She was beautiful. Smart. Loyal. And, despite everything he’d tried to convince himself she’d done during the past decade, incredibly loving.
He’d be a fool to let her slip out of his life again.
The bike was fast, and because Dianna didn’t seem to mind the speed, he kicked it up another notch. Within the next quarter hour they were pulling into the campground’s front gates. Heading for the ranger’s headquarters, he put the brakes on and Dianna was off the bike and running up the stairs before he turned the engine off.
Seconds later, she came back down, her face pinched and tight. “She’s not there.”
Oh shit. April’d had plenty of time to get to the ranger’s station. She should have been there.
And then, he heard Dianna gasp, her hand going over her mouth as all the color left her face, her finger pointing toward the sky.
A quarter mile to the left, in the direction of the river, a plume of fresh, black smoke was rising into the blue sky.
A building must have just been set on fire.
“Get on,” he yelled, and once her arms were back around him, he sped down the paved one-way road that wound through the campsites, wanting to get as close as he could to the fire as quickly as possible before he went in on foot. A group of vacationing families stood huddled together in the parking lot watching the flames.
Again, Dianna jumped off and raced toward the cabin before the bike’s tires had completely stopped spinning.
Leaping off the leather seat, the dirt bike dropping onto the dirt, Sam ran after her. She was fast, but he was faster. He grabbed her arms, not letting her take another step toward certain danger. She struggled hard, trying to pull away, and he had no choice but to imprison her against him, her back pressed hard against his front.
“What if April’s inside? I have to save her!”
It was a big leap, but he understood why she’d gone there. April’s safety was all she could think about right now.
But if he couldn’t get her to listen to reason, there’d be more than one casualty today.
“We don’t know if she’s inside. And it’s not safe for you to go anywhere near that building,” he said firmly in her ear to make sure she got it.
“But what if she is? I can’t let her burn to death!”
There was no reason in her voice, only desperation. He understood, but it didn’t mean he was willing to risk losing her.
The tall dry grass in front of the building was already engulfed in flames. Before he could even get near the cabin, he’d need to put out the grass fire. Still, he wouldn’t let her go until she’d regained control.
“The only way I can get to the building is to light a backfire.”
“No,” she gasped. “Not more fire.”
“When the two fires make contact, they’ll burn each other out. It’s the only way.”
Finally, she seemed to understand, giving him an anguished “Okay.”
He was still afraid that she’d make a run for it when he released his hold on her and pulled several flares out of his pocket. A couple spilled to the ground and Dianna picked them up. Looking at the trees, he studied the direction of the wind to make sure the flames weren’t going to blow straight toward them, or toward the crowd of people who should have known better and evacuated the site already.
But he didn’t have time to warn them of the dangers of loitering so close to a live fire. If Dianna’s sister was inside, he had to save her.
If it wasn’t already too late.
He’d been in the very same position with his brother Connor, had watched him suffer agonizing burns. Even though he’d done all he could to save him, he’d always wished he could have done more.
Would Dianna ever be able to forgive herself if April perished in the fire? And would she forgive him for not saving her?
He reached for her hand and she dug her nails into his knuckles as the fire ravaged the ground in between them and the cabin. And then, less than a minute later, a path cleared in the field into a mass of sizzling embers.
“I’m going to try and get in the cabin now, but I don’t want you to follow me. It’s not safe.”
Sam could see that Dianna wanted to fight him on it, but he had to make sure she understood.
“I can’t help whoever is in the cabin if I have to help you too.”
“Just hurry,” she said, quickly giving in. “Please.”
Without his turnouts, the heat emanating from the ground was intense, but he’d been in far hotter forests. He ran toward the small building, all of his focus on finding a way to get inside, considering that the entire front half was already on fire.
Quickly jogging around the perimeter, he found no doors, no windows to enter from. He’d have to go in the front by diverting the fire from the door.
Grabbing a large branch off the ground, he climbed a nearby tree behind the building and launched himself onto the steaming roof. Moving quickly, he ripped off old roofing tiles, exposing the thin wood planks that covered the beams.
He worked fast with the stick, ramming it into the wood, busting a hole in the ceiling. Any second now, flames would find the new source of oxygen and shoot out the hole. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be caught in them, but if he didn’t make the hole big enough there wouldn’t be enough oxygen to divert the flames from the rest of the structure.
A split second before fire rushed out of the hole he’d made in the roof, Sam jumped out of the way, launching himself the eight feet to the ground.
Like clockwork, the flames moved away from the door. Moving around the front, he kicked it in. The smoke was black and thick, but he’d spent ten years maneuvering through these kinds of conditions, and his eye was trained to look for limbs, to listen for coughing and look for bodies.
But the building was empty. Completely empty.
Sam heard the familiar crackle of a building about to implode and in the nick of time he got out of the building and ran like hell. The walls started falling in on themselves before he reached Dianna.
“Where is she?” Dianna screamed at him.
“She wasn’t in there.”
She fell to her knees, her face in her hands.
Sam had never felt so helpless in all his life as he squatted down to gather her in his arms.
The man watched Dianna Kelley from the parking lot, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move.
Her sister was already in the trunk of his car. When he got back to his compound, he’d punish the girl for the way she was thrashing around, for the noises she dared to make. Fortunately, with all of the commotion from the fire—children and women yelling and crying, sirens finally making their way into the campground from an oncoming Colorado Department of Forestry fire engine and police cars—no one could hear his prisoner struggle.