SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (44 page)

It was the smell that told Pickett something was wrong.

The ocean breeze had died with the setting sun, and a land breeze was just beginning to push the air almost straight down the pier.

She turned from adjusting Tyler's jacket and raised her head to sniff the land breeze. Sort of sweet, sort of sulfur, slight odor of decay ...
cooking gas.

Restaurant was too fancy a word for the four orange vinyl booths and lunch counter that took up one wall of the bait shop. She supposed they had cooking gas there, but it seemed unlikely that the smell would carry nine hundred and fifty feet to the end of the pier.

The breeze died, and now she could only smell whiffs of beer, cigarette smoke, and the caramel corn the children were sharing. Underneath was the always-present pier-smell of fish bait and treated wood, long pickled in salt air.

It smelled like what it was: a crowd on a pier, but the feeling of cold fingers stroking her spine from the inside got stronger.

Jax, with his almost uncanny sense of where she was and what was going on with her, reached out a hand and drew her to him without pausing in the conversation he had struck up with an elderly man. The man was ranting to Jax about a loggerhead turtle nest near his beach cottage. He was irritated because he had to walk around the yellow tape that the turtle conservation group had placed around it.

Briefly comforted by Jax's scent, Pickett snuggled closer to his warmth as the breeze picked up again, but then there it was again.
Gas.
It just didn't make sense to smell gas where there wasn't any.

Jax felt her stiffen and cocked an eyebrow at her, but his wry smile said he had misinterpreted the cause of her unease. He knew well her opinion of people who were drawn to the uncrowded simplicity of the Outer Banks' pristine beaches and then complained because they missed all the conveniences of New Jersey. The man showed no signs of winding down. Pickett waited for a break in his monologue and when none appeared, she shoved out a
stop
hand.

The man stopped his harangue, more in surprise at her temerity than courtesy. Pickett would take what she could get.

"Excuse us." She pulled on Jax's sleeve. "I want to leave. Something is wrong."

Jax's eyes met hers in a moment's hard assessment. Then—she wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't been looking right at him—he went from being a laid back young man, politely letting an older man bore him, to being someone else. Someone she'd glimpsed once before when he'd come in from the hurricane still enrapt with the wildness of the storm. His shoulders suddenly looked broader. His weight moved to the balls of his feet and he scanned the crowd in one swift efficient sweep, noting the position of every single person. Without seeming to stop scanning, he swept up Tyler as he ran by chasing another little boy about his size.

"What's the matter?" Jax asked tersely while settling Tyler in his arms.

Pickett rubbed the back of her neck. "I don't know. I just want to get off this pier." She shrugged helplessly. "It doesn't smell right. I keep thinking I smell gas."

Jax lifted his head, inhaled sharply. "I don't smell it."

"I don't either right this minute, but ..."

"Okay, let's head out." Though spoken in a flat calm drawl, there was no doubt the words were an order.

Was that how he sounded on an operation? Did he weigh his men's input and come to instant decisions, confident that he was the one who decided, who told others what to do? Pickett's work gave her exquisitely developed intuition, but rarely did she communicate what she intuited, and even more rarely did she expect someone else to act on it.

There was no time to stand in bemusement, however. Even if Jax's tone had not assumed instant obedience to his softly worded command, her feeling of unease was growing stronger. Pickett could see nothing but a wall of people between her and the safety of the beach. Jax's hand, warm and firm, came down on her shoulder urging her forward.

"Wait, Daddy!" Tyler craned his head around. His perch in his father's arms put his head above Pickett's. "Where're we going? This isn't the way to the fireworks."

They were definitely going against the flow of the crowd, which parted for Jax as they never would have for her. She patted Tyler's leg. "We'll watch from the beach."

"No! I don't wanna go to the beach." Tyler could see for himself that people were streaming toward the far end of the pier to get a good position to view the fireworks.

Grateful for Jax's bulk at her side, Pickett pressed toward the bait shop and the exit just beyond it. Tyler saw the exit sign, one of the many signs he could read, and started pushing at his father's shoulder, twisting to be put down." A/b/We can't leave. We didn't see the fireworks yet! Put me down!"

"It's okay, son," Jax's voice was a soothing rumble, but he didn't let up the pressure on Pickett's shoulder. "If everything's all right, we'll come back."

Suddenly there was a sizzling whistle and pressure on her ears as if the noise extended far beyond the audible range. Pickett had the confused thought that the fireworks must have already started when a hand twisted the neck of her windbreaker swinging her around, and into the opposite direction.

