The fire incident commander had warned her not to go, since the fire was moving fast and was too unpredictable. Oliver asked her not to go. She was the police chief; surely she could let the fire department see to evacuations. But Tess was Tess, fearless and a little reckless at times. He couldn’t deny that those same qualities that attracted him to her also frustrated and terrified him at times.

“At the rate this fire is moving, you have at best ten minutes,” the fire commander had told her.

“Please don’t push it,” Oliver had pleaded. “Pay attention to the clock.”

“I’m not stopping to socialize. I’ll be fine.”

In the end they’d set a safe time parameter, but Tess was way past that now.

He was across the street from his church—all services had been canceled today—and stood near the Hollow bridge, looking down River Drive. The wind whipped around him as he tried to get a better view of the road she should be coming down if she followed the last evacuee. The truck he knew as belonging to Janie and Garrett Cooper appeared, passed him, and turned in to the already-crowded church lot. Rogue’s Hollow Community Church was a certified shelter for those complying with the evacuation orders. Though only half the town was threatened and the wind-whipped fire was swirling away from downtown Rogue’s Hollow, it seemed as though the whole town was here at the church and mobilized to help.

That was what Oliver loved about this place and the people he called friends and parishioners—they were always ready and able to help. There were trailers used to help move threatened livestock, RVs loaned in case people were out of their homes for an extended period of time, and food and food preparers ready and able to start serving up meals.

Knowing that all he could do right now was commit Tess to prayer, Oliver crossed the street and walked back to his church and all the activity there. The fire department had set up a command post in the lot. Emergency personnel, volunteers, and displaced residents milled about. Arthur Goding, looking distraught, was talking to the incident commander. The last communiqué from a helicopter pilot dropping water in the area was that the old logging camp behind his house had gone up in flames. Arthur was more concerned about the camp than he was his own home.

“I can rebuild my house, but that camp is irreplaceable because of the history there.”

In all the years Oliver had lived in Rogue’s Hollow, he’d never seen such a hot and fast fire as he was seeing today. Started by an early fall thunderstorm on Bureau of Land Management property yesterday, the flames spread quickly over summer-dried brush as the same wind that moved the thunderstorms along spread the fire.