His head lifted as the revving car engine sounded closer. Too close. She’s driving too fast, he thought angrily. He wasn’t going to get out of the parking lot before she was back in it. The damn fool will hurt herself.
His foot jerked, messing the nice little pile he’d made. Then her car came careening into the lot straight for him. As he leaped back to save himself, her front tire ran over the remains of the laptop. The car stopped with a jerk and the combined power of the wind and the airstream she created picked up a mass of papers, throwing them high into the air again.
They rained like confetti over his head as she threw open her car door.
“For God’s sake, Angel.” He went ahead and shouted at her because he was so fucking tired of everything. “I was hoping to survive at least until lunchtime. What the hell are you doing now?”
From behind the steering wheel, she swallowed, her eyes wide. “Fire! There’s a fire.”
He leaped toward her. “What? Where?”
She made a vague gesture behind her. “There. Back there.”
“Get out of the seat,” he said, trying to pull her from the car. “Let me go see.”
“No, no. You can’t. It’s burning on both sides of the road. Moving fast, and moving right this way.”
Chapter 20
Cooper’s gaze shot from Angel to the road behind her. The dust hadn’t settled because it wasn’t dust.
Smoke. It was smoke. Now that his wits were focused, he could see it, smell it. Fire had been a constant threat all summer, and it was the worst of the punishments that nature could mete out to the Sur. Flash floods and mudslides were bad enough, but thanks to tricky winds and inaccessible canyons, a small grass fire could quickly become a conflagration.
“How close?” He was already turning, running for the path that led up to the retreat. “How close?” he yelled again over his shoulder.
Angel caught up to him, breathing hard. “Bad at distances,” she answered. “Halfway to the highway?”
Only half a mile away. Okay, okay. Think, Jones, think. Beth and Judd were safely away. Lainey was nearing Carmel by now. The retreatants were with the brothers. Then, with a vicious bite, fear struck.
“Katie!” He stopped short and grabbed Angel by the shoulders. “Katie’s alone at her house.”
Angel gasped. “Oh my God.”
“Quick, Angel, think. Which way is the fire moving?”
She was trembling beneath his hands. “Southwest. It was coming from the south and moving toward the ocean. Toward us.”
The Whitney house was north, a greater distance from the fire, but the phone at Tranquility was much closer.
“Listen,” he said to Angel. “Since we can’t use the road, you need to take the shortcut—the walking path—to Katie. I’ll go down to the retreat, call in the fire, then come to you two.”
“No!” She grabbed his forearms. “We stay together.”
Shaking his head, he pulled free of her. “We’re all better off if I call it in right away.” He shoved her in the direction of the Whitney house. “Go. Go!”
She stumbled back, then stayed rooted to the ground. “No, Cooper. Don’t. Don’t leave me.”
Ignoring the husky break in her voice—Am I so unlovable, then?—he forced himself to shove her again, making his voice hard. “You’re leaving me, all right? You’re leaving me to help Katie.”
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
The smell of fire was thickening the air. It dried his eyes, irritated the inside of his nose. “Angel, you’ve got to do this.” He worked to keep the alarm out of his voice. “For Katie. Please.”
“Katie.” The name finally seemed to pierce Angel’s stubbornness. She sucked in a breath, glanced at the path behind her, then met his gaze. “For Katie.”
Without another look back, he turned and tore toward the retreat. It would take Angel three times longer to get to his niece, even if she ran. By then he would have called the emergency number and be making his way to them both.
Unless he was trapped by the fire.
Angel approached the Whitney front door at a run and thumped both fists against it. “Katie!” She pushed her hair off her forehead, the skin sticky and tight from the sweat that had dried instantly in the arid atmosphere. Her fists thumped again. “Katie!”
The door opened, releasing a cold wash of air. Katie stared at Angel, round-eyed. “You’re here.”
“Fire.” She’d left her breath somewhere back on the path, Angel decided. “Cooper.”
Katie nodded. “He called from the retreat and said you were coming.”
“He’s all right, then?” Angel clutched the doorjamb, her legs weak with relief.
“He said to wait for him here, but if we get worried to take the car and head north.” She lifted her hand to show a set of car keys dangling from her fingers.
Drawing in a deep breath, Angel stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “Yes, we’ll wait for him.” She deliberately slowed her words, hoping to sound resolute and calm. “He won’t be long.”
But staying calm was like trying to keep still while the hot breath of a monster was blowing on the back of her neck. For Katie’s sake, though, she calmly took a >seat beside the window in the living room to keep watch for Cooper. As the minutes ticked by and Angel couldn’t hide her trembling any longer, she casually directed the girl to go upstairs. “Gather what you need for an overnight stay, just in case Cooper thinks we should leave.”
Katie threw her a frightened look, but Angel pretended not to see it. The last thing she wanted to deal with right now was anyone else’s fear. She was having enough trouble controlling her own.
She looked out the window. Where’s Cooper?
He shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes behind her, even allowing for a couple of phone calls. Hadn’t she already been sitting here for at least that long? It had to be twenty-five minutes. Thirty. Eternity.
I’m dying.
