Consumed (Firefighters #1)(12)

But people were idiots.

As he picked his way through, being careful with where he put his boots, there was the sound of dipping water from all directions, the cold tears of the extinguishing effort falling from anything and everything. The going was uneven, dangerous, and even though the removal effort involved a dozen men and women, there was still so much that he had to mount as he shined his beam down.

Ropes lasted about a nanosecond before he ripped off his sling. His bad shoulder, the one he’d popped out of the socket again, immediately protested the freedom of movement, but it could fuck right off with that.

Training the flashlight into the slick mess, he searched for a reflective flash, a wink of movement, a sign, a sound, a—

Too many lost.

The thought barged in and took over, replacing everything save his visual acuity. But goddamn it, how many more times was this going to happen? How many searches after how many accidents where good men and women were lost? As the crazy bell started to go off in his head, he did what he could to dim the noise; in the end, though, all he could do was ignore it and try to focus through the distraction.

The mental effort was harder and less successful than ever, the opposite of a muscle exercised regularly: Instead of getting stronger, his ability to withstand the chaos in his head was weakening, and his terror was that he was burning out.

If he wasn’t doing this job? What the fuck else was there for him.

More with the careful footsteps, higher on the mound of twisted, mangled, burned-out crap, harder with the going now. In his heart, he knew this was not a rescue situation but a recovery one, and he pressed on because he was very well aware that chances were better than not that someone was going to have to do this for him at some point—

“Ropes.”

He stopped and glanced over to the left, expecting to see a guy wanting to get his attention. But no one was there.

He’d heard his name, though. He absolutely had heard his name.

Frowning, he turned in that direction, and thigh-high’d one knee to get over a mangled desk. His flashlight, as he trained it into the tangle, was so bright that the wet patches on the blackened metal and charred wooden beams sent strobes back to his retinas, making his vision dance.

An instinct that made no sense whatsoever drew him to a juncture between two more I beams and what appeared to be a printing press and some travel trunks. It was about fifteen feet back from the opening that he’d heard Sister had been pushed out of—arguably out of range. From what he’d been told over the phone, the collapse had occurred right as Danny had been shoving her from the building, so no, Ropes decided. Not here—

The movement was so slight, and occurred just as he was swinging the beam away, that he nearly missed it. And even as he pivoted back and did a reexamine, he was convinced it had been a smaller piece of wood or metal slipping down to the concrete floor and catching the light.

Frowning, he squatted further and braced his good hand on something that was still warm from the fire.

And there it was. Way down in there. The telltale reflective flash from the sleeve of a firefighter’s PPE.

Ropes whistled loud through his front teeth as he got down on hands and knees. “Danny! Maguire! Danny! Give me a sign. Move your hand!”

As every single person in the collapse looked toward him, the wait for a response was forever. And then an eternity after that.

But it moved. It fucking moved.

“Maguire!” Ropes shouted as the others fought their way in his direction. “Stay with me, Maguire!”

Come on, my man, Ropes thought at the guy. Don’t die on me now.

But that arm didn’t shift positions again . . . as if the man’s last action on earth was to get help that did not get to him in time.

“Stay with me, Maguire.” Ropes’s voice cracked as people tried to get a strategy for lifting everything away without causing another collapse. “Goddamn it, man, stay with me . . .”





chapter




7



University of New Brunswick Hospital, Downtown New Brunswick Anne didn’t so much wake up as rock climb her way back to consciousness, her will using ethereal secures to pull herself to a surface breach of awareness and reasoning. And with baseline awareness came dull pain, her body carpeted with sensations that had been filed down by the morphine she was on.

It had to be morphine. Percocet made her nauseous.

As she opened her eyes, her hearing tagged along for the ride, the soft beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor reassuring her that she was alive. The hospital room was the color of oatmeal and had all the variability of decor you’d expect from Quaker Oats: no extraneous furniture, drapes, or even framed posters. The mini TV was off, and the bed next to hers was empty— Higher reasoning returned with the speed and aim of a boomerang, bringing with it that image of the smoke clearing to reveal the inside of that warehouse just before the collapse.

“Danny!”

With a surge that was more will than wellness, she went to sit up, get up, go find him, except there was an IV line in her right arm—oh, screw that. She reached over to pull it out— And brought up a stump.

A carefully bandaged, medically addressed stump. The wrappings were bright white, and there were more layers of them at the top, the end bulbing out in a reverse taper. Like she had fennel for an arm.

Shock, the medical kind, not the emotional sort, made the monitor go into an alarm, and thanks to her medical training as an EMT, she reached over and turned the noise off. Then she just stared at the stump, her eyes blinking over and over and over again.