CHAPTER 1
LIV
Bitterroot, Montana
Eight Months Ago
The wind shifts wrong.
One second, we’re cutting line, steady, methodical, Kent shouting updates over the radio—then everything goes quiet. Too quiet. The kind that presses against your eardrums like a held breath.
I glance up. The smoke above us pulses. Moves sideways. Then curls back in on itself like something alive. I feel the drop in pressure—deep, instinctual. My gut clenches.
“Oh no…” I start.
The ridge explodes.
Flame erupts from the tree line with a scream like a jet engine. Radiant heat slams into me like a freight train, searing skin through Nomex. Everything goes white-gold and roaring. The fire doesn’t crawl—it runs, sprinting straight for us with the hunger of a beast unleashed.
“Kent!” I scream, but he’s gone. Swallowed.
I can’t see anyone. Kent, Lawson, the others—God, where are they?
The air gets sucked out of the canyon. My lungs seize. I drop low, crawl blind toward the black, the already-burned patch that might give me a chance. A branch explodes to my left. The whole world is fire.
One foot in front of the other.
Ash rains. A helmet clatters, spinning. A scream cuts short.
I dive behind a granite outcrop and curl in on myself, face pressed to the dirt, pulling the fire blanket to cover me, hands over my head, every instinct screaming too late, too late, too late…
And then…
Silence.
The fire races past. Moves on. Leaves nothing behind but scorched bone and silence.
I rise on shaking legs. My voice is gone. My team is gone. All that’s left is a strip of Nomex with Lawson’s name. I shove it in my pocket.
I’m still breathing. Why? Why me?
GREER
The ridge goes red as I raise the binoculars.
I’m forty klicks out, parked on a weathered bluff with a direct line of sight to the Bitterroot burn. My boots scrape loose shale as I step away from the rig, breath steady. Below, smoke bellows into the sky like a funeral shroud, and flame columns punch through the tree line, twisting high enough to gut the clouds.
Right on schedule.
The comms are already dead. They were supposed to fail. That part cost extra.
"Flashpoint confirmed," I murmur into the sat link as I crouch by the front tire. The secure mic flickers. "Grid 4-G is fully engaged. You should have confirmation within the hour."
The voice on the other end doesn’t respond with words. Just a static pulse. Receipt acknowledged.
I thumb the screen dark and stare down at the inferno swallowing the gulch where Liv’s crew was sent in early. Too early. I manipulated some of the data—under Liv’s ID—to suggest that the blowback risk was minimal, so the brass bumped the op. They thought it was safe.
I knew better.
