“Just press the button to talk and release it when you finish,” he instructed, gently, stepping away to give us space to talk.
“Tommy?” I said into the radio, as I stared up at the inferno.
“Is that you Evie?” My throat closed up as I tried to hold back my tears. His strong, beautiful, Irish accent my undoing.
“It’s me, Love,” I reassured him.
“Sorry you had to come all the way down here. I’m gutted I dragged you away from your pole dancing class. I’ve been thinking happy thoughts all day about that class.”
“You’re crazy. How did you even know about it?”
“Liam spilled the beans and I’ve been fantasising about it ever since.”
“You’re stuck inside a building with no oxygen left, and this is what you want to talk about?” I was smiling as I wiped away the rogue tears that refused to be constrained.
“Yep,” he replied, not sounding the least bit scared or worried. “In fact, while we’re here, can you answer something that’s really bothering me?”
“What’s that?” I asked, trepidatiously.
“What is it that you wear when you’re on that pole?”
“Seriously! Of all the things you want to ask me, that’s it?” I shouldn’t really have been surprised. This was Tommy after all. And truth be told, I admired that he was staying so calm. He could have been waiting for a bus for how relaxed he sounded, but I knew it was all an act. Most likely to keep me from worrying.
“Yep,” he replied, and I could hear the humour in his voice.
“Fine. I wear lycra sports shorts, which are a little like hot pants, a sports bra and a t-shirt.” Lord only knew what anyone else listening in on the radio would be thinking, but Tommy was never one to worry about things like that.
“Tommy. Are you okay?” I asked, when he didn’t respond.
“Sorry, babe. I was just filing that one away in the spank bank for later,” he replied.
“Tommy! You can’t say stuff like that!” I admonished, looking around to see if anyone was listening. The officer with the white hat was close by, deep in discussion with a small group of firefighters, but he was far enough away to give me a little privacy, and although Em was also nearby, she was doing the same.
“Love, I can practically feel how hot your cheeks are from here,” Tommy teased, but when he coughed, my heart skipped a beat.
“How bad is it, Tommy?” I asked quietly, my voice breaking a little. “How much smoke is there?”
“I’ve had worse. You haven’t seen real smoke until you’ve seen Kieran barbeque. I’m telling you Evie, you’re in for a treat come the summer. That fucker could burn water.”
“You just make sure you’re around to take me to these barbeques okay? I’ve got big plans for us this summer. I was thinking we could maybe go down to Brighton for a couple of days. Take a walk on the pier and have a picnic on the sand. And I want to get some window boxes for your little balcony. We could get a little table and a couple of chairs out there, and with some colourful, pretty flowers, it would be beautiful.” I was babbling and I knew it. But I needed reassurances. I wanted him to promise me that everything would be alright, even if it was all a lie.
“Yeah? I like the sound of those plans. Only it’s our balcony, remember?” he pointed out.
“I remember,” I said, wishing we were both back there now. Lying in his arms as I had been a couple of days ago, gazing at the balcony and wondering what it would look like covered with flowers in bloom. If I’d known then that it might’ve been the last time I’d experience it, I would’ve tried to memorise every second. He coughed again before his microphone cut out, and I knew he’d done that deliberately so I didn’t hear the worst.
“Deep breaths, baby. You’ve got this. Just hold on a little bit longer and they’ll get you out.” I did everything I could to reassure him, but talking into the nothingness, not knowing whether he was just catching his breath or losing consciousness, was terrifying.
“Don’t worry, love. I’m back,” he said after a little while, but I could tell from how scratchy and tired his voice was that things were getting bad.
“You scared me for a second there.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. All that talk of pole dancing and trips to the beach with you in a skimpy bikini had me losin’ my breath.”
“I don’t remember mentioning a skimpy bikini.”
“No, I added that. It was a vital part of the fantasy that’ll get me through the night.”
“You make it out of this safe and sound and I’ll wear any colour bikini you want on Brighton beach.” It was a stupid agreement, but at that point I would’ve given the world for a guarantee of his safety.
“Promise?” he said, hopefully.
“Promise,” I agreed.
“Hey Evie. There’s somethin’ else I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” I asked, racking my brain and wondering what he could possibly want to know that would be worse that the pole dancing question.
“Will you marry me?”
The radio crackled, and then there was nothing but silence.
Chapter Twenty-One
TOMMY
Fuck! Of all the stupid fuckin’ times for the stupid fuckin’ battery to die, it had to be then. Couldn’t have been, say, two minutes later when I had the answer to the most important question I’d ever asked in my entire life. There must’ve been something wrong with it, because I should’ve had at least an hour left. Without the ability to speak to the commanding officer on scene, the chances of any co-ordinated rescue went down the shitter as well.
I still couldn’t understand what had happened. The fire was on the left hand side of the fourth floor of the building and was under control. Me and Hammer and Wookie and Mase had been working in two man teams, evacuating the flats on the upper floors. There was no fucking way the fire should’ve been anywhere near there, but when Mase opened the door to the top floor, the fucking room exploded. I’d seen a back draft in training, but I’d never experienced it in a real life situation before. I wasn’t a guy that scared easily, but I’d been absolutely fucking terrified.
