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throat burn even as she felt some of the stress of the day seep away.
    What would have happened to Pete if she hadn’t made it out of that barn in time? She had to think Marshall or Katrina would have taken him in. He’d been their dad’s dog, after all, a link to the man John had been before his traumatic brain injury two years before he died.
    â€œNeed to go out? Do you?”
    The dog gave one quick bark and she opened the back door for him and walked out onto the stone patio overlooking the river.
    She needed to change out of her smoky uniform and shower but right now she wasn’t sure she could move from this spot.
    After a moment, Young Pete finished his business then came back to sit beside her. The dog was ten years old and not young anymore but she still stuck the modifier on his name. Her dad had always called him that, in contrast to Old Pete, John’s previous dog.
    Birds flitted through the branches of one of the big elms in her backyard, their song mingling with the breeze rustling the leaves and the river’s endless, soothing song.
    She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the late afternoon sun.
    She could have died today.
    She wanted to think she’d had the situation fully in hand but Cade had it right. She had been foolish and arrogant to think she could take on that fire and win, especially without following protocol and keeping her radio on. It had been sheer dumb luck that she was here enjoying the beauty of a June afternoon.
    The realization was sobering yet oddly invigorating, as if the heat and smoke had burned away something hard and confining.
    She felt as if she had been encased in ice since her father’s death in January. Longer, really. Maybe some part of her had been suspended, frozen since the terrible succession of events five years ago that culminated in Wyatt’s death, when she had made the decision to go to the academy in his stead.
    Each of her brothers loved law enforcement, just as their father and grandfather and great-grandfather before them. A Bailey had been keeping the peace here since the first settlers moved into the area the Native Americans considered a place of mystical strength and healing.
    Her father and Wyatt had given their lives for the job. If she loved it as they had, she might have been willing to die in the line of duty. She didn’t. She never had.
    Her pocket jangled suddenly and she knew by the ringtone it was her mother. Shoot. She’d meant to call Charlene the moment she got home. As the widow of a fallen police officer and the bereaved mother of another, her mother had every right to her worry and Wyn felt bad for adding to it.
    â€œMom. Hi. I’m sorry I missed your call. It’s been a...crazy afternoon.”
    â€œOh honey. I’ve been frantic! I called the ER, I called the station, I called your house. Finally I called Cade and he told me what happened and assured me you were all right.”
    â€œI am. A little smoke inhalation but I was treated and released at the scene.”
    â€œSo it’s true. You really ran into a burning building to save a couple of juvenile delinquents.”
    She thought of those poor, scared little boys, each trying to shoulder the blame for the accident in order to take the burden from the other.
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œOh honey.”
    She heard a sniffle and could guess her mother was trying to hold back the tears she had probably been crying all afternoon. Charlene had lots of practice sitting at home and worrying. Guilt pinched at her again. She should have called the moment the EMTs took away the oxygen mask.
    â€œI’m coming over to make sure you’re okay,” her mother insisted.
    â€œIt’s not necessary, really. I’m fine.”
    â€œYou say that, but I don’t believe you for a minute. I can hear it in your voice. Mother’s intuition is never wrong, honey. You’re upset and you need me there.”
    She