Consumed (Firefighters #1)(64)

As Anne sat, she wondered what was being monitored in her body. How much was being recorded. There were ways now that people could measure the slightest deviations in skin temperature, weight shift, breathing.

She sat on the very edge of the cushion. “So about those fires.”

The man smiled slowly, and it was only then that she realized his eyes were the color of his decor, the color of dangerous fog on the sea.

“Won’t you sit back and relax, Inspector Ashburn. We aren’t in any kind of hurry.”

Anne glanced back at the double doors she’d entered through. “My boss is expecting me back in the office ASAP.”

“He’ll wait.”





chapter




28



As the engine’s brakes squealed and Company 17 pulled up to an apartment building with a second-story burn, Danny hopped down to the pavement and went for the lines in the back.

“Dannyboy, you’re on clear.” Captain Baker nodded at Moose. “You, too.”

“Roger that.”

He and Moose got their tanks and masks on and then went for the equipment, pulling up the panels. As the lineup of axes and tools were revealed, Moose palmed two long handles and turned to Danny.

The sight of the axe made Danny sweat underneath his turnouts. “I’ma take the Boston.”

“Why? We need axes to get through doors—oh. Sorry.”

Don’t dwell on it. Just keep going.

Danny grabbed a tool that had a metal piercer on one end and looked forward to using it to pry down rafts of Sheetrock. Besides, one axe was enough. They didn’t both need one. It was better this way, more efficient.

As they jogged over to the front door of the apartment building, he kept going with the list of reasons why there was a strategic imperative for him not to have an axe.

Residents were funneling out of the entrance, some still in bathrobes even though it was by now eleven thirty in the morning. Most were elderly and he anticipated a lot of cats. The building’s alarm system was going over, the shrill warning making his ears ring. The smell of smoke was in the air and he cursed.

This was a hot one, he thought. He could tell by the scent.

An old guy with Albert Einstein hair and a robe that looked like it had come out of Archie Bunker’s closet stopped in front of Danny.

“I told her that kid was going to kill her. Be careful—I don’t know if he’s got a gun.”

“Who?”

“Her grandson. Bad news. Been with her for the last three weeks. Has someone called the cops?”

“You better get moving.” Danny nodded to the slow-up the guy was causing. “We’ll handle everything.”

“Righto.”

As the man kept going, Danny hit his communicator. “Two-fiver-eight-seven, over.” When he was acknowledged, he said, “Confirm NBPD arrival, over.”

Captain Baker replied, “ETA three to four minutes. Over.”

“Two-fiver-eight-seven, over and out.”

He and Moose hit the second-floor landing and peeled off from traffic on the stairs. One look down to the far end, and Danny’s warning bells went off: There were eight doors on the hall, four on each side, and all but one were open or cracked, the residents in a rush to get out—or adhering to a not-uncommon building protocol requiring that everything be accessible during evacs.

The lone standout? The only one that was closed? Was where the smoke was coming out.

“I think we should wait for the badges to get here,” Danny said. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

“Are you kidding me? Don’t be paranoid.”

They started down the well-trod carpet, the chemical sting in the air irritating his nose and back of the throat. The smoke curling out of the affected apartment, both from around the door and outside, made him run through the analysis quick: volume, velocity, density, and color.

Volume was sizable, suggesting a hot fire in a limited, poorly ventilated area: There was a layer of smoke up along the ceiling in the corridor that was thickening, and through the window at the end of the hall, he could see great black clouds billowing from the apartment into the open area. Velocity was bad news, the smoke choppy and spastic, another sign of poor ventilation and a warning that an autoignition flashover was likely. Density was trouble as well; the smoke was like a solid, laden with airborne fuel solids, aerosols, and gases, all of which were ready to party. Finally, the color was the worst. Black meant high toxicity, and so the likelihood anyone was alive in there was very low.

A few breaths of that kind of “air” and a person loses consciousness, with death to follow in a matter of minutes.

Danny hit his communicator. “Two-fiver-eight-seven, over.” When the acknowledgement came, he stated, “We have black smoke in a chop on the second floor. Closed door. We need this vented and cooled right fucking now or this corner of the building is going to go H-bomb. Over.”

Captain Baker responded. “Can you open the door?”

“Not advisable—”

“Yup,” Moose interrupted on the line. “I’m doing it now.”

Danny grabbed the sleeve of the guy’s turnout. “Anybody in there is already dead.”

“Maybe not. We have to try.”

Captain Baker’s voice came over the connection. “Get in there. The ladder is in position and we are venting.”