Burn for You (6 page)

A buzz of adrenaline worked its way into his chest. A second blast? What the hell was going on over there?

“Ten four,” he said into the radio. Not even bothering with goodbyes, he walked briskly out of the restaurant. Nick and Sandra would understand. When they called your number, you went.

An image of a smiling shorthaired blonde came to mind and his pulse kicked up another notch. He hit the pavement outside and broke into a jog, hurrying to his squad.

Chapter 5

“Goddammit, Russo!” Flaherty held his face right in front of Victoria’s, his gray eyes level with hers. “Get it together.” His hands gripped her upper arms painfully, but the pain was grounding somehow. It was real.

“I…I…”

“I know,” he said, his voice quiet. She might’ve thought it sympathetic, but for the coldness in his eyes. “I know. But it’s over now. You need to snap out of it.”

Sweat trickled down Victoria’s back, and she concentrated on leveling out her breathing. In and out. Nice and even.

She’d hoped these episodes were over. Unlike many of her veteran counterparts, she hadn’t had any qualms about seeking counseling when she returned to the states. But then, her mother was a psychologist. She’d been raised in a culture of talking it out. So, she’d gotten to work with her therapist and she’d been flashback free for almost a year. The entire time she’d worked as a civilian paramedic, she’d never had one episode. But her therapist had warned her. PTSD wasn’t something you got over once and never dealt with again.

So much for all those hopes that she’d be the one to prove her therapist wrong.

That explosion…

The sound, the concussive force of it moving through her body, the ringing in her ears, it was just too similar to that horrible day in Kandahar. And that day hadn’t even been the worst of her days in Afghanistan.

She stopped that thought before it launched her down another black hole.

“I’m okay.” She wriggled out of Flaherty’s grasp and stood from where she’d been knocked to the ground. “Sorry about that. I’m fine now.”

Lord, what had she looked like? Had she been talking? Had she been fighting with Flaherty? She didn’t remember anything except the completely vivid flashback.

Her cheeks grew hot and her stomach knotted. Having her brain fritz out like that—it was beyond embarrassing. And it didn’t help that Flaherty was standing there, assessing her the same way he did when he was considering involuntarily committing someone. Victoria tipped her chin up and turned away from him.

Several yards away, Tonya sat in the back of the ambulance. A firefighter was talking to her, evidently keeping her calm while Flaherty had been dealing with Victoria. The woman looked dazed but unharmed.

Across the street, children stared. Some were crying, understandably frightened by the blast. Some were solemn and watchful.

Flaherty led her to the ambulance, and she sat on the back bumper of the rig. The explosion had been just that. A huge burst, strong enough to blow out windows and do some structural damage, but fewer flames than one would expect. What could’ve caused that?

Flaherty lifted her arm, turning it to look at the scrape on her elbow. “Doesn’t look too bad. Just an abrasion.” His bedside manner with any given patient generally lacked warmth, but his lack of eye contact with Victoria was positively frigid.

“I’m fine.” She pulled her arm back, annoyed that he was so clearly irritated with her. Just what the hell was his problem? What had she ever done to him?

Nothing, that’s what. She was nothing but nice to the guy. If one could actually be killed by kindness, he’d be dead by now.

“Hey!” Graham’s frantic shout snapped her out of her ruminations, and she stood up. He came out of the daycare center, propping up a badly limping Tayshaun Moore.

Victoria and Flaherty sprang into action. She gently shooed Tonya out of the way and pulled the gurney out with Flaherty’s help. Moore didn’t look like he should be walking, but Graham was probably desperate to get him as far from the building as possible. “Hang on, guys! We’re coming.”

They set the gurney on the ground—she and Flaherty moving as one unit, despite the unfriendliness between them.

“Easy, Moore.” She helped support Moore’s upper body as the three lowered the injured firefighter to the gurney. “We got you.”

“Where’s it hurt, man?” Flaherty asked.

“Everywhere,” Moore moaned. His breathing was shallow and quick—the kind of he-he-hoo people did when they were in extreme pain.

“He was right by the blast, it threw him up against a wall.”

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Victoria had a lot of experience with blast injuries. The blood trickling from his ears told her that his tympanic membranes had ruptured from the overpressure. Which meant his lungs were also at risk for primary blast injuries.

