The fire raged, but Landon Brenner raged against it harder.

After the unexpected wind change, the squad had known it was only a matter of time before the blaze would start to creep up on Cedar Springs. Today was the closest the department had seen so far. The fire had spread to a nearby county park: All around him, the ponderosas burned like matchsticks, like the already-spent candles on the half-eaten cake he’d advanced past on his way toward the burn. One of the park's picnic tables had been abandoned mid-birthday party; he could still see the overturned chairs and melted ice cream pooling on the paper plates. A pile of unopened presents, grouped together on the end of the table, had been summarily forsaken.

Landon vowed the fire wouldn't get that far.

He was loaded down in full gear, but he had never felt lighter. Sweat dripped down the inside of his helmet, and though it stung his eyes, he was glad for the pain. Pain kept you awake to danger, kept you focused. Beside him, one of the volunteer firefighters from San Francisco—Keller—moved with equal competence. Keller was new to the Cedar Springs fire but clearly not new to the job. Landon appreciated that he didn't have to look out for Keller the way he did some of the other guys in the growing rag-tag volunteer contingent.

So when the spray beside him let up suddenly, Landon knew what had happened before he turned to assess his partner.

Keller struck the nozzle of his hose against the flat of his palm; he did it again, then swiveled to try and get a better visual on his tank.

Landon shot an arc of spray over his shoulder as he hustled over. "Trouble?" He knew his voice would sound distorted through the mask and pushed some extra air out to make himself heard, keeping his inquiry short.

Keller nodded and motioned to his tank. "Jammed!"

"Go! Get a replacement. I'll cover you."

Keller's pause told him that the other man was still uncertain. Time was of the essence, and neither of them had time for this debate.

Cedar Springs didn't have time for this debate.

"Don't hesitate! Go!" Landon commanded. He pointed, and Keller, nodding, broke into a jog toward the trucks parked in the distance behind them.

Landon turned back to face the fire, pulse racing, but he kept his thoughts collected and clear.

His tank was still half full—more than enough foam to cover both areas. He had the time he needed, but he couldn't afford to be distracted again. He swept back along the perimeter of his section, snuffing out blazing trees and patches of forest floor. A loud creak, followed by a thunderous crash in the distance, told him that one of the park trees had just given up the fight. There would be more to follow, but he couldn't afford to think about it now. He plunged deeper into the woods.

The fire didn't hold out for long against his onslaught. He sprayed great gobs of foam, watching it fountain out from the end of his nozzle with grim satisfaction. As soon as the landscape in his section was carpeted in a fresh blanket of artificial snow, he moved onto Keller's area. He had gone deeper into the heart of the blaze and was sweating enough to fill not one, but maybe ten, of the station's buckets. He distracted himself with thoughts of the cold shower that awaited him back at their temporary residence but quickly narrowed his focus once more. If the forest was coming down in this sector, then he needed to stay sharp. A shower would be his heavenly reward after facing hell head-on.

The fire in Keller's section had progressed further than he’d expected. Landon gritted his teeth and rechecked the foam level on his tank. He thought he had enough—maybe barely—to complete the mission on his own . . . and if he didn't, he would damn well find a way to make his reserves last to the bitter end. He couldn't count on Keller to be back at it in time. It was his responsibility—and his alone; he had taken it on, and he wasn't about to back off now.

A sudden movement drew his attention. A three-legged shape, hunkered down low to the ground, slunk toward him, coming from the opposite direction that backup would be barreling in from. At first Landon thought it was probably a coyote, or maybe even a fawn—he had seen plenty of mule deer flushed from hiding today and had watched them go sprinting off across the empty highway in droves. The features of the animal approaching him now resolved, and he saw that it was nothing but an ash-gray mutt, probably stray or lost and wandering after the fire had reduced its home to cinders.

"Shit," Landon muttered.

The dog was behind a wall of flame. It whined, feinting back and forth, bad leg tucked up close to its chest. It paused and wagged its tail at him half-heartedly as if waiting with patient and implicit trust for him to rescue it.

"God damn it!" he swore again and turned to see if backup had arrived yet.

It hadn't.

Well, he’d told Keller he had the situation handled. He just hadn't expected to encounter a new one.

He saw Pete's face, suddenly staring out at him from between the flickering tongues of flame. The memory hit him so hard that he nearly stumbled backward, but he braced himself and endured, as he always did, unable to let go and unable to look away.

The forest around him receded, transforming into a vast black Alaskan river surrounded by a wilderness of fir trees. He saw Pete, still a teenager—forever a teenager—waving to him, calling for him, screaming at him, as Landon stood rooted to the spot. Fear had clutched him that day in cold, unrelenting fists, and it still hadn't released him by the time the flood had been upon them. A giant wall of brown water, clotted with trees and debris, had gone tearing down the river as a wide-eyed Landon clung to his log and watched Pete swept away—

The dog barked, wrenching him rudely back into the present. Sweat was boiling off him, a new waterfall of perspiration that had nothing to do with the blaze surrounding him. This was a cold sweat—old sweat, the kind he woke bathed in nearly every other night.

But the dog wasn't Pete. There wasn't going to be another Pete, damn it, not ever again. No man or beast was dying today, not on his watch.

