Rise of the Phoenix novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Road

I didn't dress.

I pulled my coat on over nothing, shoved my feet into my boots, and ran after the prints with the coal blazing under my ribs.

The snow melted where I stepped.

I left a trail of steaming black footprints a quarter mile long, down the lodge drive and out the gate, onto the county road.

The plows had cleared one shining lane.

He was a mile down it.

He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down.

The sun was just breaking over the ridge, and his shadow lay long and thin on the road.

"Garth!"

He didn't turn.

I put out both hands and let go.

A wall of fire went up across the road between us, twenty feet high and thirty wide, with a roar.

It lit the pines on both sides, and for one terrible second I thought they'd catch.

I pulled back hard.

I held it at the edge of the asphalt, flat and bright, a curtain of gold with the sun behind it.

Garth stopped.

He turned around slowly.

"That's an unusual way to say good morning," he said.

"Don't you dare make a joke."

"It's not a joke. It's nerves."

"Where were you going?"

He looked at the wall, then at me.

I could see him through the flame, wavering.

"Missoula," he said. "There's a pay phone outside the feed store."

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