“You’re still coming to the wedding, aren’t you?” Billy asked.
She hesitated. She had accepted the invitation only because she had believed that Cain would be in the Atacama.
But he wasn’t.
He was here.
“Please,” the boy said. “You promised.”
“Billy,” David said quietly. “Back off. Miss Wilde is a very busy woman.”
“But she promised.”
Shelley looked at Dave. There was sympathy in his brown eyes. She wondered what Cain had told his stepbrother.
“Say good-bye, son. I’ll be out in a few minutes.” The boy saw his father’s determination, sighed, and said, “Bye, Shelley. Thanks again.”
“Don’t forget to visit,” she said.
“I won’t.”
Just before Billy shut the front door of the shop behind him, he called over his shoulder.
“See you at the wedding, Shelley!”
The door shut fast.
Dave shook his head. “I’m sorry, Shelley—Miss Wilde.”
“Shelley,” she corrected. “There’s nothing to apologize for. You have a son anyone would envy.”
Dave looked around the shop before he turned to her with troubled brown eyes.
“You did Cain’s penthouse, didn’t you?” She nodded because she couldn’t speak. “I thought so. I’ve never seen a place that reflected a man’s personality so deeply. And a woman’s.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“There was more to it than just skill. There was love.”
Her eyelids flinched with a pain she couldn’t conceal.
“Why did you leave my brother?”
For an instant Shelley thought that she would refuse to answer. But the lure was too great.
Maybe Dave knows something I don’t. Maybe he can help me understand why I’m alone.
“Is that what Cain told you? That I left him?”
“No. He hasn’t mentioned you at all. It was Billy who told me about you.”
Her dark eyelashes closed in a futile effort to conceal her pain.
“Why, Shelley?”
“Ask Cain,” she said, her voice low.
Dave laughed curtly. “I’d like to live to see my wedding day.”
“What does that mean?”
“Cain and I have been in some hard places around the world. He taught me how to measure men, the signs to look for, the subtle animal signals of violence.”
“Insight,” she whispered.
“Yes. He has enough for three men.”
She wished she could disagree. Deep in her soul she knew she couldn’t.
“Cain is a storm looking for a place to break,” Dave said simply. “God help the person who triggers him. So I’m asking you. What happened?”
“He walked out on me.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I heard. I just can’t believe it.”
“Believe it. I do.”
“Shelley, my brother loves you.”
“Not enough to stay here with me.”
“All the time? Won’t your work let you go with him some of the time?”
She didn’t answer. Like Cain, she was the owner of her business. She could travel as much or as little as she chose.
And she chose to stay in L.A.
A whole world out there.
Am I hiding in here?
The door to The Gilded Lily burst open and Billy ran back in.
“Shelley, there’s a fire near your hills! I heard it on the car radio!”
She bolted out of the shop and stood in the street, straining to see. Wind gusted fiercely, forcing her to squint against the dry rush of air.
But there was no need for clear vision. It was all too easy to see the dense plume of smoke billowing from the direction of her hills. The driving force of the Santa Ana wind had leveled off the top of the smoky column, flattening it into a long dark flag rippling toward the sea.
Even as she watched, the column boiled up blackly, fiercely, shoving against the harsh wind.
Wildfire, untouched by man.
“Is it—” Dave began.
“Yes.”
Without another word Shelley ran back into The Gilded Lily, grabbed her purse, and sprinted to her car.
Dave and Billy were right behind her.
“Anything we can do?” Dave asked.
“No. If the fire is bad enough, they’ll have roadblocks out. Only residents will be let through, and maybe not even us. But thanks.”
She drove out of the parking lot fast enough to make the tires whine. Within minutes she was on the freeway. The view was better from there. She could see that the fire was at least two ranges of hills east and slightly north of where she lived. Her home wasn’t in the direct path of the fire.
Yet.
Small comfort, but I’ll take it, she thought grimly.
It was nine-thirty on a hot, dry Saturday morning. The Santa Ana winds would rake the land for the next ten hours, dying back only after sundown. Until then, the wind would blow between forty-five and fifty-five miles an hour, with gusts up to eighty-five. Burning embers would ride the wild gusts of wind, spreading fire from the mountains to the sea.
The closer Shelley got to her home, the more sirens she heard. Fire engines were pouring in from all over the county, but there were only a few roads into the steep, brush-covered hills.
Traffic thickened, slowed, and stopped to allow the screaming parade of sirens to pass. People got out and gathered along the roadside, shielding their eyes from the sun and pointing toward the wall of smoke raging against the brassy sky.
A pale dusting of ash sifted down.
Shelley kept driving whenever she could. Fifteen fire trucks raced past her before she reached the turnoff to her own narrow road. The first thing she saw was a squad car parked sideways across both lanes, blocking them. She stopped abruptly and rolled down her window.
A deputy sheriff leaned down to talk to her. His legs were braced against the stiff wind. He was forced to hold his uniform cap in place with one hand.
“Sorry, ma’am. Unless you live up there, you’ll have to turn around. This is a dead-end road. Too many sightseers blocking it and we won’t be able to move equipment or evacuate the residents if the fire spreads.”
