by Emilia Finn
Chasing Fire
GILDED KNIGHTS SERIES BOOK 2
Emilia Finn
CHASING FIRE
By: Emilia Finn
Copyright © 2021. Emilia Finn
Publisher: Beelieve Publishing, Pty Ltd.
Cover Design: Amy Queue
Editing: Bird’s Eye Books
Model: Shane Williams
Photographer: Golden Czermak
ISBN: 978 1 922623 03 4
This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This Book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy.
To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected]
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of Emilia Finn’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Also by Emilia Finn
Looking To Connect?
CHASING FIRE
Prologue
1. Idalia
2. Nixon
3. Idalia
4. Nixon
5. Idalia
6. Nixon
7. Idalia
8. Nixon
9. Idalia
10. Nixon
11. Idalia
12. Nixon
13. Idalia
14. Nixon
15. Idalia
16. Idalia
17. Nixon
18. Idalia
19. Nixon
20. Idalia
21. Nixon
22. Idalia
23. Nixon
24. Idalia
25. Nixon
26. Idalia
Epilogue
Also by Emilia Finn
To second chances
Also by Emilia Finn
(in reading order)
The Rollin On Series
Finding Home
Finding Victory
Finding Forever
Finding Peace
Finding Redemption
Finding Hope
The Survivor Series
Because of You
Surviving You
Without You
Rewriting You
Always You
Take A Chance On Me
The Checkmate Series
Pawns In The Bishop’s Game
Till The Sun Dies
Castling The Rook
Playing For Keeps
Rise Of The King
Sacrifice The Knight
Winner Takes All
Checkmate
Stacked Deck - Rollin On Next Gen
Wildcard
Reshuffle
Game of Hearts
Full House
No Limits
Bluff
Seven Card Stud
Crazy Eights
Eleusis
Dynamite
Busted
Gilded Knights (Rosa Brothers)
Redeeming The Rose
Chasing Fire
Animal Instincts
Rollin On Novellas
(Do not read before finishing the Rollin On Series)
Begin Again – A Short Story
Written in the Stars – A Short Story
Full Circle – A Short Story
Worth Fighting For – A Bobby & Kit Novella
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CHASING FIRE
GILDED KNIGHTS SERIES BOOK 2
EMILIA FINN
Prologue
There’s a difference between the dark of night, and the dark of doom.
I’m not sure how I know, the very moment I come to consciousness, that this was the latter kind. But the second I open my eyes, my heart stops.
Darkness, darker even than that of midnight, invades my senses. And after that, the stench of burning plastic… carpet… wood.
My heart thuds—one, two—and then I shoot up in bed and bound to my feet. I wear only sleep shorts and a sports bra, since after five years of marriage, I choose comfort over aesthetics.
Plus, it’s not like Max cares what I look like.
Once I’m standing tall, the smoke billowing beneath my bedroom ceiling becomes more apparent. More suffocating. Then all those lessons they teach us in elementary school—get down low and go, go, go—come racing back to my mind.
With a frantic glance toward Max’s side of the bed—empty—I drop to the floor on my hands and knees, and race across the carpet toward the door. “Fire.”
Sweat breaks out on my brow. Heat from the other side of the doorway pulses against my uplifted hand. I touch the handle—a quick tap, tap, tap—and when I find it warm but not hot, I yank it open and cry out at the roaring flames at the end of the hall.
It’s like an angry beast. An enraged monster of orange. Balls of flame, dangerous fingers clawing at the walls, and with every second beat of my heart, the creature spits its anger further along the hall. Chasing me. Taunting me.
“Fire!” My eyes water, from the heat, from the smoke. From the wedding pictures melting under the beast’s touch. “Max?” My throat is already hoarse. Throbbing and scratchy. “Max? Where are you?”
I keep low, and though common sense says I should race back toward my bedroom, call the fire department, and get the hell out, my instincts won’t allow it. Instead, I crawl toward the fire. Toward the heat. Toward the angry monster who threatens to hurt my family.
My knees ache, and when I crawl across broken glass—panes that burst from the windows after the heat of the fire was too much—I bleed and leave a trail of crimson on my newly laid carpet.
“We can’t have white carpet,” Max chuckled as we stood in the flooring store barely a year ago. “White? That’s not smart, Idalia.”
“It’s not white,” I’d argued. “It’s oatmeal.”
“Max?” I cry out at the pain slicing my throat. “Max? Where are you?”
