Wildfire

by Toni Draper

  Meanwhile, Sydney left to shower and Mena stepped out to her Jeep.

  It wasn’t long before Isa joined her in the driveway, and as she looked at the papers and notes Mena was going through, she remembered something. “I never told you he came to see you when you were in the hospital.”

  “Henderson?”

  “Yeah. It was weird. I found him talking to you while you were still out, before you came around. He was even crying, if you can believe that.”

  “Maybe his conscience was getting the best of him. Look, I know I shouldn’t say anything without proof, but I’m not sure I don’t have it.” Mena told Isa what she’d found in the incident reports and on the images captured by the deer cams.

  Isa looked at her. Was it with disbelief, or was it hurt that she’d been left out until now? It was hard for Mena to tell.

  “I’m still searching. That’s the real reason I wanted to come back here. I just can’t believe, I don’t want to believe, that someone we know, someone on our crew, could do such a thing. The thing is, I’m not sure he’s been doing it all on his own.” Mena looked at Isa imploringly. “I’m trusting you with this until I figure out what we’ve got. Please don’t tell anyone, Isa. Not even Mike.”

  “Did I just hear my name taken in vain?”

  Isa, who’d made arrangements for Mike to join them, ran to him and wrapped him in a hug.

  Mena greeted him and gave the two of them some space by joining Sydney, dressed and ready to go—and looking pretty good, for that matter—waiting on the porch with the laptop open. The split screen showed recorded image numbers with date and time stamps, as well as descriptions.

  Mena leaned over her shoulder. “Looks like you’ve been busy. Have you found anything interesting or worth telling me about?”

  “You tell me.” Sydney pointed to the screen, “Looks like the same man in the same vehicle keeps showing up.”

  Mena knew without looking who the man was. He’d been on her radar all along. It was time to take her suspicions and all she’d compiled in the way of proof and evidence to Peña.

  “I know how this looks and is sure to sound, but please, Chief, hear me out.”

  Mena told and showed him everything she’d found.

  Peña didn’t say anything for a long while, causing Mena to fear she’d stepped far out of bounds. Still, she held her ground, until he looked up from the accusations and confirmation laid out on the desktop and sighed loudly. He looked at her as if considering what to do, then, using a key on a chain he pulled from deep in his pocket, he bent to unlock a drawer and took out a nondescript, unmarked file and passed it her way.

  “I would have told you if I could have,” he said to her, almost as an apology as she opened the manila folder, her eyes drawn to a familiar name. “We’ve suspected him for quite some time. We just didn’t have enough to nail him, but the truth caught up to him in Flagstaff.”

  Mena had to know, “The Elden Fire?”

  Peña nodded. “I guess it finally became too personal, nearly cost you your life. And that realization must have got to him somewhere deep inside. One day, he just lost it, broke down completely, and told me everything.”

  “Did he say how many? Which ones? Did he say why?”

  “He confessed to three or four by name. I’m sure there were more. Hopefully, it will all come out in time. He never really gave a reason. He had some anger issues, even had some rage going on. We suspect it was a combination of that and his need, or greed, for the constant flow of hazard pay it brought in. Love and money are usually the catalysts for all crimes.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Oh, he’s definitely going to do some time.”

  “Jeez, it’s no secret I never liked the guy, but—”

  “Don’t even go there, Mendoza. He doesn’t deserve your sympathy. He betrayed the brotherhood. He betrayed us. He could have killed people. His actions destroyed homes and caused millions of dollars in damage. He put all our lives in danger. My only regret is that we couldn’t stop him sooner.”

  Mena nodded in agreement and started toward the door. She hesitated before turning the knob, however, and spun back around.

  “I guess now maybe isn’t the best time for another matter I need to discuss?”

  Peña dropped his head into his hands for the second time during their visit. “Go ahead. Whatever it is, lay it on me. I’m already numb.”

  Mena knew the sooner she told him the better.

  “I’m moving.”

  At that revelation, Peña’s head quickly jerked up.

  “To where? And why? May I ask?”

  “Only to Sedona. I’ll still be able to help. And I’m thinking about going back to school. For arson investigation. You know what they say,” she paused before smiling and finishing her thought, “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “That’s fantastic! You obviously have a knack for it, but don’t think I don’t know that’s not the real, or at least the only, most compelling reason. You’re avoiding the why, Mena.” Peña sat back with a smile. “Let me help you out like I did that very first time you stepped into this office. Do you remember?”

  Of course, she did.

  “Tell me, does it have anything to do with love?”

  Before she had a chance to answer, Peña laughed and said, “Forget it, Mendoza, you’re busted. Your face just told me everything.” He laughed again, louder this time.

  Mena reached deep down for the courage to tell the man, “Well, maybe not quite everything.”

  When she was finished telling him her love and life stories, including revealing her sexual orientation, she was surprised by his response.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mendoza, but Traci and I have known for a long time. We’ve just been waiting for you to feel comfortable enough to share that part of you with us.”

  A single tear—of relief, of happiness, of both—escaped her heart and found its way down her face to her shirt front.

  “Oh, Mena.” He got up from behind his desk and put his arms out for a hug.

  She gladly stepped inside his embrace.

  “Don’t you know? Haven’t you always known? I love you just the way you are. And you’re the only woman I can show affection to, other than my mother, without fear of my wife’s retaliation.” They shared a laugh and Mena had never felt freer and more relieved.

