To Protect & Serve (10 page)

“No, all night tonight. The 24-hour shift thing. Then I’m off until Sunday.”

“Twenty-four hours? Ugh.”

“Yeah. As long as we don’t get middle of the night calls, it’s okay.” They walked a couple of steps as her heart said she hadn’t remembered this walk being this short on the way to the soda shop. “You working tomorrow?” He swung his gaze on her for the briefest of seconds.

“Of course, I work all the time. Weekdays, weekends, morning, noon, night, four o’clock in the morning.”

“You don’t sleep?”

She shook her head. “Too many things to think about most nights to spend time doing something so trivial.”

“Four o’clock in the morning, huh?”

Slowly she nodded as they traced
their way into the parking lot.

“Well, I guess now I’ll be up at four o’clock in the morning half the time, too.” He drifted off on thoughts of the nighttime. “It’s really a weird time of day if you think about it. I mean it’s strange to be up when everyone else is asleep.”

Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s the nice time of the day for me—nobody calls, I’ve got the world all to myself. No clients, no employees, just me and work.”

“That’s funny. The other night I was wondering why in the whole world anyone else would be up at that un-Godly hour. It’s nice to know I wasn’t the only one.” At her car, he leaned back on the Trailblazer next to it. “So, you think I could like, I don’t know, get your number or something so I could find out if I’m the only one awake the next time?”

“My… number?” she asked, and her skin jumped away from him. “Oh, I… don’t really give out my number.”

“Oh.” He nodded and halfway smiled. “That’s cool. I just thought…”

Stupid, don’t do this
. The thoughts clawed through her even as she dug into her purse.
Tell him no, Lisa.  Leave. Now
. However, her hand produced her business card for her heart, and with her gaze down she offered it to him. “In case you’re ever bored a four o’clock in the afternoon.”

Gently he smiled at her as he took it. “Like when I need a break from sink cleaning?”

“Yeah, something like that,” she agreed with a reluctant smile. Then she turned and looked at her car. “Well, I’d better get back to work otherwise it might be four a.m. before I get to go home.”

“Yeah, I’d better get this stuff in before Hunter blows a gasket.” He watched her get in the car, and then he stood holding the door
and the food. “Drive carefully.”

Why was it so hard to just say good-bye? “Don’t let Hunter get to you.”

“I’ll try not to,” he said with a laugh.

“I’ll see ya.”

“Yeah,” he said, and very carefully he shut her door.

She started the car, waiting for him to slide out of the space between hers and the Trailblazer. However, when she backed out, he was still standing right at the edge of the car’s path, those white bags dangling from his hands next to his knees. Off-handedly she waved as her body traced down everything it liked about how he looked—those pants curved in all the right places, the jacket draped over those arms that she couldn’t get out of her head, and that smile, lop-sided and completely amazing. He waved.  She did too—kind of.  When she got to the street, she looked back. He hadn’t moved, and somehow, it was like she was destined to be watching him in that rear view mirror forever.

The next morning Lisa was still on his mind as Jeff went to his locker to grab his coat at 6:30 fully prepared to head out with the rest of the guys. However, Hunter had other ideas. How he accomplished hanging a whole open bag of flour from the locker door without getting it everywhere in the process, Jeff would never know, but the second he opened the locker, the bag ripped and white powder spilled out, hitting the ground at his shoes, and creating a cloud that drifted all the way up his clothes.

With two coughs he waved at the now-white air surrounding him as he looked through it to his cloths. Snickers and giggles erupted from the far side of the lockers.

“Nice,” Jeff said with a reluctant smile as Dante and Hunter peered around the end of the gray metal, fighting back the laughter. “Very nice.”

“Have fun cleaning that up. I’d hate for the chief to happen by and see it,” Hunter said, and he turned Dante toward the door.

A tired sigh escaped as Jeff looked down at the white lava floe still cascading from the locker onto his shoes. Carefully he picked one shoe up and then the other, and he walked over to the sink, knowing he was leaving a lovely white shoe trail behind him.

“Crud, Witkowski baled on me,” a short, middle-aged fireman said, coming into the room as Jeff pulled the trashcan over to begin the clean-up. “What am I going to tell Pat?”

“What’s the big deal?” the man’s colleague, a tall, brownish-blond goateed man about half-a-decade older than Jeff, said in a deep voice that resonated off the concrete walls. “I’m sure she’ll understand.” However, they stopped in mid-conversation when they turned at the lockers and saw Jeff scooping the flour from the floor and transferring it into the trashcan. “Problems?”

“You could say that,” Jeff said, wishing his voice sounded happier about the mess.

