Page 173 of The Ampersand Effect

When she woke hours later, it wasn’t the cold or the wind that stirred her. It wasn’t the hunger gnawing at her stomach, nor the wail of a siren drifting from the city center miles away.

It was the smoke—thick and acrid—and the distinct, visceral certainty that the world around her was on fire. The sky had darkened with the setting sun, but the clouds had taken on the color of burning coals, streaked with lightning like the dying embers of a forgotten fire.

In the distance, still a mile or two away, flames danced. Overhead, the smoke was already dense, and as she spun her head on her shoulders, she counted at least three separate walls of dark vapor rising into the air. Aetheridge Forest was burning.

Swallowing the panic that was ebbing inside her, she dropped to her knees and began patting the ground, frantically searching for her purse—and the phone inside it. Cell service in the forest was unreliable, but she hoped with everything she had that the clearing would provide enough satellite visibility for her to connect to an emergency call.

Her hands swept blindly through the grass, the encroaching night and thickening smoke reducing her vision to a blur and making her eyes water. A cough tore from her throat. She kept searching, her palms coming up empty over and over.

“Where is it?” she shouted, the words catching in her smoke- raw lungs. The stark realization hit like an anvil on her already compromised lungs: she hadn’t lost her purse. She’d left it at the funeral parlor.

And with it—her only chance of communication. Her only chance of rescue.

Grier swallowed hard. Her mouth was parched from the smoke—and the weight of her predicament. She needed to stay calm, but her heart and her mind raced, rapidly mapping her surroundings, tracking the likely positions of the fires, and analyzing every possible escape route.

The biggest blaze blocked her primary exit—the main trail leading east from the clearing. To the west lay the watering hole she and Tobin had jumped into on their date. North was nothing but cliffs and a four- to five-hundred-yard drop to Lake Aetheridge—a likely unsurvivable plunge.

That left the south. Smoke thickened like curtains to the southwest and southeast, but directly south, a small patch of sky looked marginally clearer. It would take her deeper into the forest, potentially risking a broader area of forest to clear before she was able to exit—but it was the only option that wasn’t immediately lethal.

She scanned the clearing one last time, confirming what she already knew. Then, as the next gust of wind brought a faint breath of cleaner air, she filled her lungs, crouched low, and sprinted into the pocket of hopefully safe forest.

Thirty-One

Tobin tapped her phone for the eleventieth time during her layover in Grayport. It was a little past three in the afternoon, and she hadn’t heard from Grier since their exchanges earlier during her overseas flight. The funeral should be over by now, and even if Grier had stayed behind to help with cleanup or talk to Molly, she should have responded. Even a simple thumbs-up—to let Tobin know she was alive.

“Where is she?” Tobin muttered aloud, opening her chat with Grier again and rereading the messages she’d sent. Everything after their exchanged “I love yous” prior to the funeral remained unread.

TOBIN—10:00 a.m.

I wanted to surprise you… I changed my

flights. I’m on my way home—to you.

You shouldn’t have to do this alone, and

I’m sorry it took me until now to do

something about it.

TOBIN—1:18 p.m.

Just landed in Grayport. We’re so close!

Can you pick me up? I land at 5:11.

TOBIN—2:13 p.m.

Grier? Are you okay?

Tobin fidgeted in her chair, pumping her leg nervously against the bar beneath her feet. She’d known today would be hard for

Grier—expected the distance while Grier grieved both publicly and privately. She hadn’t expected radio silence.

She glanced out the window at her plane, framed against a dark, overcast sky. A light rain began tapping against the glass, its soft rhythm doing nothing to soothe her rising anxieties.

Pulling out her phone, she opened the weather app and scrolled to Aetheridge. A chill trickled ominously along her spine as her eyes landed on the bright red lightning bolt icon beside her hometown’s name.

A summer’s-worth of drought conditions…