“I live here.”
She held out her driver’s license. The deputy read the address on it, compared her pale face with the picture, and gave her back the license.
“All right, ma’am, but listen for a squad car just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Evacuation. We’re recommending it, but we’re not requiring it yet.”
Her heart turned over. “Here? We’re not in the path of the fire.”
“Not at this point. We’re evacuating the homes to the northeast. Bulldozers are making a fuel break between you and the fire, and the planes will be coming any time now. Your area should be safe unless the wind shifts.”
She let out a long breath. “Thank God.”
“But just the same, you listen real good for an evacuation order, hear? Until then, shut off the gas and electricity and load your car with whatever you want to take. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Shelley nodded, even though she didn’t believe it would happen.
A forced evacuation? lmpossible, she told herself. There’s a little ash and smoke in the air when the wind shifts, but the fire isn’t that close.
I’m not going to cut and run just to make some government types feel good.
But she kept her thoughts about evacuation to herself. She didn’t want to be forced to stay on this side of the barricade. If just one random ember landed on her cedar-shake roof before she was there to put out the spark, she would lose her home.
And her home was all she had left.
A hard gust of wind rocked Shelley’s car and nearly tore off the deputy’s hat. She waited impatiently while he got in his squad car, backed it out
of the way, and waved her through.
There weren’t any fire trucks on the narrow, winding road leading. to her home. Fire equipment was concentrated in the next development over, to the northeast. There, fire threatened houses with each hot blast of wind.
Driving up the hill to her house, she saw only private cars heading down to safety. The vehicles were stuffed to overflowing with clothes and paintings, computers and potted plants and pets, whatever each person thought was too valuable to risk losing.
She knew from past experience that some of her neighbors had already made several frantic trips, unloading possessions at a friend’s home on the flatlands, beyond the reach of flames. Her neighbors would make the same trip in reverse at sunset, or sooner, when the fire was under control.
It had happened that way in the past. It would be the same now.
False alarm, she thought. Like the last two times. A precaution, that’s all. They aren’t really evacuating anyone here.
Not here. It can’t happen here.
She kept repeating the words all the way to her driveway. She leaped out of the car and tripped the main breaker in the electrical box. Then she grabbed a wrench and ran to the front, sidewalk. There, set in concrete, were emergency shutoffs for gas and water.
The water valve she ignored. The gas valve she shut off hard and tight.
Nudge appeared at her side. The cat’s movements were odd, stiff, edgy. Every primitive instinct was at full alert. Sensitive nostrils twitched, reading danger in the hot, sooty wind. She yeowed once, harshly, and patted Shelley’s leg with claws only partially sheathed.
“I know, Nudge. It smells like hell. Literally.”
Racing through the house, she shut windows and doors before she threw off her work clothes and pulled on jeans. She hesitated, then hauled out Nudge’s car carrier.
The cat saw the cage and tried to bolt.
“No you don’t!” she said, grabbing the cat’s scruff.
Quickly, firmly, she stuffed an unhappy, spitting Nudge into the cage and carried it out to the car.
“I don’t want you to panic and run off into the hills if the wind shifts and you smell a lot of smoke,” she explained. “You’d singe every hair on that pretty coat.”
The cat squalled in loud protest when Shelley moved away.
“Sorry, Nudge. I’ve got a long list and a short clock. Take a nap.”
Moving quickly, running through the list in her mind, she hauled a ladder out of the garage and leaned it against the overhanging eaves.
“Hope the water pressure holds,” she said. “If everyone taps into it at once . . .”
With a silent prayer she turned the hose on full force. There was still water pressure. Not as much as usual, but enough to make the rainbird sprinkler work.
She dragged the hose up the ladder. The sprinkler attached to the hose chattered wildly and scattered water all around as she scrambled up onto the dry shake shingles. She hooked the sprinkler stand over a roof vent, adjusted the head for a circular pattern and stood back, ignoring the cold stream of water lashing across her with each sweep of the rainbird.
From the rooftop Shelley could see up the street to her left, where the cul-de-sac made a graceful loop. Beyond the curving, single row of houses, flames raged two ridgelines to the northeast. The fire looked like a red-fringed, black blanket being shaken savagely over the tawny hills.
The sound of a large propeller plane throbbed through the air. She squinted, caught a flash of metal, and spotted a Sierra Deuce dropping out of the blue-gray sky. After circling the fiery ridgeline a few thousand feet above the flames, the aircraft slanted down. With a final silver flash, it vanished into the smoke.
Unconsciously holding her breath, she watched until the plane finally emerged again. Somewhere, hidden within the smoke, thousands of gallons of fire retardant were raining down, slowing for an instant the hungry march of flames.
The wind veered suddenly, blowing directly toward her house rather than at a diagonal that would steer the fire past her to the waiting sea. Shelley’s heart slammed as the black blanket leaped toward her. The air smelled of smoke. Ashes drifted down into the steep canyon just across the street from her.
No! she thought fiercely. The wind will shift again. It has to!
Across the street and beyond the green terraces of the hilltop homes, bulldozers labored on the ridge and in the canyon below. Like huge metal shamans drawing god signs in the dirt, the machines gouged lines of raw earth across the paths fire might take.