The goateed man shook his head in sympathy and turned back to the conversation. “Pat’s cool. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Understand what? That I’m going to miss her birthday again? Like I missed Valentine’s Day and Jenny’s spring play and our anniversary before that? Yeah, I’m sure she’ll understand.” The shorter man shook his mostly hairless head. “I just wish I could find somebody else to cover for me on Tuesday. At least it would stave off a divorce for another couple months.”

Jeff was listening as he cleaned, and although they would know he was eavesdropping, he straightened and cleared his throat. “I could probably come in on Tuesday if you needed someone.”

The older man’s attention snapped to Jeff. At first his gaze was hard and cold, then it softened slightly. “I haven’t seen you around. You new?”

“Yeah. I just started last week,” Jeff said, nodding. The fact that he was still standing in a mound of white flour seemed to escape from his consciousness “But I’m not busy Tuesday. If you need somebody…”

“What’s your shift?” the man asked with worry around the edges of the question.

“Oh, no. It’s okay. You don’t have to switch or anything. It’s no big deal. I don’t mind covering for you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I work Sunday anyway, so Tuesday won’t kill me.”

The man stood for a moment and then smiled and stuck his hand out. “Wade Fraser.”

“Jeff Taylor.” He brushed his hand off on his pants, which did no good, and shook first one man’s hand and then the other.

“Gabe Teague,” the goateed man said.

“So you’ll really do this?” Wade asked, rocking backward on the thought.

“Yeah. No problem.”

Wade smiled mischievously. “Pat may kiss you.”

The tips of Jeff’s ears went hot as he shrugged and bent back down to the mess. “Just glad I could help.”

When Lisa’s gaze chanced on the clock on her computer at 3:55 on Sunday morning, she almost laughed, and had she not been so tired, she would have. It had taken all of Saturday and most of the night to go through Kurt’s idea of a ready presentation piece-by-piece and get it acceptable for Monday’s meeting.

Why was it that she had hired him again? She couldn’t clearly remember anymore. In fact, as her mouse clicked across the screen, anything other than utter exhaustion was getting very little play in her brain. However, every thirty seconds or so her gaze would slip down to that little clock in the corner as her dreams slipped to him.

Her chin rested in her hand as thoughts of him drifted through her. He had said something about Sunday. Was he off on Sunday? Or was that when he went back? She shook her head to clear it of him. However, seconds later he was there again, crowding through her work like a bulldozer. It was because she was so tired, she told herself. Her willpower along with her energy was shot. The mouse slowed as it clicked across her screen.

3:59 glowed back from the ether. Where was he now? At the station? At home in bed asleep? On a call? In the fuzz of sleep invading her brain she hoped it was one of the former and not the later. She was going to have to find out more about his schedule, she thought as the haze finally took over, and she laid her head on the desk. She really was going to have to find out more about him.

“House fire in progress 2545 Arthur Street.” The voice cracked over the speaker above the break room table Tuesday night as the alarms sprang to life, and instantly Jeff was on his feet. The whirlwind banked into high gear around him as people scrambled for the trucks. In the next blink six of them were crammed into one, pulling on gear and equipment as they wailed their way to Arthur Street.

The insides of Jeff’s stomach flitted in no definite pattern as he pulled on his air tank. This was it. The one he had worked for, trained for, wanted to do, and suddenly the moment was upon him.

Only the streetlights lit the night surrounding them as they sped to their destination where in rapid succession they jumped out. Flames illuminated the night sky, jumping out of the second story of the house and reaching for the roof
of the house ten feet over.

“Teague and Jackson cut the utilities,” Captain Rainier, the B-shift crew chief said as the truck slid to a stop. “Jameson, you and Taylor get the vent holes cut.”

When his feet hit the street, Jeff grabbed the extension ladder and started for the house. In seconds Zack Jameson was there climbing up with the roof ladder and chainsaw in hand. As soon as the saw was whirring, Jeff turned back for the truck, feeding one of the cotton hoses from the top of the truck down to Jackson who had just returned.

The training kicked in. His hands just worked, pulling the hose as it fed off the truck. At that moment a frantic lady dressed only in a thin flowery robe ran smack into the chaos and right up to Jeff’s side.

“Kaleb. Did they get Kaleb out?” she asked, pulling on the edge of Jeff’s coat as he fought to extract the last of the hose from the truck. When he turned, those eyes seemed terribly familiar. Fear. Utter, inconsolable terror.

“Who’s Kaleb?” he asked even as he worked. The hose hit the end. “That’s it!”

“He’s the little boy. He’s eight. He’s about so high with red hair and freckles.”

“Where was he supposed to be?” Jeff asked, trying to pay attention to everything at once.

“He was staying home tonight—by himself while his mom and dad went out. They asked me to watch him. I didn’t know anything until I heard the…”

“Captain, we’ve got a problem,” Jeff said, striding right up to where Gabe and the captain were strategizing where to go from here.

