Kade's Rescue (Detroit Heat Book 1) (3 page)

“Trick them into being who you want?” I’d heard this all before from other girlfriends. I was too picky. I was looking for an ideal man that didn’t exist. The usual stuff. I might have sounded that way when I talked about a man, but really, I just wanted someone who worked toward a greater good. Someone who got
satisfaction
from that.

As I wrestled the cork from the bottle, Shatrice laughed. “If you want to use the word ‘trick,’ you go right ahead. I prefer ‘psychological conditioning.’ If you don't believe me, just take a look at Darnell. When we met, he was a mess.”

“Then why’d you start dating him?”

“Because he had a Camaro.” I snickered as Shatrice went on. “And because he had
potential.
I knew there was a great man inside him. It just took some doing to get that great man out.”

I raised my eyebrows. She might have been on to something there. I laid the cork and corkscrew down and switched the phone to my other ear. “Advice heard.”

As usual, for Shatrice, that wasn’t enough. “Advice
understood
?” she asked.

“I think so.”

She laughed. “Good. We’ll discuss the tricking of men further at work tomorrow. You enjoy your wine and your white-girl shows.” She knew me so well.

“Goodnight, Shatrice.” I rolled my eyes and hung up.

Dropping down into the couch, I wondered about what she had said. I knew that no one was perfect, but damn, I was starting to get a real sexual frustration building up inside of me. The Disney princess fantasy wasn’t so ingrained in my head that I thought Prince Charming was really out there, but I also didn’t think my standards were too high.

I didn’t have a favorite hair color or eye color. A man’s physical appearance didn’t concern me nearly as much as his heart. I wanted a kind man, but not a pushover. A good man, but not a boring one. A giver, but not to a fault.

I sighed. Maybe I really was too picky.

My longest relationship had been with Sam in college. He wasn’t kind, good, or a giver. He was a bad boy, and I still regretted the nine months of reckless lust. He’d ridden a motorcycle and he fucked like a porn star, so it wasn't hard for me to look past his faults.

Maybe I was looking for the antithesis of Sam instead of what I thought would really be good for me. After he and I had a painful, fiery split, I’d dated Edward. Edward really was the opposite of Sam. He was quiet, introverted, and well-spoken.

We met in a philanthropy club, and after four months of long nights talking about traveling overseas to dig wells and examining what we felt were the true roots of poverty, he’d finally kissed me. Edward didn't set my heart on fire, not by a longshot, but he was reliable, safe, and I thought our common interests would mean that we’d grow into the power couple I’d always longed for.

Shatrice’s words reverberated in my head. Maybe with some gentle persuasion, I could have helped Edward to become what I really needed. Our minds were in sync, yet our bodies were anything but. I couldn't admit to him that things in the bedroom weren’t good for me. At the time, I’d told myself it was because he was too fragile to take it, but looking back,
I
was the one who couldn’t say it.

I cycled through my other scattered relationships and realized that Shatrice might have been right. With a bit of effort and vision for the future, I could have seen myself with any of them for the long haul, except for Sam.

And Edward in particular had seemed beyond smitten with me. I thought that perhaps I was being arrogant, but I couldn’t think of any relationship where my partners had really asked anything of me. I sipped at the chilly white wine and had a thought that made my heart stop for a second.

Had I ever been in a real relationship? An honest-to-God, give-and-take relationship?

I didn’t want to think about that now. I had moved to a brand new city and carved out a decent life for myself. I had survived the disaster of the S.S. Aaron and there would be other ships in the sea—just hopefully ones that didn’t pass in the night.

I flipped on Netflix to let
Gilmore Girls
play.
Oh, Lorelai. I can sympathize.

Before the accident back in May, my senses would sharpen in the blink of an eye at the sound of our station’s tones ringing out. On the way to a call, I would do my best to hold off the adrenaline. We had an average of a five-minute response time and adrenaline did nothing good while you sat in a fire engine traveling to a call. It made you antsy en route and it clouded your mind once you got to the scene.

But now I’d begun to dread the tones. My fellow firefighters would call out encouragement and some of the younger guys would cheer. To them, they were a football team coming through the tunnel into the spotlight. It was their bowl game. To me, it was like reliving the memory of that terrible night right from the beginning.

I would let out a sigh of relief when we found out it was a false alarm or the fire turned out to be popcorn burnt in a microwave in an apartment building. When it was a real fire, I had to swallow my fears and do my job. I could do that, but it was getting harder to hide it from the brothers around me.

A few days after my first session with the shrink, we had a big call. It came out as a second alarm; we were called to assist a nearby station with a fire they were already battling. A fire had started in the basement of an apartment complex unit, and by the time the neighboring department got there, it had traveled up into the attic.

I was riding in the seat just behind the officer, facing back and watching the rain-soaked world disappearing into the distance. I heard the radio traffic, but my mind wasn’t with it.

“Looks like we’re fighting this one from the inside out.”
 

I turned from the window to my partner for the shift. Young and far too eager, Rico Baggio
was a green as they come. He’d only been with the DFD for a little over a month, and it showed in just about everything he did. Rico thought of himself as Superman, which got probies killed more often than anything else. He spoke like he’d not only seen every episode of
Rescue Me
and
Chicago Fire,
but like he knew what the fuck he was doing. That was a serious problem.
 
The kid could be good someday, but he had to learn his place.

I mumbled, mostly to myself, “Just stick with me. We’ll do what we’re told.”

Rico didn’t seem to hear, he was too caught up in himself, “The Dirty D: the only place where the water shoots out of the house instead of in.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the window. We had another two minutes and I was trying to keep myself calm.

