by J. R. Ward
Forcing her lungs to work, she rasped, “It’s getting hot in here.”
In her mind, she heard Danny’s voice: So take off all your clothes. I . . . am . . . getting . . . so . . . hot . . . Iwannatakemyclothesoff.
She thought about the hell she was going to catch when Captain Baker found out she had split up from Emilio. Although maybe the man would be dead if they’d stayed together down here.
“We’re coming for you, Anne,” the captain said. “Injuries?”
“Negative.”
Twisting her head to the right, she only made it halfway around, her helmet getting crammed into something—
Through the visor of her mask, she got a crystal-clear on the field of orange flames roiling out of the stairwell and across the ceiling, the bubbling movement like a hundred rats fleeing rising water in a sewer, its escape the large hole above her that had been a ten-by-fifteen-foot section of the second floor, but was now the debris field trapping her in place.
Pushing against anything that was on her, she phoenix’d-from-the-ashes like out of The Walking Dead, a stiff, bad-angled version of herself rising from the floor. As she made it halfway to full height, it was a relief that her legs were fully capable of holding her weight.
That was the last piece of good news she got.
“Twelve-ten, check in,” came over the radio.
“I’m okay.” She looked around and tried to place herself directionally. “I’m up on my feet.”
“Good girl—”
“Don’t call me ‘girl.’ ”
“Roger that. We’re coming for you—”
There was a sudden shifting overhead, one of the old timbers groaning as it was forced to shoulder an unexpected burden. She glanced up. The fire was closer, and she could feel the heat more. Smoke was beginning to build, too, bringing with it a galaxy of cinder stars that floated around, innocent and beautiful as fireflies in a summer meadow.
Anne realized she was trapped when she attempted to fully straighten her spine. Her right side was fine. The left half of her came up only so far as her arm would permit.
Leaning back, she pulled against the tether. Her hand, fat from her glove, refused to yield, some triangulation of trash turning the extremity into a rope with a blood supply.
The pulsating orange waves licking above her threw off enough illumination for her to see the problem. Desk. There was a desk that had fallen through the ragged hole in the ceiling, and somehow, the thing had managed to mate with one of the massive ceiling beams. No, two old beams.
Her hand was the bad-luck hole-in-one in the middle of the tiddlywinks from hell.
Planting her gloved right palm on the closest length of oak, she braced her feet in her steel-toed boots and shoved hard.
Nothing.
She tried a different hand position on the beam. And then an alternate angle of counterforce. Her big-ass glove was the problem, and with no way of reaching over things to release it, she was stuck with a Popeye problem at the base of her wrist.
And all the time, the fire spread, eating its way down the flammable, ancient carpeting on the stairs, spreading through the beams still on the ceiling, consuming the cheap particleboard that had been used to make walls.
“Twelve-ten, hang on in there—”
Another collapse rumbled all around her, more sparks flying, another helping of debris added to her plate.
She pulled harder. Pushed more.
Inside her turnouts, something welled and river’d. She prayed it was sweat and not blood—and as much as she told herself to preserve oxygen, her lungs started to inflate and deflate like she was on a sprint, her cognition, her thoughts, fragmenting.
Talking into her radio, she tried to make like she was calm. “You guys almost here? Are you—”
The third collapse brought down a wooden beam that was breeding open flames two inches in front of her mask.
“Twelve-ten!” Captain Baker yelled through the radio. “Check in—twelve-ten!”
chapter
3
New Brunswick Firehouse No. 617
McGinney Street and Benedict Avenue
Fire Chief Thomas Ashburn stared over his messy desk at the two geniuses before him. Idiot number one, on the left, was a third-generation Italian firefighter, a stand-up guy who was built like a pro wrestler, never blinked in the face of death, and, aside from an intermittent off-duty drinking problem, had no red checks after his name.
If he had a dozen Chuck Parnesi’s in his firehouses, he wouldn’t be prematurely gray and divorced.
