Set the Night on Fire (22 page)

Crap!
Evie craned her neck to see up ahead. The man was right. A sea of red brake lights and bumpers clogged the exit. It looked like the kind of traffic jam you might see in a city.

Her phone beeped again. Her father had texted,
She threw off her blankets and I can’t keep her in bed. She keeps asking for you.

Evie stared at the mess up ahead. Surely other police officers would arrive to help direct traffic. The line of cars would start making their way down the hill, one by one. But how long would that take? In the meantime, her mother needed her. She couldn’t just sit here and wait. Danny had told her to be orderly and set an example.

Well, screw that.

Decision made, she tapped the accelerator and turned the Tacoma toward the back road, the one she’d used to deliver mulch for Brianna. The turnoff was tucked behind a tall grove of cypresses at the back of the terrace. With a quick glance, she saw that diners were still crowding the terrace—Danny’s orderly evacuation didn’t seem to be going as planned.

She nosed the Tacoma down the road and the terrace, restaurant and gardens quickly disappeared from sight. The road curved around the steep hillside. To the left was a dark scrubby slope, to the right a sweeping view of the shoreline and the low-lumen lights of Jupiter Point. She ignored both, keeping her eyes on the gravel road illuminated by the Tacoma’s headlights.

The road was much bumpier than she remembered. When was the last time it was graded? She hadn’t been down this road in four years. Wasn’t it maintained anymore? She hit a pothole that jarred the entire vehicle, and cursed under her breath.

Maybe she should go back and join the traffic jam instead. But the road was too narrow to turn around easily. With a shudder, she imagined accidentally backing the Tacoma off the edge onto the steep downward slope.

Nope. It was much better to just keep going. Get off this hill and to her mother, as soon as could be.

Thinking of her mother, she unconsciously picked up speed. The road seemed to improve, and she relaxed, rolling her neck to release the tension.

And then came a sharp left-hand curve. She almost missed it, then yanked the steering wheel just in time. The Tacoma skidded on the gravel, the tires spinning as they lost purchase
.

Fighting to keep control, she fishtailed across the road. One side, then the other, and then—
slam
.

The back of the truck went
crunch
—into a pothole?— and the engine stalled out.

She jerked backward, her head slamming against the head rest.

For a moment she stayed right where she was. Adrenaline pounded through her. That pothole must be huge. It had practically swallowed up the vehicle, like a sinkhole. Should she get out of the car and check it out? Try to restart the engine? She whooshed out several deep breaths and picked up her cell phone. She should call Danny…but no, he was in the middle of evacuating a restaurant.

Carefully she got out of the Tacoma and surveyed the situation. The rear left tire was so deep in a cavernous pothole that the bumper was twisted up like a snarling mouth. No way was it going to be able to drive anywhere.

She pulled out her phone to let Danny know what had happened. It seemed very wrong to bother him when he had a whole inn full of people to juggle. But it was his truck and he might be interested to know it was stuck on the back road. As she started to dial, one side of the pothole collapsed and the truck settled even deeper into the road.

Oh great.

She sniffed the air. Gas.

She took a step back, then another, and then—she was flying backwards on a blast of light and sound.

T
he road
to the Seaview was a mess. Sean had to drive half on the shoulder, half on the upslope to make it past the bottleneck of vehicles. As soon as dispatch told him the JPFD was checking out the fire, he’d called Chief Littleton and offered their help.

“It’s small, Type Four, nothing we can’t handle. Looks bigger than it is because of the overcast.”

“Come on, Chief. You expect us to sit on our hands out here watching you guys do all the work? Give us something.”

“Fine. Get on out to the Seaview and help the PD evacuate the place. It’s just a precaution but he could use a couple extra hands out there. Traffic’s clogged up.”

“Sure thing. Who’s in charge up there?”

“Officer Blaine. He happened to be there on a date, go figure.”

Evie.

Maybe it was petty of him, but he was almost relieved that her big date was being interrupted by an evacuation. As Sean worked the Super Duty through the mess of cars, he kept a careful eye out for Evie. As soon as he saw her, he’d tell her…

Forget telling. He’d just haul her up against him and kiss her. Kisses said more than words ever could.

The scene in the parking lot was even more chaotic, with so many vehicles trying to leave at once. A bottleneck had developed at the entrance of the lot. An older man in a Camry was yelling at a car full of teenagers. A young mother was trying to soothe her sobbing baby. No one seemed to be in charge, so Sean told Josh to go play traffic cop at the main parking lot exit.

“Shouldn’t we check in with Blaine first?”

“I’ll do that. We don’t want things getting out of hand out here.”

With a nod, Josh did as Sean directed. With Rollo following behind, he ran into the inn to look for Officer Blaine.

Inside, more chaos reigned. Confused guests argued with an overwhelmed-looking manager at the reception desk. Sean caught raised voices, an edge of panic, a buzz of confusion.

Finally he found Blaine outside on the terrace, trying to herd the guests inside. Most of them seemed more interested in taking photos of the glow on the hillside. It was definitely something to see. Wisps of smoke drifted across the valley between the Seaview’s hill and the next rise. The low overcast flickered with a deep crimson light.