If the stairs hadn’t been so close to the door, all of us would’ve died. The cannon of smoke that shot through the floor entryway, knocked us all off our feet and down half a flight of stairs. Maybe it was dumb, fuckin’ luck that saved us, but I like to think God had seen me out the corner of his eye. I was banged up and bruised plenty, but when I saw the waves of fire rippling across the ceiling, I was rattled. All we could do was lay there. Hunkered down as we rode out the worst of it.
With a fire below us on the other side of the building, that stairwell was our only means of escape. We had no idea how long the flames above us had been building before the introduction of oxygen through the opened door fuelled the inferno. I knew we had to do something though. Staying put was like signing our own death warrant. Spotting the tell-tale red of a fire extinguisher below, I shimmied my way down another flight of stairs, until I found what I was looking for.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Hammer shouted, as I crawled my way back to the guys.
“I have an idea,” I explained. “I’m going to use this to close the fire door. See if cutting off the oxygen supply will contain the fire to the top floor. If it works, you need to fuckin’ leg it back down the stairs. I don’t know how long we’ll have to get out.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Wookie said. “You have no idea whether that fire door will still hold and if it explodes again, you’re fucked.”
“Does anyone else have any better ideas? We can call down for a hose, but it will take the guys a good ten minutes to connect it around this side of the building and get it up here, and we don’t have that kind of time.”
“So why do you get to play hero?” Hammer asked.
“Because I’m young and fit and you’re old and fat. You fuckers need all the head start you can get.”
“Well,
if this goes tits up, I call dibs on the dipshit’s new gear. You know, apart from the shit he’s wearing that’s about to get burnt to a crisp,” Hammer replied, sarcastically.
“Jealousy’s a bitch, ladies. Now move!” As smooth as if we’d rehearsed the move a hundred times, the guys crawled past me and when they were able to stand, scrambled down the stairwell as quickly as they could. Pulling the pin on the safety device, I doused the doorway until it stopped burning, then used the bottom of the metal tank to push the heavy door shut. It shrieked in protest and fought me every inch of the way, but eventually it closed tight. And held. Using what was left in the extinguisher I covered the ceiling and walls of the stairwell, and when I heard the guys whooping and hollering I knew I’d bought us the time we needed to evacuate.
“Fuck yeah!” I shouted, adrenaline coursing through my veins. The deafening creak above me was terrifying, and I knew instantly what it meant. I’d heard the same sound once before on the night I’d saved Evie. The night the roof caved in.
“Get back!” It was all I had time to yell before the inevitable happened. The rest of the guys, who were a few flights below, flung themselves into a corner just as I did. Covering my face to protect my mask, I didn’t see what came down, but I felt the echoing thunder right through to my bones. When the noise stopped, I looked around. The stairway was full of dust and smoke, but after a minute or two passed, I began to see how completely fucked I was.
“Everyone okay?” I asked though the radio, holding my breath as I waited for a reply.
“All good, Tommy. What the fuck happened?” Hammer answered.
“Roof caved in,” I explained. “It wasn’t the whole thing or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but it was definitely part of it. You need to get out now.”
“Get your arse down here then, Road Kill, and let’s go,” he ordered.
“About that. I’m afraid you ugly fuckers need to go on without me.”
“Fuck!” one of the guys said, and I knew they were seeing what I’d seen. Whatever had fallen from the roof had taken out a couple of flights of stairs between me and the guys. With the stairs missing and the floor above me in flames, I was trapped. The only way to reach me was by making a hole in one of the exterior walls. Even if that were possible, there was no way our aerial platform could reach that high.
“We’re not leaving you behind, mate,” Wookie said, sounding pained. I knew it was pointless to argue with the guys. I loved that they didn’t want to leave me, and God knows I would’ve been the same, but these boys had families. And they couldn’t help me, no matter how much they wanted to.
“Command, this is BA1,” I said, through the radio to the incident commander. “Top floor of the building is completely engulfed in flames. I’m located between the tenth and eleventh floors in the North stairwell. A partial roof collapse has taken out the staircase below me. The rest of the team has a clear pathway to the exit. You need to get them out, Sir.”
“Understood, BA1. What is your gauge reading?” the commander responded.
“Eleven minutes,” I replied, rubbing the gauge in the vain hope that I was reading it wrong.
“Roger that,” he replied, the solemn tone of his voice a sure indicator of the grave order he was about to give.
“Command to all units. Evacuate the building immediately. I repeat. Evacuate the building immediately.” The directive came through loud and clear, and I knew even the guys wouldn’t argue against an order from the Chief. Houston was somewhere knocking around, but on an incident this big, it wasn’t unusual to have the chief running things.
“Fuck!” Wookie raged. “We’re going, but we’ll be back with some equipment.”
“Bring me back a coffee and a bagel while you’re at it,” I told him.
“Will do,” he replied, before ushering the guys down reluctantly. When I could no longer hear them, I went back on the radio.
“Command, this is BA1. I’d like to speak to my girlfriend. Can someone find her for me and put her on the radio. I don’t know if there’s enough time, but I want to try.”
