, think, observe, and plan. That, boys, is a stop. Anything else is quitting, and quitting is dying. Are you the surviving kind, or the dying kind? We’ll find out.

Damn all.

Screw her, then. Screw her for staying alive through it all, for being better than he was, for being stronger, and for taking from him the only thing he wanted now, which was merely to die in peace and without shame.

But she deserved something. Pointless as it was, he wanted to give her something, so that when Luke Bowden and the others-no, not Luke, why couldn’t he remember that, why couldn’t he believe it?-came to her bedside, they could tell her that Ethan had died trying. Because unless he left some evidence behind, how would anyone know he’d done a damn thing other than fall off a mountain?

He had a QuikClot in the pocket of his hiking pants. Always carried one, because the thing he feared most out here with the boys was arterial bleeding. One fall, one slip of the knife, one surprised bear, all of those things led to the same place-blood loss-and so he walked prepared for it.

Give Allison that much, then. Give her the blood-clotting dressing, and then they could say, Well, Allison, he died trying. Didn’t give up even when it was over.

It took him some time to find the right pocket, but he got it unzipped and fumbled out the plastic package that contained the bandage. He had two of them, he’d forgotten that, but he figured one was enough. Hell, just opening the package would say that he hadn’t quit.

He used his right hand to bring the package to his mouth and then he tore it open with his teeth and fumbled out the bandage. It was a mesh packet filled with a coagulant; blood already had coagulants, but not enough to stop a traumatic bleed quickly. Ethan had used it a time or two, but never on himself. He rotated, wincing and hissing at the pain, got two buttons of his shirt undone, and then put the mesh packet down on the bullet wound at his side and pressed hard.

His eyes closed again, although this time it was involuntary. Still, he held the dressing tight, and after a while the world stabilized and he could look at the wound. A bad one, but that steady pulse of blood was already slowing.

Maybe one more, he thought, not because it will make a difference, but because it will show her how hard I tried.

He got the second package out and tore it open with his teeth and pressed it to the still-exposed part of the wound and then it occurred to him that he had a belt and he loosened that and freed it with an effort and then, moving slowly, because his left wrist and right shoulder would not cooperate, managed to get the belt wrapped around the bandages and cinched tight.

The pulse of blood had stopped.

For a moment, he was pleased as hell with himself. When they found him, they’d be able to tell her that he had not only survived the fall but been able to stop his own bleeding where he lay.

One problem remained, though: the idea of people finding him where he lay. His wife had moved when the end came for her, and kept moving, and moving had saved her. Ethan had no place to hide from death, but maybe he could try to move. Try to get upright.

At least stand up for her, he thought, and then he leaned against the tree and used the heels of his hands to push himself up.

And fell right back onto his ass.

Okay. Once more, and slower now, and use the legs, because the legs seemed more solid than the arms. The arms were not so good.

He made it up on the fourth try, and the sensation was remarkable. The simple act of getting to his feet was like something almost forgotten, an ancient skill.

He stood there and he breathed and then he looked at his side and saw that the QuikClot hadn’t given up yet. The dressings were keeping the blood at bay. He looked at the pool of drying blood in the dust beside the fallen pine where he might have been found, and he was immensely pleased to have parted ways with it.

He took the first step, and then the second, and the motion was not a bad thing. It hurt, but the hurt was a sweet ache that reminded him his body still moved and that pain afflicted only the living.

He wasn’t moving fast, but he was moving, and again he was aware of the land around him. Republic Peak loomed above and there was an eagle circling between him and the summit, and below it the mountains spread to forest and all around him the world lightened with pink hues. It was a beautiful day for a walk, he thought, even if it was your last walk. Maybe even better if it was the last walk. The smoke was in the air and that was a shame, but he knew that from the ravages, the land would be reborn and that these mountains had seen more fires than he had seen days on the earth and that they could bear them again.

He was happy just to be walking, then, happy that he had not quit, and he was so pleased with this that he almost missed the rifle.

It was above him, on the rocks, maybe thirty feet up, and the climb seemed mighty and the reward unworthy, because who was there left to shoot?

All the same, it was there.

A man who was happy to die walking, he reasoned, ought to be happier still to die climbing. Getting upright had meant something, and those first steps another thing, but to climb? The story he wanted to leave out here was that of a climbing man. A fallen one, to be sure, that part was undeniable by now, but one who’d climbed as far as he could.

He paused long enough to fill his lungs and check the bandages. They were both a shade darker, but not dripping. Then he fixed his sights on the rifle and began, one unsteady step at a time, to climb toward it.

40

The wind swung around after sunrise, started blowing out of the northwest and regaining the momentum it had sacrificed for the lightning storm.

The fire shifted with it, and Hannah knew then that it was going to be far closer than she’d wanted to imagine. In her mind, she’d always kept them half a mile from it, at least, a wide swing over the top of the fire ground and down to the creek, the two of them staying well away from the dangerous heat of it and from the ghosts that waited for her within the flames.

They weren’t going to have half a mile. Maybe a quarter of a mile. Maybe less, if that wind kept blowing.

Don’t show it, she told herself. Don’t show him that you’re scared.

They had taken too long getting down the mountain. They were about half a mile from the creek and she couldn’t see the crew that should be there, and that was more trouble, because it meant they’d camped farther north than she’d realized, and this was even worse news, thanks to the wind. It would push the fire up the gulch, which the team on the ground would regard as a fine thing, because that was exactly the direction they wanted the blaze to move, away from forest and fresh fuel and on toward the rock. Rock always did a better job of fighting fire than humans did. The mountains took care of themselves in the end; all you did was help.

This was turning into a beautiful morning for the fire crew, then, because the wind was helping them, and they’d stay north and appreciate their good fortune since there wasn’t anything up the gulch worth fighting for. Maybe three acres of fir and a ridge of grass and then the rock.

And Hannah and Connor.

“It’s high,” Connor said.

She understood that he meant the fire itself. They were close enough to see the flames clearly now, see how they climbed the pines and still weren’t satisfied, kept flapping higher, tasting the air to see if there was anything edible up above. She remembered being struck by the same thing in her first fire season, remembered swinging a Pulaski and trying to keep calm and pretend that flames so high above did not unnerve her.

The sound of it was powerful now too. As the wind provided reinforcement, the fire took on a sound like soft thunder, but steadier, the echo of distant trains.

“It’s going to be a problem,” she said.

“What is?”

“That fucking wind,” she said, and then looked at him and said, “Sorry.”

“Call it what you want,” he said.

She nodded and wiped sweat from her face and saw that her palm came away smeared with ash. Her eyes were stinging from the smoke and tearing constantly.

Hotter the fire, cooler the head; hotter the fire, cooler the head, she told herself, one of the mantras that Nick chanted at them as they worked, and it meant two things: Keep yourself hydrated and as cool as possible against the fire heat, and, more important, keep your thoughts clear. Keep your mind working, and keep calm.

“Here’s what the fire wants to do,” she told Connor. “Jump that creek and find the forest. Why? Because it’s on a quest, just like us. We want to find help; it wants to stay fed. But here’s what the wind is instructing it to do: push up the gulch. The problem for the fire is that it doesn’t know what we know, and it won’t realize that going up the gulch is a mistake. It will know that only when it finds the rock shelves.”

He was staring at her. “Why are you talking like that? Like it has thoughts.”

“Because it does.” She ran her tongue over her teeth, trying to draw up some saliva, wishing for water. They were both out now. “It has needs, at least, and it knows how to meet them and what to do if something gets in its way. And right now…we are very close to doing just that, Connor.”

“It’s still pretty far off.”

It seemed to be, anyway. Looked as if it were taking its time chewing through the timber, and they had elevation on it and some distance, and the creek loomed, shimmering in the sunrise.

“You said we just need to get across the creek. Right?”

