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  As he watched the fire jump across the ditch, just as he knew it was going to, he figured he would lose a few buildings today despite all his efforts. Just not, please God, any people. He turned and marched hard away from the approaching flames.

  Chapter 6

  James shut off his computer and grabbed his keys and left his office, phoning Sylvia again as he trotted out to the car. Still no answer.

  When he’d thought about the possibility of the fire shutting off the loop road, a hot shaft of fear had punched through him. Look, the fire might come to nothing. He knew that. The winds might die out. They might shift or even reverse. The firefighting effort might work to contain the burning to uninhabited areas. All that might be so. In fact, it probably was how it’d play out.

  But that tiny chance was there too, that everything would go wrong, that the winds would pick up, and the fire would accelerate in the exact wrong direction. As it was, he’d have just enough time to get home, grab a few things and Syl, and get out of there. That thought made him a little crazy. His foot grew heavier on the accelerator. When he almost ran a red light, he made himself get back under control.

  “I’ll get there in time,” he said to himself. “Nothing will happen. We’ll be fine. Sylvia will be fine.”

  Dammit, he hated that they’d argued this morning. Or that he’d argued. Be honest about it, at least. He’d picked the fight. Sylvia had already started to work, and she hadn’t fought back.

  At the last traffic light before the highway, he activated his Bluetooth and stuck the earpiece in. “Call Sylvia,” he told it.

  It went to voicemail. “Syl, honey, I’m coming home. Pack up your car with clothes, and get valuables together, and insurance papers, and the cash in the bedroom closet. We might have to evacuate. Wait for me unless it’s not safe to stay. I love you.” He waited until the options came on after the message, and he marked it “urgent.” If she wasn’t looking at her phone, she wouldn’t see that either, but when she went to check messages, that one should be at the top of the list.

  Everything will be fine. He kept telling himself that, and telling himself to calm down, because here he was speeding again. A ticket would slow him down. He took some deep breaths, got back into the next-to-right-hand lane, and forced himself to drive the same speed as the traffic around him. He thought he was doing pretty well until he looked up and realized he’d missed moving into the FasTrack lane and was stuck in the lineup for the cash toll.

  “Damn it!” he said, pounding the steering wheel. He turned all the way around in his seat, craning his head, trying to see if he could manage to yank the car out of the lane and get in the right one.

  But no, he was just past the barriers. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said, angry with himself. He got out the transponder anyway, hoping it would work in a pay line, and he jittered in his seat as the line of traffic moved slowly ahead.

  At least it wasn’t rush hour. He could be in this line a half-hour longer if it were an hour later. And that’d be an hour he might live to regret. He inched forward again. Again. It seemed to be taking forever, but the car clock told him he’d been in line for less than five minutes. Finally, after eight long minutes in the line, and he was up at the booths.

  “I got stuck in the wrong lane. I have FasTrack,” he said.

  “Exact change only. A dollar seventy-five,” said the bored, sour-faced woman.

  He took out his wallet. He had a five and a twenty. There were a few quarters in the console, but not seven of them. “All I have is the five.”

  “Exact change only,” she repeated.

  “Lady, I have to go. There’s a fire near my house.”

  “I don’t want your life story, sir,” she said. “I want exact change.”

  He threw the five at her, said, “Arrest me, then,” and took off.

  Idiots. Though he hoped she wouldn’t sic a cop on him. That’d slow him down as well. He kept an eye in the rearview mirror, but no one was after him.

  “I’ll probably get a ticket,” he said, knowing that they filmed every license plate, but really did he care? No. He wanted to go home, and in time.

  There was construction out at the end of the Grass Valley area. He hadn’t known that. Or he supposed he had known, at some level, but they only worked from 9:00 – 3:30 every day, so as not to make rush hour any worse. He read the sign. Okay, and only 9:00 – noon on Fridays, because people might be heading from California into Nevada for the weekends. They were still working right now.

  The delay took long enough that his anxiety rose another notch. He phoned Sylvia again. “Sylvia. If you get this, look the fire up online.” He told her how to find the map. “Call CalFire. Call the sheriff’s office to see if we’re under evacuation orders. If we are, just evacuate. I’ll try to meet you at the turnoff from 49, but don’t wait for me there. Just go. We’ll connect in Grass Valley.” He looked around, hunting for a good meeting site. “If we miss each other, there’s a Best Western. You know, by the DMV? Meet in their parking lot. If I can’t get to you, I’ll get a room and be there from five to whenever. I love you, Syl. I’m sorry I was a dick this morning, and I love you.”

  He told his phone the get the number for the Best Western, and it didn’t understand him. Traffic was at a standstill, so he risked the ticket and grabbed his phone, punching in a search, finding the number then touching it to connect. The call went through. Bluetooth back on. “Can I have a reservation for tonight?” He gave her his details. Should he make it for two nights? A week? He asked her about cancellation fees. It wasn’t bad. He’d just get charged for one night at worst. He made the reservation for a week.