Inside her head, she heard him saying the words, she saw that implacable expression on his face. But he wasn’t dying, he wasn’t! And she couldn’t think about that now. She couldn’t think about him telling her he’d never love her.
“Angel!”
She jumped from her seat as Katie yelled her name again and came running down the stairs. “What? What?”
“Outside.” Katie grabbed her arm and pulled her through the kitchen and out the doors to the pool area. “Look.”
It was snowing. Oh God, not snowflakes, but flakes of ash. They swooped down, driven by a wind that was blowing from the south. From Tranquility.
Like flower petals, the ash was softly falling and settling everywhere—on the flagstone patio, on the market umbrellas and chaise lounges, on the square-cut hedges, the potted, blooming geraniums, even on the surface of the pool. It was drifting into their hair too. Angel tried brushing it out of Katie’s even as another flurry drifted over them, dumping more ash on the poolhouse roof and dusting the pines ringing one side of the patio.
“What do we do?” Katie said, sounding small and lost. Sounding like a little girl.
Katie was a little girl. Angel’s stomach clenched at the thought, but she spun away from the teen’s white face and wide eyes. “We water stuff down,” she replied, cool and matter-of-fact.
She had no idea how effective it might be, but they had to do something. Hadn’t she watched news footage of people fighting fires hundreds of times? They always watered stuff down. “Where’s a hose?”
When the girl only stood there, Angel sharpened her voice. “Where’s a hose?”
Katie still didn’t move. “I want my mom.” Her arms wrapped around herself. “I want my mom.”
Angel didn’t like the panic on the girl’s face or the tears in her voice. “We have to keep it together, Katie.”
“I want my mom,” she said again. “Let’s go to my mom.”
Angel shook her head, eyeing the ash raining down and the widening cloud of smoke moving their way. “W
e’re waiting for Cooper, remember?”
Katie’s eyes filled with tears.
At the sight of them, Angel’s anxiety tripled. “Don’t cry, for pity’s sake. Don’t cry.” What could she say to calm the kid’s fears? “We’ll wait a little longer. If he still isn’t here, maybe…may be you can take the car yourself.”
The instant the words left her mouth, she regretted them. Of course she couldn’t let Katie leave alone.
But before Angel could take them back, the girl broke. She dropped to the ground, sobbing. “Can’t drive,” she choked out. “My dad…my dad…promised to teach me soon.” Her whole body shook with more wrenching sobs as she drew her knees to her chest and buried her face against them.
Helpless, Angel stared down at her. What was she supposed to do now? She sucked at this kind of emotion! This was person-to-person stuff. Personal.
Tears made her uncomfortable. Worse, they made her feel out of control.
She hunkered beside Katie and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “We, uh, we have to be strong now.” She remembered her mother saying that, every time they moved to a new apartment, new town, new country. “Now’s not a good time to fall apart.”
“My daddy…where’s my daddy?”
The girl’s wail was one of grief, of anguish, of fear, Angel thought, gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached. It was every emotion Katie had bottled up since her father’s death.
Their father’s death.
Katie suddenly looked up, pinning Angel with a tear-drenched gaze. “Where is he?” Then her face crumpled again and another wash of tears ran down her cheeks. “He’s supposed to save me.”
He’s supposed to save me.
Angel froze. It was as if the words were wrenched straight from Angel’s childhood. Straight from that deepest, darkest corner of her heart. But she wasn’t going to cry about it. Hell, no.
Instead, squaring her shoulders, she grabbed Katie and pulled her close. “We’ll be all right,” she said, her voice strong. Emphatic. “We’re okay.”
“I want my daddy,” Katie sobbed against her neck.
Yeah, well, join the club, Angel thought, resentment toward Stephen Whitney piling on top of the ever-simmering anger. He’d deserted both of them. Her arms tightened around Katie. “We don’t need a man to save us. We don’t need anyone.”
Katie looked up, her expression tragic. “But I loved him,” she answered. “I loved him.”
Why? Angel wanted to shout at the girl. What did he ever do for you?
But he’d been a real father to Katie, Angel knew that. He’d painted clouds on her bedroom ceiling and probably taught her to swim and to ride a bike and would have taught her to drive. He’d likely played toddler games with her too, throwing her up in the air, telling her to flap her wings. Fly, angel, fly! he’d probably called out as he tossed her. And then, as she fell, he’d saved her, catching her in his arms, to rub his cheek against her blond curls.
And the little girl had giggled and given her daddy dozens and dozens of angel kisses all over his face, until he’d laughed his deep daddy-laugh and begged her to stop.
“Did he…did he used to throw you up and catch you?” Angel whispered, her eyes strangely stinging.
Katie shook her head. “Don’t remember.”
But I do.
She remembered the flying angel game now, and other games, jacks and Old Maid and a board game with candy characters. She remembered a paint-splattered hand turning the pages of a picture book. She remembered being held in the curve of his arm and leaning against him, falling asleep to the sound of his voice rumbling in his chest.
What had happened? Why had he left her, why hadn’t he come when she needed him?
She was never going to know the whole story.
But as Angel’s arms tightened around her half-sister, she realized those answers didn’t matter so much anymore. He hadn’t been a superhero. Like all men, like all humans, male and female alike, he’d made mistakes, he’d made errors of judgment, he’d caused other people pain. But he was gone now.