“Right.”

“The creek isn’t that far. We can make it. We can run.”

God bless him, he still thought he could run. How long had he been on his feet; how long had he been awake?

“Hannah?” he said. “We can make it if we run.”

“There’s one problem,” she said. “It can run too, buddy. You haven’t seen that yet, but trust me, it can run.”

The temperature of the main fire was maybe twelve hundred degrees, maybe fifteen hundred, and it was finding plenty of fuel, and the wind was pushing oxygen in, so that temperature was rising. When it got hotter, it would get excited, and it would be ready to run.

Hotter the fire, cooler the head.

She had cost them both dearly by keeping them high, and it was fine to acknowledge that but imperative to know that continuing to climb would no longer be a mistake. The creek was tempting but she wasn’t sure that they could make it, not even running, and if climbing again might save them, then they had to do it. The very idea of climbing made her feel defeated.

“We’re going to backtrack a bit,” she said. “I’m sorry. But it’s the right thing. We need to go back up the drainage and get up on that ridgeline, you see it?”

He followed her pointing finger and nodded.

“We can walk along that. It’s not too steep. And it gives us plenty of space if the fire makes a jailbreak and decides to run. It won’t like the rock, and there will be plenty of rock between us and the last of the trees. Slower going, but safer. We’ll just make our way along that ridgeline and then deal with the creek.”

He didn’t say anything, but his face told her that he didn’t agree, and she knew the look well, had worn it herself on the day she convinced Nick that there was enough time to get down and save the family and make it back up.

“It may not get that high,” she said, “but we’ve come too far to risk it. So it’s just a little more time, and then…”

The rest of the explanation faded into silence and inconsequence when a horse with two riders appeared out of the smoke ahead of them.

The sun had risen above the fire in a war of red heat, but the light had shown them nothing and Allison was unwilling to push Tango any longer. It was too vertical here and they were too close to the fire, and if Jamie’s son had made it down the back side of Republic Peak, they should have seen him by now. She had been prepared to announce all of this for the past fifteen minutes but hadn’t managed to get the words out, because how did you tell a mother that it was time to give up the search for her son? So she rode just a bit longer, slowing Tango to a walk. He was uneasy with the fire, trying to pull them farther away from it, but farther away was steeper and more treacherous ground and so she made him hold the ridgeline. When he stopped entirely, her first instinct was to look at his leg again. Jamie’s first instinct was to look forward, and so Allison had her head down when Jamie said, “Who is that?”

Allison looked up and saw them then, two figures, and because it was two and they were some distance away, her immediate reaction was a cold chill of fear-she had ridden right back into their arms.

But the heights were wrong. It was not the brothers-she would know them even in distant silhouettes, no question. The two figures were on the other side of a steep drainage lined with deadfall, and they weren’t moving, just staring ahead.

“Who is that?” Jamie repeated. Her voice was measured, as if she was fighting for calm, and so Allison tried to match it when she said, “Let’s go find out.”

She urged Tango forward-Just a little more, please, buddy, just give us a little more-and watched the silhouettes take clearer shapes. The fear was transforming into triumph, because it looked to be a woman and a boy.

“Is it him?” she said.

“I don’t know. Get over there and see.”

“I can’t take the horse through that.” The drainage fell off sharply, a drop of at least eight feet, and the deadfall offered a base filled with gaps and holes, leg-breakers in wait.

“Then let me down. Please stop and let me down.”

Allison brought Tango to a stop and Jamie tried an awkward dismount and nearly fell off the horse’s back. Allison caught her arm and said, “Easy,” and then Jamie found the stirrup and swung down and nearly fell again trying to pull her gun from its holster before she even had her legs under her.

“Relax,” Allison said. “It’s not them. It’s not the ones you need to be worried about.”

“Then who is it?”

That was a fair question. One of them was a woman, Allison could see that from here, but who? Jamie kept the gun in her hand and started toward them on foot without waiting for Allison.

“Hang on,” Allison called, but what was the point in slowing her? One of the two was Jamie’s son, it had to be. She dismounted too, and she didn’t think of tying Tango because Tango wouldn’t run from her, never had. She put one grateful palm on his snout and it came away slick with sweat.

“Be right back, buddy,” she said. “Then we’re getting the hell out of here.” But already she was troubled by the logistics of that-she wasn’t sure how much longer he could go with one rider, let alone two, and four would be simply impossible.

It wasn’t the rescue Hannah had imagined. She’d marched them across the mountains and back down toward the fire with the expectation of reaching men and women with hoses and axes, pump trucks and ATVs, and maybe a helicopter.

Instead, she had two women on horseback.

“Do you know them?” she said. “Connor? Do you know who these people are?”

“I’m not sure.” He hesitated and then took a few steps forward, closer to the drainage, and Hannah followed, feeling a powerful need to be between him and any strangers, even if they meant no harm.

“Hello!” Connor shouted. “Hello!”

The women had dismounted and were approaching, one bandaged up, the other well ahead, and Hannah realized there was a gun in that one’s hand. She reached out and caught Connor by the arm, jerked him back.

“Stop. We don’t know-”

“It’s Allison!” he said.

“Who?”

“Ethan’s wife! That’s Ethan’s wife!”

“Your instructor?”

“Yes, it’s his wife.” He waved an arm at them and shouted, “Allison! Allison! It’s me.”

“Who’s with her?” Hannah asked.

“I have no idea,” Connor said. “But at least she’s got a gun.”

Allison was struggling to catch up to Jamie Bennett-riding had been painful, but running was worse-when the boy began to shout at them. At first she couldn’t make out the words, because the wind was carrying the sound of the fire up the gulch, but then she heard her own name.

It was him. It was Connor, Jamie’s son. They’d actually found him.

“We’ve got him,” she said to Jamie. “He’s safe, he did just what he was supposed to do and took that escape route, even though it led into the fire.” She didn’t have any idea who he was with, but he didn’t appear to feel threatened, he seemed healthy and unharmed, was calling out for her, and Allison was flushed with relief and triumph, saying, “We found your son,” when the disconnect that should have been obvious finally hit her.

Allison! Allison!

He was calling to her. Why wasn’t he calling to his mother?

“Doesn’t he see you?” she said, but she already knew the answer to the question, and her mind was slowly catching up to what this meant when Jamie Bennett turned back to face her.

“He doesn’t know who you are,” Allison said. “Why didn’t you tell me that? He doesn’t know that you’re his mother.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d go on ahead now. You’ll need to be in front of me.” The gun was in Jamie’s hand, and it was pointed at Allison, who looked at it as if she weren’t clear on its purpose.

“What are you doing?”

“Get in front of me. Please.”

Allison looked from her to Jace and said, “That’s not your son.”

“I’m afraid not. Now, walk over there to him. He’s come a long way, and he deserves to see you, don’t you think? We’ll all figure it out from there.”

Allison stared at her, not moving. The boy and the woman were moving, though; they were approaching fast, were within pistol range. I can shoot it well, Jamie Bennett had said.

“What’s happening?” Allison said. “What in the hell is really happening here?”

Jamie gave her a pained expression and a small shrug and said, “Not everything I told you was a lie. I truly came to get some people out of the mountains, Mrs. Serbin. Just not my son. I’ve come for my brothers.”

41

For the first time since Ethan had woken him in the night, Jace was actually convinced that he was going to get out of the woods. Not just that it was possible. It was happening. Ethan had sent Allison for him, somehow, and she’d come with someone who’d protect him.

“We can take the horse,” he was saying as he fought his way through a downed pine, feeling his ankle twist in the branches. It was a dry, dead tree, and when the fire made it up here, it was going to burn fast. But that didn’t matter anymore, none of it did, because they’d be gone by the time the fire got here. The journey was done.

Behind him, Hannah said, “Connor, slow down.”