"Run!" Jax didn't loosen his hold on her jacket, but instead, pulled her with him as he ran, holding Tyler against his chest, back toward the end of the pier.

It was a sensation between flying and being strangled. Pickett wasn't sure how often her feet actually touched the rough planks. With Jax holding her, pulling her, almost picking her up, she was running faster than she had ever run. Other people were beginning to run now, yelling. Pickett ignored the jacket's zipper cutting into the base of her neck.

There was a loud boom and the hand on her back shoved her roughly down and something,
someone heavy,
fell on top of her. Under her, the pier rippled and heaved like a carpet being shaken in the wind.

The breath knocked out of her by the fall, it took a moment to sort the extreme heaviness of her chest as Tyler lying on her back, sandwiched between her and Jax.

Pickett tried to lift her face away from the splinter digging into her cheek only to feel Jax's arms cross over her head pushing it back down. "Stay down!"

More booms. The pier shook again. There was the unmistakable
whoosh
as fire roared for oxygen.

Tyler gave a thin scream and began to struggle, digging sharp little knees and elbows into her back and the side of her neck. His rubber-soled sneakers were amazingly hard when they connected with the backs of her thighs. Suddenly he was lifted off her, but before Pickett could relish her renewed freedom to breathe she was hauled to her feet with more strength than ceremony.

"Move it!" Jax pushed her relentlessly toward the ocean end of the pier.

Even if the hand clamped to her collar would have allowed it, there was no need for Pickett to turn around to know that the pier was on fire behind them. The fitful land breeze enveloped them in smoke and sent sparks dancing past them. A lurid orange light competed with the mercury vapor lamps that were set at twenty-foot intervals.

There was no way off the pier.

The fire was between them and the beach and once they reached the tip where it widened into the fantail fishing platform, they would be as far as they could get from the blaze. They were trapped.

Frantic yells punctuated the fire's steady crackling, Tyler howled without let up, while unbelievably, the pier's music system continued to blare the Beatles.

"Hey Jude, don't be afraid. Take a sad song and make it
be-eh-eh-ter
..."

Pickett swallowed back a half-hysterical laugh and concentrated on maintaining her footing on the planks made bouncy by so many running feet.

A child careened into her legs, clipping her behind the knees, instantly followed by a much larger person. Before she could even attempt to recover her balance Jax had clamped her to his side with an iron arm.

Jax guided them toward one of the crude benches built at intervals against the railing. Most of the crowd, in an effort to get as far away as possible from the fire, had packed into the fishing platform. Jax pressed her into the bench with Tyler between them.

Not taking his hand off his son, Jax reached with his other hand for his cell phone. Tyler immediately scrambled to Pickett, wrapping his legs around her waist and clutching her neck in a strangle hold. Pickett pressed his wet face into her neck, murmuring reassurances and rocking him.

Flames leapt forty feet into the air behind Jax. The bait shop was fully ablaze now and spreading toward the walkways that ran on either side. The land breeze had picked up and was blowing steadily from the northeast pushing stinging, oily smoke, sparks, and flaming bits down the pier.

Under the roar of the fire, loud even this far away, Tyler sobbing, and the Beatles endlessly repeating
nah nah nah nahnahnah nah,
Pickett heard Jax calling 911.

A fireman had told her once that a pier, baked dry by years of sun, burned incredibly fast. The nearest fire station was fifteen or twenty minutes away. Pickett fought back her rising panic, and focused on Jax's voice. How could he sound so calm? His tone was flat, almost emotionless, as he assessed the situation for the 911 dispatcher.

Tyler squirmed against her arms as if he wanted to get down. When she tightened her hold, not daring to let him get away from her, he began to hit and kick. He twisted a fold of skin on her neck and she gasped in pain.

The sudden intake of breath dragged the chemical-thick smoke deep into her lungs, making her cough until her eyes steamed.

Tyler screamed, "I want my mommy!" as he kicked. Her heart went out to him but she could do nothing but grimly try to hang on to him as she coughed and gasped.

Jax snapped the cell phone closed. What the hell? He thought Pickett was getting Tyler calmed down. Most of the time she was better at it than he was. Suddenly the kid seemed to be going ballistic. Pickett tried to keep her face from his flailing hands but he noticed she didn't slacken her hold even when she caught a knee to the solar plexus.

Tyler was hurting Pickett. Jax snatched the child off her lap, more furious than he remembered being, maybe ever.