Quickly, she helped Moore out of his turnout gear and cut open his t-shirt, anxious to assess his lungs. Pressing the chest piece of her stethoscope to his sternum, she listened closely while Flaherty assessed some shrapnel lodged in Moore’s neck.

“Decreased breath sounds on both sides.” She glanced up at Moore’s tense face. “Got any pain in the ribs?”

“I got…pain…all over.”

Keeping the scope on his chest, she moved it over his heart. “He’s tachycardic. Both lungs collapsed. Probably punctured by broken ribs.” Victoria looked at Flaherty. “Let’s get him in the ambulance.”

They moved the gurney quickly and efficiently, and Victoria hopped inside. She grabbed the pulse oximeter and clipped it to Moore’s index finger.

“We’re going to need the chest tube kit.”

“We’re not doing that here,” Flaherty said, irrigating the shrapnel wound in Moore’s neck with saline. “We’ll get him to the ER. They can do it in a sterile field and with the right equipment.”

She glanced at Moore. Even with his dark skin, his face was visibly ashen, his breathing labored, and his eyes wide with panic.

“Pulse ox is sixty. I’m doing it now.” They didn’t have time to waste. Oxygen lost meant organ failure. And time lost meant brain loss.

Graham stood at the open ambulance doors and offered Moore encouragement. “You’re going to be all right, buddy. You’re in good hands with these two. You know that.”

Moore nodded, still unable to take a full breath.

Applying Betadine with careful strokes, she started prepping his torso.

“Move over.” Flaherty tried to nudge her out of the way, and Victoria felt her blood pressure rise.

“I got it,” she said through gritted teeth and held her ground.

“Russo, move aside. This is a serious procedure.”

“Yes, and one that I’ve done several more times than you.”

She’d had enough of this second-guessing bullshit from Flaherty. He’d been a sniper in the army, not a medic. He hadn’t seen blast injuries. Hadn’t placed a chest tube in the field. Victoria had. And she’d done it while under fire and with far less tools at her disposal. “Two seconds ago, you wanted to wait until we got to the hospital, and now you want to do this?”

Flaherty leveled his cold gray gaze on her. “You just checked out on me back there. You were shaking from head to toe, and now you think you’re steady enough to do this? Fuck that.”

No, fuck you,
she thought
.
“I got this, Flaherty. I’m tight.” She held out her hand—her completely steady hand. “Give me the scalpel.”

“Guys, c’mon.” Graham shifted uncomfortably just outside the ambulance. “You’re making Moore nervous.”

Two other firefighters had joined Graham, offering Moore their silent support. Glancing at the growing crowd, Flaherty handed over the scalpel.

Keeping her voice low, she spoke to Flaherty out of the side of her mouth while continuing to prep Moore for the insertion of the chest tube. “Do not argue with me again. He’s struggling enough as it is. Get up there, hold his hand, and keep him calm.”

Seething silently, Flaherty placed himself at the head of the gurney and did as she asked. “It’s okay, buddy,” he said, his calm, assured voice contradicting the angry glare he sent her way. “We got this. Stay calm, my man.”

She focused her attention on the task at hand. If this had been done at the hospital, they’d have used a CT to confirm correct placement of the tube. Out here, she had only her instincts and feel to guide her. But she had experience too, and that’s why she hadn’t backed down from Flaherty. He was angry and probably panicked. If he pushed the tube in too far, he could do even greater damage.

“You’re going to feel some pain here, Moore, but then you’re going to feel like the elephant sitting on your chest is gone. So stay still and bear with me, okay?”

He nodded, and she made the incision. Quickly but carefully, she inserted the chest tube into the pleural space, releasing the excess air and watching for signs that the lung had inflated.

Moore took an easier breath and, beginning to relax, let his head collapse against the gurney.

Feeling her own lungs fill with relief, she glanced back at Flaherty. He nodded once. No
good job
. No
you were right
. But she’d take it. On a Flaherty scale, a single nod was equivalent to a gold fucking star.

“Pulse ox is on its way back up,” she said. “Let’s move out.”

But before Flaherty was even in the driver’s seat, another explosion rang out from the daycare center.