He kept going, though; he didn’t need to slow down, not anymore, because it was over, they were getting out of this place. Hannah hadn’t lied-he was going to see his parents again. It was actually going to happen.

“Connor. Jace! Jace!”

When she finally used his real name, the first time she had, he turned to look at her. She was standing in the base of the drainage herself now and her expression didn’t look right. The joy that should have been there wasn’t. It was darkness. As if she saw something she didn’t like.

“Come back down here,” she said.

“What?” He was halfway up the slope, on his hands and knees, holding on to a tree root. All he had to do was pull himself up and he would be on the other side, standing with his rescuers.

“Come back down here,” Hannah repeated, and right then Allison Serbin spoke as well. Didn’t just speak, actually, but shouted.

“Jace, run. Get away from her!”

Get away from Hannah? Why didn’t Allison trust Hannah? If Hannah had meant to harm him, she’d have done it by now. There was something Allison didn’t understand, and Hannah didn’t either, and Jace knew he could set them all straight-everyone was just confused. He pulled up on the tree root and got over the lip of the ditch and then stood up on the other side. The woman he didn’t know was only a few feet away, and she was looking at him calmly. She was the only one besides him who wasn’t showing any fear.

She was also pointing the gun at him. She knew how to hold it too, a two-handed shooter’s grip. But why was it pointed at him?

“Who are you?” Jace asked.

She ignored him, taking two slow steps back, into a position where she could see Hannah and Allison clearly.

“Allison,” she said, “do not tell him to run. That’s not good advice. What Jace needs to do is sit down.”

Jace looked back at Hannah. She was still standing at the bottom of the drainage, and she looked defeated. She didn’t take her eyes away from the woman with the gun as she said, “Jace, sit down. Please. Do what she says.”

He sat. The woman said, “Thank you. And if you ladies could join him, we’ll all be able to relax a little bit.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Understand that we don’t have to relax. You get to pick how it goes.”

Allison sat down. She was about ten feet away from Jace, and he could see now how badly hurt she was, with bandages all over and dark stitches around her lips. Behind her, the horse paced and watched them all. He seemed as confused as Jace felt, and he was facing the fire. Jace could see that he was afraid of it.

“Two out of three,” the strange woman said. “Let’s get everybody up here.”

She was talking to Hannah, who slowly climbed out of the drainage the way Jace had. When she sat, she sat very close to him. The woman said, “Don’t get in between us. That’s very brave, but I think you understand that I need to see everyone clearly.”

Hannah moved away, but not far. She said, “You’re going to die too if you keep us here. You realize this is not someplace we can just sit and wait?”

The woman ignored her. She was looking right at Jace. “Where are they?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The men who came to kill you. Have you seen them?”

She was partners with them, he realized. Not here to help him at all; here to help them. He looked at Hannah, then at Allison Serbin, searching for an explanation, for something, but the woman snapped at him again. “Jace, you need to tell the truth about this, and do it now. Where are they?”

“Behind us,” he said. “We lost them.”

“I doubt that. Are they with Ethan?”

“I don’t know.”

Jamie’s eyes shifted to Hannah, and she said, “What happened, lady? Who in the hell are you?”

Hannah didn’t answer. She had turned away from the woman as if the gun didn’t bother her at all. She was staring down at the fire when she said, “You don’t have time to find them. Don’t you realize that?”

Allison Serbin said, “They’re your brothers? You sent the boy up here to be killed?”

“It wasn’t anyone’s first choice, Mrs. Serbin. The boy’s parents are very distrustful. Even when they agreed with my plan, they wouldn’t turn him over to me. Insisted on sending him to Montana themselves, and I’ll give them credit, they did a fine job getting him out under cover. Could he have been taken at the airport in Billings? Certainly. But at such great risk. In the mountains, though? So much easier. Had your husband not decided to be such an overachiever, it would have ended for the boy with a bullet from a rifle no one ever saw. That was the idea. It might have been hard on you both, sure, but nobody else would have been harmed. What we have here, though, is a situation that got a little out of hand. Too many people tried too hard to help our friend Jace.”

Her brothers. Jace stared at her and realized he could see it. Tall and lean and blond and with the same calm. But she wasn’t shooting yet. They wouldn’t have waited, he was pretty sure. That was the difference.

“You sent him out here so they could find him?” Allison was asking, and Jace hadn’t heard that much anger in anyone’s voice in a long time-he thought she might disregard the gun entirely and try to kill this woman with her hands. “You asked Ethan to keep him safe but all you wanted was to know where he was? You evil bitch. You actually sent him to-”

“To be fair, Mrs. Serbin, a good deal of this was your husband’s fault. He tried too hard. It wasn’t supposed to take so much work. I feel bad for the rest of you, because all of this didn’t need to happen. Jace here was the only one who…who was required.” She shifted and blinked a few times-she was the only one facing the smoke, and it was blowing hard now, and the fire was louder than before-and said, “Jace, would you like me to let these women go?”

He nodded. The tears were threatening. He didn’t want to cry in front of this woman, though, in front of this evil bitch. Allison had called her exactly what she was. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of crying his way to the end. It was what she expected from him.

“Please,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “Yes, please, let them go.”

Hannah reached for him then, trying to take him in her arms, and the woman fired her gun and Jace ducked back and lifted an arm as if he might protect himself from the bullet. She’d shot high, though, and it was gone, into the smoke.

“Next one won’t be a warning,” she said. “Now, Jace, these women can go. If you tell me the truth, and you work with me, they can go. That’s your choice.”

“Yes,” he repeated.

“All right. How far away are they? Where was the last place you saw them? Or have you not seen them?”

“They’re behind us,” he said. “That’s all I know.” He waved a hand up the mountain, and that was when he saw the man in black coming down toward them. Jace’s face must have shown something, because the woman turned and saw him too and apparently recognized him, even at a distance. She seemed pleased.

“Well, would you look at that. We don’t need to go anywhere, Jace. We can all just sit here and wait.”

“You said they could go.” His voice rose to a shout. “You said they could go!”

“I’m going to leave that decision up to other people. For now, we’re all going to wait.”

Hannah’s voice was soft when she said, “Then we’re all going to die. Not just the ones you want. You will too.”

The woman turned and looked back down the slope to where the trees were burning and said, “I think we’ve got plenty of time.”

Jace didn’t even look at the fire. He was still staring at the man. It was a single man coming down off the mountain, on their trail. It was one of them, there was no doubt.

“I told you,” he said to Hannah. “They don’t quit.”

Allison had been considering a rush at Jamie Bennett, so infuriated by the betrayal that she was hardly afraid of the gun, thought she could take the bullets and still kill this bitch, but now there was another one, and she knew how it would go from here.

“I hadn’t expected to see you so soon,” the man in black called to them as he approached, and Allison wasn’t sure whom he was addressing until Jamie responded.

“I hadn’t expected to be needed. It looks like things got away from you.”

“It has not gone as planned.”

He was close enough now to be heard without shouting. His eyes took them in one at a time and lingered on Allison.

“Mrs. Serbin, I have traveled with you in my mind for a full day and night now. You see what you’ve done to me?” He waved his free hand toward his face, which was a blistered mess. “And, no, you don’t look well yourself, but at least you have received proper medical treatment. I’ve suffered. It has not put me in a good frame of mind.”

He turned then to the boy and spoke with a softness in his voice that sounded almost sweet, the awe of a new father addressing his child.

“Jace, Jace, you beautiful lad. My, how you’ve troubled me. You’ve run far enough, don’t you think? If it makes you feel any better, you’ve taken a toll on me, son. You have truly taken a toll.”

Jamie Bennett said, “Where is Patrick?”

Allison had been wondering the same thing. One of them was horror enough, but there should have been two.

Jack Blackwell did not speak for a moment. He was facing away from Jamie, his eyes on Jace Wilson, when he said, “Our brother is dead.”

