Fire Born (Firehouse 343)

by Christina Moore

  “We’re going to rescue your girlfriend, Chris—try not to get us killed in the process, will you?”

  Chris refused to acknowledge the attempt at humor. All he could think about was getting to Martie. He needed to see her, to touch her. To tell her he didn’t care about the background check. If she really wanted to know why he’d spent two years in a Montana juvenile detention facility, he’d gladly tell her—he would do whatever she wanted so long as he got to hold her again. He just wanted her back in his arms, where she belonged.

  Because he wasn’t driving an official vehicle, he could hardly expect other drivers to get out of his way. He laid into the truck’s horn whenever he got stuck behind someone actually following the speed limit, and more than one middle finger or “Fuck you!” was thrown his way. Chris ignored them all because nothing else mattered except getting to Martie in time. When he finally screeched to a halt in the street outside the Breckon Apartments building, he noted that three patrol cars had already arrived.

  Throwing the gear shift into park, Chris jumped out of the borrowed vehicle and ran for the entrance with Scott on his heels, the detective instructing the uniformed officers to surround the building.

  “Martie!” Chris hollered as loud as he could once he’d set foot in the lobby.

  A yell came from somewhere up above—he couldn’t be sure if it was the second or third floor. He ran for the stairs as another voice sounded, and he thought he heard his name. This spurred him on, and he remembered to call out a warning to Scott and whichever officer had followed them in about the missing step as he took the stairs two at a time. The door to apartment 2A was already partially off the hinges from being kicked in by Terry or Football ten days ago—Chris knocked it off the rest of the way with his own boot. Every door in the apartment got the same treatment, and he could hear Scott and the officer in the other apartments doing the same.

  “Chris! Up here! He’s going to start a fire!”

  Fear and joy lanced through him at the sound of Martie’s shout—he was relieved beyond measure to know she was still alive, but knowing her kidnapper was about to light the place up had turned his blood to ice. He flew as fast as he could out of 2A and headed for the third floor without waiting for Scott or the uniform, though they were just seconds behind him. Instinct led him straight to apartment 3C, where he could hear the kidnapper yelling, and when he went through the door he called out to Martie again.

  The strong scent of nail polish remover led him to the bedroom, where Jessica used to sleep and Calvin had been struck down, just in time to watch as a man turned to him, eyes wild and lighter open. The lighter went into the air and although everything in him wanted to dive for it, he could not. He wanted to protect Martie, and instead he had to turn and shove Scott and the officer trailing behind him out of the way.

  There was a whoosh as the chemical caught, effectively sealing off the room. Chris turned back and tried to look inside to Martie. Through the flames, which circled nearly the entire room, he could see her, and a rage that was surely hotter than the fire burned in his veins when he saw that his quarry stood behind her, her hair in his hand, a knife at her throat, and her shirt hanging open, baring her chest.

  “She’s mine now, redskin!” he taunted.

  “I’m gonna kill you when I get my hands on you, asshole!” he retorted angrily.

  “Oh no, I think not,” the man replied, coughing as the smoke caught in his lungs. “You see, we are surrounded. The fire will get to us before you do, and then Martie and Ronnie and I will be together forever!”

  A hand grabbed Chris by the arm, and he swung his fist as he turned. Scott narrowly avoided the right hook, ducking away just in time. “Chris, we have to get out of here,” he said, coughing as he did so.

  “No. I’m not leaving her!” he fired back.

  “You’re no good to her dead!” Scott challenged. “Your guys are on the way. Work with them to get the fire put out—then we deal with the motherfucker.”

  “Damn it, Scott! He’s got a knife to her throat,” Chris pointed out. “He’s going to kill her before we get through.”

  “He’s right about that, you know!” the man behind the flames called out. “Both my little whores and I will be long dead before you can reach us.”

  Chris wanted to scream. The crazy bastard had put his own life at risk by starting the fire, which meant he believed he had nothing else to lose, and he was messing with their heads. In that moment he wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around the psycho fucker’s throat and squeeze the life out of him.

  The smoke was spreading quickly, as was the fire. The plaster and wood comprising the inside walls of the apartment were already weakened from the previous fire, and it wasn’t taking much at all for them to catch again. Reluctantly Chris moved with Scott away from the bedroom door, the uniformed officer having already been sent back down to join the others outside.

  “Do you have your gun on you?” he asked, coughing as much to cover up the question as to try and clear his airway.

  “Of course I do,” Scott replied, his hand over his mouth now.

  “You have to shoot him. Can you hit him without risking Martie?” Chris asked.

