I stood as all around me fire erupted. Through the building smoke, I saw Beau running, carrying a shotgun and a burning log, lighting brush behind him.
“Over there!” I shouted to Del.
“Where?” he yelled back.
“This way!” I ran as fast as my injured leg allowed. Limping, I wove between the trees, my leg throbbing, dodging fallen logs, heading toward Beau, making my own path through the woods.
“Sarah, wait!” Del shouted behind me. “Turn back!”
All around us the flames gained power and spread, burning through the brush, the fallen leaves and branches, igniting the trees. Ahead of me, Beau reached an opening in the woods, the dirt driveway where he’d parked his car the night he murdered the deputy.
I had to stop him. I had to save Kristilynn, if he still had her.
I kept running, the fire rushing behind me. Somewhere in the distance I heard Del shout again to turn back. I couldn’t stop. I saw the LeSabre ahead.
As I ran toward him, Beau threw the burning log he used to light the flames to his right into the woods. Like the flick of a match, it ignited the underbrush, the flames instantly working their way up into the trees. Beau dropped his shotgun and unlocked the trunk. In that instant, I knew Kristilynn had to be inside. He was getting her, to drag her with him into the burning woods.
I glanced around, hoping for help. The fire had cut me off from the others. I was alone.
Raising my rifle, I had not a good but a decent shot a Beau through the trees. I aimed. But before I pulled the trigger, something happened. Beau reeled back, stumbled and fell. His hands over his eyes, he writhed on the ground.
I didn’t shoot but kept coming, my rifle in my hands, ready.
In the clearing, the flames edged closer, and the fire Beau started when he threw the lit branch spread. In the distance, I heard Del shouting, but fainter. I couldn’t make out what he said over the crackling of the burning trees. All around me, I heard loud pops as branches and trees succumbed to the fire and heat.
Beau thrashed on the ground, still rubbing at his eyes.
“Help me!” Kristilynn shouted.
I ran faster, and I saw her head pop up as she pushed higher in the trunk. I grabbed her and pulled her out. I leaned her against the back of the car. I held my rifle on Beau, while I braced her with my side to keep her upright. I tried to think. I couldn’t decide what to do. The heat from the fire built on my skin.
Eyes wide, Kristilynn scanned the wall of fire crawling ever closer. We would soon be trapped.
“Dear God!” she yelled. “Sarah, I can’t run. You can! Get out of here!” Tears streamed her cheeks. “Leave now, or we’re both dead!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Beau Whittle reaching for his shotgun. Instinctively, I aimed my rifle and fired into his chest. Beau stopped moving, his head rolled back and his eyes went blank. I had no time to make sure he was dead.
I fired again, this time dead center into his forehead.
With that, I turned my back on the man who’d caused so many so much pain. I had a more pressing problem.
“We’re getting out of here now!” I told Kristilynn, her face a patchwork of cuts and bruises.
“How?” she said.
“We have to find a way out,” I said. “It’s our only chance.”
We couldn’t drive out. The flames had jumped the driveway. The fire burned on both sides of us, edging closer. The inferno had become a living, breathing animal, a dragon that eyed us, determined that we wouldn’t escape. The sound of the conflagration transformed into an angry growl. We had no passable route back to the road.
The only possible path to escape led deeper into the forest.
From the car’s trunk, I grabbed an old blanket. “I’ll pull you on this.”
“No, Sarah, I…”
We had no time. I laid her on the red flannel. I grabbed her arms and the corners of the blanket, and I dragged her over the brush, pulling her between the trees. The sounds of the fire carried toward us. The air grew hot until breathing hurt.
“You can’t save me,” she screamed. “Please, run!”
I looked around us, trying to decide where to go. The land to my left angled down, maybe to a gully. I decided it would be easier to pull her downhill. That was all I knew.
I pulled her over a fallen tree trunk.
“Oh!” she cried.
She dropped my hands. I tightened my grip. “Hold on!”