Jamie didn’t seem to believe him. Didn’t answer, just gave a little shake of her head.

“Mrs. Serbin’s husband,” Jack said, “was not the aid I had hoped he would be.” He looked back at Allison and said, “He is dead too, but you understand that is not a fair trade to me.”

Ethan was dead. He had been in his mountains, and it hadn’t seemed possible that he would die in them.

Jack Blackwell looked away from them now, stared down into the fire that feasted below. For a time he just stood there, as if he were alone in the world and no troubles weighed on his mind.

“Look at it go,” he said, almost to himself. “That was Patty’s, you know. That was his idea. And it may yet be effective, though he won’t know it. There are bodies to hide and stories to silence and it might be his fire that will do the trick.”

He swiveled his head abruptly, faced the woman who’d guided Jace Wilson this far, and said, “Who are you?”

She didn’t answer.

“I know your role,” he said. “You’re supposed to keep watch. You’re supposed to keep something like that”-he indicated the fire-“from being allowed to spread. But I’d like to know your name. Would you share that much, please, before we proceed?”

She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Hannah Faber.”

Jack Blackwell nodded and mouthed the name once without speaking it aloud. A slow, thoughtful gesture, as if he were striving to commit her to eternal memory.

Then he lifted his pistol and shot her.

Allison had never before heard a sound like the one that came from Jace Wilson then. Something between a scream and a howl, and he scrambled toward the woman as she fell, and bright blood cascaded between her fingers while she held the wound, which was centered in her right knee. Jack Blackwell lowered the pistol and said, “Have a minute with her, Jace. Go on and take a minute. We’re pressed for time, but I’ll not rush this. Not after so long a journey.”

“Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said. “Hurry or we’ll never get out of here.”

“You’d like to finish it?”

“I can.”

“No.” He shook his head, watching Hannah Faber, whose feet were still moving on the rocks as if she intended to find a way to stand. “No, the work that remains is mine alone. And, Patty, he’ll get them in the end. He lit the match, you know. I’ll let them wait on his work now.”

He tilted his head to study Hannah’s face. He watched with great interest, and then he said, “Jace, please step aside.”

Jace Wilson didn’t move, and Jack Blackwell sighed and then lifted the pistol and fired again, and this time it was Allison who screamed.

He’d fired around the boy, just inches to the side of him, and put another bullet into Hannah Faber, this time in her left foot. Blood ran out of her boot and her head dropped back and her mouth opened but no scream came. She just writhed in silence.

“I believe she’s good to wait on our brother’s work now,” Jack said. “I think that’s a fine way to bring it all to a close.”

“Hurry,” Jamie Bennett said again. She was looking down at the oncoming fire and her face was wet with sweat. Jack Blackwell ignored her and turned to Allison and lifted the pistol, then lowered it and shook his head.

“For you and me, things should be a bit more intimate, don’t you think?” he said, and then he flipped the gun in a smooth twirl so that he was holding it by the barrel, like a club, and advanced on her.

“I’m glad he killed your brother,” Allison said. Her voice was shaking.

“Are you, though?” he said. “Is that pleasing to you?” The soft, musical tone was gone. “I’m going to-”

The rest of his words and most of his face left him then. His head burst in a red cloud and he dropped sideways and didn’t even roll when he hit the rocks.

For a few seconds, Ethan had no idea what had gone wrong. His skull was ringing and blood was pouring out of his face, soaking his cheeks and coating his lips in coppery warmth and dripping into the rocks where the rifle lay.

Was I pointing the son of a bitch backward? he thought, and then he lifted his right hand to his forehead and brought back a palmful of blood and thought, You are one dumb bastard.

He’d had his eye pressed to the scope. Right up against the metal ring of it, of a scope with high eye relief that allowed the shooter to keep his face away, because guess what, boy, there was some serious kick when you shot a bullet the size of your index finger a thousand yards.

But he’d shot it. And where had it gone?

The QuikClot bandages were dark with blood, and he knew how bad that was, but right then, right there, sitting on top of the world, Montana and Wyoming spreading out for miles in all directions around him, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He just needed to know what his shot had done.

He sat against the rocks where it had all started, where the fall had begun, and he got his breath back as sweat ran salty into his open, gasping mouth, and then he turned and looked down to the place from which he’d come, and he started to laugh.

It was not so far. From up here, it did not look so far. A man with a strong arm would probably believe he could hit it with a baseball, and maybe he wouldn’t be wrong.

But that man wouldn’t have climbed from there to here, bleeding and broken. You didn’t know the distance until you’d done that.

He rolled onto his stomach and found the rifle where it had fallen, and he brought it up again. Put his eye to the scope-same dumb mistake, but he wasn’t shooting this time-and realized he couldn’t focus. He had to pull back and wipe at the blood in his eye; he was awash in it. When he looked again, all he saw was smoke and fire. The forest was burning hot now, the wind carrying the fire up toward him, but it would never reach him, not across all of that stone. Then he moved the scope a touch and he was looking at his wife again.

The first time he’d seen her through the scope, he hadn’t believed it. He’d heard enough stories of the things men thought they saw when death was near, and this one fit, a mirage of his wife, but then the rest of them had taken shape, his wife and Connor Reynolds and Jamie Bennett and another woman, one he didn’t know. The fire lookout, he supposed. All alive. All with Jack Blackwell.

He hadn’t had time to wonder over it, the way they’d all met there, the paths they’d taken. Not when Jack Blackwell started shooting. Ethan had wanted to fire fast then but knew that he couldn’t, because, just as Jack had warned his now-dead brother, a miss at this distance would be costly. This was no AR-15; he wasn’t going to be able to fire a burst of shots and adjust along the way. Shoot once, and shoot true. He’d forced himself to aim and think, trying to remember the basics of shooting at a target that was so far downhill. He’d been taught these things once and all that stood out was something that seemed counterintuitive but was the reality: Whether you were shooting uphill or downhill, the bullets would always pull high. Slightly higher on a downhill shot, for the simple reason that gravity was less of an enemy to the bullet’s path when it was already headed down.

He’d aimed at Jack Blackwell’s waist first and then decided that wasn’t low enough. It was a damned steep slope and the bullet would be climbing above his aiming point, and it would be better to hit him in the hip than not at all. He lowered his aiming point to the knees, moved his finger to the trigger, and let out a long, slow breath. Tried to let everything within him go loose and liquid. A tense shot was a missed shot. His father had taught him that. Tense muscles jerked on the trigger. Jerked triggers produced wild bullets.

Then Jack advanced toward Allison, and Ethan kept those black knees in the center of the crosshairs and let his index finger graze the trigger and pull it home and the world exploded on him.

Now, scope to his eye again, he had the world back, if in a bloody haze, and he could see his wife and the boy and…he could see Jack Blackwell.

Jack Blackwell was down.

Ethan started to laugh, and then he realized it sounded more like sobbing, and he tried to stop but couldn’t.

Got him, got him, got him. Got them.

But beyond the survivors was a rising scarlet cloud. The fire was pushing hard and fast. They needed to move.

For a few seconds, no one made a sound. Then Jamie Bennett let out a low moan and fell to her knees and stretched her hands out to her brother as if she could put the pieces back together. She dropped her gun when she reached for him and Allison had the slow, stupid thought Someone should get that, but she didn’t move. Jace was still sitting on the ground, and though he’d registered that Jack Blackwell was dead, he seemed catatonic. His focus on the woman Jack had shot was total. He was whispering to her, and Allison couldn’t hear the words. The woman had her eyes closed and was breathing through her teeth.

“Who shot him?” Jamie Bennett said. “Who took that shot?”

There was no one in sight. The mountain was empty.

