To the Stars (Thatch #2)(39)
A sharp breath burst from her, and I could see the hurt in her eyes, but she tried to cover it with a teasing smile on her face. “I can’t try to change your mind when you say things like that.” Cupping my face in her hands, she pulled me down to kiss me softly. “I will never love anyone the way I love you. But you better understand that in three months there’s no more running away from me. You’re mine after that.”
I smirked. She had no idea.
Present Day—Richland
THE SHRILL SOUND of a bell jerked me awake. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but in the two seconds it took for me to realize what was happening and fly off my bed and out of the room, I’d already noticed it was dark outside, and I hadn’t moved from the rigid position I’d fallen asleep in. My body ached as I ran to the bay, but soon the adrenaline that always pumped through my veins had me forgetting about the stiff muscles, and I was shaking for a different reason than I had been when I’d gone to sleep. There was a house fire that was quickly spreading to the dwelling next to it; these kinds of calls were what I lived for, were why I became a firefighter in the first place. Being there for EMS to help people who were hurt, yes, any day. Helping old women get their cats out of trees, yeah, it actually happened. Small fires, of course, were the majority of our calls, and were just as important as the freaking cats in the damn trees. But huge house and structure fires, judging by the excited energy that rolled through the truck as we sped through town, were why we were all here.
We’d barely pulled up and started jumping off the truck when a teenage girl in nothing but an oversize T-shirt came running up to us, screaming, “She’s still in there! Please, you have to get her! I can’t believe I did this,” she murmured.
I didn’t have time to ask about that last statement but knew we’d need to talk to her after. “Who?” I yelled over the noise of the roaring fire and other members of my crew.
“Shit, shit, shit. Natalie! The girl I’m babysitting, she’s only three! I swear I didn’t know anything would happen. We fell asleep. The candles!”
She was pulling at her hair and obviously panicking; her breathing was shallow when she wasn’t swearing over and over again. I grabbed her arm and pushed her back a few steps toward my sergeant as I quickly asked, “Where was she when you last saw her?”
“Sleeping in her room. We tried to go to her window, but the fire was too big there!”
“Where is that?”
“Th-th-the very back of the house on the first floor! Last room on the hall!”
I was already running toward the house before she’d finished telling me. Our rapid conversation had barely lasted a minute, but that minute still could’ve been too long. The fire was too big—most of it near the back of the house where the girl’s room supposedly was. The smoke alone had been doing damage the whole time.
“Natalie!” I yelled as I rushed into the house with another firefighter, Pete, right behind me, echoing her name.
“Natalie, call out to me if you can hear me!” I yelled again, even though I wasn’t near the rear of the house. The front was covered with smoke and it was hard to see, but there was a possibility she’d gotten scared and tried to run from the fire.
We slowed as the smoke thickened and flames licked at the walls and doorways of the hall we were going down, but we never stopped calling out her name. With only a second to assess the flames coming into the hall from the room where I bet the fire had started, Pete and I barreled through and came to a closed door.
“Natalie! If you can hear me, back away from the door!” Pete roared only seconds before he forced the door open.
The back wall of the room was covered in flames, the rest of the room was filled with smoke, and there was no child on the unmade bed.
“Natalie?” I called out, and crouched low to the ground.
I’d only gone a few paces before my flashlight went across a pair of eyes looking back at me from under the bed.
“Natalie, I’m a firefighter, I’m here to help you!” I shouted as I crawled toward the bed. “Can you crawl out to me?”
Seconds passed before she started coming toward me, and by the time she was out from under the bed, I had made it over to her. I sat up, grabbed her up into my arms, and took off out of the room at the same time I put an oxygen mask over her face. Pete reached for my shoulder just as I slid to a stop in the hallway—I’d forgotten about the fire that separated us from the other side. There was still a sliver of space left that the fire wasn’t touching, but I was now holding a little girl wearing only a nightgown and holding a small blanket.
I moved the mask away for a few seconds as she coughed, then gave it back when she was done. She tried to move away from the mask and cried out for her mom. “I’ve got you,” I promised near the top of her head. “We’re going to get you out of here, and then we’re going to get you to your mom, I promise.” Glancing at Pete as he spoke into his radio, I said, “Get the comforter off her bed.”
Natalie turned her blackened, tear-streaked face on me, and though her bottom lip continued to tremble violently, it was obvi ous she was trying to put on a brave face. I held up the mask and she moved toward it, so I offered her a reassuring smile.
“You’re brave, Natalie, huh?”
She nodded, but didn’t try to speak.