  Just in case.

  He wouldn’t need, it, he told himself. No way would he need it. But when the traffic eased off and he continued toward Nevada City, he could see in the distance a white plume of smoke, rising in the distance: the fire itself, now within his visual range. It wasn’t a small one now. The smoke rose and rose, thinning out as a wind took it.

  He called Sylvia again. This time, it wasn’t no answer. It didn’t even ring.

  The phone system was down? Or just her phone? Either way, it threw him into near-panic.

  He called Pasquale, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before now. No answer. He called Pasquale’s girlfriend Lindsey, and that connected. He left a message, which probably didn’t make much sense, and asked that if she was in Pinedrops right now, to go knock on Sylvia’s door and tell her there was a fire, and to tell Sylvia to listen to her phone messages. If she wasn’t in Pinedrops, he said to Lindsey, please don’t go there. Stay safe.

  James floored it. He had to get home now. Had to. He turned on the radio and made it scan through stations as he drove. He wanted news on the fire, damn it all to hell! Why wasn’t anyone talking about it?

  Chapter 7

  The first time Sylvia knew anything was wrong was when the light changed. It was a normal sunny day one moment, daylight pouring in the window, more than enough light for her to work by, and then the next moment, that bright illumination was gone.

  In its place was an eerie mustard-yellow light, and something in Sylvia’s deep animal brain said, “Run!” Her heart raced, and she shot out of the chair, while her logical mind was saying, “Whoa! Why are you so afraid?”

  She mentally stomped down on the panic that was trying to overtake her. It didn’t seem rational. She didn’t suffer from panic attacks, but she thought this must be what one felt like, a crazed fear far out of proportion to whatever was going on.

  It was that weird light outside. That’s what was doing it. She saved her work with a click and ran out to the deck. And she saw then what her animal brain had known from the first. There was a cloud of smoke overhead, moving from the northwest over her house. Already, the only blue sky left was a patch to the southeast.

  She sniffed and smelled no smoke. But that’s what it was, wasn’t it? It had to be smoke. And not from someone burning brush, and not from a house fire. It was
too vast a cloud. Out here, that meant one thing. Wildfire.

  In a more controlled fear, she rushed around the house, looking for her phone. Within five minutes, she regretted not having more smart devices hooked up. James hated them, and she’d had no opinion until right now. Couldn’t people with all that crap say, “Where’s my phone?” and some disembodied voice would tell them?

  Her phone was everything. It was her connection to James, to her mom, to his folks, to her friends. It had every number, and every password and oh my God if I can’t find it—

  Stop. Think.

  She wrestled her mind under control. All right, Sylvia. If it is a wildfire, and if it is coming this way, you’re going to have to pack your car and go. So pack your car, and while you’re doing that, you’ll see the phone. Start in the bedroom.

  And so that’s what she did, shoving some of her clothes and James’s clothes into two suitcases. Casual clothes. Spare sneakers. A knit dress for her that wouldn’t wrinkle and sandals if she had to look halfway decent. He had on work clothes, so for him, there was room for his hiking boots and a light jacket. She’d wear a light blazer out the front door, despite how hot it was today. She carried that in her teeth to the door, and carried the suitcases, which she dumped all in a heap.

  She packed some food from the kitchen into a shopping bag—not much, but she might have to eat in the car or in a shelter for the next twenty-four hours. A half case of water, still in shrink wrap, held together enough to carry it to the door. And she went to her computer and sent herself the working document, which she did twice daily, and she started a cloud backup of all the computer documents. Back to the official office—James’s office, really—where she yanked out paper copies of insurance policies, their marriage certificate, passports, a little address book she used that had all her passwords written in it, and shoved it all into her briefcase. She went back to the bedroom and took apart the hiding place for cash in the closet. There was a thousand dollars in fifties and another hundred in tens. That went into the briefcase too.

  From the garage, she backed her car into the driveway, put what she’d packed into her car—luckily she hadn’t lost her keys too—and then took a moment to run out to the street to look around.

  A car passed her, honked. Someone shouted at her, and she nodded without looking over, knowing what they probably wanted her to know. She could see very little around her from the front of her house that told her anything of detail about the fire. Now that the last of the blue sky was hidden, if you didn’t know what direction it was coming from, you might not be able to guess, except for the wind, picking up now, blowing steadily across her face. Behind the cloud of smoke, the sun was shining but she could look right at it. Through the smoke cloud, it was the color of good mustard. The smoke itself was brownish gray.

  And all this time, as she packed logically, and acted like a normal human adult who knew how to manage her life, this animal voice in the back of her head kept screaming:

  RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!