Okay, fine, he’d probably still be divorced. But his hair wouldn’t be almost white.
Genius number two was the problem—and the carrier. Spike-haired and heavy-metal-loving Damian Reichmann was a walking hemorrhoid, the Typhoid Martin of Bad Behavior, a man capable of reducing even a relatively tight guy like Chuckie P to the lowest common denominator of a twelve-year-old at summer camp. Damian absolutely, positively measured his life’s worth on how many people around him were pissed off. Nickname? Damnit. Because pretty much every time the asshat was addressed, it was along the lines of “Damnit, why did you . . .”
“I am too old for this shit.” Tom glared at Damian. “And so the fuck are you.”
Damnit’s smile had fat-kid-loves-cake all over it. “What I do?”
Tom leaned back in his old wooden chair. And stared at the guy.
Damnit shrugged. “Look, Chuckie P got no game. I thought I was helping.”
“You set up an eHarmony account,” Chuck cut in. “And sent women to my house. To go on dates. With me.”
“Did any of it work?” Damnit gave a two-thumbs-up. “Did we get it in?”
“They were fetish models!”
Tom had to give that detail a “huh.” “I didn’t know those type of women were on eHarmony.”
Damnit shook his head. “It was an ad on Craigslist, actually.”
“What the fuck!” Chuck glared at the guy. “People get killed off that thing!”
“Annnnd you’re still breathing. Also haven’t answered the question. What about that redhead who was into bondage—”
“Enough.” Tom backhanded his neck to rub away the steel beam that was his spinal cord. “Look, I can’t let this go. This is one too many times in the last month.”
“Come on, Chief.” Damnit smiled some more, flashing the gold canine he’d added last month. “It was a practical joke. That could possibly have gotten him a blow job—”
“Chuck, punch him in the junk, and you’re even.”
Damnit cut the shit and stood up straighter. “What.”
“I love you, Chief.” Chuck put his hand on that heavily muscled chest, right over his heart. “And I mean that as a leader, a friend, an example of good works everywhere—”
Damnit double-clapped his happy tackle. “Seriously, I’ll sue. I will sue you, the city, him, this firehouse. There are rules, you know.”
“Oh, right.” Tom reached back and took the city’s human resources manual off his shelf. Cracking it open, he drawled his forefinger down the table of contents and then opened the thing at about the halfway mark. “I better make sure I follow procedure—okay, I’m supposed to give you a warning first.” He looked up at Damnit. “Damian Reichmann, Chuck Parnesi is about to turn you into a soprano. Chuckie, g’head.”
“Take it like a man, Damnit.” Chuckie smiled like Jason on the right Friday of the month. “Besides, it’ll help you hit the high notes in the shower—”
The clanging of the alarm bell going off was an eraser on the board, swiping away the fun and games.
“Back to work,” Tom said as he pivoted and checked his computer screen.
“What we got?” Chuck asked.
“One-alarm that’s now a two down on Harbor and Eighteenth. Looks like the four-nine-nine is already there.”
“One of those warehouses?” Damian said.
“Yeah. They’re only requesting one engine. You boys take the call. Ropes’s
still got that bum shoulder from last night—”
Vic Rizzo, a.k.a. Ropes, broke into the office. He had a cell phone up to his ear and one arm in a sling. “It’s Anne. Your sister’s trapped in there.”
Tom knocked his chair over as he burst up. “Is she alone? Where’s the rest of the crew?”
* * *
Later, Anne would wonder what exactly it was that made her look over her shoulder. It couldn’t have been a sound because her heavy breathing in her mask drowned out even the roar of the fire. And it wasn’t anything visual. She didn’t have eyes in the back of her helmet. But some kind of instinct called her from behind, and she pivoted against her left arm, glancing toward a wall of fire that had spread down the vertical particleboard.
From the midst of the swirling red and yellow flames, a massive figure plowed through the partition, its force so great, things didn’t so much break apart as powder into sparks.
