Through the Fire (7 page)

She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Not yet.”

The ceiling speaker chirped. A female dispatcher’s voice came over. “Battalion One, please landline dispatch.”

Mauvain glanced at the ceiling and then at Julianne. “Thank you, Ms. Caldwell.” He put his hands together. “Well, that’s it for now. You guys are doing a good job. Stay heads-up and be safe.” He started toward the stairwell and pulled a cell phone from his belt.

Captain Butcher stood. “All right. Let’s get to morning checks and house duties.”

Guys stretched and conversation resumed.

Timothy Clark turned to me. “I’ll clean the north bathrooms if you’ve got the south ones.”

I nodded. He disappeared down the hall toward the dorms. My stomach growled, so I made for the kitchen and found a couple heel slices of bread wrapped in plastic in the free-for-all bowl on the counter. I pushed the handle down for the toaster and watched the metal wires glow red-hot, feeling the warmth on my face.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from across the room. “Do you know where . . .” Julianne stopped when I turned around. “Never mind,” she said, and walked over to a set of cabinets, opening and closing doors.

“Are you looking for something?”

“I’m fine.” She opened and closed two more cabinets. “Thank you.”

“Coffee cup?”

She closed three lower doors and exhaled. She kept her back to me. “Yes.”

“Second top cabinet from the right.”

She threw her hands in the air and muttered, “Of course, the one I didn’t check.”

My toast popped up. I grabbed a couple paper napkins and set them on it. “So, sounds like you’ve had your hands full with the new job.”

She pulled down a mug and walked to the coffee maker.

“Yep.”

I buttered the toast and watched her from the corner of my eye. She poured the coffee and stared at it. Her shoulders slumped.

“Creamer?” I said.

She turned her head to the side and gave a slight nod.

“Fridge to your right. First door.”

She fished out the half-and-half.

I set the butter knife down. “You new to this area?”

She stopped pouring and held the creamer carton in the air for a moment, then added a splash more. “I’ve been out of state for a while.”

“Oh. Nearby?”

“Northern California.”

I bit into my toast and stared at her, chewing.

“Thank you,” she said, raising the coffee mug.

I swallowed my bite. “My pleasure.”

She gave a quick polite smile and moved to the door, stopping to look out the window. “It hasn’t changed that much.”

“Did you grow up here?”

She seemed to be looking more inward than out. “There’s always more going on than what you see on the surface.”

I stepped to the island. “This probably sounds canned, but . . . you seem really familiar.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. She pushed on the door. “Have a good day, Firefighter O’Neill.”

“Wait. How do you know my name?”

She disappeared into the dayroom.

Tones cycled from the ceiling-mounted speaker.

A woman’s voice echoed. “Battalion One, Engine One, Engine Two, Engine Four, Truck One, Rescue One with the safety officer to a structure fire—smoke and flames seen coming from the front of a residence.”

My heart rate quickened. I opened the kitchen pole-hole door. The brushed-steel cylinder stretched from the ceiling to three floors down. I felt the cool metal on my palms and dropped through the circle of air.

CHAPTER
12

A
cross the apparatus bay it rained firemen.

My head pounded with my pulse. I stepped into my turnout boots, pulled up my suspenders, and hopped in the back. Kat shot out of the barn and I threw on my coat, falling back into the rear-facing jumpseat. The ladder truck followed us with the rescue behind it. Chief Mauvain trailed caboose in a screaming train weaving down Evans Avenue.

I worked my arms through the shoulder straps of the seat-mounted air pack, standing to tighten the straps. The engine jerked, and I slammed against the door.

Butcher bent around from the front. “Get seated back there.”

I cinched the waist belt and dropped back into the seat. Timothy cranked on his air valve.

Butcher pointed. “Left here on Spokane.”

“I got it,” Kat said. “I’ll get you there. I’ll get you water.”

She pulled to a stop just past a hundred-year-old two-story house on my side of the rig. Butcher reported a wood-framed structure with an A-frame roof and heavy smoke showing.

The air brake snapped and hissed. I opened my door and hopped out. Everything felt right, back in step.

Until I saw the fire.