“Chief Littleton sent us,” Sean told the police officer. He tried to block out the fact that this young, good-looking guy had dared to take his Evie out to dinner. “How can we help? I got one of my guys directing cars out in the lot.”

“Good, that works.” Blaine glanced at the hillside. “Do you think it’s going to make it this far?”

Sean checked the direction of the wind, sniffed the light scent of burning pines. “Hard to say. The wind is dying down, so that’s good. I checked a map and there are several roads between here and there. With luck, it won’t jump any of them.”

“Amen to that. Okay, since you guys are the firefighters, how about you two check the premises for any potential gas leaks or other hazards while I handle crowd control?”

“Roger that.” Sean gave a little salute and he and Rollo headed back toward the interior of the inn. “Kitchen first, I think—”

Boom!

The sound of an explosion ripped his thought in half. “What the hell—“

“That sounded like a gas explosion.” Rollo ran back to the terrace and leaned over the balustrade to search for signs of fire. “I don’t think it was here, though.”

“Parking lot?” Sean clicked his comm to call Josh. “Everything okay out there?”

“Yup. No exploding vehicles. Sounds like it came from down the backside of the hill.”

Officer Blaine got off his phone and raised his voice to penetrate through the din of alarmed chatter. “Please remain calm, everyone. The Seaview has not sustained any damage. The evacuation is still underway. Please follow directions and do exactly as you are told.”

He gestured to Sean and Rollo. “That includes you two. I want this place checked in the next ten minutes so we can shut it down.”

Sean nodded. He wanted desperately to ask where Evie was, but managed to refrain. She was probably somewhere in that traffic bottleneck. Although he hadn’t seen her, and he’d been looking…

Followed by Rollo, he ran into the kitchen, where an alert waiter was already shutting down the gas line.

“Good man,” Sean told him. “You’re a step ahead of us.”

“Did you hear that explosion?” The young waiter’s hands were shaking. “I was afraid the kitchen would be next.”

“Do you know where it happened?”

The waiter pointed toward a door at the far end of the kitchen. “Sounded like it came from that direction. There’s a road back there.”

“The back road? The one that curves past all those overlooks?”

“Yeah. Hardly anyone uses it anymore.”

Sean glanced at Rollo, knowing they were thinking the same thing. If someone had driven down that way, they were probably on their own. The emergency workers had their hands full here.

“You should go join that mob trying to get down the hill,” Sean told the waiter. “We can take it from here.”

The waiter nodded with relief and headed for the door.

“Wait,” Sean called after him. “Was Evie McGraw here tonight?”

“Yeah, she had dinner with that cop. But I think she already left. He told her to take off when he first got the call. She would have gone down the main road, that’s where the officer was sending people.”

An uneasy feeling settled into Sean’s gut. He’d scanned every car they’d passed on the way to the Seaview and he hadn’t seen her. He’d looked for her in the parking lot and inside the restaurant. No sign of her anywhere.

He pulled out his phone and dialed her number. No answer.

Uneasiness gave way to dread. Had Evie taken the back road, despite Blaine’s instructions?

He knew his Evie. She wasn’t always the rule-follower everyone thought.

He bolted for the back door. “I gotta go.”

Rollo grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop. “What about Blaine? The PD’s in charge and they told us to do a safety check.”

“Tell him I went down the back road to check out the explosion.”

“Isn’t Vargas still all over your ass? Better do what the locals say.”

Sean forced words out of his suddenly tight throat. “Evie knows that back road.”

Finally Rollo understood and let him go. “I’ll handle things here. Go.” He pushed him out the door.

Sean ran across the back lawn. Blaine was the least of his worries. Vargas was maybe the second to least. They could demote him, fire him—hell, kick him out of the fire service. The whole town could say it was one more Marcus fuckup. And he wouldn’t care. The only thing that mattered right now was Evie.

Outside, he ran for the trail he’d taken the last time he was here, when he’d been following Evie after she fled her disastrous dinner with Brad. He pounded downhill until he saw the back road. He leaped over a rosebush and scrambled through some hedge whose fragrance reminded him of that night with Evie. Stumbling as he landed, he barely kept himself from doing a header onto the gravel.
Run, run
.

He launched himself down the road. When he rounded the next curve, he spotted a small column of smoke rising into the air. From the smell of it, it wasn’t a brushfire. He’d sniffed a thousand brushfires in his lifetime and knew the aroma well. He could identify the makeup of the forest—birch, pine, juniper—from the odor of its smoke. This smoke didn’t come from wood. It came from man-made materials—steel and plastic and fabric. It came from a car.

Faster, faster
. Like some kind of hurdling champion, he leaped past potholes and patches of gravel as he careened down the road. Smoke stung his eyes and seared his lungs.

Finally, he spotted the wreck. The burning frame of an SUV filled the center of the road, a flaming skeleton pouring smoke and licks of flame into the night air. It looked almost demonic, a metallic skeleton.

Evie didn’t drive an SUV. This wasn’t her cute little white Jetta. For a moment, relief flooded him. Someone had wrecked their car, but it wasn’t her. He ran closer, covering his mouth with his elbow to protect his lungs from the hot, smoky air. He scanned the terrain—scrub-covered hillside to the east, a downslope to the west, vegetation interspersed with bare rock.