Jack Blackwell was gone, but the fire was not, and the sound of it was louder now, a roar beneath the black smoke that boiled out of the tree-lined ridge below them. The heat was intensifying every minute. Jamie Bennett got to her feet and looked at Allison and then the other woman.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” she said. “This one was supposed to be easy.”

Nobody answered. She began to walk away with a weaving, unsteady stride. She almost went down once, caught a tree, held herself up. Nobody moved or spoke or attempted to stop her. The kill shot from nowhere had stunned them all. Jamie steadied herself and continued walking toward Tango. The horse turned to meet her.

Allison finally moved, crawled over the ground for the two guns that lay there in the blood, got her hand around the pistol, and then looked back at Jamie when Tango let out a whinny. Jamie was trying to mount him. It took her three tries but she got into the saddle, and then she began to kick him. Trying to drive him downhill.

He was already uneasy from the fire; the only reason he was still there at all was Allison, and he did not want to carry another rider. Now he was trying to rid himself of Jamie Bennett; it was as if he understood what Allison had not been able to. Jamie stayed on the horse maybe fifty yards before he succeeded in throwing her. She landed in the rocks and her leg snapped beneath her and when she tried to rise, she let out a cry. The horse hesitated, as if he felt guilty despite himself-Tango was nothing if not a good horse-but then he began to gallop, into the trees and out of sight.

Jamie Bennett tried again to rise, and this time her scream was louder and she went down faster and then she was silent and they couldn’t see her anymore and it was just the three of them left there as Jack Blackwell’s blood poured down the slope and dripped toward the fire.

Allison looked at what remained of his skull and then up into the mountains and said, “Ethan is alive.”

42

There were ghosts on the mountain now.

Hannah could see her old crew, all of them, but it was better this time, better than it had been. There were no screams and no one was running, and even Brandon was on his feet again-he hadn’t given up, was standing tall and strong.

And watching her.

They all were.

Nick came down close and looked at her patiently and said, “Hannah? Deploy or die.”

He’d screamed it the last time she’d heard the command, but this morning he was calm. They all were. It reassured her. They were the best, after all. Hotshots. If they were not panicking, then she shouldn’t. They were the best.

Nick said it again, his blue eyes earnest, imploring: “Hannah? Hannah?”

He left her then, and the spoken name remained, but the voice was different and the face was different. The boy. Hannah looked at him and thought, Thank you, God, he made it across the creek. I didn’t think that he would. I didn’t think he had a chance.

“Hannah?”

Wrong boy. Wrong mountain, wrong day. Hannah blinked and looked into a tear-streaked face and said, “Yeah.” It came out as a croak and she wet her lips and tried again and this time it was easier. “Yes, Connor. I’m fine.”

“Tell me what to do,” he said. “I’ve got the first-aid kit, but it’s so bad, and I don’t know what to use, I don’t know what to do, you’ve got to tell me what to-”

“Stop,” Hannah said.

He stopped talking, waited on her. Hannah blinked and breathed and now she saw the woman behind him, and for an instant she was afraid, because the woman held a gun. Her eyes held no harm, though. The woman’s face was wrapped in bandages and she looked down at Hannah and said, “We’ll get it fixed. It’s not going to kill you.”

“Of course not,” Hannah said. She didn’t look where the other two were looking, though, at the places where it felt as if her legs were on fire. That was a trauma basic-let somebody else look. You didn’t need to see it yourself.

So everything was good, then. Everything was fine.

No.

Nick’s voice, maybe. Brandon’s? She couldn’t tell. It was so faint.

Look.

Who was talking? And whoever was talking was wrong, she wasn’t supposed to look, it wasn’t going to help a damn thing. She wished she could hear him better, the voice was too soft and the sound of the fire was a roar now, advancing through the timber, and-

Oh. That was it. Yes, that was it.

“I need to look at the fire,” she said. “Help me.”

“No,” the woman said. “Lie still. Let me see what I can-”

“Let me see the fire.”

They helped her while she turned. The pain turned with her-it wasn’t about to let her sneak away. She got her first glimpse of her wounds without intending to, managed to keep her eyes away from her knee, where the pain was worst and the bleeding heaviest, but she saw her left foot, the beautiful White’s fire boot now with a jagged hole in the black leather, blood bubbling through it. A surge of nausea rose but she looked away and fixed her eyes on the flames, and while the pain didn’t step aside, the sickness did.

The fire was near the edge of the timberline now, and then it was open grass, and then it was them. The route Hannah had wanted to take originally, backtracking into the high rocks, was no longer an option. They’d been delayed long enough to allow the fire to find the drainages, and it was moving through them fast.

If you died in a fire, you died at two speeds, Nick had told Hannah more than once. One was measured with a clock, and the other with a stopwatch. Your death began in the poor decisions you’d made that led you to the place you did not belong, and your death ended in the poor decisions you made trying to escape it. They were on the stopwatch now, and she knew it was running fast.

Time, time is our friend, because for us, there is no end…

“Hannah?”

She was aware then that Connor had been saying her name over and over, and she blinked hard and refocused and said, “I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”

“We go back, right?” Connor said. “Isn’t that what you said we should do? I can carry you. We can carry-”

“We’re not going to get high enough, fast enough.”

“We’ll run,” he said.

“It will run faster.”

The speed of fire increased going uphill, one of the great evil tricks of a forest fire. They were on a slope of about thirty-five, maybe forty degrees. At thirty degrees, the speed of the fire would double. It would also have more of the wind by then, because right now the trees it was burning through were shielding some of the wind. By the time it reached the dry grass, empty of trees and on the upslope, it would turn from a marathon runner into a sprinter, and they’d be trying to cross directly in front of it.

No chance.

Somewhere behind her, just out of sight but so close she could feel his breath on her ear, Nick said, “Hannah? Deploy or die.”

“I had a fire shelter,” Hannah said. She was losing focus, though, losing the place and time, was telling them about another day and another fire, and so she was annoyed when Connor began to open his pack, paying no attention to her. It took her a moment to realize that he was getting out the fire shelter. The one he’d brought down from the tower. The one she’d said she would never get inside.

“That works?” the woman named Allison said. She sounded beyond skeptical. Hannah got that. Everyone who’d ever looked at a fire shelter did.

“It works.”

But not always. It was wrong to tell them lies; you should never lie at the end. Whether the fire shelter worked or not was a matter of heat and speed. If the fire passed over them quickly, the fire shelter might save them. If it lingered, though…then it was the worst kind of end. You’d be better off sitting and waiting like Brandon had.

Hannah pushed herself up on the heels of her hands and then closed her eyes when the pain came on. When she opened them again, her mind was clearer but the pain was sharper.

“Connor?” she said. “Listen to me now. Do what I say. You need to get that shelter up. Can you do that for me?”

He nodded. His hands were shaking, but he nodded.

She told him how to do it, and it took him only two tries, even with the shaking hands. He was good like that, but the fire shelters were also designed to be deployed by shaking hands. It was the only way they were ever put up.

Even as he deployed the shelter, she was doing the math and coming up short. You were supposed to have one shelter per person, and she had three people and one shelter. She’d heard of only one time, ever, when three people had survived in the same shelter. It was the Thirtymile fire. But back in South Canyon, where thirteen lives had been lost, attempts to share shelters had failed tragically.

In Hannah’s mind, that still left an odd man out here in the slopes above Silver Gate.

“That’s going to work?” Allison Serbin said. “You’re serious?”

The flimsy, tube-shaped tent hardly looked inspiring. Particularly not against the awesome backdrop of scarlet terror behind them.

“It works. You’re going to get inside of that,” she said. “And you’re going to stay there.”

She was looking at both of them, and Allison Serbin seemed to understand the problem, because she said, “Jace, listen to her and get in it,” without suggesting anyone join him.

“You go with him,” Hannah said.

“What?”

“It’ll be tight. But it’s worked before.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be fine?”

