Consumed

by J. R. Ward

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Marshall nodded to the parking lot. “G’head. G’on now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Anne wheeled away and blindly walked off. She was halfway to the car when Don called out, “What about the dog?”

  She turned back around. “The dog?”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I, ah, I made sure it’s at a good vet’s.”

  “Better than the streets.”

  “Yes, better.”

  Lifting a hand, she returned to the car before she apologized again. Remade promises the man didn’t want to hear. Got teary about an animal she was abandoning even though the thing wasn’t hers in the first place.

  God, she was so sick of life.

  She really was.

  chapter

  11

  Box alarm. Two engines and a ladder from the 617 responding to back up the 499.

  As Tom arrived on scene, he pulled up behind the ambulance, and got out. The primary house on fire was a cheap, worn-out two-story—and its equally rundown next-door neighbor was looking pretty toasty as well, the wind carrying the flames across a tiny yard and onto siding that was dry.

  It was a little unusual to smell the electric burn in the air. Still, faulty wiring wasn’t solely the purview of 1920s bungalows and fifties-era cottages.

  The plumes of water being used to fight the initial blaze were coming out of the windows on the first floor. Then again, the 499 was already on scene, and of course, those dumbass cowboys had dragged lines into the house, as opposed to extinguishing the flames via an external position.

  Tom strode over to Captain Baker, the incident commander, and was not about to be diplomatic. “What the hell are you doing, Chip?”

  The man held up a hand. “Don’t start with me.”

  “Why are those idiots in the house?” He knew the answer, though. “Chip, you gotta backbone this shit. Come on. You’re in charge here.”

  “The fire’s almost out.”

  Tom shook his head and opened his mouth—but then he caught the pisser recruit walking by.

  Reaching over, he grabbed onto the sleeve of the kid’s turnout. “Stop. This is done wrong.”

  The newbie halted and looked up with wide anxious eyes. His name was Reggie, but he’d already been given the nick of “Wedgie”—which, considering his last name was Boehner and it could have been “Boner,” wasn’t all that bad.

  “You fold this side first, secure here . . . and buckle here. They taught you this at the academy.”

  As Tom made quick work of the jacket, the kid nodded and stammered something. And was cut off as glass shattered on the second floor.

  Smoke billowed out—and then flames.

  “Goddamn it,” Tom muttered, “it traveled up inside the walls.”

  Wedgie blinked. “Huh?”

  “Go help get the house next door wet.” He shoved the kid forward. “Chip, get those boys out of there. Or I will.”

  “Bring those lines out,” Baker barked into the radio. “Repeat, all lines and personnel out. Now. Reposition southwest exterior, six-one-seven fighters next door.”

  Three firefighters emerged from the open front door, dragging lines with them. Emilio, Duff, and Moose, Tom guessed by the body sizes.

  “How many did you send in there?” he asked. When there wasn’t a reply, he elbowed Chip. “I said, how many?”

  “Four.”

  “And who’s the fourth?”

  The answer to that question presented himself by breaking a second-story window and jumping out onto the asphalt-shingled overhang above the front entrance.

  Danny Maguire had a preteen girl in his arms, his oxygen mask over her face even as she struggled against him. “Medic!” he barked.

  People ran over and held out arms. There wasn’t a ladder truck free, but they didn’t need one—at least not for this rescue. Maguire got down on his knees and handed off the victim—while keeping his mask tight to her face.

  “Keep it on her!” He shrugged out of his tank. “Take this with her!”

  The girl was thrashing and yelling about something, pointing back into the house.

  “Don’t you dare,” Tom muttered. “Oh, hell no, you are not going back in there without your—gimme that!” He reached over and yanked the radio command out of Chip’s hand. “Maguire! You are not fucking going back in there—”

  Dannyboy didn’t miss a beat. He stood up, turned away . . . and crouched down to shove his huge body back through the window he’d broken.

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Maguire!” Tom yelled.

  The fire coughed out a plume of gray smoke through the broken window, and then there was the telltale lick of flames. And Maguire was in there without his mask.

  “Personnel, stay out of the structure.” Tom held the radio so hard, the plastic casing cracked. “Stay out of there!”

  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 great.

  “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. But it wasn’t a TV or an ottoman or even a love seat being used as an escape tool. No, it was Danny Maguire’s shoulder first and then huge body afterward—which included his big, fat, empty, helmet-less head.

  Because, somehow, he hadn’t lost that. And really, wasn’t that a miracle for someone who’d given away his air supply, his radio piece, and the part of his 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, although 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 return to the office.

  She went a co
uple 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, and that the building had wood supports, and that 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 non-moving knuckles. She felt nothing—and not just on the surface, because there were no nerves to register sensation. She actually 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 that they were no longer professional colleagues—after all, 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 turned the burned-out, mangled shell of the totaled sedan into a planter in your front yard so you could revisit it every single day.

  Besides, if the female in that drunken voicemail was any indication, it was pretty clear what kind of self-medicating he was using.

  Whenever her guilt got to stinging, she needed to remind herself that Danny was just fine and so was she. And with the passage of all the hours, days, weeks, and months since that warehouse fire, their lives were in different places and that horrible eternity when she’d been trapped in that hot spot was gone.

  You had to keep going.

  Staring over the cleared site, she thought . . . yup, just as the remnants of the warehouse were gone, so, too, the events of that blaze had been struck out of the timeline of both their lives.

  So, too, the connection they had once had.

  Back behind her, her phone started ringing in the car. After a moment, she pivoted away and returned to her vehicle to answer it.

  chapter

  12

  You got a cigarette?”

