Six firefighters died in a wildfire two years ago.
One of them was my crew. My friends. My responsibility.
The chemistry of that fire shouldn’t exist outside one workshop, on one mountain, owned by one man.
His name is Ezra Maddox.
He lives behind a clubhouse gate and answers to no one but a wolf, and I came to Bone Hollow to put him in handcuffs.
What I found wasn’t a killer.
I found a man whose left side was burned by the same fire that built him. Whose hands run hotter than mine. Whose scarred mouth silences the names I count when I can’t sleep.
He didn’t kill my crew. But the man who did stole his fire — and is still on the mountain with the wind at his back.
I came for an arrest.
I’m staying for something else.
What burns when the fire wants you back?