The wind shifted again, nearly returning to its original direction. The smoke retreated slightly.
Watching, Shelley prayed that the fiery blanket hadn’t shaken off any of its red-hot fringe in her area. If it had, the burning embers would leapfrog fuel breaks and fire lines. Tiny, hidden flames would lick deep within the sun-bleached chaparral; then fire would pool and run together until it leaped fully grown onto the back of the raging wind and rode to new ridges, new hillsides, new houses.
Her home.
It can’t be. It just can’t.
A cold dash of water across Shelley’s back reminded her that there was still much to be done. Her house had three levels of roof to protect. She had put a sprinkler on only one.
Cautiously she walked across the slanting roof back to the ladder and climbed down. She went to the garage, pulled out another lightweight ladder, and hauled it through the redwood gate and down the steep flagstone steps to the second rooftop level of her home. Propping up the ladder, she turned on another hose and sprinkler and dragged it up on the middle roof.
As soon as she positioned the sprinkler to cover as much as possible of the cedar shingles, she hurried down the ladder again and went back to the garage.
By the time she had a sprinkler going on the lowest roof overlooking the pool, she was drenched. Yet as soon as she moved away from the sprinklers, the hot wind dried her with frightening speed.
With a heavily beating heart, she hurried to the built-in sprinklers in the yard and turned them all on. The water pressure was low. Many of her neighbors had left sprinklers running when they fled.
Wind gusted, whipping Shelley’s hair across her face, stinging her eyes. A fine mist from the pool’s waterfall swirled around her. She turned her face to the dampness. It washed over her like a cool sigh.
“I wish I could breathe that damp air across every bit of my hills,” she said. “If only I had a magic wand . . .”
Then she thought of the powerful pump that sucked water out of the pool and returned it in the form of a waterfall.
“Not quite a magic wand, but better than nothing.”
She ran down the last steps to the pool pump and filtration system, which was hidden among rocks and greenery. Fumbling in her eagerness, she turned the pump on full. Instantly the waterfall tripled in size, becoming a roaring torrent that pounded down over a third of the pool and flung curtains of mist into the air.
“Every little bit helps,” she said, the words both hope and prayer.
Biting her lip, she turned and looked to the southwest, toward the chaparral where she and Cain had walked. The sky was nearly clear in that direction. No more than the thinnest veil of smoke had filtered over there from the fire behind her. Flowers bloomed in splashes of color. Their fragrance filled the sunny day.
It was hard to believe a fire was burning anywhere.
Yet when Shelley turned around, smoke reached toward her home like a hand with black fingers and glowing red nails.
The wind shifted in a single, long moan that swept her hair straight back from her face. Holding her breath, she waited for the wind to shift back.
And waited.
And waited.
Ashes drifted down over her, ashes as big as her palm, ashes still burning at their edges. They cooled before they touched the earth. Behind her, the waterfall pounded with a thunder to equal the wind, sound drowning everything.
Yet nothing could hide the fact that the wind had changed directio
n. It was blowing very hard now, blowing straight from the fire to her home.
Shelley ran back up on each roof level and moved the sprinklers so that a new section of the tinder-dry cedar shingles would be wet down. Ash fell, streaking her arms. Some of the ash was still warm.
Some of it was hot enough to burn.
“No,” she said roughly. “Damn it, no!”
Only a third of each roof had been touched by the sprinklers. It would be at least half an hour before all the roof surface had been watered down even lightly.
Yet as she watched, heat and sun drew steamy evaporation from the damp shingles, drying them, making them vulnerable to fire once more.
A squad car drove slowly up the street. A calm, oddly distorted voice blared out of a speaker. The first part of the message was lost to the wind.
Shelley didn’t need to hear the words. She knew the officer was telling, people to get in their cars and go down the hill.
“No,” she said through her teeth. “It’s not that close!”
The squad car passed by the front, of the house. Words floated up to the roof.
“ . . . wind keeps blowing out of the east, the fire lines could be breached,” a calm voice said. “There is no reason to panic. There is plenty of time to evacuate. Just get in your cars and drive slowly and carefully down the hill.”
Water and ashes running down her face, Shelley stood on the lowest roof and listened to the evacuation order. Slowly she looked around.
The roof was only partially wet.
I can’t leave yet. The roof is still dry. Besides. The fire is still at least one ridge over. The wind will shift again before there’s any real danger. Santa Ana winds always shift.
The squad car turned at the cul-de-sac and went down the street again, sending the evacuation orders echoing between the smoky, windswept houses. Cars started up and began following the officer down the hill, away from the fire.
No fire trucks came screaming up the narrow road. Despite the evacuation orders, other areas were in more immediate danger from the fire.
“I’m not leaving yet,” Shelley said. “This is my home! If I leave now and an ember lands on the roof, no one will be here to put it out.”
She glanced around anxiously. To the southwest, over the ravine behind her house, the sky had dimmed from blue to gray. Overhead, the air was darkened by smoke, getting darker with each minute. Ashes rained down. With them came tiny glowing embers.
Where the Heart Is Page 26
