Chapter Twenty

Lily spent a restless night, her dreams punctuated not by fireworks, but by flames. She woke up with a choking sensation a few minutes before her alarm was due to go off. Smelling smoke, she shot upright, her chest tight, her heart pounding.

Think, assess. Don’t panic.

Lily took a deep breath, blinked the night’s clouds from her eyes, and scanned the room. Nothing. Nothing but the remnant of a dream.

Rising, needing to be sure, she pushed the window open wide and leaned out, both hands braced on the sill. Thunder Ridge, an unbroken collage of green beneath a steel-gray sky not yet giving way to the dawn, rose unmolested above her. Somewhere beyond that pristine ridge, fire devoured the forest. Somewhere out there, Chase and dozens of others stood in the fire’s path and denied it passage. How close was the fire? How long before Chase and the others battled it into submission?

She’d resisted the urge all evening to find Sarah and pester her for an update. Sarah would come to her with any news as soon as she could, and reminding her—reminding them both—of their helplessness was simply cruel. Folding her arms across her chest, Lily suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the damp morning mountain air, an anomaly that would disappear by noon when the day lay heavy as a cloying blanket beneath the blistering sun. That discomfort barely registered now, not when somewhere out there—where she wasn’t exactly sure, considering her natural compass was sorely lacking despite a summer tramping through the surrounding forests—Chase was undoubtedly hard at work. She would be hot and dusty and tired beyond anything Lily could imagine, facing one of nature’s most violent displays of temper. Had she slept? Had she eaten? Was she whole and uninjured?

“Damn it,” Lily muttered. She’d had moments—hours verging on days that hazed into weeks—of frustration and rankling impotence over the last few years, but unlike now, she’d had weapons of her own with which to fight back. Now she was sidelined, helpless, and the stakes were personal. She was tucked away here, safe and secure, and whatever Chase faced out there, there was absolutely nothing Lily could do to help her.

Lily lifted her chin and turned her back from the window to gather her clothes. She had a full schedule ahead, and a camp full of kids who would still benefit from what she could help teach them. Chase was doing her job, and she’d do hers.