What We'll Burn Last, page 17
The dispatcher’s training kicks in, and familiar questions start to needle. How many roads in and out of the area? How heavily populated? Are there livestock to evacuate? Getting farm animals to safety can take hours.
All these questions lead to the most important ones: How much time will the residents of Collins Road and Juniper Court need to evacuate?
And do they have that much time?
It’s only a dozen acres, according to the caller. The dispatcher believes there is time. Those first pencil-thin wisps that rise in the sky stoke caution, not panic.
But heavy with soot, ash, and branches, the column of smoke rises ever higher until it hits a layer of cooler air and collapses like a bowling ball dropped in water. The smoke spreads across the sky. Stretches across the ridgeline.
The calls grow more frequent, and more alarming.
Dispatcher: 911, state your emergency.
Caller: (Frantic.) The hill is on fire.
Dispatcher: Where are you calling from?
Caller: It’s getting really bad out here.
Dispatcher: We have reports of fires on Collins Road and Juniper Court. Are either of those near you?
Caller: No. I’m on Beaumont.
This doesn’t make sense to the dispatcher. Beaumont is a mile south of the other locations. She wonders if more than one fire is burning. Or if it’s larger than initial reports suggested.
Dispatcher: Where is the hill from where you are?
Caller: (Voice shaky.) It’s close. A quarter mile?
Dispatcher: Are you able to evacuate?
The caller’s next words are unintelligible; then, panicked, he begins to shout so loudly that the dispatcher’s ears thrum for several seconds.
Caller: My God, it’s all burning! It’s all fucking burning!
The man’s location puts him seven miles northeast of Ridgepoint Ranch. In two hours, the fire has burned five miles.
And now, having reached the hill, it’s starting to climb.
CHAPTER 26
OLIVIA
Saturday, 12:30 p.m.
Olivia was in the side yard with Goose when a white SUV pulled up to the house. Its door was emblazoned with a familiar green-and-gold logo, and Olivia felt the flush of adrenaline. She held her breath, and her body stilled, as if hope were a small bird she might startle away.
Adam?
Her son’s name in her head brought the rest of him with it—the too-big glasses that slipped down his nose when he read, the peanut-butter-and-raisin sandwiches she’d find moldering in his backpack, the fullness of his smile, the emptiness of his bedroom, the downy stubble that would never grow into a beard, the lanky limbs that would never fill in with muscle.
The bird she imagined wasn’t hope at all, but fear. She felt the grip of its talons, the slice of its beak.
The deputy approached, his face grim, and a new thought pricked.
Is this about Ellie Byrd?
The deputy was young—late twenties, she guessed—with tight curls cropped close to his head and a cleft chin. He spoke before he’d made it fully up the driveway.
“Olivia Duran?” His tone and expression were matter-of-fact. A man with a job to do.
Whether that job involved her son or the missing girl, Olivia knew that men in uniforms rarely brought good news.
Please don’t ask to come in. Olivia inhaled, lungs swelling to fill her chest. Please don’t ask if there’s someplace we can sit.
The worst news always followed being asked to take a seat. When the police came to talk about Adam, that was one of their first requests.
She’d led them to the living-room couch, choosing the spot where Adam had fought off a recent virus and remembering how she’d brought him tea and soup and brushed the hair from his forehead while he slept. Remembering, too, how she’d done the same when he was a toddler, his head in her lap, the entirety of him fitting in the crook of her arm.
Olivia had picked at the leather on the armrest and waited for the lead detective to share whatever update was so horrible that they’d requested her to sit first.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Duran. There’s no sign of where your son’s gone.”
Where your son’s gone. As if he’d left voluntarily. She’d never believed that, no matter what Meredith claimed.
Her nails, already bitten to nubs, scraped the armrest. She’d willed herself to hold the detective’s gaze even as it scalded with its sympathy.
“We’ll share any news as it comes in.”
Updates that were frequent at first fell off as the trail ran cold.
“And of course, feel free to reach out. Anytime.”
Her calls were returned quickly until new cases demanded their attention. She tried not to blame them. She’d been the one who’d failed to protect Adam, not them. They’d only failed to find his body.
Out of reflex, she’d thanked them—Always be polite, Olivia—even as her fingers throbbed from gouging a hole in the leather. After they’d gone, she’d called a local nonprofit to arrange a donation of the couch. She could no longer stand to look at it.
Now Olivia nodded, waiting for whatever it was the deputy had come to tell her and resentful that it always seemed to be that way.
Though the silence lasted only a few seconds, Olivia considered saying, My husband might be involved in that girl’s disappearance. If she told the deputy about Richard and Ellie before he could pose the question, she and the kids would be safe, at least.
Unless…
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying anything stupid.
The deputy said, “A wildfire is burning near Johnsville.”
A wildfire. She released her tension in a shallow hiss. If he noticed the change in her breathing, he gave no sign.
“System flagged your address as a nonresponse. You signed up for the emergency alerts?”