A dark figure lay sprawled along the side of the road. He jogged toward it, blinking away smoke fumes. As he got closer, he switched on his head lamp and played the beam across the victim.

A woman, tall, dark-haired…
oh my God
.

His heart beating like a snare drum, he turned the victim’s head to feel her pulse, and saw her face.
Evie.

Shoving down his sheer automatic terror, he checked her pulse. Strong. She was alive. Unconscious, but alive. He ran his hands over her, checking for other injuries. Nothing obvious jumped out, but she could have internal injuries, wounds he couldn’t see, a concussion. He grabbed his comm. “Josh, I have Evie down here on the back road. She’s unconscious and possibly injured. I have to get her medevacked out.”

“On it.”

Sean hunched over Evie, shielding her from the heat pulsing from the smoldering vehicle. He should get her farther away. What if there was more fuel waiting to ignite? Moving her was a risk, but so was leaving her.
Shit.
He smoothed the hair away from her face. God, what he wouldn’t give to see her smile right now.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I ever let you go, even for a second.”

Lovely and still, her face displayed no response.

“Please, Evie.” He cupped her cheek, willing her to wake up. “It’s Sean. The idiot who’s completely in love with you but didn’t know how to say it. Please, wake up.”

A blast of hot air grabbed his attention. He looked up and saw that a patch of scrub grass had caught a spark from the SUV fire and was now burning merrily away.

“Evie, I have to leave you for a second. I’ll be right back.” He set her back down and ran to the patch of grass. Stomping it with his boots, he chased down every smoldering blade until nothing was left burning. He turned back to Evie.

Shit
. Another fire had sprung up, even closer to her. And a third, just past her. The breeze must be carrying sparks from the vehicle to the grassy margin. He quickly called Josh again as he dashed back to her, leapfrogging over the flames between them. Crouching down, he gathered her into his arms.

He rose to his feet, grunting under the dead weight of an unconscious woman. Now what? Fires crackled on both sides, consuming fuel like young demons released from hell. He could try to run through the flames and down the road. He was wearing his Nomex pants and a padded jacket, but Evie had nothing like that. The wind was picking up, but its direction was variable. Now it seemed to be heading straight down the road, but in the next instant it was pushing flames down the hillside.

He had to make a decision.
Now
.

He tightened his grip on her limp body and hunched around her so that his fireproof jacket protected them both as much as possible. Then he plunged between the smoldering vehicle and the fire crackling through the grass. Sparks landed in Evie’s hair but he batted them away.
Go, go, go.
Past the flames, down the road.

Carrying Evie in his arms, he jogged around a curve in the rutted road. He couldn’t go far while holding her like this. It was probably ten miles to the end of the road. His thigh muscles burned, his lungs heaved. Evie’s weight seemed to get heavier and more awkward. He needed to find some kind of shelter in case the flames did the unpredictable.

A roar from behind him grabbed his attention. He looked back.
Holy shit
. The fire was really going now, eating through the dry brush along the side of the road. It would probably spread to the downslope next. The entire hillside would catch fire. And maybe the other side of the road would be next. There was no way he could outrun it.

He flashed on Finn, who had taken shelter in a gravel stream bed. This back road, even badly maintained, was pretty similar to a stream bed. Gravel and dirt, clear of all vegetation. It was their best chance right now.

If only he had his fire shelter with him.

But he had his fireproof jacket, and maybe that would be enough. As the flames leaped and danced only a few feet away, he lowered Evie to the ground. He took off his jacket and nudged her into a fetal position, then covered her with his own body. He curled tight around her, like a football he’d just intercepted. He made his own body as small as possible and pulled his jacket over both of them. He tried to pin it to the ground the way he would with his aluminum shelter, but it wasn’t quite big enough.

He took shallow breaths of the heated air. If they were in the heart of a wildfire with nothing but a jacket for protection, they’d be doomed. But this fire was just getting started, and they were smack in the middle of the road. There was limited fuel out there. Once the flames passed, they’d be okay…

Please, Lord, let Evie be okay.

The crunch and crackle of the flames just outside made the hair on the back of his neck rise. The smell of burning sagebrush mingled with the scent of Evie’s hair under his nose.

Once again, there he was in the middle of a burnover. This time, Evie’s life was in his hands. He’d die before he let that fire get her. He squeezed his eyes shut and huddled in a tight ball over her unconscious body.

During the Big Canyon burnover, all kinds of crazy thoughts had gone through his brain. His family, his past, his need to set things right, all of it coalescing into one conviction: he had to go back to Jupiter Point.

Now, only one thought pounded through his brain.
Save Evie
.
Love Evie
.
Evie, Evie, Evie…

As if the power of his plea reached from his cranium to hers, she stirred underneath him and moaned.

“Evie, sweetheart, it’s Sean,” he whispered, trying to keep his voice as calm and even as possibly. “I’m here. I’m right on top of you.”

“What…?” All her muscles tensed as she regained consciousness. She tried to lift her head, but he used gentle pressure to hold it close to the ground.