I felt her hands tighten around my arms, and I pulled her with all my might. Her face became a mask of pain each time a branch or rock hit her back or arms. When we reached the gorge, the effort became easier. We slid down the hill. Before long, we landed at the bottom, and the trees opened up around us. Above us, clouds of acrid black smoke hovered. On either side of us pine and oak trees rose up, fuel for the fire that marched toward us.
I wondered if the fire would jump over us if we stayed in the gully. I’d heard about escapes like that, but it would take a miracle. I didn’t feel comfortable that I was in line for that kind of help from above. The sound of the fire grew louder as it spread. We were surrounded by fuel, the trees, the brush, the grass. Everything dry and brittle.
In the woods above us, I heard a loud bang, as if the forest had reached such a high temperature the very air exploded. I wondered if it could be the gas tank on the LeSabre. It didn’t matter. I had no options. I had to keep going, pulling Kristilynn with me. I knew she’d be bruised and cut. Her nose was black and blue, bloody, broken. The cut on her head oozed blood. Standing at the base of the gully, I looked in both directions and thought I saw blue sky in the distance to my right.
The smoke spread toward us, the slight breeze urging the fire to spread. My eyes burned, and I could barely see. I hoisted Kristilynn over a fallen log, stumbled and bashed the cut in my leg, blood spurting out. I scrambled to my feet. The fire kept coming, blanketing us in smoke. I felt the heat of the flames.
I thought of Maggie and Mom. I thought of the ranch, of home. I wondered if I’d ever see them again. It seemed hopeless.
“Stop!” Kristilynn shouted. “Please, just leave me! Run!”
“No!”
“Sarah, go! Please! Go now!”
Above us in the forest the fire roared, and we heard another explosion, not far in the distance. It sounded like massive destruction.
I kept us moving. We coughed and choked on the acrid air. A thick curtain of smoke hung above us.
Then the miracle I’d doubted happened.
Kristilynn slid more easily. The ground seemed smoother. My feet squished in something soft.
Mud.
Another ten feet, perhaps fifteen, and I stood in a few inches of water.
Walking became harder, my feet slipping out from under me. But I kept going. Twenty feet ahead, I trudged in ankle-deep water. I looked out and saw that the opening widened and the water drained into a small lake.
Before the drought, the gully must have been a creek.
To my right, above me, I saw a park grill on a pedestal.
I pulled Kristilynn to the side, the slight current from the lake sloshing against her body. I dragged her to a scrawny willow tree that grew at an angle over the water. I peeled her hands from mine and placed them on the tree trunk.
“Hold on!” I said.
Around us, the smoke continued to move in, I felt the heat intensifying, and I knew the fire trudged closer.
“Sarah, look!” Kristilynn shouted. She held onto the tree with one hand and pointed with the other to the left, out to the lake. A metal raft with a ladder floated perhaps thirty feet away. Someone’s summer cottage swimming platform.
Salvation.
“Can you float on your back?” I asked.
“I can try.” Kristilynn looked hopeful, still frightened but I guessed believing for the first time that we might survive.
“Wait here.” I worried we’d get in trouble in the water. I couldn’t take the chance.
I
scurried up the bank and found a deserted campground. The place was strewn with tents, coolers and beach towels. Families, couples enjoying a summer day had taken off fast. Fleeing the fire, they left everything. On the shoreline lay an abandoned child’s float, a smiling green turtle with a hole in the middle and a rope laced through its mouth. I rushed over, grabbed it and pushed it down the bank to where Kristilynn waited.
“Hold this,” I ordered. “I’ll be right back.”
I went back up, opened a couple of the coolers and found one with bottles of water. I pushed it down the hill and tied it to the float with the tow rope.
The sound of the fire grew louder around us. The heat built. I pulled Kristilynn into the water and onto the float.
“You feel okay on this? Stable?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”
“Here we go.”
I gave the float a shove, and then walked in after it. Once in the water, I swam on my side, kicking, pulling her along, the ice chest bobbing. I aimed for the raft. When we reached it, I had Kristilynn hold onto the ladder. I untied the ice chest. I climbed up the ladder and then lifted it up after me. I hauled it onto the raft. Then I reached back down for Kristilynn.
