White Heat Read online

They wound their way toward San Puebla, over the railroad tracks, the rickety bridge, down the centuries-old road. Tom drove, with Griffin next to him. Lyndie was in the backseat with the two lovebirds, both of them chomping at the bit.

  She had no idea why they had to get married right now, right this very moment. She’d have much preferred to see Tom let his daughter have the life she wanted. Then she’d have given out the cargo of supplies Brody had provided and gone back to the States. Brody and Nina could live in sinful bliss as long as they wanted, with no promise, or burden, of the actual marriage.

  Something she’d hoped to do herself. Instead, she held Lucifer’s carrying case, who was extremely unhappy in her lap with the wind whipping around them. Unhappiness she understood, as it had rooted within her as well.

  Historically, when she was unhappy, she made sure she was alone to lick her wounds, and she had plenty to lick. But there would be no alone time for her now.

  It didn’t help that she had a perfect view of the man who’d caused her wounds. Griffin’s broad shoulders stretched the material of his T-shirt, his fawn colored hair blowing wild around his head. Then suddenly he stiffened, and when she saw why, she did, too.

  A long, narrow plume of smoke rose over the closest peak in front of them.

  29

  A flare-up. The last thing on earth Griffin wanted to deal with.

  Nope, scratch that. The last thing he wanted to deal with was the woman standing behind him, arms crossed, face unreadable, eyes filled with misery as she tapped her foot and pretended not to give a shit that he’d broken her heart.

  Something he’d never intended to do.

  He stood on a rock outcropping, with the river rushing at his feet and the blackened mountainside behind him. About a quarter of a mile below was where they’d left the Jeep, after leaving Tom and Nina off in town to get together whatever crew and tools they could.

  Brody had remained at the top of the trail to wait for help to arrive.

  Not Lyndie. There was no waiting anywhere for Lyndie. The stubborn woman had insisted on staying with him.

  To the bitter end.

  They easily found the fire, at the base of the canyon where the blow up had occurred the week before. He figured the embers had been smoldering for days, hidden from view by the rock and fresh vegetation lining the river. The last crew might have called it quits too early, or hadn’t checked all the northern perimeters first. Or maybe there’d been lightning.

  “Not too bad yet,” Lyndie said. “Right?”

  He estimated twenty acres. “Not if we get right on it.”

  “You’ve got the river as one firebreak,” she said. “And the burned hillside behind it as another.” She smiled at his raised brow. “I learned a lot in the past few weeks.”

  “Probably more than you ever wanted to.”

  Her smile faded, her eyes filled with such sadness. “Yeah.”

  Ah, hell. “Lyndie—”

  “Just…fix this,” she said. “Get this fire taken care of once and for all, and we’ll go and smile for Brody and Nina, and then we can get the hell out of Dodge. Okay?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned on her heel and walked away, down the river, back toward the direction Brody had gone.

  “No, not okay,” he said, but no one answered.

  * * *

  In two hours they had fifteen men along the back side of the flare-up, standing along a trail that they intended to use as a firebreak. They had their backs to a wall of weary, thirsty conifers, ripe for exploding if they didn’t stop the fire. Far above them was sheer rock, far below the already burned acreage…but in between was a nightmare playing out that couldn’t be stopped.

  Griffin wore the same clothes he’d flown here in, which were the jeans and T-shirt he’d pulled on this morning after finding Lyndie had left him alone in her bed. Tom had come up with gloves for him, and a long-sleeve button-up to protect his arms.

  It had to be nearly a hundred degrees, with no humidity. The air crackled. As always, the fire created its own weather, and Griffin had never in his life seen a flare-up get so hot so fast. As the afternoon turned to early evening, and then dusk, even the trees and growth with roots in the river were bursting into flame, shooting fire straight up into the sky, where balls of it seemed to leap from treetop to treetop. A crown fire fueled by wind, and now it didn’t even need the ground vegetation to spur it on.

  Looking around, he knew. This thing had become bigger than them. The narrow, low running river wasn’t going to provide protection, not with the flames as hot as they were.

  Which left them unexpectedly trapped. They couldn’t go down, the vicious walls of flame held them off. The 35 mph gusts shoved the fire ahead of them as well, reducing the angle between the flames and the fuel on the ground, resulting in an overwhelming inferno. It raced ahead of them, up the hill, blocking their road out.

  Griffin’s mind raced with their options, which were few, when suddenly a two-hundred-foot pine tree fell, crashing down, shuddering the ground around them like an earthquake.

  “Griffin?” Lyndie gripped his arm, pale despite the scorching heat.

  It was automatic to reach for her. “Scared?”

  “Nah.” She looked around her, at the trees above them crackling with the dry air and flames, at the way they were becoming circled in. The hot air whipped her hair around her face and she tightened her hand on his.

  With an earsplitting crack, a tree just to their right exploded.

  Lyndie jerked. “Okay, I’m officially scared now.”

  The flames were licking at their heels, and he knew it would be only a matter of time before it leapt over the river to where they stood. It’d happened so damn fast he still couldn’t believe it. “The burned area to the east,” he told Lyndie.

  She shouted the directions over the bruising wind and crackling fire. “Let’s go. Vamanos!”

  In a single-file line, they made their way along the river back to the already blackened area that had burned last week. They couldn’t go any farther south, or any other direction for that matter, the flames had trapped them in. On a hillside about fifty acres wide, they sat surrounded by flames and watched. There was nothing else to do.

  Caught between the rock hillside and the already burned out area, the fire turned on itself, and raged. The sun fell out of the sky, leaving them in the dark except for the fire itself, an eerie, out of body experience for anyone who hadn’t experienced such a thing before. Dark, dark sky, leaping flames into the sky, all around them.

  Through Lyndie’s translation, Griffin did the best he could to ease everyone’s mind, and not for the first time, marveled at how she held up. For an hour they sat there, and then another hour, and then finally, the firestorm was over.

  They’d lost forty more acres but not a single soul, and Griffin thought maybe he could lie down and sleep for three weeks. They staggered off the mountain and into the village, everyone going their own separate and exhausted ways.

  Griffin found himself in the kitchen of the inn, being fed by Rosa, along with several of the men she had also insisted on feeding. Eventually they went off, leaving him alone.

  He didn’t want to be alone. Hearing a low murmur of voices, he opened the back door and found Brody and Nina in each other’s arms beneath the dark, dark night. “Sorry,” he said, and went back inside. He headed into the large living room and found Rosa standing behind Tom’s chair, massaging the man’s shoulders, her mouth teasing his ear as she whispered something that had Tom looking like a mighty happy man.

  Turning to head back into the kitchen, Griffin nearly tripped over a sleeping Tallulah and…Lucifer? Curled up together like they’d come from the same litter.

  Damn, he’d never felt more alone in his life. It’d been a long time since he’d had someone in his life to kiss, to massage, to sleep with, someone who could just touch him and make his world seem like a better place.

  Too long.

  He climbed the stairs, then let himself