  Chapter 19

  The Elden Fire, when all was said and done, had burned thousands of acres and required the assistance of hundreds of firefighters, including engine crews, helicopters, and backfiring, using both handheld drip torches and helitack units in charge of aerial ignition.

  Although she had come a long way since the day of her accident, Mena knew before she could go any further, she’d have to first go back to that day and place, to where her old life had ended and her new one began.

  Unable to bring herself to follow the exact route she had taken on that fateful morning, she drove to where Isa and Mike had parked their vehicles instead. She knew this only because of what they’d told her. All that remained of the lookout tower was a few structural beams and a slab of concrete where the foundation had been poured decades ago.

  The charred remains that Mike and Joe had described from their last visit were just as they had said, as she had imagined. As strong as the pungent pines had been, all that was left in the air was a lingering scent of burnt wood and ash. The place was a desolate wasteland. It looked like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. The quiet was penetrating, to the extent it sent shivers down her spine and put bumps on her arms. She shook off the eerie feeling and forced herself to face what was left of the surrounding forest.

  Remarkably, most of the large trees were still standing tall amidst weaker saplings that had bowed to the force of the fire and fallen. The survivors wore blackened battle scars on their bark, like a
wounded soldier wears his Purple Heart. Mena looked up from the bottom of their trunks and inwardly saluted them. She marveled at their strength, fortitude, and resilience. In the bold, yet humbled way of a private who lacks the character and experience of a veteran, she dared compare what she’d been through to their bravery and suffering.

  Love, like fire, can be equally explosive, volatile, and unpredictable. Cupid’s arrow, like a lightning bolt, can hit an unsuspecting target dead-on and strike the very heart of it. The fire that ignites has several courses it can then take. Lacking fuel or oxygen, it will do little more than smoke and smolder, and it will quickly die out. At the opposite extreme, it can burn out of control and destroy everyone and everything it meets. What is hoped for is a slow burn, one that will allow itself to be tamed and directed. Such fires can be good for both humans and nature, allowing forests to rid themselves of fuels that have built up over time, giving lovers time to dispose of unnecessary baggage piece by piece, freeing themselves from the causes of blowups and the threat of irreparable harm to relationships.

  Mena stooped and sifted through the remains at her feet, allowing the ashes to slip through her fingers as her mind sorted through the past year’s happenings.

  Tomorrow, she would return to Yuma to turn in her contract, unsigned, to the principal’s secretary of the school where she’d been teaching. Although she’d sworn she’d never follow her heart in such a way again, she was willing to go the distance one more time, for Sydney, who’d proven her love and commitment to their relationship by doing the same and embracing change. She only hoped this time, they’d have their happy ending.

  At the very moment of that thought, her attention was pulled away by the piercing screech of a hawk taking flight from a stalwart old growth tree. Like Pocahontas’ Grandmother Willow, as Kim might say, this granddaughter of a wise Mother Nature had been around to witness the turning over of many new leaves in her day.

  That was when she saw it.

  A tiny blade of grass, barely noticeable, was struggling to break through the earth’s burned blanket. She took it as a sign. One she had been looking for, what she needed. To her, it said and meant it would take time. But one day, this place, and she, would be teeming with life again. When that happened, both she and the cycle would be rejuvenated, renewed, whole, and complete.

  She smiled, then headed for home.

  Epilogue

  Its attention turned toward the woodpecker’s hammering in the otherwise still forest, the vermin failed to detect the rousing of a larger bird of prey, one with its eyes on the distracted prize on the forest floor. As the smaller bird continued to probe in search of bark beetles—insects that feast on the ponderosa pine’s post-fire cambium laden with nutrients—animal instinct should have cautioned the creature to be careful, but the warning fell on ears deafened by the incessant boring. The flames of the blaze had thinned out the branches of the close-knit trees, dropping a pre-fire, previously impenetrable canopy of needles to the forest floor. Now able to clearly see its quarry, and with space to spread its wings and fly where it could do neither before, the hawk swooped downward, expertly navigating toward its food source. The mouse, with its beady eyes fixated on the fast-moving beak of the other, noisy bird, failed to see the predator until it was too late, its talons too close for escape. As the furry body was airlifted, the singular blade of grass in its vicinity moved almost indiscernibly on the ground’s floor.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the entire IP Team for seeing a “diamond in the rough” of my manuscript. Like the MCs in my pages, I hide my feelings well, so you may never know how much your belief in me and that first phone call really meant.

  To Candy—for helping an old introvert navigate the world of tweeting and being social via online media. I’m a WIP, I admit ; ) and for encouraging and inspiring me (not that you knew it at the time, but I’ve told you since) to try my hand at another genre via answering an early inquiry during the Interlude Press 2020 Tiny Book Fest.

  To Choi—for Wildfire’s beautiful cover. Its gorgeous simplicity has already been framed and hangs on my wall. I LOVE it!

  and especially

  To Annie—for helping me polish my writing to the best I could make it be. And for your hours of toil and sacrifice as my words like rocks, no doubt, tumbled through your head. Yet, you didn’t give up on me.

  I’m also extremely grateful to my sensitivity readers: Celeste Castro, Lucy Ibarra Podmore, Alex Perez, and Kimberly Zepeda for their insightful input and suggestions. Changes made to my story because of them greatly strengthened and vastly improved it.

  About the Author

  Toni Draper was born and lived most of her life in Maryland. These days, she calls home a two-acre sprawl in south Texas that she shares with her spouse, three rescued dogs, and a stray that stayed. Wildfire is her debut novel.

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