Rand stood, and as he did she reached out and took his hand. She had a surprisingly strong grip. “What?” he asked.
“Just...thank you. Now, go.”
Rand dropped her hand and raced away, wondering if the tear he’d seen was gratitude or smoke in Beatrice’s eye.
“CHRIS!”
Rand ran into the forest, the flames dying around him as the fire crew blasted water through the trees. He pushed through the piles of smoldering pine nettles and over the downed limb that had almost killed Beatrice, Eli and him.
As a firefighter the smell of wet earth always gave Rand hope. But would he find the boy in time? Did he even want to be found?
“Chris!” he yelled into the shock of burned and blackened trees, denuded of foliage and standing like spikes against the night sky. “Chris!”
Kids were strange ducks in Rand’s book. Most of them could outsmart the majority of adults. Granted, he didn’t hang with philosophers and academics, but his family and friends were no dummies. Kids, however, were open to all possibilities and concepts. That’s why a lost kid was so hard to find. They didn’t sit still. They didn’t follow patterns that “thinking” adults would take. They relied on base animal instincts. When trapped, they bolted for freedom. When cornered, they would outsmart their prey or vanish. They bucked rules, ignored safety measures and took risks.
He guessed that Chris had used plenty of animal instincts to avoid Rand’s search thus far. With the blaze petering out, Chris could circle around, exit through an unburned area and get back to camp. Of course, that scenario assumed Chris wanted to return to camp. But what if he didn’t? What if he was a runner? A kid who felt so displaced in his life that all he wanted was to skip over these tough years and wake up when he was much older. Rand had seen that kind of kid.
Sometimes they were arsonists.
Rand had fought fires from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Idaho to California. He knew exactly the kind of conditions that it took for Mother Nature to burn. But there had been no thunderstorms here in Indian Lake. No lightning bolts. And not quite enough heat to spark spontaneous combustion. No, this was a fire started by human hands. Rand would bet his reputation on it.
And if he was right, Chris had all the more reason to stay clear.
Rand had one shot at bringing out Chris. He had to take it.
“Chris! I know you can hear me. It’s safe now. Eli is safe.”
Rand kept going, toward the most burned section of forest. It was his guess that it had been near here where the fire started.
“Chris!”
“Do—do you promise?” The young voice traveled down from the sky to Rand.
Rand turned on his boot and looked up. To his right was a tall, wide pine tree that had been burned on the bottom, but halfway up the tree, the limbs were unscathed. Huddled between two enormous lush pine limbs was a boy. Rand couldn’t see his face in the dark. But he could feel his fear.
“Yes, I promise your brother is safe with Miss Beatrice at the camp.”
“I don’t believe you,” he sniffed.
“It’s true.”
“How did they get out? I barely got up here myself before it all exploded.”
Now the boy was crying and the sobs caught in his throat, restricting his words.
“The trees did explode,” Rand said, careful to keep his words calm.
“It was scary. Really bad.”
“But you were brave. You climbed that tree all by yourself.”
“I’ve been climbing stuff all my life.”
“I’ll bet you have. Let me guess. Windows? Fire escapes? Rooftops, maybe?”
“Yeah.”
“I was kinda like that, too. I’m still climbing ladders. Ropes. That kind of stuff.” Rand paused as he heard the dissipating sound of the hoses. The crew was winding down. “The fire is under control. You come down.”
Silence.
Chris coughed and then hacked. Rand guessed the kid had inhaled his share of smoke tonight.
“There are paramedics here who need to help you. The smoke—”
“I know all about smoke,” Chris interrupted. “Okay?”
Rand felt impatience kindle in his belly. “Chris. You have to come down, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“No kidding.” Rand ground his teeth. This was no place for attitude. A burned limb could fall at any moment and crash into them both. But while he could think of a dozen retorts to Chris at the moment, not one of them would get the kid to climb to the ground. “If you don’t come down, I’ll come up and get you.”
“How?”
“Just like you did. Climb. Then I’ll tie a rope to you and lower you to the ground. Or you can stay there, where the burned bark will skin you alive. Your choice. But I’m not leaving here without you.”
“Why?”
“It’s my job.”
“Oh.” Chris started coughing. He cleared his throat. He coughed again. “I’m coming down.”
Rand knew that once Chris got past the living foliage and sturdy limbs, his descent was going to get rough. There was a good twenty feet of burned bark and sharp splinters on that half-denuded trunk. Rand could see jagged stubs of limbs on the trunk, but could Chris? Were they strong enough for him to get a foothold? Or would they break under his weight? Worse, would the kid make a jump for it and risk breaking a leg or ankle in his drop?
“Once you get to the last limb, Chris, I want you to take it slow. I’ll guide you down.”
“I don’t need your help, okay? I made it up here and I can make it down on my own.”
Rand heaved a frustrated sigh and put his hands on his hips. Beatrice certainly had her hands full with this one.
“You’re doing great,” Rand encouraged the boy as Chris moved down through the limbs and came to the burned part of the trunk.
Chris toed the trunk with his sneaker, searching for a foothold, but he found none. The boy grabbed the limb with both hands and lowered his feet farther down the tree, still looking for a brace.
“The trunk is too wide for you to hug and slide down. Plus, you’ll scrape your skin in the process,” Rand said. “Or...”
“Or?” Chris asked with just enough trepidation that Rand thought he might have made an impression on the kid.
“You can drop and I’ll catch you.”
“No way.”
“It’s okay, my body will cushion your fall.”
Chris peered down at Rand, his arms stretched over his head as he hung on to the limb. His knuckles had gone white and his fingers were starting to slip. The kid wouldn’t last much longer.
“Why?”
“There ya go with the questions again. Just drop.”
“You’re angry at me.”
“I’m getting there, yeah.”
Rand heard the hoses stop, then he looked up. The wind had died completely. Tiny pellets of long-overdue rain had started to sprinkle