“Sarah, I –” she started.
“Just hang onto me. We’re not there yet.”
On my knees, I grabbed her under her shoulders and pulled her toward me. The raft angled down toward the water, heavy with our weight. It took only moments, and I had her out of the water. Flat on her back, she gasped, drawing in the fresh air. I lay beside her and did the same. When we caught our breath, I helped her sit up. We coughed hard, and my lungs felt raw.
Across the water the blue sky grew blacker, and we watched the bright yellow flames in the campground burn everything in their path.
Time passed. I had no idea how long. Our breathing grew steady, and I relaxed some. I popped open the cooler, handed Kristilynn a bottle of water. She took it, opened it and took a long drink. I did the same, and we sat mesmerized by the flames, neither of us believing we survived.
Forty-nine
A helicopter spotted us an hour or so after we arrived at the raft. The pilot signaled, and we waved at him. During that time, the fire burned, leaving nothing but a trail of soot-covered, blackened shards of tree trunks behind. The green of the forest gave way as the fire consumed everything around the perimeter of the lake.
Kristilynn and I sipped on our water bottles and eventually nibbled on ham and cheese sandwiches I found in the cooler. I said nothing to her, not wanting her to worry, but I wondered about Del and the others. I hoped Del followed his own advice, turned and ran. Men can be stubborn, I thought. Then I realized that Del would probably say I was the stubborn one.
Before long, the helicopter returned. Someone lowered a long basket, the kind used to transport injured patients to hospitals. I helped Kristilynn lay down inside. I buckled her in and pulled on the straps to make sure they were tight.
“After all this, I’m not going to lose you now,” I said.
“Sarah, I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “Without you, I would have died out there.”
“It’s okay, Kristilynn,” I said. “What’s important is that we made it out together. We’re both here. And Liam Kneehoff and Beau Whittle, well, neither one of them will ever again hurt either one of us.”
From above, someone winched up the cable and pulled the basket toward the helicopter. Kristilynn rose up above me, higher and higher. I thought they’d bring her all the way up and swing her into the copter, but instead, they took off with her hanging in the basket, whisking her away.
Once Kristilynn was gone, I stared at the flames across the water. They’d worked their way around to a house nestled in the trees on the water’s edge. Someone, more than a few folks, would lose their homes in the fire. That was a tragedy, and I felt bad for them. But I couldn’t help thinking that if they got out with their lives, they’d been granted an incredible gift.
I thought about Maggie with her robots, wondered what Mom decided to do about the wedding, and I hoped no one told them that I was caught in the fire.
When I walked up to the Rocking Horse later that afternoon, I didn’t want to see fear on their faces. I wanted them to look at me and smile, give me a hug. When they did, I’d whisper ever so softly in their ears, “Never forget. I’ll love you, forever.”
A while later, the helicopter returned. This time, it was my turn.
Epilogue
A week after the fire, I grabbed the Houston Chronicle from the driveway and saw the article. Liam Kneehoff’s execution had been rescheduled, and the governor had wasted no time. In two months, he’d be marched into the death chamber. I still didn’t know how I felt about that, but I’d decided this wasn’t a question I had to answer. Others could debate the right or wrong of the death penalty, my only opinion was a sense of relief that Kneehoff would never again reach out from his cell to hurt anyone.
Dressed for work, I walked in with the newspaper in my hands. Mom had been busy, and the kitchen counters were covered in bakery. I helped myself to a blueberry scone to go with my coffee, and she gave me the eye. Her hair in curlers, she wore a careworn, pink cotton bathrobe.
“You’re not going into the office, are you? Not today!”
“I’m supposed to meet Sheriff Delgado and some of the troopers and deputies who worked the arson cases at headquarters. I won’t be long,” I explained. “The governor’s flying in to give us commendations.”
Mom scowled. “You should have told us. Maggie and I should be there for that!”