I come so close to the fire that the hair on my arms burns. The stench is enough to make me want to wretch. The ache, enough to make my tears come faster, thicker. “Max? Answer me!”
Sirens wail outside. The fire inside is loud, deafening… but still, sirens punctuate that roar, even without me having to make the call.
So I hurry my movements and forge toward the heat.
Self-preservation is a funny thing. To be pushing toward the flames, instead of away; to be coming closer to the heat, instead of scr
ambling back. My instincts scream at me to turn and get outside. But the other part of me, the more dominant side of my psyche, helps me push on. Because living without my family isn’t living at all.
“Maximo?” I stop at the bedroom door with tears tracking over my cheeks, and my stomach heaving. There’s no oxygen here, nothing fresh to breathe. And no way out. I tap the steel handle, just like I did in my bedroom. Once, twice, and cry out at the burn, hot like lava.
That means I shouldn’t go in, right? It means I should get the hell away.
But I can’t. I cry. My heart is inside that room.
The sirens outside grow louder, and the smoke in here grows thicker. Darker. Water rains down from somewhere above, like the torrential rains are back, and my ceiling is leaking again.
But we fixed that leak. Right before we got new carpet, we fixed the roof and made sure nothing would get past it again.
“Max?” Sobbing, light-headed, and sore, I tap the door handle once more. I’m scared of what I’ll find when I open it, but even more terrified of what will happen if I don’t.
My heart thuds slow beats, like it’s pumping a river of mud. My brain works in slow-motion. My vision grows darker. Lack of oxygen quickly kills my system… my thoughts, my sight, my breathing.
But my instincts don’t slow. They could never. Because love is a special type of magic, and it traverses even death.
More glass shatters somewhere in the house. I hear that, then blasts from an airhorn. One. Two. Three.
What does that mean?
I draw another breath, to prepare to push on, but it’s counterproductive—damaging, as the smoke fills my lungs and forces a cough to tear at my throat, my diaphragm rejecting the filthy air.
Seizing, choking, trying to rid my body of the poisonous air, I push on.
Because I must.
I test the handle once more, cry at the heat branding my palm, then I do what I shouldn’t: I open the door.
The flames follow me in. They shove me, lick at my back, and pull a pain-filled cry from my aching throat. Then my eyes stop on the bedroom window. On the dark shadow half in-half out.
The man freezes, and when red and blue lights spin outside the window and reflect off his uniform, I release what little oxygen I have on a cry of relief.
The firefighter isn’t on his way in; he’s on his way out. And in his arms, he bundles Maximo close.
“I’ll be right back!” he shouts. The guy, the firefighter, must be an easy two hundred and fifty pounds. Maybe more. But then, maybe less. Maybe the darkness and his uniform confuse my tired brain.
I drop flat to the floor, exhausted, dying, but Maximo is safe, so my instincts can rest. My need to find him goes silent.
As I lay here, heaving for air, my brows draw together, and my arms push me up. I watch as the firefighter leaves my home through the broken window and disappears into the darkness. I should be terrified. I should scream for him to bring Maximo back, but it’s safer out there. With strangers, and darkness, and danger, it’s still safer out there than it is in here.
“Idalia?”
At that voice, I cry out and attempt to turn back toward the door. “Max?” I crawl toward the hall, toward the flames, and try to widen my eyes. “Max? Where are you?”
“I’m coming!” His voice is a mere whisper above the roar of flames. A terrified plea that he be found. That he finds me. “Idalia! Where are you?”
“I’m in Maximo’s room!” Shouting is like purposely shoving razor blades down my throat. Like swallowing acid, and chasing it with sandpaper. “Max? Where are you?”
“I don’t…” His voice stops as he coughs, retching, painful. “I don’t—I don’t know.”
“The fire department is here.” Weak, I fall to the floor once more and cuddle into my plush new carpet. It’s so soft. So comforting, even beneath the stench of smoke and dirty water. It’s what I wanted. What I asked for. “Just wait a second, Max.” My voice is just a murmur. A whisper. “The man said he’ll come back.”
“Ma’am!”
I remain where I am on the floor. My eyes are heavy, my brain slow, my twitching fingers, the only movement I can focus on. “Here.”
“My name is Brandon and I’m gonna get you out.” The man, big shoulders and broad muscles, a god amongst the flames, a hero who climbs back into a burning home, comes down to my level and meets my eyes through the clear glass… perspex… plastic of his helmet. It’s hard to see in the dark. Hard to tell even if he’s young or old, black or white or something in between. “Come on.”