Black smoke rolled out the front door, swirling liquid fire chasing it down a darkened hallway. Two opalescent eyes formed within the flame. The fire morphed, and the world around it shadowed into a Mexican beach, bonfires raging—and there in the doorway stood the sickle-gripping reaper waving with the heat. A vacuum opened in my gut. I stepped back and collided with Kat.

“Look out, Aidan.”

I rubbed my eyes. Timothy hopped on the sideboard and put his arm through the hose loops. The fire was on my side, and he had beat me to the nozzle. He yanked the hose load to the pavement and winked at me, taking off up the walkway. The wind shifted and he vanished into the smoke-filled air.

Butcher walked in front of me, radio held by his ear. He slapped my shoulder. “Find the seat and knock it down before this whole thing flashes.”

The ladder truck turned the corner, Peyton spinning the rear steering wheel in the tiller cab.

Kat shoved the handle of my flathead axe across my chest. “Am I going to have to do everything for you guys?”

I grabbed the smooth linseeded handle with its familiar dark hickory veins.

My father’s axe . . .

She grabbed my jacket and pushed me toward the house. “Wake up, Aidan!”

Kat circled around to the pump panel and shouted, “Water comin’!”

It snaked through the flat hose fabric, swelling it solid. I slid the axe into my belt sheath and strode up the walkway. The nozzle jerked forward in Timothy’s grip, pointing at the doorway like a dog to its catch. Timothy pointed it at the side of the house and bled the air from the line with a
hiss-splash
. The heat was palpable. I knelt and strapped on my mask as flames wicked around the doorframe. Timothy crawled in, his boots assimilating into the smoke.

Sheol sucked him in.

I swore I heard laughter. Panic raced down my windpipe. The hose line inched inward like a python.

I couldn’t leave Timothy. I pulled on my gloves.

Fire erupted at the ceiling, bulbous and rolling up the building side. I hit the floor and clambered in. Timothy’s coat took shape in front of me.

He yanked on the line. “There’s a glow back there.”

I nodded and grabbed a coupling. We pushed deeper in. Fire rippled above like an inverted river.

Cormac’s voice echoed in my head.
“Its sole desire is to
consume.”

Timothy took a kneeling position at the doorway to a raging back room. The hallway temperature neared unbearable heights. I held the hose behind him and leaned my shoulder into his back. His torso shifted as he opened the bale and the water stream shot out. He swept it across the ceiling and circled it around the room.

The fire danced. It mocked. It shot from the room with wicked lit fingers, clawing and scratching, curling around my air bottle. It tugged at me, pulling me to it. Flame edges whipped down the walls, forming a sickle in the air, swinging in a slow arc down toward my sternum.

I had to get out.

I turned and bolted, colliding with Butcher, knocking him to his rear. The smoke spazzed and scurried. I glanced back to see the fire darken in the room. The atmosphere cooled, lightening from black to gray. Someone outside broke a window. A fan started on the porch, pushing the haze past us.

Butcher made his feet and stared at me through his mask. He held a radio mic by his facepiece. “Battalion One, Attack Group. We have knockdown.” He broke his gaze and walked past me.

Timothy worked the hose line into the room, hitting hot spots with short bursts of water. I stood as the truck guys scooted by, tools in hand. Lead-colored smoky wisps vacillated and wove in front of my mask. I leaned against the wall and took off my helmet.

Nothing made sense anymore.

CHAPTER
13

T
he wrinkles beside Benjamin Sower’s eyes looked like rays of the sun in a child’s drawing.

I dropped my turnout boots from the back of the rig to the app-bay floor. “That is definitely a Captain Sower joke.”

He grinned, his broad shoulders shaking as he chuckled. “Well now, what else would a cow without any lips say?”

I shook my head and smiled at the floor. “I guess ‘Ooo’ is it.”

He laughed again, the fluorescent lights casting a dull sheen over his bald head.

I climbed down and hung my suspenders over the chrome bar beside the door. My turnout pants were dank and thick with the smell of smoke. “So what did you learn on the second floor?”

He hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “That I’m glad I work on the third.”

I laughed. It sounded like a pressure relief valve off-gassing. “Come on now, Ben. We go way back. What’s the inside story?”

“We do go way back. As far back as you go. I was there the day you were born, remember?”

“Strangely enough I don’t recall a whole lot about that day.”