And it had a chain saw.
There was only one person that size who would be insane enough to bring a gas-powered tool with him to rescue her.
As a lit part of the walling fell off Danny Maguire’s enormous shoulder, his head beam hit her square in the face, and she looked away as her retinas squeezed tight.
Thank you, God, she thought as she blinked to clear her vision.
“I’m trapped, Danny! I’m stuck—” When she didn’t hear her own voice over the radio, she realized her unit must have been compromised.
Pulling back against her hand, she pointed to show him what her problem was, and he nodded, that light of his moving up and down. With a powerful pull, he ripped the chain saw to life and came forward, wielding the twenty-five-pound piece of equipment like it was an empty coffee mug. Pumping the gas, a high-pitched whine rose and fell above the din as he assessed the wooden beam that had just fallen and was now part of the tangle. Moving herself to the side, she shoved something relatively light off her—a laptop, or what was left of one.
The blade and its chain came within inches of her facial mask, but she didn’t wince. As reckless as the man could be in real life, he was a surgeon with anything that cut wood or building materials—
Without warning, a ten-foot-by-ten-foot section of the ceiling fell on them, and she dropped her head, bracing against impact. When she wasn’t crushed, her first thought was that Danny was holding that whole part of the building up—but no. That beam he’d been about to cut had caught the load and was keeping it at bay.
But if he cut the length now, they would get buried.
The chain saw’s engine went silent, and as he put it down at his feet, she could tell he was cursing inside his mask, his eyes in a nasty squint as he scanned the collapse. Then, with an arch to rival a bridge span, he grabbed ahold of her jammed forearm. When she nodded and sank into her legs, she watched the brim of his helmet dip three times.
One . . . two . . . three.
They both pulled and the pain that shot up her arm and into her shoulder had her grinding her molars to keep from screaming. When she couldn’t handle it for a second longer, she shook her head and bumped her body against his.
Danny released her. Looked around again. Behind his mask, his mouth was moving; he was talking into his radio—and she could guess what he was saying.
Anne gave a couple more half-hearted pulls. Then, with a curse, she pointed at the wall he’d come through. “Go!” she yelled inside her mask. “Leave me!”
Danny leaned over and grabbed her arm again, that cranking grip of his locking on her so tightly her bones compressed. As he pulled with his incredible power, her teeth clenched, and her breath shot out of her ribs—and she took as much of it as she could.
“Stop! Stop!” She sagged as he relented. “Stop . . .”
Anne shook her head and motioned toward where he had entered. “Go! I’m done!” Moaning in her throat, she pushed at his huge body. “Go.”
When that got her nowhere, she released her mask and shoved it aside. Hot, deadly air, the kind that toasted your esophagus and BBQ’d your lungs, closed her throat.
“Go!”
Behind his mask, Danny was furious and his gloved hands went to try to force her oxygen supply back into place.
“No! Get out of—”
Creaking over their heads made them both duck on reflex. As sparks rained down through the smoke, Anne weaved on her feet. “You’re going to die in here! Go!”
Danny put his face in hers. He was ripshit and letting her know it behind his mask, and for a split second, she watched him from a great distance even though their faces were six inches apart.
I’m going to miss you, she thought. Of all of the people I work with, and everyone I know . . . I’m going to miss you the most.
Danny yanked his own breathing mask away. “Put your goddamn oxygen back on!”
“You’re going to die!” she screamed.
“I’m getting you out of here!”
“It’s too late for me! Go!”
As if the fire were excited by their yelling, a hot flare burst out next to them, roasting the skin on one side of her face. Danny cursed and forced her mask back on, and she was still hollering at him as he reestablished his own air and then bent all the way over to the floor. Picking up the chain saw, he backed away a couple of feet and went on a discus spin, releasing the Craftsman at the top of the arc, the tool flipping end over end into the wall of fire. Then he covered her with his body, forming a shield.