“Cell service is out, but we have a landline.” A landline she’d ignored when it rang because she had larger concerns than a wildfire a dozen miles away. “Are we being evacuated?”
“It’s voluntary for now, but with the wind, this fire could be a bad one. Be ready to evacuate.” On cue, the wind shuddered. “How many people in the house?”
“Four.” She lowered her pitch and tried not to smile in relief. “Me, my husband, and our ten-year-old daughter live here, and our adult son is visiting.”
“Anyone require special assistance?” At the shake of her head, he said, “Any animals?”
“Just a dog.”
He pulled out a neon-pink ribbon. “Stay safe,” he said. “And please pay attention to those alerts.”
“I will.”
The deputy stopped at the edge of her property and tied the pink ribbon around the trunk of a small tree. Then he walked across the road to where the Kims lived.
CHAPTER 27
LEYNA
Saturday, 12:32 p.m.
Seated on the sofa next to Dominic, Leyna studied the three Polaroids laid out in a row on Rocky’s coffee table.
She’d seen them before, but only at a glance, clipped to twine strung across Grace’s bedroom wall. Until Dominic had handed them to her, she’d remembered only the blank spaces on that wall. She’d spent years trying to fill in those blanks through countless searches of cardboard boxes, dresser drawers, and her own faulty memories. Now here they were, laid out in front of her, the images she’d tried unsuccessfully to conjure. Unremarkable but also everything.
Leyna studied the row of photos, each one feeling like an attack.
The photos were lightly damaged, as if folded and smoothed again, and smudged by fingertips.
The first showed a group shot taken at a neighborhood potluck the fall before Grace disappeared. Leyna was in this one too, standing next to her sister, both of them in sweaters because the weather had already turned crisp.
The second was a close-up of Grace in a pale blue cap-sleeved blouse, the tiny fake sapphire pendant she always wore with it resting in the hollow of her throat, Grace nearly smiling, strawberry-blond hair fanned by an invisible wind. The blouse makes my eyes pop, don’t you think? she’d said more than once. The necklace was never recovered.
Leyna plucked the third and final Polaroid from the coffee table. It showed Grace on the patio behind the Clarke house, the angle and Grace’s outstretched arm suggesting she’d taken the photo herself. Smiling again, back when Grace smiling had been a thing. Two others were in the photo: Rocky, stone-faced and in profile, his attention wholly on Grace at the other edge of the frame, and, wedged between the two of them, a third person with a guarded expression.
Her mother.
The air in the living room was stale and too warm. Meredith Clarke had claimed not to know Rocky well, yet here she was standing next to him and her missing daughter.
These were three of the Polaroids that Grace had taken down before she disappeared, Leyna was certain. So what were they doing tucked inside an envelope in Rocky Hamlin’s bedroom? And where was the one still missing?
Something else about the photos bothered her in a way she couldn’t yet identify. Something other than how Rocky looked at Grace.
The photo of the Duran brothers and Clarke sisters that Ellie had shown around town wasn’t among the Polaroids. There was no proof the girl had ever been there.
Suddenly aware they were in the house uninvited, Leyna picked up the photos and slipped them in her pocket. Dominic moved closer to her on the couch, the heat of his thigh burning into her own. Reading her body language, he said, “We should go.”
“He’ll notice the photos are gone.”
“He’ll notice the broken window first.”
Despite the risk, neither of them moved. “How do you think he got these?” she asked.
“Either she gave them to him or he took them.”
“Looks like it’s time to talk to Mom.” After several minutes of preoccupied silence, she said, “Judging by the photos, they were friendly.”
“Were they?” He sounded doubtful. At his tone, she could guess he was remembering the photo of Rocky staring at Grace, Meredith between them.
“That one creeps me out too,” she said. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he disappointed that there were no clues about what happened to his brother or to Ellie Byrd? For a moment, she’d let herself forget that he grieved his own loss.
“She looked happy enough,” he said. In the pause that followed, she felt the qualifier coming. A second later, it did. “But if they’d been close, wouldn’t you have known that?”
Leyna sorted through her memories as she had earlier, but she still found none that included Rocky.
“They were close enough for Grace to have taken this photo and hung it on her wall,” she said, trying on the argument even as it struck her as false. She’d felt the hint of connection when she found his battered copy of Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And yet, after finding the photos of Grace, doubt reemerged, more insistent now.
If they were friendly, what kind of man befriended a teenage girl?
“I need to talk to Thea too.”
Beside her, she felt Dominic stiffen.
“Why would you need to talk with my sister?”
“Because when I asked her about him earlier, she was evasive. She was hiding something.”
“Of course she has secrets. She’s ten. And she was born six years after Adam and Grace went missing. What could she possibly know?”
“Probably nothing.” Leyna patted the pocket that held the photos. “But shouldn’t we at least ask again now that we have these?”
Dominic closed his eyes, rubbing his face with enough vigor that she worried he’d do damage to his skin. When he opened his eyes, he exhaled.
“I’ll talk to Thea,” he said. “You talk to your mom. More efficient that way anyway.”
“How about you talk to my mom, and I talk to Thea?”
