4
A little over a year ago, Rollo and the rest of his team of hotshots had been trapped in a burnover in Big Canyon. A ferocious wildfire, moving faster than seemed possible, had simply run over them. For fifteen minutes the crew of nineteen hotshots—minus Finn, who'd taken off on his own instead of deploying his shelter—huddled inside their thin aluminum tents. The sounds of the firestorm outside—a tree exploding, the hiss of sap boiling, the fire-generated wind currents—warned Rollo there was a strong chance he'd die.
His life had done the proverbial flash-before-your-eyes routine. All of his twenty-nine years had unscrolled in his mind as if he was saying goodbye to it all. And in his heart, he was. Sean, the team leader, had tried some black humor to keep the panic at bay. It turned