  “Are you serious?” Scott asked. “Chris, we have to get out of here before this place falls down around us!”

  “I told you I’m not leaving her!” he fired back. “If you want to leave, then get out! But give me your gun and I’ll do it myself.”

  “Chris, if either one of us shoots him, we run the risk of his arm jerking and the knife breaking her skin,” Scott said then.

  He could hear the sirens from the engine, ladder, and rescue units as they approached. He knew his boys would perform as excellently as always, but he also know they would be too late.

  “Scott, we don’t have a choice,” he told him. “They’re going to die, either by his hand or the fire.”

  They stared at one another for a moment, hardly daring to breathe for the smoke. Then Scott drew his weapon and clicked the safety off. “Alright,” he said quietly. “But we gotta move quick.”

  “You don’t have to go in. Just kill the fucker.”

  Scott said nothing, merely nodded his head toward the door. Christ stepped back in front of it, though the heat from the flames forced him to stand back against the wall. As soon as he saw him, the kidnapper jerked on Martie’s hair and she cried out. His chest became painfully tight as he noted the fire inching closer to them.

  “What’re you going to do, red man? You going to stand there and watch us burn?” the man asked in a sing-song voice. “It’s not like firefighters carry a gun, so you can’t shoot me.”

  “No, but cops do, asshole,” Chris fired back, and at that Scott swung into the madman’s view, his gun raised and ready to shoot. The report of the weapon being fired a split second later reverberated in the confined space of the narrow hall, and he watched the next moments unfold as if in slow motion.

  The kidnapper’s eyes widened and he jerked up on Martie’s hair again. The knife drew to the right across her throat as the bullet struck him in the shoulder, and the impact threw him backward. He fell hard to the ground, pulling Martie with him.

  Fueled by adrenaline, Chris pushed Scott out of the way, then threw an arm over his face and ran headlong through the flames across the doorway. He was protected somewhat by the bunker gear he still wore, but the open jacket left his chest exposed, and a spark hit him, lighting his t-shirt on fire. He swiped at it as he ran for Martie, who now lay motionless on top of her captor.

  He reached for her and picked her up, then turned back for the door. The sight that met him there warmed his heart—Logan and Football. The two of them stepped through the flames as though ignorant of their presence, one moving immediately to his side and the other to the second prone form on the floor. Football picked up Ronnie as Logan pushed him toward the door.

  “Watch her head,” he said, and Chris nodded.

  Taking as deep a breath as the sm
oke allowed, he choked on a cough and ran through the fire, praying that he made it to the other side without getting himself or Martie burned.

  ***

  She was unconscious now. The doctors had given her supplemental oxygen to help her lungs recover from the smoke, and morphine for the pain she likely suffered. Chris’s blood continued to simmer with rage as he sat next to a sleeping Martie in her hospital bed, hating Graham Henderson even more with each passing minute. He’d beaten Martie—had hit her hard enough to not just cause bruises and swelling, but also hairline fractures in her right cheekbone. There were three stitches at the base of her throat where the knife had cut into her, and two more where she’d been pistol whipped. She would make a full recovery, but the doctors wanted her to sleep for at least twelve full hours to help speed it along.

  Chris wanted to climb into the bed with her. He wanted to hold her close, to whisper in her ear that he would never let her go for as long as it took for her to wake up, to believe he meant every word. But he also didn’t want to disturb her, and so he sat holding her hand and brooding, futilely urging time to move faster.

  Larry, though still in serious condition—and under guard in another wing of the hospital—had recovered enough to answer some of Scott’s questions. The man he answered to was his half brother, Graham Henderson—as in Deputy Director of the Montana Bureau of Fire Safety Graham Henderson. The face he presented to the public was a devout Christian who was married with three children, who didn’t smoke and drank rarely—he didn’t even like to use curse words. But according to Larry, the man beneath the mask was somebody altogether different, someone who could be truly terrifying.

  Graham had never really loved his wife, Theresa, and had only married her for her family’s money and political connections. He sired children with her only because it was expected. But ever since her cancer scare some years back he’d had a string of mistresses; Ronnie was only one of hundreds. He had also apparently had political aspirations of his own. He wanted to be Governor of Montana first—had been planning to finally make a run for it next year—and then President. But when Ronnie had gotten pregnant, he’d thought it all at risk. He feared being cut off from the cash flow his wife’s family provided, feared the public backlash a scandal like an affair and a lovechild were liable to cause. He refused to let Ronnie shame him like that, and so he had ordered her to get an abortion. Graham hadn’t counted on Ronnie having a backbone or motherly instinct—or that she was willing to simply disappear in order to raise her child.