Rainier looked up. “What’s that?”

“There might be a kid inside.”

“Might be?”

“I didn’t know… he said he was going to bed,” the lady said as hysteria invaded her body and soul.

“Where’s his room?” Rainier asked.

“It’s on the first floor in the back,” the lady said. “He just called me thirty minutes ago, and everything was fine.”

Jeff looked at the captain who yelled to two other firefighters running by. When they ran up, the captain briefed them, and broke them into two groups. Gabe and Jeff would go around back. The other two would go in the front. Six words of final instructions before Jeff ran to the truck where he grabbed the pry bar as Gabe pulled off an ax. The two of them raced down the darkened side of the house.

At the gate Gabe stopped, rattling the whole fence in his frantic attempt to get in. “It’s locked.”

“Great.” Jeff’s brain sped ahead of him like a racecar. “Here.” He dumped the metal at Gabe’s feet, jumped onto the house’s cooling system which stood by the gate. Two short motions and he was over. “Pitch me the stuff.” The equipment landed on the other side of the fence in a non-discernible pattern, and his hands moved in rapid succession retrieving all of it just as Gabe joined him on that side of the fence.

They ran for the house, and at the first window, Jeff pounded on the glass. “Hey! Anybody in there? Kaleb? Anybody?”

The only answer was the popping of the flames high above them. At that moment he heard the crash and ran to where Gabe had just hacked through the plate glass back door. He reached in as the smoke poured out of the gaping hole. One click and they were in. The glass crunched under his boot as Jeff stepped through the opening, and the middle of his heart slammed into his chest.

Kaleb. A scared little eight-year-old kid in a two-story maze that he had no map for. Where was that little boy? Jeff pulled on his air mask as the smoke enveloped him. It was blinding, and he bumped into a dining room chair which sent him crashing into the wall. There were so many places a little kid could be. Feeling his way through the darkness
list only by the pathetic flashlight he swung this way and that, Jeff slid down the wall until it suddenly broke into a hallway, and he turned into the opening. “Kaleb? Kaleb, buddy? Where are you?”

Nothing was quiet. Voices, water, fire, sirens, windows shattering from the heat trying to find its way out. Then he saw what looked like a white cloth heaped next to the wall. “I found him!” he called to anyone who could hear anything in the mêlée. Gently he picked up the little body, which felt like it weighed nothing at all.

He met Gabe coming from the other direction, and they hit the opening together.

“Get out! Get out!” Gabe yelled as if Jeff had any intention of hanging around for the rest of the show. Snaps and a crack. The fire was eating the second floor away right above them.

It wasn’t really running so much as just stepping cautiously as he fought through the smoke to find his way back out into the cool night.

“It’s this way.” Gabe grabbed his elbow and dragged him back into the dining room. “Hurry!”

Crunch went the glass under his boot as Jeff became part of the smoke pouring out into the backyard. The streetlight beam gave him the first real look at what felt like a rag doll in his arms. Barely eight, the freckles stood out in stark contrast to the pale face. “Oh, God, please.”

A wail not wholly like a fire truck sliced through the night.

“Let’s get him out front,” Gabe said, at the gate which gave way with the first ax hit on the metal.

Jeff’s legs were hurrying through the darkness, but he didn’t really feel anything as they broke past the trees on the edge of the house and into the swirl of lights flashing across the houses making them look like a fun house gone mad. In a blink he saw the EMTs rushing up the grass. “Over here!” he called, skidding to a stop on the grass and laying the little, limp body in front of him.

“We’ve got it.” One of the EMTs pushed him away, and Jeff backed up enough to let the team take the lead.

“Hey, you okay?” Gabe asked with a clap on his back.

He coughed twice. “Yeah.”

“He’s breathing!” one of the paramedics said as they all jumped into motion. It was only when the youngest one stood to get the stretcher from the ambulance that Jeff recognized him. That flash and then he was gone.

“Teague, Taylor!” the captain yelled. “We need you guys ready to go in!”

A small look back and Jeff turned. There was more work to be done.

The clock in the locker room read 4:15 when he stumbled back in, his fellow firefighters surrounding him—sooty and grime-covered. They all looked like they had just come home from an all-nighter in hell.

“I hope the kid’s going to be okay,” Gabe said, pulling off his boots slowly as the sound of the showers hazed out the comment.

“Yeah.” Jeff reached into his locker for the little gold cross. He needed it right now. Pulling its strength into his soul, he ran a hand over it and then yanked it on over his head. They weren’t supposed to wear things like that at work, but he needed something.

“You did good out there, Taylor,” Gabe said as Jeff stood on his way to the showers.

“Just doing my job.”

“Well, I’d be happy to help you do it any day of the week.”