“Your father’s wry sense of humor lives on, I see.”

I didn’t want to talk about my father. “So tell me.”

“All I know is that the pressure from city hall to find this firebug is building.”

I nodded. “And today’s fire—”

“Probably.”

I swallowed. As far as I was concerned, any arsonist could be
the
arsonist, the one who set my father’s fatal fire.

Ben shifted his stance. “So, have you seen the garden out back?”

“Um, yeah, actually. That corn looks pretty high. Kind of weird, right there in the middle of the city.”

“I’m really happy with that. Last tour someone took off with a couple ears. And that’s fine. If they need it that bad, they can have it. I’ll grow more. Or
God
will. He provides.” His face turned solemn. His voice quieted. “Aidan, on a different note, I have been a bit concerned for you.”

Alarms of suspicion rang in my head. He had just come from talking with the chiefs. “
You’ve
been concerned? Or did somebody come to you who was concerned about me?”

“No. No one came to me.”

My face must have betrayed my skepticism, because he said, “My talk with Mauvain had nothing to do with this. I just . . . I haven’t had the chance to talk with you since the whole thing with Hartman. I’ve felt a burden for you in prayer.”

He and my dad had been best friends. I had so many memories of him from growing up—Bible studies at our house, barbecues, birthday parties. Even then he didn’t have hair.

I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Ben. Really. I appreciate the concern.”

He waited.

He knew me too well. I shook my head. “You know, I should have made a better judgment call. We just got into a hairy situation. But Hartman’s going to be all right, and that’s what matters.” Somehow the words sounded false as they fell from my lips, bearing a hollow timbre of rationalization. I was sure he could see through it. I blurted, “I’ve just been off my game a bit since I came back. I’ll get it back though. I just stutter-stepped a bit on this last fire.”

Ben sat on the sideboard, nodding slowly, as if he were part of a conference call and listening to another party. He brought his elbow up and rested it on the intake manifold. “It’s not like you to feel off your game.”

“No. I know. But it happens to all of us, right?” I zipped up my station boots and draped my uniform pant leg over them. “Like a batting slump. I’m just thrown off my rhythm.”

“Remember Wade Boggs, Aidan?”

I straightened. “Sure. Yeah. One of the best batters ever.”

“Yes. While not a model of moral fortitude, he was in fact one of the all-time best. He was also extremely superstitious. Had to eat chicken before every game. Had to always have batting practice at the exact same time. He had these habits he was committed to following to keep himself on his game. But you know what? I bet you none of that had much to do with why he hit so well.”

“Why do you think?”

“Twenty-twelve vision. He could see the ball like no one else. He came built that way. He possessed a gift.”

I studied the soot-stained and heat-discolored number 1 on the engine’s side.

“So do you, Aidan. I saw it in your father, and I’ve seen it in you.”

An emptiness augered into my gut. I noticed my hand trembling and crossed my arms over my chest. The gift hadn’t saved my dad. What hope did I have? I ran my hand over the warped number 1. “What happens if you can’t rely on that gift anymore?”

He breathed in. It seemed like a mix between knowing he’d made a connection and realizing that now he had to deliver some answers. He spun the wedding ring on his finger and looked up. “There isn’t one of us who doesn’t need to learn how to better place his trust in something, or some
one
, outside of himself.”

“What if there isn’t anyone you can trust?”

“You know there is, Aidan. You’ve known it since you were—”

Tones.

“Engine One to a medical emergency, seizure. Haley’s Casino. Use the air curtain entrance on Virginia.”

I threw my turnouts in the back. “I’ll see ya, Benjamin.”

He stepped back from the rig. “We’ll talk later.”

I nodded and closed my door. Katrina fired up the engine and Lowell Richmond hopped up into Timothy’s seat.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked as I pulled on my seat belt. “Waits finally kick you off the Q?”

He threw his turnouts on the floor. “Yeah, I needed a break from rescue, and Timothy owed me.”

Kat rolled the rig out and flicked on the lights, looking both ways on Evans. Butcher put us en route over the radio and flipped on the grinder siren. All westbound lanes on Second were stacked, so Kat took oncoming traffic, blaring the air horn. Cars acquiesced by moving to the side.