The red lights were flashing from the trucks already on scene before we slowed to a stop. I could hear the clamor of the truck warning that someone wasn’t wearing their seatbelt. Looking to my right, I saw that Rico was already loaded up with his air pack and he had the door open.

I shook my head. He’d stand outside our truck for five minutes before being given an assignment, wasting energy and air from the bottle. You could talk until you were blue in the face, but the kid wouldn’t listen. I’d make sure the battalion chief knew about it so Rico could hear it from on high. Then it might sink in.

Pulling the handle below my seat, I released the SCBA bottle built into the backrest of the seat. Pushing the door open with my foot, I slung the air tank over one shoulder and stepped out of the truck.

When I shut the door, I saw the thick, black smoke was rising into the night sky. Every light seemed to be trained onto the apartment, making the whole thing look like a sinister hot air balloon. Hoses stretched in every direction toward the house. I could see the first department’s truckies had already set up ladders, but the fire was still growing.

It was a three-story apartment and it looked abandoned. It was May all over again. A woman was screaming in a nightgown, oblivious to the rain falling down around her. The battalion chief came up to my crew, his jacket already soaked through with rain.

“The place is supposed to be abandoned, but we’ve got multiple witnesses saying a family was squatting. Our guys have ladders set up for egress, but we need eyes inside on two and three.”

Clay, the shift commander, looked to me. “Grab the rook and get his gear dirty.” He watched me for a split second. I understood what he was doing. The slightest bit of hesitation on my part would have change his mind. I had to be dedicated one hundred percent.

I nodded, accepting the risks. “Grab a set of irons, probie. We’re going hunting.”

I reached back into the truck and took out the thermal imaging camera. Clipping it to my bunker jacket, I knelt down on the small bit of grass between the road and the sidewalk. After laying my helmet on the ground, I threw my mask over my head. Rico followed suit. As I walked toward the burning structure, I seated the mask, pulled my hood up, and strapped my helmet back into place.

With a twist of my wrist, I opened the air bottle behind me. My PASS device beeped, letting me know how much air I had. I slid the regulator over my mask, popping it in with a click, and sucked hard to pull the first breath from the tank. I looked back, waiting for Rico to catch up with me. I saw him shuffling toward the building carrying the axe and Halligan bar like a handful of sticks. I shook my head. The kid had so much to learn.

I walked past the rapid intervention team, patting one of them on the shoulder. Reading their last names on their bunker jackets, I realized I knew three of the four guys. I gave them a quick salute. All four of them nodded. Between us was the understanding of survival. If something happened to me or Rico while we were inside, they’d be in to pull us out.

Through the static of the microphones embedded in our masks, Rico said, “You ready?”

I’d been tired of his arrogance even before the events in May. Now I was downright done with it.

I grabbed him by his shoulder strap and pulled him so close our masks collided. “You don’t get to ask me that. I ask you that, and you should shit your pants when I do. We’re about to crawl around in a living, breathing monster looking for ghosts. You need to pull your head out of your ass and remember that you don’t know the first thing about fire. You can wave your certificates at me all you want, rook, but you ain’t seen shit.”

I pushed him away, knowing I had extinguished the flame in his heart. It was cruel, but it was also reality. “Let’s go.”

The second floor of the apartment was bare and we were able to stay on our feet for most of it. As we got toward the back of the building, the smoke got thick and I pointed down. We crawled on our hands and knees back through the kitchen and a second bedroom, but it was empty too. Once we got back to the front of the structure, I climbed back to my feet and hustled up the stairs to the third floor.

On the way up, I radioed my shift commander. “Second floor clear, S and R moving to three.” I turned back to see sweat on Rico’s forehead beneath his mask. “You good?”

He nodded. “You?”

I nodded. Overall, I was handling the whole thing better than I thought I would. I was keeping my mind in check and staying focused on the job at hand.

We hustled up the metal stairs. I thought I felt them give a little bit as we ascended.

It was another one of those things I’d look back on later and question.

Rico used his Halligan to bust the door to the third-floor apartment wide open. When he did, heavy smoke pushed out and we both dropped to our knees as it shot above our heads and into the night sky.

I saw dark plumes puff out and then pull back inside as if the building was breathing. A cold thought gripped me and I dove forward and tackled Rico to the metal grating in front of the apartment.

The building shook as a smoke explosion rippled over our heads. I could feel the heat as the air ignited inches above our helmets. A window shattered, raining wood and glass down around me and my partner. The shrapnel became the least of our problems when the landing twisted.

The metal creaked and groaned, pulling itself free from the rest of the apartment. As it began to sag, Rico reached out, frantic to grab onto anything he could. I planted my feet on the banister and punched at his shoulder.

“Give me the axe. Use the Halligan to dig in!”

For a split-second, he didn’t comprehend. Rico hadn’t been in any high-stress situations. But it wasn’t my first time nearly sliding down twenty-five feet to the unforgiving earth below.

He used his free hand to slide me the axe as the landing pulled farther and farther away from the building. I could feel gravity trying to tug me down. I drove the axe into a corner, wedging it in as best as I could. Looking over, Rico wasn’t having the same luck.

He drove the Halligan down, but couldn’t get any purchase. I swung my free leg out to try and give him something to plant on, but we were tilting too far. I let go of the axe long enough to radio, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Officers McCaffrey and Baggio
on the A-side, third story. We need immediate assistance.”

“Copy, we see you.” Clay’s voice came over the radio calm and collected. It was an attempt to keep us from melting down. I wrapped an arm back around the axe.