I thought about Pavel. Only he’d survived, living for over a year after the transfusion before his house burned down. But he was dead too. There were so many holes in my story.

My eyelids fell and I snorted awake as the plane began its final descent. We slipped through steely clouds, and farmland stretched in patches of rust and emerald. I was back in Colorado to uncover Dr. Kriss’s trade secrets, what hid behind the contracts. Now that she knew she wasn’t controlling the story anymore, she must feel as I had when the P-I articles began appearing on my desk. That’s why I would’ve been fine to stay in a holding pattern over Denver for the rest of the day. I didn’t want to feel this solid bounce, this charge down the runway before the engines relaxed. As we trundled to the terminal, I dreaded stepping out from airport security. If Dr. Kriss felt that way, I knew, she’d kill me if she could.

2.

Considering what happened last time, the insurance was steep when I rented the Jeep, but it wasn’t long before I was on the road out of Denver. I stopped at an outdoors store called Alpine Sports and bought a small pair of binoculars, some cargo khakis, a pea-green vest, and a ball cap with autumnal-forest camouflage. The man at the counter asked what I was planning to do and I told him I was going birding near Arcade.

“They’ll be glad to have you down there,” he said. “Seems like all the tourists are staying away this year, with the fires and all.”

“Fires?”

He made sure to ring me up and swipe my card before saying, “You haven’t read about them? The Hayman Fire was right around where you’re headed. Largest forest fire in state history, if you can believe it. Felt like it was everywhere. They’ve contained that one, more or less, but the forest is still burning all over the place. If you end up camping, you’d better obey the no-burn policy and watch for wildlife. There’s an exodus in progress and they don’t care who’s in the way.”

I was looking at the receipt that had unspooled from the machine. With my paycheck withheld and the first of September approaching, my savings were all but gone.

“How are your lungs?” he said.

“Fine.”

“Keep it that way.” He tossed a respirator mask in my bag, no charge.

3.

I saw scorched miles on the road to Arcade. Some trees still stood, trunks black and thin like spent matchsticks, while in places the ground had burned to bare soil and looked like stretches of beach, the earth a fine ash gray. Deer clustered in odd spots, unsure of where to cross.