Page 11 of Smokin’ Situation (Masked Men of Sage Springs #3)

Annie

Yanking open the driver’s side door of my truck, I hopped in, pulling hard against the strong winds to get it closed.

Navigating across the steady stream of traffic headed away from the road closures, I turned north, watching the edges of town fade away as I pressed the gas pedal, ignoring the little voice in my head that told me it was a bad idea to do this.

But I wasn’t the type to just sit around and do nothing.

When I got near where the state highway forked and turned toward where the article said the road was closed, I slowed. Barricades blocked the intersection, but whoever had once monitored them was long gone. I was sure they assumed most people wouldn’t drive around a barricade. I wasn’t most people.

And I knew the alternate road where the locals turned to avoid the traffic during tourist season, which was not blocked off.

Carefully turning my truck up the old road, I navigated around the potholes left behind by the spring thaw and used it to cut across to the highway on the other side of the barricade.

My pulse thrummed as I took the sharp curves on the empty road up the ridge, knowing that I was putting myself directly in the path of something I couldn’t control.

And that if I got caught ignoring a mandatory evacuation, I was in deep shit.

But my sister was going to be in shit so deep it’d threaten her life if she’d gone home after her shift in the middle of the night.

I should have gone home last night. I should be there right now to wake her ass up and drag her out of the house.

But after weeks of insomnia fueled, broken sleep mixed with the heat exhaustion, I hadn’t even really remembered getting back to the bar last night.

There was no way I would have been awake to guide Tripp to our tiny cabin off the beaten path.

We technically lived in a “neighborhood” according to the county, but the houses were far apart, and the roads were frequently inaccessible in the dead of winter because they never sent plows out here.

Coming around the bend that bordered several of the ranches north of town, I watched as a light haze of lingering smoke coming from up the mountain filled the air.

I could see the road, but it just added to the level of anxiety keeping me alert.

Only a few more miles and I’d be near the turn to our road, and then I could get my sister and get us the hell out of here.

The curves tightened, and I slowed my speed, only to hit the brakes hard, narrowly avoiding a splintered tree laying across the pavement.

Trying not to panic, I scanned the road outside of my windows, hoping I was still far away from the fire and sheltered enough from the strong wind gusts that had knocked the tree down.

My truck windows rattled as the howling wind blew smoke and ash through the air, the smell of it creeping inside the cab of the truck through the air vents.

Throwing the truck in reverse, I pulled a U-turn, heading back toward where I’d come from, trying to plot an alternate route.

“I’m fine. Everything is fine,” I murmured as I scanned the tree line for answers. And if I continued repeating that to myself aloud, then maybe I’d believe it.

The smoke that’d once been far off in the distance was now moving closer with every wind gust, and I was suddenly terrified that not only was the road blocked, but the wildfire seemed to be heading straight for my home. The same cabin where my sister was currently asleep.

Twisting my hands on the steering wheel, the leather creaked as I tried to figure out the quickest alternative to get around the downed tree. There had to be some way to get around this roadblock and the last few miles to the cabin .

Steering the truck to the shoulder, I grabbed my phone, dialing her phone number again. The sound of the continuous rings was ominous. I hated that she turned off her phone when she was working the night shift.

I knew her job as an emergency room nurse meant she had to be rested for every shift, because sometimes people’s lives depended on it, but right now I wished it was one of the rare times she forgot to put her phone on silent.

I’d gladly face her wrath if it meant knowing she wasn’t in the path of a shifting wildfire.

“Come on, Reese, pick up…”

Her voice echoed over the speakerphone, telling me to leave a message and she’d get back to me, but right now I was afraid that she’d never be able to get back to me if someone didn’t warn her, she was potentially in danger.

“Fuck,” I groaned, laying my head on the steering wheel briefly before I tried to formulate a plan to get back to the right side of the ridge.

There were some country roads that wound through the forest that only locals knew about I could use, but since cell service out here was spotty at best, I’d potentially put myself in the path of the fire and unable to get help.

If Reese were in this situation, she’d calmly have told me to go back to town and find someone working on the emergency dispatch for the fire service. But they were busy enough trying to keep things contained with the wind that had swept through the valley in the last few hours.

Fucking careless idiots. They knew there was a burn ban and still set off fireworks, because dumbasses who were probably drunk seemed to not give a shit about the consequences of their actions as long as they got some enjoyment out of it.

Pulling up the map app on my phone, I tried to zoom in far enough to plot out a path around where I was stuck. My anxiety rose with each second my eyes scanned the screen, not seeing a clear path through .

But as the smoke swirled in the air outside my windshield, the smell of burning pine drifting through my air vents, I knew I needed to just pick a path and hope it got me out the other side.

Putting the truck in reverse, I carefully turned it around, scanning the side of the road for the break in the tree line I knew was there. I just hoped the road that’d been a shortcut to save time when we were running late for curfew in high school was still there.

I almost missed it, but I navigated the cab carefully through the gap in the trees, following what had once been a bypass to the highway from other county roads. It had clearly seen better days, the truck rocking from side to side as I slowly disappeared into the dense forest.

The smoke thinned out as I got further from the main road, but the acrid scent of the fire lingered, reminding me I needed to hurry.

The jarring sensation of the truck crawling its way through the pockmarked trail kept my senses alert, hope springing in my chest as the trees thinned out slightly as I approached the road that’d get me home.

The road on the other end appeared so close, but then I felt the front end of the truck suddenly dip and an ominous crack echoed through the cab. The sound of metal snapping made my eyes widen before my teeth gnashed together with the impact.

The sound of my pulse rushing in my ears and the metallic tang of blood in my mouth were only secondary to the sudden sense of panic that was taking over. But I couldn’t let it pull me under.

“Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounded,” I whispered, knowing it was a lie.

Carefully unclipping my seatbelt, I shoved my phone in my pocket and reached for the handle on the door.

The cab of the truck was cocked at an awkward angle as I stepped onto the running board and looked down at where my wheel had once been inside the wheel well.

That was not the case anymore as I looked down in horror at the rubber of my tire visible in a place I knew it didn’t belong .

Leaning out further to assess the damage, the truck dipped, and an eerie creak rang out as I took in the deep, crater-like sinkhole that had come out of nowhere, snapping my wheel to the side like I’d been driving a Matchbox car and not an oversized pickup truck.

“Fuck,” I breathed, knowing that I’d taken a precarious situation and turned it into a fucking disaster. Not only was I still miles from the cabin, and my sister; I was now stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere with a broken axle.

A flat tire I could have handled, but now I was well and truly fucked.

And as the wind picked up, a powerful gust rocking the truck underneath me and threatening to toss me off my perch, I realized that maybe the voice of Reese in my head was right.

I should’ve headed back into town and let the professionals try to find my sister, because now they had two Thomas sisters to rescue.

Carefully leaning back inside the cab of the truck, I pulled the door closed after me, hoping my phone could still get a signal.

Because I wasn’t going anywhere in this vehicle, and heading out on foot toward where I thought my cabin was located would be epically stupid.

If I didn’t manage to walk straight into a fire, surely the smoke inhalation would kill me.

Dialing the numbers to 911, I swore as a set of beeps rang out over the speaker phone before the line disconnected. Squinting at the corner of my phone, I cursed again at the tiny letters in the corner saying No Service.

It was like the universe was mocking me for being an idiot.

“Think, think,” I breathed out, trying to remember what Reese had told me to do if the cell service towers were out of order.

Since it didn’t say SOS in the corner, I knew that meant there wasn’t any signal to call someone, but I thought texting sometimes still worked.

Scrolling past a text from a number I didn’t recognize, I pulled up Reese’s contact, hoping I could get through to her too. Or that she’d at least maybe wake up to a text and know what was going on.

Annie: Mandatory fire evacuation. Get out of the cabin as soon as you see this.

It took a few extra seconds to send, but it didn’t bounce back, so I opened a new text and hovered my thumbs over the screen.

Was I supposed to send this to the fire department? The sheriff’s office?

Maybe I should have paid better attention to my sister when she was trying to lecture me about safety procedures.

Typing 911 into the To: field, I hoped my message would go through.

Annie: Stranded on an abandoned road in the evacuation zone in a truck with a broken wheel axle.

In seconds, my phone vibrated in my hand, a message filling the screen.

911: This is the Chaffee County emergency services dispatch line, do you know where you are located?

Annie: The old bypass south of County Road 24.

911: Can you describe the make and model of the vehicle?

Annie: Metallic gray Ram pickup truck.

911: Who am I speaking with? And can you give a brief description of the passengers in the vehicle?

Annie: Rheyanne Thomas. I’m by myself. 31, female, long brown hair, 5’7.

911: I need you to open the map app on your phone and see if you can get enough signal to generate a location. Click on the little blue dot on the map and share it with a new text message to this number .

Following the rest of the directions from the dispatcher, I sent the message, hoping it’d go through.

911: Got your coordinates. Forwarding to emergency services. Please remain in the vehicle and keep your windows up. Is there smoke in the vicinity?

Looking out the window, I noticed a haze in the air, but I could still see the break in the trees where the road I’d been trying to get to was located.

Annie: Not as much as there was on the main road, but there’s a haze between the trees. Definitely smells like smoke, but I don’t think it’s close.

911: Turn on your emergency flashers. Keep the windows closed and set your AC to recirculate the air inside the car without pulling in air from the outside. Close as many vents as possible. If the car starts to fill with smoke, turn it off. Do you have any water or a face covering? Blankets?

Scanning the passenger seat, I spied a discarded bottle in the footwell, full of the greenish electrolyte drink Tripp had given me yesterday.

He must have mixed a fresh bottle before we left the festival last night.

Under the back seat, I found a blanket and another bottle of water, but nothing to cover my face with.

Where were those damn Covid masks when you needed one?

Settling back into the driver’s seat, I texted them back.

Annie: Found some water and a blanket.

911: Good. Make sure your doors are all unlocked and then get down as low as you can in the rear seat of the vehicle. Wet the blanket with some water and keep it over your head if possible. Keep drinking to stay hydrated.

Following her directions, I climbed over the center console, settling on the floor in the back.

I grabbed the strap of my purse from where it rested in the passenger seat and pulled it over my shoulder, tightening the strap until the small crossbody was tucked tightly against my chest. I guess if I died in the burned-out hull of this truck, it wouldn’t matter if I was wearing underwear.

The air outside still looked hazy, and I hated I couldn’t see what was happening outside the truck from the floorboards, but I’d ignored enough safety instructions for the day, so I would do whatever they told me to.

Annie: Do you know how long it’s going to be?

911: Local search and rescue have been notified of your location. Just try to stay calm and do not leave your vehicle.

Easier said than done, but I tried to keep my breathing slow, sipping out of the bottle of electrolyte drink, wishing I could return to the previous day when my problem had only been dehydration.

Now I wasn’t sure if I was going to die stuck in the backseat of my truck while my sister was asleep in a cabin a few miles away with no one to save her.

Wanting to preserve the battery in case I needed to send another message, I locked the screen and set the phone on the seat next to me, closing my eyes and praying that someone out there was on the way to get me out of my own mess.

Because the last thing I wanted was to be added to the tally of Thomas’ who didn’t live to see old age. Like my parents.