The explosion was loud and immediate, the gasoline in that tank heating up until it created sufficient pressure to blow the Craftsman apart, the bomb detonating with a brutally hot kiss.
Anne ripped her mask off again. He was barking into his radio, but the time had come and gone for plans, and rescues, and her salvation.
“You need to go,” she ordered him. “Now.”
Danny stopped talking, his face going still behind his clear shield. And then he removed his oxygen supply. “We die together, then.”
He was every bit as resolved as she was, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Exactly as it always had been between them. God, why did she think death would change anything? And the man wasn’t going to leave her. Between his brother dying on the job three years ago and then him losing Sol twelve months ago, all of his nope-I-don’t-have-PTSD was going to make it impossible for him to go through that kind of mourning again.
Anne looked down at her arm. It was her left one. Not the hand she wrote with. And she was never getting married, so it wasn’t like she needed to worry about a ring finger.
Clean cut, she thought.
“Cut it off,” she said over the crackle and spit of the fire. To help him understand, she pointed to her forearm. “Tourney and cut!”
Danny’s blue eyes flared, and he shook his head as he looked around again, assessing all of their no-go options.
Anne released the straps on her tank under her pits and let the weight drop off her. Then she bit her right glove off and spit it out. The fastenings down her fire-resistant jacket released one by one, and she kicked the heavy folds off so that that one sleeve pooled the entire weight at her trapped wrist.
“Tourney!”
Shit, it was hot. She could feel her skin prickle in warning—or maybe that was her shirt melting into her arms. But she had other problems.
Danny released his mask and put his face in hers. “Listen, James Franco, this isn’t fifty-seven hours!”
“The movie was 127 Hours!”
“Are you seriously arguing about that right now!”
“Tourney me and do it!”
“That’s it. I’m demanding backup—”
“Do you want to kill all of us? Either leave me or do it!”
She would have taken care of the problem herself, but the angle of the blade needed to be right . . . and oh, God, was she out of her mind? What was she saying?
“Cut my hand off or leave me!”
chapter
4
Danny was rank furious as
he tried to get Anne’s jacket back on her. Was she out of her fucking mind—
A resounding groan escalated into a roar, and more of the floor above collapsed around them, coming down the slope created by that panel held up by the beam tangle. Arching over Anne, he protected her, bricks and pieces of particleboard punching at his shoulders and crashing on his helmet.
When things stopped hitting him, he discovered an unexpected bene. Smoke was escaping fast in a new direction, the rush-hour-worthy evac suggesting a way out might have opened that hadn’t been there before. The flames were so thick, he couldn’t be sure.
“Cut it off!” she yelled at him.
“Will you shut up with that!”
He kicked shit out of his way and attempted to get her mask back in place again, but she fought him—even as consciousness began to go in and out for her, her eyes rolling back, her weight weaving. And still that goddamn hand of hers was squeezed in between a trap of beams and crap that looked like pieces of machinery and a desk.
“Pull with me!” He wrapped himself around the back of her once more and took her forearm in his palms. “On three. One!” Maybe this will work. “Two!” Please, God, let this work. “Three!”
They both strained, her strong body bowing until her boots slipped out from under her and he had to catch her.
“Dan!”
As Anne barked his name, he refocused on her—and she put her free hand to the side of his mask.
“Do it, Dan,” she said. “Or you have to go. I’m okay with dying. Honest.”
He stared into her eyes through his facial shield. His breathing was a freight train in his ears. His body was shaking under his PPEs. His mind was racing through solutions, too many of them getting rejected.
Oh, wait, actually all of them getting tossed.
“Fuck,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
Releasing his mask, he pushed it aside and locked eyes on hers without any barriers. It wasn’t supposed to end like this . . . although even as he thought that, he wondered what the hell their other option was. He and Anne Ashburn were both death-wish idiots, the kind of people who pushed limits, and themselves, until shit got broken.