The Burning Road to Divorce After the Fire novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: What the Backup Kept

Kurt's POV

The radio guy at the Breckenridge base met me behind the vending machines at noon and would not look at my face.

"I haven't done this," he said. "You understand that. Nobody asked me, and I didn't do it."

"Understood."

He pushed a thumb drive across the top of the machine, small and black, and I covered it with my hand.

"The phone system keeps a backup of every missed call for ninety days," he said. "Nobody ever turns it off. It's from 3:58 that morning."

"Did you listen to it?"

"I listened to it once." His mouth worked. "I have a grandmother."

I put the drive in my shirt pocket, the one where my badge used to ride.

I did not tell Lainey.

I want that on the record, since I'm making a record.

I told myself she had enough to carry before Saturday.

The truth was I could not stand to be in the room when she heard it.

I sat in my truck outside the fire building and put the drive in my laptop and played it once, with the volume low.

Pearl's voice was dry and calm and out of breath.

"Brent, honey, it's Gran. The smoke is coming up the grade, and my tank is low, and Lainey's got me in the car. I know you're busy. If you could just send somebody, we'd be grateful."

A pause, and the wheeze of the oxygen.

"Don't tell her I called. She'll fuss."

Then the beep.

I shut the laptop and sat with both hands on the wheel.

She had asked for help politely, and she had apologized for the trouble.

I had held my crew for eleven minutes because a man told me the air was on it.

He had this message six minutes before he gave the order.

I was past angry by then, and my head was very clear.

At two o'clock my assistant superintendent knocked on the glass.

He had a folder under his arm and eight hotshots standing in the parking lot behind him in a line.

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