Read Online Falls Like Lightning by Shawn Grady - Free Book Online Page A

camp, he’d used the excuse of needing to put eyes on the greater perimeter of the fire to hike off toward a nearby hill. He palmed his GPS, walking toward the coordinates Chief Shivner had given him behind closed doors.
    The crew had grumbled about cutting indirect line so far from the fire. Fortunately, their belief in the ability of the brass to make effective tactical decisions was already cynically skewed. Who were they to argue with Incident Command? Wouldn’t be the first time things on the ground appeared much different than they did in the war room.
    Shivner had been right about the timing. Mother Nature had in fact provided a huge opening for them. All Caleb had to do was confirm the find and report back.
    He drew a deep breath of pine and sweet smoke-tinged air. It was nothing like working the ambulance in San Francisco. He did not miss the blood spills and bleach bottles and exposure reports. The constant drunk calls. He had been an underpaid people-mover, occasionally able to exercise the authority of an emergency-room physician.
    Caleb climbed atop a boulder and drew a deep breath. The air held the feel of electricity. Beneath broadening smoke columns, the land beyond rose and flattened with the organic lay of eons. Natural. Without the hand of man shaping it into something concrete and linear and lifeless.
    He’d become a paramedic to spite his father. His financial-advising, stock-brokering, disinterested, and uncommunicative father. He didn’t regret the day he walked from the overpaid and insultingly low-responsibility brokerage internship he held. Dad wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, and to stay in his shadow as he did so.
    Caleb lost himself in paramedicine, forgetting for a time that he had no real intention of pursuing it as a career, until one evening, after scrubbing his forearms with surgical soap to remove the blood of their latest patient, it all returned in one vehement tide. Who had he really spited? Who had he triumphed over?
    Vexing one’s father was a fickle endeavor.
    This—the mountains, the growing firestorm, and the building thunderheads—this held the flavor of freedom. And if Shivner’s coordinates were accurate and his story held water, then it would be Caleb’s unique portion of poetic justice.
    He removed his helmet, letting the wind wick sweat from his brow. He estimated three miles lay between them and the main body of the fire. Cloud-to-cloud flashes of lightning lit off. The sound of thunder followed. About a half mile below his position, a line of thin wispy smoke wove into the air. He glanced at the handheld GPS and then back to the smoke trailing skyward. Not far from his goal.
    It was too close to be a spot fire. Could be a single tree struck by lightning. Or . . .
    He looked behind him. He wouldn’t be missed. Pendleton was no doubt caught up in planning and mapping out their route for tomorrow, trying to figure out why Chief Shivner had told Caleb but not him which direction to cut line.
    The sunset faded into the melding hues of dusk. A full moon brimmed on the horizon, but the main fire’s mushrooming column threatened to overtake it. He could make it to the wispy smoke source before nightfall, but it was going to be a dark trip back.
    ———
    Caleb expected the scent of woodsmoke, but not roasting meat.
    His stomach tightened. He swallowed a fresh burst of saliva, lifted his canteen and shook it. The water tasted warm and stale.
    He drove the handle of his combi-tool into the dirt atop the last rise before the smoke source. With a step he cleared the knoll and peered down upon a tiny but stout log cabin resting about a hundred feet from the bank of the creek. A river-rock chimney rose from one corner, the smoke now dim and hardly visible from it. A dim light flickered inside a small-paned window beside an open front door.
    A strange, indistinguishable sound drifted out from it.
    Plucking? Caleb leaned his ear. Not just plucking. Twanging. A