With a smile Jeff reached out and caught Gabe’s hand on the way forward. “Watch what you wish for.”

Lisa noticed the picture of the gutted house on the front page of the Chronicle the next morning, and her interest riveted to the story. Midnight on a Tuesday. Sunday flitted through her mind, but after that… Her hand flipped through the paper, but there was nothing about him. Not that she really expected there to be.

It was crazy to even think about him, but the center of her heart hoped fervently that he was at home in bed when that one happened. Of course, she knew even if he was, he wouldn’t be forever. Eventually the law of averages would put him in one of those burning buildings. Eventually…

She folded the paper and laid it to the side. Work was what was important now. Work. Jeff and all the other guys in the world would have to take care of themselves. She certainly didn’t need to be wasting valuable energy stores on keeping up with them.

“Ten to one the Celtics make it to the finals,” Dante said from the top of the truck as Jeff worked below, restocking the first aid kits on Thursday.

“You and the Celtics,” Hunter said as a road cone from the top of the truck landed on the concrete behind Jeff. “Why don’t you get a real team?”

“Like who? The awesome Nets?” Dante walked past Jeff to the truck door. “Please. They can’t even spell basketball, much less play it.”

“Oh, yeah, like the Celtics all have Ph.D.’s,” Hunter shot back as another road cone hit the ground behind Jeff.

“Hey! Would you quit throwing those down,” Dante yelled. “You’re going to break something important.”

“Like what?” Hunter asked.

“My head for one,” Jeff said, looking up at the man standing far above him like a supernatural cowboy.

“No.” Dante ducked back out of the truck. “I said, ‘Important.’”

Jeff shook his head and buried it into the first aid compartment. Why did he even try?

“Lisa,” the voice said at her doorway as she sat in her office Friday evening clicking through the Internet looking for a good picture of a zebra that they could use. She looked up and came to immediate attention.

“Tucker?”

“Yeah, sorry to disturb you.” He opened the door wider and stepped in. “Sherie said it was okay.”

“Oh.” Lisa fought to rebalance her world. “Come in. Have a seat.” Her hands went to work straightening her desk. Sherie knew better, but Lisa also knew her secretary had a huge crush on Tucker and his All-American blond good looks. One little please, and Sherie would’ve dove off a cliff for him. “What can I do for you?”

“I brought over this list of venues.” Tucker held them up after he sat down. “Grandpa thought we’d better get something booked before all the space is gone.”

“Oh, okay.” She reached for them. “Let me see.”

However, he pulled them back. “What do you say we do this over some dinner? It’s almost six, and you have to eat anyway.”

“Dinner? I’m kind of busy right now.” She glanced at the zebra on her screen and wished she could join him in that nice green grass. “Can’t we just go over them here?”

“I made reservations at La Tour D’Argent.”

“D’Argent? Over on the Bayou?” she asked, sensing a trap. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you have to eat, and I have to eat, and we can talk while we eat.” He looked at his watch, and all Lisa could think was that she would really like to break that perfectly straight nose of his. “We’ve got to get though, or we’re going to be late.”

Late? How about never?
Pushing all the protests of her rational side down, she stood. 
Let’s get this over with so I can get back to work
. Quickly she grabbed her purse and made sure her money was in it. When she got to the door, she felt his hand guide her through it, and every fiber in her body wanted to smack it away.

“Sherie, I’m going to take off.” Lisa readjusted her purse on her shoulder, and she didn’t miss the dreamy look her secretary wafted over the two of them. “Just lay the calls I need to return on my desk.”

“Sure, boss. No problem.” And that dreamy gaze followed them right out the door.

At the elevator, Tucker reached past her and pushed the button. They stepped on, and he pushed two.

“My car’s on the third,” she said, and when he didn’t reach for the button, she did, but he stopped her hand with his.

“Let’s just take mine,” he said, and she hated that tone. “That way we can talk on the way.”

And get this over faster? That would be a blessing.
Wishing it wasn’t so hard to ignore the slithery way his gaze slid down across her, she stepped out into the parking garage. The second level. It was where she used to park until she hadn’t been able to find a space that one day. Now when she pulled into the garage she told herself that parking on the third gave her a reason to take the stairs, which had to qualify for some exercise. However, the real reason was always right there in the shadows of her heart.

They stopped at the new two-tone beige Lexus, and Tucker opened her door first. Smoothly he took her hand as she folded onto the leather seats. As soon as she was in, she pulled her hand from the fingers that felt like they had been soaked in butter for two solid decades. When he shut the door, she sat back, pulling herself straight up as she did.
Professional. Keep this professional, and he won’t get any ideas
. Quickly she grabbed the seat belt and wrapped it around herself. One more barrier, one more line of defense.