  She fought it, keeping it at bay. It wasn’t giving her any help, so she ignored it the best she could. Okay, what else? What were awards or memorabilia or things she couldn’t bear to live without if her house burned down? Back inside, she found a few things, of hers and of James’s, and tucked them into another tote bag. Oh, and toiletries. You could buy them lots of places, of course, but she might as well grab a few.

  And finally, in the bathroom, she found her phone. She felt such sweet relief at its discovery, even the animal voice in the back of her head screaming at her to run shut up for a full minute.

  She scrolled through the messages. James. His mother, a text, saying, I’m worried 4 fire. Heart you. LOL. Many people had explained to Anna Chang for years that LOL didn’t mean “lots of love,” but the explanation never took. And it was bizarre at this moment to have someone laughing at Sylvia’s situation. She certainly wasn’t finding it amusing.

  She’d listen to James’s messages in a second and call him back. For now, the toiletries. Two full plastic bags hanging off her arm, she carried them to the computer to make sure the backup was going okay, and she realized the computer was dead. She tried a light switch. Also dead.

  Okay, don’t panic.

  Don’t panic even worse.

  It could be the fire had taken out lines. It could be that the power company had turned off the power, which they did to prevent fires starting from sparks off fallen lines.

  She had to get out of here, now. She locked the house on her way out. She got into the car and hit the garage door button. It didn’t go down.

  Of course. No power. She ran to it and grabbed the gritty edge of it high overhead and pulled it down. It fought her, but she had the strength of adrenaline and wrestled it half the way down, and then pushed the tiny almost useless handle on the front to get it all the way down from there. Not locked. Just down. Like theft was the thing to worry about now.

  She backed onto the road, reversed, backed up onto her driveway, and stayed parked in her driveway while she listened to the messages from James. When she heard the last one, she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more anxious. He was coming home, which was what she wanted, automatically, unconsciously, with every fiber of her being, wanted her small family together to get through this as a team. She wanted to touch him and smell him and know he was all right.

  But she also wanted him to stay in Sacramento, safe from any danger. She heard the increasing desperation in his voice with every message, and when he told her he loved her, she said it back to her phone. For all the good that did. Silly woman, call him!

  She called him back, or tried to. And got a message saying the system was busy.

  She was a Californian. Every Californian knew, in case of earthquakes, texts might go through when phone calls would not. They took up little bandwidth, and they might sneak on through the instant there was enough available to pass them along. So she typed. I love you. Stay away. I’m on my way out. I’ll meet up with you at that hotel. She typed the time on her car clock. Though she knew her text message would be time-stamped, it might not reflect when she actually left. She hoped he’d get it soon, and he’d turn around and wait for her.

  The emergency alert system for cellphones had not sent her a message, so she hoped that was a good sign. She tried 911, hoping maybe the cell system gave those calls priority, but that also got a “system busy” response. Fine, okay. She’d done what she could. Time to go.

  She turned out onto the highway and joined a line of cars driving toward Highway 49.

  Chapter 8

  James made it past Nevada City before he hit his next roadblock.

  This one was a literal roadblock, with temporary barriers across the road. He had made the sharp curve near Hoyt’s Crossing trailhead, where he’d hiked many times, and there were two cars there, one a marked sheriff’s car, and a uniformed man standing on the center line. James stopped, rolled down the window, and talked to him.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Pinedrops. Do you know if the fire has reached there?”

  “Why, sir?”

  “I live there. My wife is working at home right now.”

  “Ah, I see. Can I have your driver’s license?”

  “Sure.” James pulled it out.

  The deputy took it away to his car and handed it to a second man in the marked car. A few minutes later, the deputy walked back with it. “Checks out. We don’t want looters up there where people are evacuating.”

  “Are you evacuating Pinedrops?”

  “The order came through not ten minutes ago.”

  “Can I get in?”

  “Don’t see why you’d want to.”

  “Until I find my wife, I need to. I mean, what if she decided to go for a long hike? Or is asleep?”

  “We’re blocking off that loop road. So you can’t get in. And you may have to turn around and flee the fire this way. So I understand your concern, but we shouldn’t let you through. Only
people who live nearer than that, farther from the fire, are getting through.”

  Another car pulled up behind James. While he’d been talking to the deputy, at least thirty had come down from the direction of home. So people were evacuating, out of the little towns along the highway and Pinedrops. He should have been looking specifically for Sylvia’s car, not only now, but ever since he hit Nevada City. “I’d like to go up. I’ll take responsibility for myself. And I’ll turn around if I see flames.”

  “Remember the Camp Fire.”

  The deadliest fire in California so far had swept through a town called Paradise, larger than Pinedrops, and killed almost a hundred people there. They were lucky to have evacuated their small hospital just in time, or many more would have died. He’d seen the films of patients in gowns being shoved into nurses’ back seats, with flaming debris raining down over them. Waiting too long to leave had killed a number of the residents of the town. Or being unable to leave killed people without cars, or people in wheelchairs. “We have some older people up there, too,” James said.