Second Chance Pass (Virgin River #5)(119)

“Yellow,” Walt said.

Her head snapped around and she stared at him. “Yellow,” she said.

“That was easy,” he said. “It’s all around and you wear it a lot. Red’s important, too.”

“Right,” she said, shocked. She shook herself. “Okay, number two hit, number three cheated, number four had a child he failed to mention, number five—”

“All right, wait,” Walt said. “Is this going to go on for a real long time?”

She grinned at him. “Didn’t you look it up on the Internet?”

“I did not,” he said, almost insulted.

“We’re stopping at five. He had a substance-abuse problem. I didn’t know about it beforehand, obviously. I tried to help, but I was in the way—he needed to be on his own. That’s when I decided that, really, I should quit doing that. Marrying. But please understand, it’s not all my fault—Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a reputation for long, sturdy relationships. I did the best I could.”

“I have no doubt,” he said.

“Do you say that because you have no doubt? Or are you being a sarcastic ass to a poor woman who had to go through five miserable husbands?”

He chuckled. Then he slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. It was the first time he’d been that bold. He’d been riding with her, showing up at her house to drink wine while they sat on lawn chairs in front of the bunkhouse, even talking to her almost daily on the phone, but he hadn’t gotten physical. “The Army was rough on families, too. I was lucky.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe you’re just better at it than me.”

“I suppose that’s possible, too,” he said. Then he smiled at her.

The men fighting the fire grew dry and tired. They’d worked their way into the forest along a line that had grown wide and deep. Jack leaned against his shovel as Mike Valenzuela passed by with a chain saw, headed up the line to cut boughs from more felled trees. He paused for a drink and took a few deep breaths before bending to his job of turning earth, tossing dirt onto a growing pile that formed a small dike against the forest. Mike moved down the line of men, out of sight. Jack wiped his forehead and put the shovel back to the ground.

Then something subtle happened. The slight breeze that Jack had been feeling on the back of his neck changed to a hot wind that hit him full in the face. Frowning, he began to walk up the line and around the curve in the direction Valenzuela had gone, looking for the source of that sudden heat. As the logging road went deeper into the trees, the volunteers thinned out and the professionals were the ones moving closer to the fire.

A murmur went up among the men and sparks filled the air. The line of men that had been winding around the hill to his left began to move toward him, then past him. Jack didn’t see Mike anywhere, so he walked a little farther. He quickly saw that there was no one back there. Behind him, from where he had been, he heard, “Move out, move out, move out!”

Firefighters who had been behind him were beginning to jog down the road. He heard a roar, sparks filling the air. The fire that they’d been chasing was coming toward them, hard and fast. In front of him was dense smoke, behind him—the logging road from whence he’d come, and to his left, a deep ravine. He turned to move out down the road when there was a blast—an ignited tree that had been burning exploded about ten feet into the forest and sent a shower of sparks and debris over the road in a huge flash. A two-hundred-foot sequoia was on fire not five feet away from where he stood. He took a dive in the direction of the ravine and began to crawl madly toward it as a burning tree came down and flames shot over his head.

At the command to move out, the firefighters and volunteers were being quickly herded back down the hill to the road, where trucks were waiting to evacuate them. Paul was craning his neck, looking for Jack. He’d seen him move into the trees, but he wasn’t back yet. Then sparks began to fly and a roaring sound could be heard. Mike Valenzuela jumped up on the truck beside some of his boys. “Where’s Jack?” Paul asked him.

“Haven’t seen him.” He looked around. “One of the other trucks?”

Paul jumped out of the truck and started back up the road, but he was grabbed by the crew chief and pushed toward the truck.

“One of our boys is in there,” he said.

“There’s no one in there,” the chief said. “Everyone was cleared out.”

“I saw him go in that direction!”

“There’s no one back there, buddy.”

“I saw him!”

“If there’s anyone there, they’ll get him,” he said, pointing to a long line of firefighters making fast tracks out of the burning forest. Right at the back of their column was an explosion, sending debris and sparks flying over their heads. Paul found himself shoved into the truck, landing in a heap, while their captain yelled, “Let’s go! Move out!” And the truck jerked into motion.

Paul sat up in the bed of the truck and watched as all these yellow-clad, hard-hatted men scrambled into the next truck, and then a third, and as each one filled up, they drove pell-mell down the logging road to the asphalt. He had to be in one of those other trucks, Paul thought. He had to be.

Two planes flew in low, dumping retardant on the fire, a bright red powder. Flames leaped toward the aircraft as they disappeared over the forest.