  As Danny tossed the perfectly reasonable inquiry out there, Emilio looked at him like he’d suggested the guy give him a block of cocaine.

  “Is that a ‘no’?” Danny muttered.

  “You’re sitting on the back of an ambulance—”

  “So I’ll light up over there.”

  “—and I’m treating you for smoke inhalation.”

  On that note, Emilio tried to put the oxygen mask back in place, but Danny was having none of that. Shoving the guy off him, he braced his dirty hands on his knees and leaned forward to give his lungs more space to inflate. The wheezing was not something he could hide, and to cut off conversation, he stared at the steaming pair of houses. They looked like a bomb had been dropped between them, the kitchen side of the one on the right and the living room side of the one on the left both blackened, dripping, ruined.

  As the 499’s pumper pulled out, he cursed. That was his ride.

  Emilio gave the mask another shot. “Come on, Danny. You’re wheezing—”

  “No, I’m not—”

  The coughing jag that hit him put liar to that one pretty good, but he was done with this. Getting to his feet, he yanked his turnout suspenders back on his shoulders and bent down for his insulated jacket.

  “Mind if I catch a ride on the ladder?” He clapped the other guy on the shoulder. “Great. Thanks. I’ll hang in the back—”

  “You’re not going to the stationhouse.”

  “The hell I’m not. Fire’s out and I’m—”

  “Heading for the ER.”

  “Amy, don’t be codependent. It makes your ass look big.”

  “Don’t argue and I won’t have to be.” Chavez pointed off to the side. “Besides, you got to deal with him now. Have fun with that.”

  Danny closed his eyes. And then faced off at what was coming on the attack.

  Chief Tom Ashburn was bull-in-a-china-shop pissed off, his too-much-like-Anne’s eyes glaring, his prematurely gray hair standing up straight as if he’d been dragging a hand through it, his target sight trained on Danny and Danny alone.

  “Don’t even start,” the chief snapped as he arrived with all the subtlety of a grenade going off in a fireworks factory. “You will be seen at the ER. And now, not later.”

  God, he reaaaaaally wanted a cigarette. “You can’t force me to do anything.”

  Tom ignored him. “Chavez, place the patient on a gurney and head to University’s ER with him.”

  As Amy dropped an f-bomb, Danny shook his head. “I’m not going—”

  “Yes, you are—”

  “I’m fine—”

  From under his arm, the chief brought out a singed folder. “No, you’re off duty and on probation pending a psych evaluation.”

  Okay, that got his attention. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The yellow folder swung right up to his face. “You went back into that house for this. You risked your own life for papers—”

  “It’s her math homework. So I had to go and get it—”

  “You risked your fucking life for nothing after you dumped your oxygen supply with her—”

  “She’s asthmatic! She couldn’t breathe!”

  “—and I’m tired of telling you the rules just to have you fuck them off because you have a death wish.”

  Danny dropped his voice and leaned in. “My roommate Jack has been out to this place twice in the last three months. And you know damn well he’s fucking SWAT, not a beat cop. That kid has nothing but her homework, do you understand? Her father is in jail, and her mother’s been skating the system. So hell yeah, I went back in and got it—and I would do it again.”

  “There’s always a reason.”

  “That girl has nothing!”

  “And you are out of a job unless you go get eval’d and are cleared.”

  Danny narrowed his eyes. “Look, why don’t you just be a man about this, okay.”

  There was a beat of silence. And then Tom stepped forward and met Danny eye to eye. “Excuse me.”

  Danny glanced at Chavez, but the guy was no fool. He was shaking his head and backing off so fast, he tripped over his own feet.

  Making sure his voice didn’t carry, Danny said, “You’re still pissed about what happened with
Anne. Why don’t you just admit that to my face instead of playing this backdoor-game shit.”

  The chief looked down at the ground, his jaw tightening. When his eyes lifted, they were cold. “I will not have a firefighter on my service that is a danger to himself and others. You will get that fucking psych eval or you can walk. Those are your two choices—and after that little crack about my sister, I care even less about the outcome. Chavez, get this fucking patient in the can!”

  Abruptly, Danny blinked and saw only white, that rage of his coming back online with a hard-on.

  The next thing he was aware of was Moose’s bearded face. His old roomie was up close and personal, and he was speaking, that mouth moving.

  Danny couldn’t hear shit. It was like he was underwater, everything muffled.

  “—to go now. I’m riding with you.”

  There was a pull on Danny’s arm, and he glanced down, seeing Moose’s hand grip his biceps and tug him toward the interior of the ambulance.

  “Play the game,” Moose said quietly. “You got too much to lose if you don’t. You don’t want to go out like this.”

  Chavez stepped up. “Come on, Dannyboy. The ER will fast-track you and then we’ll be at Timeout. Okay?”

  “Work with us,” Moose urged. “As much as I’ve wanted to kick your ass since this morning, I don’t want you taking a shot at the chief. You can’t trust that voice in your head, Danny. I know that firsthand. The one that’s talking to you now always steers you wrong.”

  * * *

  Anne left her office at five p.m., taking the stairs from the third floor down to the first. As she funneled across the lobby to the glass doors, she joined a queue of fellow municipal employees, everybody walking out into the late afternoon sunshine and finding their cars in the maze of the parking lot. On the way back to her house, she stopped at Papa Joe’s Pizza, a locally owned joint that she’d been going to since she’d moved into the neighborhood.

  With her pepperoni-and-onion in the passenger seat, she continued on to Mapleton Avenue and hung a left. Her house, a nine-hundred-square-foot Cape Cod, was halfway down the street. Her garage was detached, and she parked in front of its single closed door.