“Where’s Maximo?”
“The kid?” He grunts and lifts me into his arms, then pushes up to stand tall. I let him hold me close and smother my face against his uniform. “Outside. I’ll take you to him.”
“‘Kay.” My brain and body shut down. My eyes close, and my ticking fingers droop where my hand dangles. “Come back for Max?”
“Max?” The firefighter stops at the window and meets another who stands and waits. “No, I already got him.”
I shake my head. Sleepy, exhausted. “Not Maximo. Max.” I swallow to lubricate my aching throat. “My husband. Inside.” I try to force my eyes open. Try to meet Brandon’s gaze. “He’s looking for us.”
“One more?” The firefighter’s eyes flash wide with shock. He looks to his fireman friend, then toward the doorway where flames lick at my son’s carpet. His crib. The floor I was lying on only moments ago is now nothing more than charred blackness. “Reports said there were only two.”
“Max works away,” I whimper. “But he got home this afternoon.”
“One more?” With renewed energy, Brandon tosses me to his friend, the movement sending a jolt of adrenaline spiking through my blood.
I scream for the single second I’m in the air. Then I crash against another body. Another wall of muscle. Another steely pair of hands. Then Brandon spins on his heels and makes his way toward the doorway.
“Shit!” The new fireman fights against my weight. He holds me, but desperately tries to grab onto his radio. “McGarren! Stop.”
“There’s one more!” Brandon’s voice booms from the doorway, and then again from the radio perched just two inches from my ear. “I’m heading to the north side of the home. The flames are hotter that way, but if you guys send a crew over there, I’ll meet you by the front door.”
The new firefighter, slightly smaller than his coworker but not weaker, carries me down a ladder like it’s easy to carry a full-grown woman and not fall to your death. “My name is Dodge.” Dodge’s breath races as we move. He’s in a rush to get down. To offload my weight and hand me over. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Take me to my son.”
“Yup.” He works methodically down the ladder. Our home is two stories, and the bedrooms were at the top.
Brandon’s voice crackles over Dodge’s radio. Then another guy’s. Another. Fire crews discussing how to fight this fire, and how to extract the remaining victim. A chief shouting his orders. Some guys on the hoses shouting back that they’re moving where ordered. The ladder groans as we move, and the house rumbles, settling into place the way it does every night.
But different.
So very different.
“Here we go.” Dodge’s helmet fogs as he navigates the final couple rungs of the ladder. His breath races harder. But then he offloads me to someone else—another firefighter, another friend—then he’s gone, bounding away and shouting orders into his radio.
“Come now.” This third man maybe isn’t a firefighter at all, but a paramedic. His uniform isn’t a bright orange, but a dark blue. He has no helmet. No air tank. No rhythmic innnnn, outttttttt of air. “My name is George,” he shouts to combat the noise of those racing around us. “I’m going to help you out.”
“Maximo?” Fresh air hits my eyes and continues to make them water. My lungs still ache, they seize and make me cough. The cold night air hits my exposed skin, reminding me I’m wearing nothing more than t
iny shorts and a bra. No shirt. No pants. Nothing to maintain modesty.
Panicked, though I shouldn’t be, I shoot a hand down to cover my torso. My stomach. Goosebumps break out across my skin, and the blood trickling along my legs turns cold, so it feels like rivers of icy water instead of warm blood.
“Where’s Maximo?”
“Mommy!” I hear him, even though I don’t see him. His babyish voice. His cries of despair, and then his howls to be released from the paramedic who holds him down.
“Let him go!” My eyes stop on my two-year-old son as he thrashes against the stretcher that two adults attempt to pin him to. He’s just a baby, not strong enough to beat them, but he tries.
He screams for me, reaches for me, and snarls when the female medic tries to step between us. So forgetting my near-nakedness, my near-death, I bound away from the guy helping me walk, and stumble the distance toward the back of the ambulance. My legs are weak, and my blood loss may be more severe than I first thought.
Red and blue lights bathe the entire street. My neighbors stand by their mailboxes, snooping, but crying too. They hold hands over their mouths, tissues in their hands.
I race around people, duck through a group of firemen who stand at the back of a truck and gawk at some kind of tech station—a switchboard… knobs… levers… radios and small screens—and catch sight of Maximo once more. Soot-covered face, messy hair, and only half of his pyjamas. His shirt is missing, and it’s freezing out.