Hannah looked away from her. “Please get in,” she said. “You don’t understand how far we’ve come. I can’t lose him here.” Her voice broke on that and she gave up trying for any more words.

Allison stared at her for a moment, and then she said, “Okay. I’m getting in.”

Hannah nodded. There were tears on her face but she didn’t care. “Thank you,” she said. “Connor…I mean Jace…please get in.”

“What about you?”

What about her. She said, “You remember the promise I made to you? I said you were getting home. I promised you that. But what did you promise me?”

“That I wouldn’t make you get in this.”

“Be true to your word,” she said.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

“Didn’t say it was. But we made an agreement. Be true to your word.”

“No. We’ll carry you. I can carry you.”

Hannah looked away from him and over to Allison and said, “Help. Please.”

Allison took his arm and finally the boy listened; he dropped to all fours and crawled inside the shimmering silver fabric that rippled against the wind and the heat. Allison knelt to follow.

“You pull it shut, and you wait,” Hannah told them. “Now, guys, it’s going to be bad.” She was crying freely. “It’s going to be worse than you think, but it will work. You just promise me that you won’t get out too early.”

She was so dizzy that the words were very hard to organize now. She wasn’t sure how many of them she was actually saying.

The fire threw a sparkling spiral onto the edge of the grass no more than a hundred feet from them, some limb or pinecone that exploded out of a tree like an advance scout, and the grass to the east of her, toward the creek, began to burn and then smoldered out. This was how it would begin, with the spot fires, and this was how they did their most devious work, jumping trench lines and gulches and even creeks. She looked at the spot fire as it sputtered out; that one was not quite hot enough, not quite strong enough, but it wouldn’t be long now before one was.

“You did it again,” she whispered. The boy was going to die-after all of this, he was going to die burning. A second chance had walked out of the wilderness and into her arms and she was going to kill this one too. The fire shelter would buy them a bit of time, but not enough. There was too much fuel around it. For them to have a chance in there, the fire would need to pass by fast, a desperate hunter in search of fuel. But she’d set their shelter up in grass that was knee-high and deadly dry. They’d melt inside of the shelter, and they’d go slow.

Words from the dead found her then, more memory than ghost, although it was hard to separate them now. The last thing Nick had said that wasn’t a scream. The final thing he’d wanted-shouted-was for her to deploy her fire shelter. The second-to-last thing, though, the last thing he’d said calmly, was that he wished there were grass around them.

At the bottom of Shepherd Mountain, there had been none. It was all deadfall and jack pines and some fescue clumps, but no open stretches of grass, and he’d wished for some, and Hannah was the only person on the crew who’d understood why in the hell he had desired to be standing amid faster-burning fuel.

You need it to pass by in a hurry.

Up here, it wouldn’t. Up here it would burn slowly and they would die inside that shelter.

They were still not running. What in the hell was the matter with them? Ethan had saved them, damn it, he’d come so far and fought so hard, and he’d won, he’d dropped the son of a bitch, and they wouldn’t even give him the simple gift of running? The fire below was a constant roll of thunder now, he could feel its strength in the stone beneath him, and he thought with great sorrow that it had to be far worse down there, too powerful to imagine, and so killing Jack wasn’t enough to help them, because he couldn’t kill the fire. They had given up, and he could do no more for them now but watch.

He didn’t want to watch. Couldn’t. And so he brought them centered in the scope and he prepared to say good-bye because he refused to see it end like this, but instead of looking away then, he stared, entranced.

They had some sort of a strange silver tent out. It looked like the material on the emergency blankets he handed out to each group, and he realized then what it was: a fire shelter, the sort they dispatched to the crews on the fire line. Where they’d come up with it, he couldn’t imagine-it didn’t seem like it’d be standard issue in a fire tower-but there it was.

While he watched, Hannah and Connor argued, and then he crawled inside, and then his wife followed, joining the boy in the tent, and the other woman sat in her own blood beside a dead man and waited to join him.

You need to take the shot, Ethan thought. It will be better for her. Faster.

But he couldn’t do that.

The blood clouded the scope again and washed the woman away from him and that was the last he saw.

43

It was the wrong way to die. Jace knew that before he got into the shelter, and once he was inside and he couldn’t see Hannah anymore, he was sure of it. It would have been better for all of them to sit there and wait, and then she would not be alone, none of them would be. Right now, it was just like the quarry, hiding and waiting, and if he was going to die like that, then he should have let it happen long ago.

“I’m getting out,” he said.

“No, you’re not.” Allison Serbin had her arms tight around him, and he began to fight her, kicking and wriggling. She fought with him until they heard Hannah’s voice.

“Connor! Connor! Get out here. Fast.”

“Listen to her!” he said. “Let me listen to her!”

Allison Serbin either gave up and released him or he finally fought free of her; he wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. He was out of the awful shelter again, back into the world, and while it was a terrible world, filled with the smells of smoke and heat and blood, it was better than the tent. He’d come out facing what remained of Jack Blackwell’s head; there was not much of it to speak of, and he felt a strange, savage happiness, although once such a thing would have made him ill.

At least he didn’t get me. Neither of them did.

But it was his brother’s fire. He’d said so himself.

Hannah said, “You told me you could build a fire. You told me you were good at it.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. He just turned to her and nodded.

“Were you telling the truth?” Her voice was urgent, her eyes clear for the first time since the bullets had found her legs. “Do not lie to me now. Can you build a fire and do it fast?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to need to do it.”

“What?”

“You have one chance,” she said. “You can save yourself and save her. But, buddy, you’ve got to be able to do it, and do it fast.”

He nodded again. He felt light-headed, glad he was on his hands and knees, anchored to the ground.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You’re the one who doesn’t make mistakes, right? You can’t make one now. You’ve got to listen and do exactly what I say. If you do that, you’re going home. I promise.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. You see the grass down there? That little plateau?”

He followed her pointing finger. She was indicating the last thing between them and fire in the trees. A circle of grass that died out at the rocks where they sat now. It was maybe a hundred yards away from them, and just fifty in front of the fire.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to make a fire there,” she said. “And you’re going to let it spread.”

He looked back at her. Was she in shock? Was this what happened when you went into shock?

“It will work,” she said. “Here’s why: You’re stealing what the fire needs. Do you understand that? It’s going to need-”

“Fuel and oxygen,” he said, thinking of the brace piece, the way you’d give it that lift to provide fresh air, keep the flame from drowning. The way the fire was smothered by larger pieces of wood. But this was no campfire. This was a monster.

“Yes. You’re robbing it of the fuel.”

“It won’t work. Not on that. It’s too big! It will never burn out.”

“No,” she said. She wiped her face with her hand and left a streak of blood across her forehead. “It won’t burn out. The fire will move faster. That’s what we need. It has to go over that shelter fast, do you see?”

He wasn’t sure, but before he could answer, she said, “Go down there and start a fire, Connor. Can you do that?”

“I can do that,” he said. He didn’t think his legs would hold him when he stood, but they did. The fire steel was in his pocket. He removed it and held it in a sweating, shaking hand and said, “I’ll go make a fire.”

Allison tried to go with him. Tried to stop him, actually, but when Hannah Faber yelled at her, she paused, turned back, looked in her eyes, and saw the truth in them.

“It’s your only chance,” Hannah said. Very soft. “If he can do it, you bring the shelter down and set it up in the ashes.”

“Won’t it melt?”

“Not down there. Not at that heat. Just set it up the way you have it, and make sure it’s as close to the center as you can. Once the fire gets there, it’s going to race. It will have no choice.”

Allison looked away from her and back down to where the boy walked alone. He seemed smaller than ever before, his silhouette framed against the orange sky.

“You believe this,” she said.

“It’s the only chance. And, listen-when you get back in there with him, you hold him tight, understand? You’d better hold him tight.”