Landon shouldered his hose and rushed forward, leaping over the perimeter of fire the dog was too scared to cross. It jumped up at him excitedly as soon as he had joined it, but when he reached down, it bolted a few feet away, tail tucked between its legs.

"Come on," Landon growled through clenched teeth. He tried to keep his tone soft, with mixed results, but the dog heard the command and looped back around.

Landon stretched his arms out again, and the dog jumped into them. "Good boy!" he panted as he jogged with his cargo toward the perimeter of the burning forest. "You know a dog person when you meet one, huh? Or maybe it's 'cause you know I'm your one-way ticket out of here."

The dog whined, but they were in the home stretch. As soon as he broke out into the clearing, Landon knelt to set the mutt down. He brushed a gloved hand along the dog's back and watched the ash come off it in a cloud. Beneath it, the dog's clumped, wiry fur was brown.

The dog craned forward to lick his visor, and Landon grinned. Then it darted away unexpectedly with a yelp.

Landon rose and spun in place. Time seemed to slow, and the world stopped revolving on its axis as a towering shadow blotted out the glare of the smoke-choked sun above.

Landon tried to dodge out of the way of the falling tree, but his response came too late. It came down on him, knocking him to the ground and pinning him beneath the burning weight of its trunk. Landon heard himself shout, but the sound rebounded around his helmet and wasn't nearly as loud as the deafening roar of the fire all around him.

The heat was excruciating. The pain was worse.

He struggled to lift the tree off himself but only managed to move it a few inches before it rolled back to slam him in the chest. His helmet fogged as his remaining breath left him in a whoosh! He saw stars. Darkness encroached along the corners of his vision, but he battled it back.

Help. He tried to yell the word, but he was locked in a living nightmare, trapped beneath a blazing pillar that would crush him to death, and that was only if the fire didn't get him first. Already, he could feel the intense heat filtering through his turnout gear, nipping and biting in places as it fought to catch and burn a path through to his flesh.

This was how he was going to die. His head spun with the realization. Had he done everything right? Had he saved enough lives? Had he made up for his past mistakes? Even in his final moments, fear clenched icy claws around his heart, constricting it, and the weight of his shame pressed down on him even harder than the tree. Oh God, not yet, not like this—

"Landon!"

He heard someone calling his name from what seemed like a long distance off, but in the next moment, a face mask identical to his own loomed over him.

Landon expelled a breath, not sure if it was from relief or the fact that his lungs were slowly being crushed by the oppressive weight of the flaming trunk.

"Man down! Over here! Help me lift!"

The firefighter—Keller—motioned behind himself quickly, then turned back to Landon. He was so close that Landon saw Keller's eyes widen behind his protective screen; he could see the fire consuming him, piece by piece, reflected in Keller's face piece.

Keller reared back and unleashed his foam canon. The nozzle spouted suds all along the length of the tree—and Landon himself; he watched it wash down his mask like a slow-moving waterfall, but then, small black dots swarmed his vision, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

The next thing he knew, he was moving, flying horizontally down a sterile white hallway. Lights strobed above him, and there was a dull throb in the back of his head. He glanced down and saw that he was laid out on a rolling table. Two nurses were rushing him through what he thought he recognized as Cedar Springs Medical, toward the ER.

How he could go so quickly from feeling like death to feeling so incredible, he had no idea. Then he felt a sting as he tried to lift his hand and looking down, saw the IV emptying morphine into his arm.

Okay, maybe he did have some idea.

"Holy shit! Landon!"

Landon turned his head on the gurney. His vision swam, but he thought he made out the chief's sister, Sookie, sprinting down the hall toward him, still in her flight suit, her helmet hanging from her fingers. Behind her, he could see his squad mate, Chase, bringing up the rear, looking more uncomfortable than Landon himself was able to feel in that moment. Whatever they’d given him, he was definitely flying higher than Sookie had ever managed in her Hawk.

"I'm fine." He tried to wave off her concerns but found couldn't raise his hand up off the table. It felt like he was wearing a lead blanket.

The gurney kept rolling, and his two friends hustled to keep up. He remembered something important. "The dog. What happened to the dog?"

"You're not fine!" Sookie protested. "You're talking nonsense!"

"Sookie." Chase's voice was forceful. Landon had an idea that the other man was trying to convey something, but he wasn't sure what. He couldn't wrap his head around subtext at the moment.

He watched Sookie's mouth clamp shut, then her eyes darted, and she moved out of the way.

A nurse's uniform appeared in his line of vision. Landon followed it all the way up and was surprised to find a new female face now hovering above him. Her sleek blonde hair was tied back and framed by a halo of light from above; to his drug-addled brain, it burned like white fire. The blinding brilliance, combined with his swimming vision, fuzzed the woman's features. He squinted and strained to sit up to get a better look. He managed to lift his head, but something was holding the rest of him down. As he was trying to figure this out, the nurse passed a clipboard off to someone beside her, and that was when he was struck by revelation.

Maybe a shower wasn't his heavenly reward after all.

"You must be an angel," he heard himself say. The nurse glanced down sharply, lips parted, clearly taken aback that he had managed to recognize her in her earthly form. "Either that, or you're the most beautiful woman I've ever damn seen," he concluded.

When he couldn't keep his head elevated any longer, he let it fall back against the gurney and closed his eyes as they carted him away.