Consumed (Firefighters #1)(25)

The hoses were turned on again, graceful streams of water arrowing in on the hot spot. God only knew where Maguire was in the house or what he had gone back for. But at least the girl had been carried to safety to the lawn across the street, medics clustering around her as she coughed and struggled like she wanted to get back in there herself.

Cat or a dog, no doubt.

Fucking pets.

“Six-one-seven, you focus on the left for the spread,” he commanded.

On cue, his boys snaked lines to the house next door that had caught the fire like a cold from a fellow bus rider who had sneezed: Kindling had a better chance of resisting an open flame, but that was eighties particleboard for you. The shit was right up there with birthday candles for getting lit up.

Wedgie was overwhelmed charging his line. But that was to be expected. First fire was always an eye-opener, and as much as the kid was trying to focus on getting the cap off a hydrant and screwing the hose head on, he kept glancing back at the first home.

Like maybe he expected Maguire to come out on fire.

“Maguire, can you respond?” Tom said into radio. “Maguire, get out of there, over.”

He didn’t expect any kind of reply.

“Maguire, where are you in there?” he said. “Over.”

A fireball curled out of the window Maguire had broken, and Tom thought, Well, isn’t this brilliant.

“We need water to the second floor,” he ordered. “Four-nine-nine, I want Chavez and Duffy on that. We’re losing ground.”

Off to the side, Chip Baker was pacing back and forth with his hands on his hips and his head down, like he was cussing his chief out in his head. Good thing Tom was used to people who didn’t perform being pissed off at him when he took over. If that shit had bothered him?

Well, then he’d be Chip Baker, wouldn’t he—

The crash came from the first-floor bay window, the glass shattering outward as something massive broke through it. It wasn’t a TV or an ottoman or even a love seat. No, it was Danny Maguire’s shoulder first and then huge body afterward—which included his big, fat, empty, helmet-less head.

Because, of course, he had lost that as well. And really, why wouldn’t you, after you’d already given away your oxygen supply, your radio piece, and the part of your brain that processed risk assessment.

Actually, that last one was more like a birth defect in Maguire’s case.

There was something in the man’s arms, something he was protecting with the curve of his torso, but there was no way of ID’ing what it was.

Maguire landed. Stumbled. And fell face-first to the ground, collapsing from what was no doubt smoke inhalation.

“Medic!” Tom commanded. “Get me a fucking medic!”



* * *



Two hours after Anne arrived at the burned-out warehouse scene for a second time, she was back at her muni sedan and behind the wheel. Her notes were taken, her preliminary conclusions recorded, her plan for next steps outlining in her head.

But she did not go back to the office.

She went a number of blocks north, pulling up in front of a mostly bald lot that had been cleared with all the detail orientation and conscientiousness of a toddler. The debris, which was mostly building crumble and nonbiodegradable trash, was all small-piece and accessorized by weeds, the kind of stuff that would be there for a generation or longer.

Or until somebody built something else on the site, and when was that going to happen in this part of town?

Getting out, she walked across the street and stood on the sidewalk, hands on hips.

She could still smell that final fire she had gone into. Feel the weight of her turnouts and her air tank. See the flames and the smoke that had trailed away from the warehouse at first and then later, after the wind change, come inside. With total clarity, she remembered Emilio’s voice as he reminded her of protocol, and how she had told him to leave her.

Walking forward, she triangulated what she recalled of the layout and stopped at what was her best extrapolation for where she had been trapped in the collapse. God, she could picture precisely that desk, the beam, the debris, the fire and the smoke. The pulling at her stuck hand, the pushing at what had trapped her.

And then Danny Maguire breaking through the wall of orange flames, that chain saw in his hand.

No wonder they had worked so well together on the job. You were not allowed to bring accelerant directly into a known blaze, so gas powered-anything was a no-go. Except he’d known that she was trapped with time running out, the building had wood supports, and a chain saw was so much faster than an axe.

She would have done the same for him.

Lowering her eyes, she stared at the prosthesis that was attached halfway up her forearm. It was her day-to-day one, the one that was a flesh-colored random hand, the one that people like Dr. Delgado, the vet, didn’t always notice.

For no good reason, she lifted the thing and ran her real fingertips over the contours of the frozen digits, the static palm, the nonmoving knuckles. She felt nothing—and not just on the surface, which had no nerves to register sensation. She had no emotion about the thing, either. It was what it was, a part of her now that needed to be, by definition, as indigenous as all the stuff she had been born with.

What the hell did she have to get upset about?

On that note, she thought of Danny, and wondered how long it would take before she didn’t have an urge to see how he was doing. They were strangers now—not even professional colleagues—and what did they have in common outside of firefighting? The fact that they both kept going in their separate lives made sense and it was arguably healthy after all the trauma. If you got into a car accident, it wasn’t like you were required to turn the burned-out, mangled shell of the totaled sedan into a planter in your front yard so you could revisit it every single day.