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“I have to get to her.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing.” Mac shoved against the ground and almost got one foot under him again before Ben dragged him back. Heat and panic tore through Mac until he couldn’t tell which one had his heart trying to hammer out of his chest. “That’s Willow’s truck up there.”
Ben’s grip tightened.
Mac stared at the black column beyond the rise.
“I have to save her.” His voice broke. “I have to. I’m going to marry her.”
“No, Mac.” Ben’s voice was like an iron bell. “She would have been with Goblin.”
Tears streamed down Mac’s face. “Let me go, Ben.”
“I can’t.”
“Ben, please. If I can’t save her, I have to see what’s left.”
“Oh, Mac.”
“Let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“Let me fucking. Go.” Mac closed his eyes as he sagged in Ben’s arms.
For one second he saw Jodie exactly as she’d been that morning, directing people with a clipboard in one hand and that damned bandana tied around her neck. Then his brain put her inside a burning truck and he heard a sound he didn’t recognize and only realized a moment later came from him.
It’s never going to be okay again. I’m broken.
A dog barked behind them, frantic and sharp.
Mac opened his eyes as the barking got louder. He turned. Goblin stood in the road beside Virgil, barking at him. Hank’s truck had pulled up behind Ben’s, and Hank was climbing out more slowly, one hand braced on the door.
“Goblin,” Mac rasped.
The dog ran several yards toward the black smoke, stopped, then turned in a tight circle.
Then he took off running back east toward the way they’d come.
He stopped again, spun around, and barked at them.
Virgil frowned. “What the hell are you doing, dog?”
Goblin ran east another twenty feet, looked back, barked, then ran toward them again.
Ben loosened his hold. Mac sat up.
The bandana around Goblin’s neck fluttered in the wind.
She put that on him.
He looked toward the black smoke again.
If Jodie had been trapped inside the truck—
Goblin barked.