“You have enough going on,” I said. “And I don’t want Maggie there. I don’t want her to think about the fire any more. I don’t want her to worry about what could have happened.”
“But she’s so proud of you. We both are.” Mom said. She looked disappointed. “Are you sure?”
“Yup,” I said. “Today’s a day for happy thoughts. There’s no room for the bad ones.”
The fire took three days to put out. By the time it ended, it had levelled more than a thousand acres of Texas forest and fifty homes. It would take decades for that patch of forest to recover. But there was a lot to be thankful for. Despite all the destruction, no one died except Beau Whittle.
After everything settled down, Del got an arrest warrant for Edith Mae. She’d obviously known Beau was at the river house long before we forced her to tell us. Despite our claims during the investigation, we really didn’t have a lot to charge her with, so she pleaded guilty to hiding a fugitive. Jimi Jo, on the other hand, faced three counts of arson and one murder indictment for Pastor Wilson’s death.
“You know, we could have rescheduled this,” Captain Williams said when I arrived at the office.
“No. This works. But I’ll run out right after. I’m needed elsewhere, you know.”
“I seem to remember something about that,” he said.
The conference-room ceremony took an hour. The governor gave a short speech, and Del thanked him for all of us. The governor shook our hands, and Del looked as proud as a new poppa holding his citation.
On the way out, I collected a file I needed for a case I was consulting on. Then I waved to the others, who munched on cupcakes and cookies Mom forced on me before she let me leave the ranch.
“Gotta go. Things to do!” I said, and they shouted support as the door slammed behind me.
On the day of the fire, Mom waited for me. She’d heard the news, but she kept it from Maggie. “No reason to worry her.”
I nuzzled Mom, held her close and told her how much I loved her, and then I asked, “What did you decide about the wedding?”
“Well, I decided to call it off. It seemed like the prudent thing to do,” she said, giving me an ironic smile that reflected how quickly life changes. “Then all of this happened with you, and I thought, you know, no matter what, my daughter never gives up. Sarah never says, ‘I can’t do this.’ You just forge ahead and keep trying. You put y
ourself out there, even though you know that you may be hurt. That none of it is easy.”
I smiled at Mom and wiped a few tears from the corners of my eyes. “Oh, but I do get scared, you know.”
“I’m sure you do, honey. But when given a choice, you fight. You don’t give up just because you’re afraid.”
I shrugged, not sure I deserved the compliments. Too many times I’d questioned my own actions and thought I could have done things differently, better. But then, I decided that was human nature, to second guess. “So you’re going to…?”
“Marry Bobby,” Mom said. “And hope that for a little while we get our happily ever after.”
At the ranch, I put a new bandage on my leg. It was healing well. I slipped into my dress, a pale yellow, strapless, with matching heels. I skimmed on some sunset mauve lipstick and tied my hair into a topknot, anchoring it with a comb.
When I walked out into the hallway, I found Maggie with her robot. My daughter looked frilly and feminine in lavender chiffon.
“You ready?” I asked.
She frowned. “I’m still not sure this will work.”
I laughed and hugged her. I didn’t really understand what she planned, but the robot wore a short white lace veil making it look like something out of a Disney movie.
“You know, I bet it’ll be perfect.”
At the back of the yard stood an arch covered with white roses, and two hundred white folding chairs waited in twenty straight rows. Bobby’s family and friends sat on the left. On our side were cousins and other relatives, and Mom’s friends. Some of the folks from work showed up, the captain and his wife, a few of my fellow rangers, the ones Mom was particularly fond of. I’d invited Del, and he’d changed out of his uniform and wore a gray suit.
Captain Williams left his cowboy hat at home. His wife gave me a quick hug. “Well, Sarah, quite a day,” she said. “And you even have some clouds in the sky for shade.”
“It is perfect,” I said.
We were all trying not to get our hopes up, despite the weatherman’s prediction of possible rain. One way or another, it would work out. The rains would come, if not today, tomorrow.
The Buried Page 24