“BA1, that is a negative. I am not tracking down a civilian and bringing her onto the scene of a major incident. If you want to give me a message, I will relay it to her, but other than that you need to sit tight and wait for a rescue,” the hard arse responded. It was in my nature to want to tell him to go fuck himself, but it wouldn’t get me what I wanted. Reasoning with him was my only option.
“Sir, I have nine minutes now before I run out of air. I’m stuck in a windowless concrete stairwell. There are no stairs below me and the building above me is burning. You and I both know that nine minutes isn’t enough time to coordinate a rescue, so I’m begging. Let me say goodbye to my girl.”
The radio was silent, and I knew he was debating what to do.
“I can’t make any promises BA1, but we’ll see what we can do. Now sit tight and don’t talk unless you need to. Conserve oxygen as much as you can while we figure out how to get you out of there.”
“Yes Sir,” I replied.
The twenty minutes that it took them to get Evelyn on scene were the longest of my life. But even though I never got to say goodbye, hers was the last voice I’d ever hear, and it was enough. All I could do now was wait. Wait to live, or wait to die. I’d be saved or I wouldn’t. Either way the decision was in God’s hands. The building around me creaked and groaned as the fire spread and the walls expanded with the heat. The once clear well was filling up fast with smoke, and I knew I didn’t have long. Picturing Evie in my mind, I wondered how it would’ve felt, standing at the alter as she walked towards me, knowing I was about to make her mine forever. I didn’t have time to daydream for long, before the sound of a drill followed by heavy hammering sharpened my consciousness.
Trying to pinpoint where it was coming from, I focused on the opposite wall of the stairwell. After a couple of minutes, plaster and bricks exploded and a small hole appeared.
“Anyone home?” said a voice in a thick, West Country accent.
“That you Paul?” I asked, coughing as I inhaled a lung full of acrid air.
“Got ’im,” I heard him yell. The hammering resumed, this time faster, as they scrambled to make the hole bigger. Eventually, Paul, a transferee firefighter from Bristol who I’d worked with for a time at another station, managed to manoeuvre half his body through the gap.
“Shit,” he said, seeing my predicament. He was about eight foot below me on the opposite side of the stairwell and I could barely breathe. “Tommy, this place is coming down. The aerial won’t go any higher and we’re out of time, even if it did. You’re going to have to make a jump for it and I’ll catch you.”
Even if he caught me, chances were that he wouldn’t be able to hold me. Not at the momentum I’d be travelling when I jumped. But at this point I had nothing to lose. Paul would be tethered to the platform so there was no way I’d take him down with me if I fell. I nodded at him in agreement and readied myself to jump.
“On the count of three,” he ordered. “One, two, three!” With no room to take a running jump, I threw myself forward as hard as I could, reaching blindly for any part of Paul’s body I could hold onto. Maybe it would’ve been more manly if he’d caught me by my hand as I fell, then pulled me up with one arm. In reality, I sort of landed on top of him and we wrapped our arms around each other in an awkward bear hug. As soon as he had a solid grip, he pulled me back through the hole.
“Get us out of here,” he screamed to his partner, who relayed the message down the radio, and seconds later we were being lowered to the ground while I sucked greedily at the first clean air I’d breathed in over an hour. When I finally got my breath back, Paul was grinning at me like a lunatic.
“It’s good to see you, you big, beautiful bastard,” I said, and hooking him round the neck, I pulled him towards me and slapped a kiss on his bald head.
“You are one crazy bastard, Tommy Riordon. With balls of solid steel,” he replied.
>
“It was your idea! I was just doing what you told me to!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually do it. Or that it’d work,” he added.
“Well, you know what they say,” I said, between coughing and hacking that wasn’t pretty. “Better to be lucky than smart!”
“Amen to that.”
“Seriously, thanks mate. You saved my life,” I said.
“Anytime,” he replied, still grinning.
The aerial platform descended slowly, and only when I caught sight of the front of the building, did I really understand just how close I’d come to dying. Getting to Evelyn was all I could think about then, knowing she’d be terrified.
As soon as we were on the ground, the guys worked together to lift the aerial anchors so they could move the platform away from the danger zone, while I was whisked away to a waiting ambulance.
“I’m fine,” I protested, not wanting to waste time when I could be looking for Evie.
“You’re not going anywhere without a once over. Now sit your arse down, or I’ll sedate you and take you to hospital where you’ll be somebody else’s problem.” I did as I was told, not wanting to rile up the scary paramedic anymore. But, the oxygen mask she placed over my face didn’t stop me from scanning the crowd. She listened to my chest sounds and asked me a bunch of questions, but as soon as I saw Houston walking towards me with Evie, I whipped off the mask and ran to join them.
“I give up,” the paramedic muttered, but nothing was keeping me from my girl. When I reached her, she threw her arms around my neck and hugged me so hard my chest hurt.
“It’s okay love. I’m absolutely fine. I promise,” I reassured her.
“I was so scared Tommy. When your radio went dead, I thought that was it. I thought you were gone.”
The Fire (Hurricane Book 4) Page 19