He laughed, and her heart thudded at his smile.
“That’s a hard pass,” he said.
“I’ve shown you mine, now it’s your turn.”
“I like the sound of that.”
She felt herself flush. “I meant that now I’ve told you everything about that night. So what do you remember? Anything you haven’t told me?”
“That’s decidedly less fun.”
“Come on, Dom.”
His eyebrows knit; the premature grooves in his forehead deepened. “You know I wasn’t here.”
She felt confusion slip onto her own face. “You weren’t?”
“I had a midterm the next morning and left after lunch.”
“I could’ve sworn you were home for at least part of that evening.”
He shook his head, and his expression grew wistful. “I wish I were, but I was back in my dorm room by five. I didn’t get the call from my mom until the next morning.”
“You’re sure?”
The grooves cut deeper still. “Of course I’m sure.” Tone suddenly defensive. Too defensive? “You think I’d be able to forget the night my brother disappeared?”
Of course he wouldn’t. It had been a foolish question.
“Are you ever going to let go of your obsession with Adam?” Dominic sounded as weary as he had when it had ended with them.
Even after Leyna’s very public argument with his parents, her relationship with Dominic had limped along for a couple of weeks. Dying, even if they were unaware of how mortally it had been wounded.
In their last conversation as a couple, Leyna had shared the story of how she’d gotten the scar. He’d traced the patch of skin gently, as if it were a fresh injury. He’d touched his forehead to hers, and though it wasn’t his apology to make, he told her how sorry he was.
Each of his attempts at comfort only made her angrier.
“You’ve got to know I’m right about him.”
She figured if Dominic could see Adam as she did, he would join her side of the fight.
But by then Dominic had grown weary of fighting. “Can we talk about something else, just for today?”
“What else do we have to talk about? They’re all we have.”
She saw in his expression that her words had found their mark. Still, he didn’t leave. After sharing her story about the scar, Leyna suspected he lingered to make sure she was okay. Even years later, she remembered the force of his exhalation as much as his words.
“Sometimes, I think you’d rather be right than happy.”
That concern for her happiness again. If only he’d left then, twenty seconds earlier. But of course he hadn’t. Dominic always stayed.
“I could never be happy with you.” Each word a dagger. “You’re his brother.”
Dominic’s jaw had tensed, but all he managed was a quick “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Then Dominic, the man who always stayed, left without looking back.
Now, he waited for her answer.
“I’m trying to let it go,” she said, even though she knew she wasn’t. That she couldn’t until she knew what had happened to Grace.
For the first time since Leyna had returned to Ridgepoint, the silence that settled between her and Dominic lacked comfort, their shared history rising between them like a concrete wall.
CHAPTER 28
MEREDITH
Saturday, 12:36 p.m.
Like Meredith’s social media account, which she rarely checked, adamduranlives was set to private. After approving a follow request, Meredith had to wait a torturous twenty minutes for her blackmailer to do the same.
While she’d waited, she’d scanned the profile. The photo, a man in sunglasses, was too small to see clearly. Meredith took a screenshot of the profile photo and ran a reverse image search. It brought up multiple versions, all on retail sites advertising sunglasses. As she’d suspected, a stock photo.
The account had been started three months earlier, and there were five posts. Once approved, she became the account’s only follower, but adamduranlives was following three accounts.
Three?
She clicked for details. The second account was the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office.
Adamduranlives had never engaged with the sheriff’s office account, and if anyone there had requested to follow back, it hadn’t been approved. But the threat was clear. Meredith was one tag or follow-back away from being exposed.
The third account was Ellie Byrd’s.
Another taunt. Meredith felt an unreasonable impulse to give the screen the middle finger. Instead, she clicked on the most recent post, a video that showed a time stamp of only a few minutes before.
The video was short, less than thirty seconds. It opened on a close-up of a small bunch of blue wildflowers, paired with twigs and sprigs of icy-green leaves. It zoomed out slowly, capturing the ground around it, until it reached the edge of a patio.
Her patio.
Then it faded to an inspirational quote.
Live every day as if it’s your last.
The flowers had been arranged on the barren ground where, earlier in the year, she’d harvested her Red Russian kale. At the edge of the frame, two small weeds sprouted. The lighting suggested the video had been shot in early morning, but she’d picked those weeds a few days earlier. With that timing, it could’ve been anyone filming.
She quickly read the caption on the video.
There’s a fire in Plumas County. Hope all my friends up there are safe. #thoughtsandprayers.
Heart thudding, she scrolled through the rest of the posts.
Five days ago, a photo of the arrow Leyna had found in the tree. So the message had been meant for Meredith. The caption contained only hashtags: #bullseye, #waiting, #watching, #whereareyou, and, in all caps, #ITSYOURFAULT.
A month before, clip art of stacks of cash next to a bottle of champagne.
Not to brag but… about to come into a quarter mil. Time to quit my crappy job? #livingthegoodlife #lifegoals.
Six weeks before, a photo of van Gogh’s Girl in White in the Woods.