* * *

He wasn’t at the hospital to check on Victoria. He wasn’t. That was stupid. He’d met her once. Sure he’d asked the ER staff if any paramedics had been brought in, but that was just good old professional concern. These were his colleagues after all. Of course he cared if one of them was injured.

And one of them was. Badly, from what he’d been told. But it was a male firefighter according to the ER nurse, so the dispatcher who thought a paramedic had been injured must’ve had some incorrect information. It happened sometimes. Facts came over the radio fast and furious—often reported to dispatchers from bystanders. Sometimes, it was little better than a bunch of kids playing a game of telephone.

All he knew for certain were the facts he was able to verify while on scene.

One. The first explosion had been in the kitchen, but the cook had no explanation for how it could’ve happened. She’d started the oven to pre-heat it, left the kitchen to get some supplies, and boom—the kitchen was on fire.

Two. All witnesses agreed that there were three separate blasts.

Three. A preliminary search of the explosion sites revealed the remains of what appeared to be small, homemade fertilizer bombs. Further lab tests would be needed to confirm, but he’d bet his left nut he was right about that.

Just what the fuck were they dealing with here? Domestic terrorism? Foreign? A sociopath? Whatever it was, he was going to find out.

And first on his interview list was this Tonya Esposito. Witnesses said she was frantic over a missing child that turned out not to be missing. Honest mistake? Or ploy to keep firefighters inside and searching the building?

“Excuse me, ma’am?” He found Tonya in exam three, just as the ER nurse had said he would.

She sat on the gurney, her make-up smudged beneath her eyes from crying. A younger woman sat next to the hospital bed, holding Tonya’s hand.

“Are you Tonya Esposito?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said warily. “And this is my daughter, Anita.”

“Hello.” He shook hands with each of them. “My name’s Officer Meadows with the Evanston Police Department. I’d like to ask you some questions if I could, Mrs. Esposito.”

“Of course.” She nodded to her daughter, who released her hand and relaxed back into the chair. “Any news about the firefighter who was injured? Is he going to be okay?”

“It sounds like it. He’s in surgery at the moment.”

“It’s all my fault, you know.” The tears started anew and she pulled a crumpled piece of tissue from the shirt pocket of her clown-print scrubs to wipe her eyes, further smudging her eyeliner. Or mascara. Or whatever the heck it was women put on their faces.

He could’ve done without the tears. He wasn’t the comforting type. Not like other cops he knew. Tomaras, for example, could charm the most hysterical of criers out of their sobbing in seconds. Jason didn’t have the patience for that shit. He had questions. Tonya had answers. Couldn’t they just get on with it?

Tonya continued sniffling and sobbing into her tissue, while Jason checked his watch.

“How was it your fault, Mrs. Esposito?” he asked, his patience fairly dried up.

“I thought we were missing a child. I was so frantic. I counted twice. I swear I did. But…” She sobbed again. “The firefighters went in there because of my stupid mistake. And if anything happens to him…Oh, my Lord.”

Jason trusted his gut. Explicitly. And right now it was saying this woman was the type of person who caught a spider in a cup and tossed it outside instead of smashing it with a shoe. She wasn’t the type to send firefighters into danger on purpose.

He mentally crossed Daycare Director off his list of possible suspects.

“Mama, shh.” Anita sat forward in her chair, reaching for her mother’s hand again. “You have to calm down. Everything will be all right.”

Anita glared at Jason. “Her heart’s not strong. They’ve been monitoring her since she came in.” She tilted her head toward the wires snaking from her mother’s neckline to the machines behind her. “I don’t think she’s up to anymore questions today, Officer Meadows.”

She had a talent, this Anita. He’d give her that. She could make
Officer Meadows
sound about as polite as
screw you
.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, meeting her tone with nothing but professional politeness. “Just a few more quick questions.”

Anita inhaled, no doubt readying herself to give him a piece of her mind.

Jason cut her off. “Any information you have, Mrs. Esposito, that might help us find the person responsible would be invaluable.”

Tonya patted her daughter’s hand. “Of course. Of course.” She took a deep breath and brought her sobbing under control. “What else would you like to know?”

Anita glanced at her mother, concern drawing her features down. Shaking her head, she sighed and scooted back in her chair. She waved a hand at Jason, like a queen giving her subject permission to speak.