Allison looked at Hannah’s blood-soaked right leg and the devastated left foot, then back into her intense eyes, and nodded. “I won’t let it be for nothing.”

Jace picked up a brace piece as he walked, a perfect length of deadfall, and he was thinking that he didn’t have time to get kindling, there was no way he had enough time, but then he remembered that it didn’t matter. All he needed to do was make the grass catch. He wasn’t trying to build a campfire. Just burn the grass.

Every step was hotter, and louder. His mouth was so dry, his tongue felt fat and swollen against his lips.

I can save them.

He walked on, closer, closer, and only when he was in the middle of the ring of grass did he stop. He knelt then and dropped the brace piece-he didn’t need it, just the spark-and he tore handfuls of dry grass out and set them in a loose pile at his feet. He held the fire steel and prepared to strike it, knowing that he could do it, that he could get that shower of sparks.

He dropped the tool on the first strike. His hands were shaking too badly.

You’re going to kill them.

He grabbed it again, and that was when he heard the scream. It was loud, but it didn’t last long. It came from the woman who’d been thrown off the horse.

The fire had found her.

That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what it will feel like, Jace, that’s how you’re going to die.

Stop being Jace. Be what Hannah still called him. Connor Reynolds could start this fire; he had before.

He gripped the fire steel in his left hand and the striker in his right and this time he didn’t drop it when he made contact. Sparks fell in a shower into the grass.

Died immediately.

He was starting to panic, but then he remembered the first day, Ethan telling him to slow down, slow down, and he tried again, and then again, and on the fourth time, some of the grass caught.

He lowered his face to the ground and blew on it and it smoked white and then he blew some more and watched it glow red and then he added more grass, trying to move slow, trying not to smother it.

The fire was already spreading, though. Already pulling away from him, the sun-scorched grass going up fast, spreading out in an expanding ring. He stood and looked up into the rocks and saw Hannah Faber lifting a hand, one thumb up. He ran then, out of his own fire and back up the rocks to her.

“Told you I could,” he said when he reached her. He was out of breath, gasping.

“Never doubted you, buddy. But you just saved some lives. Now you two go down there and put the shelter up right where you started that.”

“It won’t make it up here,” he said. “There’s nothing to burn now. It’s just like you said.”

“Right,” she told him. “But it’s protocol, Connor. We go ahead and deploy, just in case.”

“Then why are we moving the-”

“Because it’s the right choice,” she said. “I’m fine. Look at this! There’s nothing for it to burn. It’s just rock. I can sit here all day. It might get a little warm, but I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Then we can all stay.”

Hannah said, “Connor? I need you to help her. I need you to.”

He looked at Allison, then Hannah, then back at his fire. It had caught the full force of the wind and found its slope and gathered speed, then sprinted to meet the rocks and foundered there. Behind it, the main blaze was very close.

“Finish the job,” Hannah said. “You can’t quit halfway through. Now help her get the shelter up.”

He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t come up with words, let alone get them out. He knew she was lying to him. At least about some of it.

“Get back in,” she said. “Connor, get back in, and this time, you stay there. I’m fine. Know that I’m fine, I’m not going anywhere. And thank you. You saved people. You don’t understand it yet, but I promise you that you did.”

“Then we don’t need to go down to-”

“You’re why I’m here, do you get that?” she said. “I’m here to make sure you get in that shelter and stay in it. Both of you. Now listen to me. You do not leave that shelter until you hear the sound of my voice. You’ve got to promise me that. It will seem like the fire’s gone, like everything is done, but you won’t know that for sure, not inside there. You won’t know what to trust. So you wait on the crew boss to release you, all right? And right now, buddy, I’m the crew boss. You wait on my voice.”

44

They had the shelter up in the ashes before the fire broke the timberline. Hannah watched it come on and she knew that it was up to the wind now.

She’d spoken with Nick only once about the possibility of dying in a fire. It had been the day he confessed that he would never deploy a fire shelter, that he didn’t like the idea. She’d argued with him then, told him how stupid it was, told him that attempting to run away from a forest fire was like running from the very hand of God-you knew you had no chance, so why would you try? All he would become, she had said, was another cross on a mountain. And his answer, with the sly smile that defused the debate before it could become a fight, was that he just wanted to make sure his was the highest cross.

I want to be winning the race at some point, at least, he’d said. Bury me high. Because he’d stayed to get her in the shelter, though, his had been the lowest cross at Shepherd Mountain in the end.

She couldn’t have run now if she’d wanted to, but she didn’t want to. She needed to watch. She owed them that.

God, it was gorgeous. A thirty-foot-high wall of orange and red dancers. She wondered vaguely if any of them at Shepherd Mountain had appreciated its beauty at the end. Thought that Nick would have, maybe. That seemed possible.

She knew it would pick up pace once it broke the tree line, but she had forgotten just how fast it could go. The astonishing thing was the way it raced uphill. Gravity owned much of the world, but it did not own fire. The flames broke the timberline in a rush and found what should have been a field of grass.

All that remained was ash.

It seemed to anger the fire.

A quarter of the way up the slope, the fire doubled its speed, advancing as if zipping along a fuse cord, rushing toward its detonation point. It reached the fire shelter at that speed and then she couldn’t see the shelter any longer. She could feel the wind, though, and the wind was good, it was gusting, it was what they needed, a fast-and-holding wind. There was nothing back there for the fire to eat, and so it wouldn’t stay. The smoke was thick but she could see the silver shimmer of the shelter, and she knew that the boy was alive inside.

“He’s going to make it,” she said. “He’s going to make it home.”

No one argued. The ghosts circled behind her in silent, respectful fashion and watched the flames move on, faster than would have been possible if the grass had remained, racing past the fire shelter, riding that beautiful wind up the mountain and on to meet her.

Nick came and sat beside her, close enough so that they were just barely touching, that graze of contact that gave her butterflies the first time and never stopped. She leaned against him and felt his warmth, and neither of them said a word. They didn’t need to. They could watch in peace now.

The job was done and the boy was safe.

45

He insisted that he’d heard her voice. His story never changed. At first nobody had seen the point in trying to change his mind-what did it matter? Later, Allison wondered if it was possible. If she could actually have called to him in the end.

All that Allison had heard was the fire. It had thundered over them and sounded and felt like nothing else she’d experienced in her life. It was like lying on the tracks as a long freight train scorched above you and somehow none of the wheels ever made contact.

Jace had tried to get out of the shelter and she had fought him. It wasn’t easy to hold so tight; it hurt terribly, but she had told Hannah that she would hold him tight and so she did and eventually he stopped fighting and held her too as the fire thundered on and on and the shelter began to feel like a burning coffin.

The sound faded but did not go away, and Allison was sobbing and terrified that they were running out of air; there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen.

“Air,” she said. “Air. We’ve got to get this thing open.”

He fought her again then, but it was different, he was holding her in, not the other way around. Allison wanted to claw her way out, even if the flames still waited, anything for a breath.

“Not until we hear her voice,” he kept shouting, “not until we hear her voice.”

She wanted to scream back that they were never going to hear her voice, because Hannah was dead and they would be too if he didn’t let her open the shelter. He kept fighting her, and then, just when she was certain she could bear no more, he said, “That’s her. That’s Hannah. Go on and open it.”

Allison had heard nothing but the fire and the wind, but she wasn’t going to argue the point, she had to escape that shelter, and so she fumbled it apart gratefully and they fell out into a world of smoke.

The fire was gone. The charred landscape showed where it had run on past them, and orange flames burned in the drainages on either side of them, but there on the hillside, all that was left was smoldering embers.

They were alive.

It was there that firefighters found them an hour later, after they’d been spotted by a helicopter. Two of the three survivors on the mountain, they told her.

“Three?”

“Two of you and a man on top. He signaled the helicopter, otherwise we might have been a long time finding you in all this smoke.”

