Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [120]
Her rescuer dragged her through the portal and inside the dim space beneath the roof. Devon stammered, “Thanks,” and shoved the jacket at him. She ran down the steps toward the tree house. Already a blister was rising on her chest above the curved neck of her tank top.
She had to find her mother. Mom would take her someplace safe. She’d bandage her burn and her wrist that was swelling and hurting more every second.
It seemed to take forever to stumble down flight after flight of stairs. Outside the inn, grit and ash bombarded her.
Raising her arm to ward off the onslaught, she looked for the chopper. An inferno surrounded the inn in every direction, while a clutch of tourists with their backs to the strong wind watched an eruption of Old Faithful. The ridge that formed a green backdrop behind the geyser was fully aflame.
Devon ran to the helicopter. “I’m looking for Clare Chance,” she shouted, as the man in the cockpit swung open the chopper door. “She’s my mom.”
“Yeah,” the slim, dark-haired man in an olive-drab flight suit answered without interest.
“I need to find her,” Devon insisted. “She was just here.”
The pilot removed his sunglasses and she saw that his eyes, surrounded by a sunburst of lines, were red. Of course, everybody’s were because of the smoke, but he looked wracked out. He studied Devon wearily. “I can’t help you.” She saw him take in her burned chest and irregular, singed hair. “You okay?”
“I will be when I find my mother.”
Clare followed Garrett across the parking lot, surprised that she had trouble keeping up.
“Those people you saw,” she said. “I think one of them might be Steve Haywood.” Having the inn in peril was one thing. If the North Fork threatened Steve and his friends . . .
“The guy who was drying out on Washburn?” Garrett grinned despite his speed. “The one I thought was sweet on you?”
A quick flash of last night’s all too brief embrace made Clare return, “He’s off the mountain now.” She got into the spirit of joshing in the face of danger, an old habit of hers and Frank’s. “Did I mention how kind it was of you to tease me about him over the public airwaves?”
“Always happy to oblige.”
As they headed across the complex, Garrett’s continued banter helped keep her mind off his ominous statement that he believed Steve and the others had been cut off.
It was bad enough that she couldn’t find Devon, but there was no reason to believe she’d been caught out on the flat by the North Fork. An inveterate urban kid like her daughter would have been trying to pass for twenty-one in the bar rather than taking a wilderness hike.
Steve and his fellow biologists were another matter. She imagined them out there absorbed in their work, while the fire came on.
Steve surveyed the forty-by-forty foot area they had staked out, partly sheltered by a community of mature lodgepole. The trees exuded chemicals that discouraged the entry of other plant species into its neighborhood.
The balance of the tract had been cleared of forest by the pine bark beetle. A few snags stood, but most had gone down and were in an advanced stage of rot, providing homes for communities of fungi, grubs and termites. Growing lushly around the fallen were crested wheatgrass gone to seed, spreading fronds of bracken fern, and dense patches of red clover. A Monarch flitted around the clusters of late-blooming goldenrod.
Fly away, Steve told the butterfly. The rooted could only await the inevitable.
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” Moru finished his count of common Indian paintbrush in precise tones. He looked toward the sound of the approaching fire and broke into a smile. “I believe this one will burn.”
Summer intern Thomas Lee looked at the darkening sky through thick glasses and pressed his lips together. Steve thought Thomas wanted to head out, but didn’t want to be the first to suggest it.
Kelly Engels wiped sweat from her freckled forehead. “Let’s beat feet!” She tightened the cinch on her untidy ponytail, stowed her clipboard in her pack, and waited expectantly.
As Steve