Chapter 1

The acrid smell of burning pine hit my nostrils, a ghost from a past I shouldn't remember.

It yanked me back from the edge of a cliff, from the cold abyss where I had fallen.

One moment, I was plummeting, the faces of the wealthy families twisted in rage above me, my own son' s betrayal a fresh, gaping wound.

The next, I was standing in the main office of the Montana wilderness lodge, the heat of a wildfire pressing against the windows.

"Mom! The fire's out of control! What do we do?"

Caleb' s voice, thick with what sounded like panic, cut through my daze.

He was standing by the door, his face pale, his eyes wide.

But this time, I saw it.

Beneath the performance of fear, a flicker of something else.

Greed. Excitement.

The same look he must have had in my previous life when he handed over that doctored audio file, sealing my fate.

In that other life, his panicked cry had sent me into motion.

I was Jennifer Johns, the head ranger, the protector.

I had fought the blaze, created firebreaks with my bare hands and a shovel, and led every single one of the two dozen elderly guests to the fireproof bunker deep in the woods.

I had saved them.

Or so I thought.

I woke up to the sheriff' s grim face and the smoldering ruins of the lodge.

The bunker' s ventilation had been sabotaged.

They were all dead.

They found a flare gun and accelerant in my cabin.

Caleb' s faked recording was the final nail in my coffin.

"She's always complaining about these rich old geezers," my voice, twisted into something monstrous, had said. "Wishes they'd just disappear!"

The powerful families, grieving and furious, didn't wait for a trial. They cornered me on a precipice, and their raw hatred sent me over the edge.

Now, reborn in the heart of the inferno, I knew the truth.

I knew the bunker was a death trap.

I knew my son was a traitor.

And I knew my ex-brother-in-law, Brian, the lodge manager, was the puppeteer pulling the strings.

"Mom, what are you doing?" Caleb' s voice was sharper now, laced with genuine confusion.

Instead of grabbing the fire extinguisher, I picked up a can of lantern oil from the supply shelf.

I walked calmly towards a stack of dry firewood piled near the porch.

The fire was already licking at the far end of the lodge, the wind carrying sparks like angry insects.

My action was like feeding a starving beast.