With an odd sense of calm, she lifted her face skyward and watched the ashes continue to fall around them, on them, onto her cheeks. Her wet cheeks.
Amazed, Angel put her hand up to her face, and then she brought it away, staring down at the muddy concoction of ash and tears on her fingertips. She was crying.
Crying.
But not because she was weak.
Not because once upon a time some man had done her wrong.
She was crying in relief, she was crying while a quiet sort of peace entered her heart.
She was crying because she remembered now, because she knew, without a doubt, that her father had loved her.
Cooper had made the necessary phone calls without a hitch. The first-aid kit and the survival blankets had been right where he’d expected. After stuffing a water bottle in the front pocket of his jeans, he started after Angel, thinking he might be able to catch up to her before she reached Katie.
But somewhere between the retreat and the Whitney compound, bad luck and hell caught up with Cooper. One minute he was traveling through hot, but fairly clear air, and then the next he was engulfed in a drift of ash. Tiny embers blew down with it, looking like fireflies at dusk.
But he plowed forward, hoping he could outdistance the fire at his back, hoping the strong offshore wind would blow the flames straight toward the sea instead of letting the fire creep northward. But as he neared the halfway point on the shortcut to the Whitney house, the point where the trail was pinched between a steep incline and the V-point of a deep canyon, he saw flames crest the hill above him.
Then, worse, one of the “fireflies” landed at the bottom of the deep fissure below, igniting the dry brush.
Shit! If the wind shifted, blowing onshore, that little tuft of burning bush could become a firestorm that would race up the gorge at a hundred miles an hour. Cooper stumbled on a root and fell to his knees, his gaze fixed on the fire that was crackling and building below him. The air filled with smoke, drifting up from below and billowing down from the fire above him.
Abandoning the blankets and the first-aid kit, he stripped of his shirt and tied it over his mouth to filter the soot. Then he pushed to his feet. Keep going, he commanded himself, as he tripped again. Keep moving.
The wind shifted, swirling ashes, blowing another hot blast of thick smoke over him. He blinked rapidly, trying to get a clearer view of what was in front of him. But the smoke was huddled around him now, trying to cut off every breath, every step.
Cooper shook his head, willing himself to think clearly, see clearly. Glancing back, he wondered if the fire behind him had already burned all the way to the ocean. Burned out. If so, turning back toward the retreat was a better bet than proceeding forward.
Don’t leave me. He heard Angel’s voice in his head, saw Katie’s precious face in his mind’s eye. He’d promised to come to them. They were counting on him, though he hoped to God they’d already taken the car and gotten out.
The smoke blanketed him now. He couldn’t see in front of him, behind him, around him. Was the fire moving faster, roaring down, roaring up?
It was hard to think. Hard to breathe. He was dizzy and his boots must be filled with cement. His chest felt so heavy. A dreaded heaviness.
If he died, would an angel find him in all this gray, sooty darkness?
No, his mind responded groggily. He’d never see Angel again.
The thought cleared his mind like a shot of pure oxygen. Oh God, oh God. He’d never see her again. He wanted to scream in frustration at fire and fate and his own stupidity. He was never going to see her again, and she’d never know how happy she’d made him.
Would someone else take his place in Angel’s life? Of course, because she wasn’t the least bit unlovable. But now he’d never get the chance to tell her she was right, that he’d let her drive away hoping to save himself, not to save her.
But, damn it, it hadn’t worked. He’d half-
known it then, and the truth was glaringly obvious now. He loved her. He was in love with her.
But he’d been right too, he thought, as he stumbled again and fell painfully to his knees: It hurt so much more to die when he had so much more to lose.
Katie saw the flames first. Angel and she were still beside the pool, still holding each other, when she suddenly clutched Angel tighter. Angel followed her pointing finger to the high, weedy hill behind the house. Fire was burning along its edge.
Swiping at her wet face, Angel jumped to her feet, dragging Katie up too. If the fire took a downward turn, there was nothing between them and it, because first it would cut off the road leading to safety. Then they’d be trapped, and she didn’t think the small stand of pines clustered by the pool area, or the tamed vegetation around the house, or even the house itself would prove much of a deterrent.
“Give me the keys,” she said. “Let’s get to the car.”
Surely Cooper would arrive any second.
Angel ran another quick, assessing eye over the situation. Okay, perhaps the manicured landscaping around the house might slow down or divert flames. If it didn’t, the outsides of the tower, house, and poolhouse were constructed with at least some unburnable stone. If she had to make a guess at their point of vulnerability, it was that stand of eight or ten pines behind the poolhouse. If those went up, who knew what would go next?
Yes, it was time to get out.
But as Katie dug the ring of keys from the pocket of her shorts, over her shoulder Angel saw the flames start racing down the hillside. Terror spiked inside her, shooting from her belly to pierce her heart.
It looked as if it was too late for all of them.
Cooper’s shallow breaths sounded harsh in his own ears as he struggled once more to his feet. He moved doggedly through the smoke, one foot at a time, one more desperate half-breath at a time.
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