“Ethan,” she said.

“I don’t know his name.”

But she did.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “You’re damn lucky. Three survivors, but we’ve got four bodies too.”

“No,” Jace said. “No, there are four survivors. If Ethan is up high, then there are four of us.”

The firefighter didn’t want to answer that, and Jace began to shout at him then, saying there were four, he knew that there were four because he’d heard her, because she’d called to him to tell him that it was safe, and then Allison held him again, and she did not let go until they were off the mountain.

The bodies told the stories that witnesses never could have, even though they had come to the mountains to eliminate witnesses. In the hospital, in a haze of pain and blood loss and medication, Ethan told anyone who would listen that the brothers were not American, and he knew this because one of them read the winds wrong. Nobody paid much attention. Ethan was saying a lot of things at that point.

Their DNA connected the brothers to names long unknown and long discarded even by them. Thomas and Michael Burgess.

They were Australian. They knew different skies, it was true, though it had been a long time since they’d operated beneath the ones under which they were born.

Thomas was Jack, the elder brother, a figure in the Sydney crime world until he traveled to America at the turn of the twenty-first century to kill a man and liked the place enough to stay once the man was dead. His brother, who had washed out of the Australian army for dishonorable conduct, joined him, first in Boston, then New York, then Chicago. They wore many names during those years but settled on Blackwell for reasons unknown. Jack and Patrick were names they’d given each other in childhood while passing through various foster homes after their father was murdered. He was shot through the windshield of his car with a semiautomatic rifle when Jack was nine and Patrick six. They’d watched it happen from the steps of their front porch.

Their sister had joined them in the country ten years earlier. She’d tried-unsuccessfully-to become a U.S. marshal, a position they saw great value in her having, given their line of work. They’d had a contact in the U.S. Marshals, a man named Temple, but now he was gone and they needed a replacement for him. It didn’t work out, but she moved into the world of executive protection as a private consultant, a job that took her to some interesting places and once to Montana to be taught survival by Ethan Serbin while she silently protected a witness who later disappeared, a rumored high-dollar hit.

In Chicago, the brothers had met a police sergeant named Ian O’Neil, who also needed some witnesses to disappear. Ian O’Neil was currently on the board as an unsolved homicide victim himself.

The Burgess brothers died on the slopes below Republic Peak as the Blackwell brothers, Jack and Patrick, and the task of connecting their DNA with the crime scenes of unsolved homicides began slowly and then bore steady fruit, starting that summer and going on into the autumn and the winter and the year beyond.

The Ritz was not finished yet, though it could have been. Ethan and Allison lived in the bunkhouse while they completed the main house. Originally, Ethan feared that it would be home to nothing but horrifying memories, and he wondered if they should go somewhere else entirely. Allison talked him out of that.

Their bodies had healed by summer’s end, and in the fall, as the tourists left and the first snows teased the slopes and padlocks were placed on the doors of the fire towers, they worked together, measuring and cutting boards and driving framing nails. There were new aches and new weaknesses for both of them, and the work was harder now than it had been but, on some days, maybe a little sweeter too. They got as far as they could before winter shut them down, and then in spring they resumed, and by then they understood better what they hadn’t been able to give voice to at first. The house had to be rebuilt, and they had to do it, because to do so was to heal, and it was either that or run. The two of them were rebuilding everything. Doctor visits were constant-burn specialists and plastic surgeons for Allison; physical therapists for Ethan-and even in their words, their touches, it was not a matter of reclaiming but rebuilding. Things were broken now, but not irreparable. And so they went about repairing, and the house became a part of it, and then it became the central part of it as the doctor visits fell away and the words between them came easier and with less weight and the touches were familiar and not desperate again.

It was, Ethan realized, what he’d never understood about survival in all these years of studying it and teaching it.

Survival didn’t end when you were found. The arrival of the search-and-rescue teams wasn’t a conclusion. Rescue, rejoice, rebuild.

He’d never known the last step.

It was summer again and the sun was hot and Ethan was shirtless as he worked laying shingles on the roof, Allison sanding drywall tape along the ceiling below him, on the day when Jace Wilson arrived with his parents.

The boy was taller, in that startling way that children between certain years could achieve. Voice huskier. He looked good, but he looked guarded, and Ethan knew why. It was the rebuilding season for him too.

His father was named Chuck. His mother, Abby, worked for a bank in Chicago, where last year she’d been approached by a professional bodyguard, a woman with kind blue eyes who’d said she’d heard about Abby’s son’s situation from her police contacts and thought she could help with the problem. Jace’s parents had divorced when he was young, but this summer day, they all made the trip together, and whatever tensions there might have been were well below the surface, where they belonged. They all had a good afternoon and a good quiet evening and after the sun went down behind the mountain, and Jace went to sleep in the bunkhouse, the adults had glasses of red wine on the porch of the unfinished house and there Allison asked Jace’s parents if they wanted to know what had come of the identification of the corpses of those who had pursued their son so relentlessly. And so they listened and learned of the exploits of the Burgess brothers and their sister. As far as Ethan could tell, the only questions that had been answered were which men had been paid how many dollars to kill which other men. But it mattered to Jace’s parents, it was part of their rebuilding season, and so Ethan listened as Allison told what she could of the story, even though Ethan knew, and was certain that she knew, that they had all parted ways with the story on Republic Peak on a hot June day when the western wind breathed fire across the mountains.

The next morning they rode back to the place where Jace and Allison had survived the fire. They borrowed extra horses from a friend, but Allison rode Tango. The burned riding the burned. She told Ethan that she was curious to see if the horse would remember the spot. Ethan didn’t ask her how she would know, but he believed that she would.

They rode out just after sunrise to the ravaged slopes below Republic Peak, and all around them was the grim gray of the burnout. Ethan was worried about the visual effect, was trying to come up with a way to balance the sorrow, when Jace said, “Her grass is already coming back.”

He was right. In the land of burned timber, there was a circle of green, an acre of grass. It had fallen victim to the flames faster than the trees, but it had come back faster too. Jace looked at it for a long time, and then his mother asked, gently, if this was where he wanted to put the cross. It was the first time anyone had mentioned it, though he had been carrying it with him the whole ride.

“Nobody died here,” he said. “She was higher than that.”

And so they went higher, up past the withered and blackened remains of trees, over a ridge of rock, and onto a short plateau. They dismounted there and Ethan knew that the boy had studied the maps that had been released during the inquiry into the fire, because he knew exactly where she had fallen. Ethan was sure of it too because he’d made a trip here himself in the fall, a long slow walk, and then he had sat alone among the black rocks and spoke aloud when he thanked Hannah Faber for his wife.

That was just before the first snow.

Now Jace Wilson cleared a spot in the earth and took a hammer and began to pound the cross into the ground. It was rough soil and he had some trouble, but when his father and Ethan offered to help, he said that he would do it himself. In time he did, but then he decided it wasn’t straight enough, and they waited in silence until he got it aligned in a way that pleased him. He ran his hands along the surface of the wood and then turned back and looked down the slope and said, “She made a good run at it. She made a really good run.”

They all acknowledged that yes, she surely had.

For a long time he sat there and looked at the burned mountain below and did not speak. Finally he got to his feet and got back onto the horse.

“It’s a good place for her cross,” he said. “You can see the grass from this spot. You can see where we were. I know that she did. She was high enough to see us.” He looked at Allison then and said, “Did you really not hear her voice?”

Allison never took her eyes off him as she said, “Did you really hear it?”

Jace nodded.

“That’s all that matters,” Allison said.

They rode down from the cross then, and over that circle of healthy green grass, and even beneath the blackness, you could see the rebirth beginning, if you looked hard enough. The land would hold the scars for a long time, but it was already working on healing them and it would patiently continue to do so.

That was the way of it.