Page 73 of Burnin' For You
Hell, right here outside her pocket of safety.
She wrapped her arms around herself, fighting the tremor that started in her gut, moved out to her chest, her breath.
Then she curled herself against the cool, solid embrace of the rock and wept.
Chapter 8
Reuben had sifted through many a charred forest during his years as a firefighter. Usually, however, he did it while garbed up with gloves and armed with his Pulaski and his water canister to douse any remaining pockets of heat.
And never while crying.
His eyes ran, his nose thick with mucus, and he wanted to sink down into the ashy moonscape and howl. Let his grief ricochet off the blackened, skeletal remains of once bushy pine, formerly fragrant balsam fir. He kicked the ash at his feet, searching for anything—
He didn’t know what was worse, the idea of finding Gilly’s charred body or simply hoping she died quickly, the noxious air burning her lungs, suffocating her before the fire could burn her alive.
Oh, God, no, please.
Reuben longed for the febrile hope that she’d somehow made it out.
But he’d seen the fire, the mushroom cloud of black smoke that evidenced a fire frustrated, stunted.
Angry.
The kind of fire routed by the ravine and thus settled down to burn hot and thick, fighting its demise.
The forest still sizzled, smoke a ghoul as it moved in and out of the trees, searching for the unburnt.
He’d gladly commandeered Rudini’s bike, shouldering it as he fled down the mountain. He hit the path and climbed on, grateful for the thick mountain wheels as he pedaled hard.
He should have flown off the mountain, broken something, but maybe God had heard his pleading, because Reuben had managed to muscle the bike over boulders, stay on the path, and find the bend where he’d emerged from the forest.
From there, he’d dropped the bike and begun to run.
He didn’t remember much of the three-plus miles through the woods. He landed hard on the soft, loamy earth, turned his ankle a few times, slammed into tree limbs, hurtled boulders, and fell at least once with enough force to knock out his breath.
It barely slowed him, the smell of resin under fire igniting him.
He hit the ravine—he guessed it took him maybe an hour, but it felt like an eternity—and the moonscape of forest stopped him cold.
No one could have lived through the inferno.
He spied his rope downstream, burned, wrapped around a submerged tree.
“Gilly!” He’d let his voice echo into the air, closed his eyes, and leaned hard on his knees, listening.
Just the wind in his ears, the rasping of his breath.
The howl in his heart.
He didn’t need a rope to descend—he found the place where he’d climbed up, scrabbled down, finally falling into the river.
And, just in case she’d done something crazy and flung herself over the edge into the river, he searched the water for her broken body.
No Gilly.
Which meant she was still on the cliff.
His chest turned to fire as he splashed downstream, past his rope. He examined it and realized he’d left the descender at the bottom. Taken off the harness and left it on the opposite shore.