  He’d searched for her intermittently over the years, all the while building his public image—making himself into the perfect man to lead the state, and eventually the country. Discovering her location at last—and living in a building owned by a man the Bureau was already investigating for insurance fraud, no less—had seemed like the answer to his prayers. It was kismet—the very words he had used, Larry said. He, the younger half-brother sired during an affair on the part of their father, had been enlisted by Graham to move to Gracechurch and get a job, to find a way to insinuate himself into Ronnie’s life so that he could learn her comings and goings. He swore that he had no idea at first that Graham was planning to kill Ronnie and Jessica, as he’d been led to believe his brother simply wanted to pay her off.

  Neither man had counted on Larry developing real feelings for Ronnie. He genuinely liked her, had wished he wasn’t getting to know her under false pretenses. He’d have even liked to meet Jessica, he told Scott, because he had a fondness for children with special needs, having suffered from a speech impediment in his youth caused by damaged hearing (itself a result of constant ear infections as an infant). When asked why he didn’t confess the truth to Ronnie or even deny Graham’s request outright, Larry’s answer had been simple.

  Fear—he was deathly afraid of Graham, who could be “one hell of a scary bastard when pissed.” Larry had long suspected that his brother was not a hundred percent sane, but was too afraid to suggest he seek the help of a therapist for his obsessive tendencies. He merely did as he was told out of fear for his own personal safety—

  —which included spying on an innocent young woman who had never done harm to anyone.

  Scott also asked him about who had started the original fire, but Larry could give him nothing on that. He reported that Graham claimed to have hired someone else for that task, as he didn’t trust Larry to do it. He had no idea who the other man was or where Graham might have met him—or where he might be now—as those were details his brother had kept to himself.

  Chris knew Larry had asked about Ronnie’s condition, and though in his mind the little prick didn’t deserve to know, Scott had informed him that Graham had hit her a number of times and stabbed her twice in the stomach. No vital organs or blood vessels had been pierced, thank goodness, but she had still lost a lot of blood, and her traumatized body would take several weeks to recover. Like Martie, she had been given sleep aids so that she would rest for several hours. Karalyn had brought Jessica to the hospital long enough to assure the little girl that her mother would be all right, though she’d had a fight on her hands getting her to leave again. Only a solemn promise that they would come back in the morning right after breakfast had enticed the little girl out of her mother’s room.

  “You must be Chris.”

  He jumped, startled out of his dark reverie by the sound of a voice behind him. Chris scowled as he looked over his shoulder. His expression relaxed only a fraction as he recognized the family resemblance. The visitor and Martie had the same Roman nose.

  “You must be Tony,” he said, turning back without waiting for the man’s answer.

  “Indeed,” came the reply, and Martie’s brother stepped further into the room. “Antonio Octavian Liotta the Third.”

  “Christopher Leland Paytah the First,” he retorted snarkily. “Want to exchange family histories now?”

  “No. I’d rather say thank you,” Tony returned.

  Chris looked up. Tony Liotta had moved to the other side of Martie’s bed, and on his face as he looked down at his sister was an expression of pain that he was fairly certain bore a close resemblance to the one he wore each time his eyes fell upon the bruises marring her beauty.

  “You saved my sister’s life,” the other man said. “For that, my family and I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  Sighing, Chris replied, “I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I wish she’d never been in harm’s way, and I’d have gladly taken her place if I could.”

  Tony nodded. “I can see you mean that, which makes me feel both better and worse.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Better,” Tony said as drew the chair behind him close to the bed and sat, “because it means you care about her.”

  “I love Martie,” Chris told him.

  “I can see that as well, which is why I feel bad.”

  Chris ran his free hand over his face. “Dude, you gotta stop talking in riddles. I have no idea what the fuck you’re going on about.”

  “Last week, I called Martie at work, to see what she was up to and ask her to lunch. She sounded upset about something, so naturally I asked her what was wrong. She told me that she’d had a conversation with her boss that bothered her, and when I asked her what it was about, she said that she’d confessed to developing feelings for someone involved in her current case. Said his name was Chris and that he was a firefighter. Martie said that he—meaning you—wasn’t a suspect in the arson so there wasn’t a conflict of interest, but that Graham had suggested taking a closer look at you before becoming involved. That there might be skeletons in your closet she couldn’t live with. I told her that given how many times she’d had her heart broken, she should probably take her boss’s advice.”

  Tony sighed then. “Considering her boss is the same obsessed, psycho nutjob that just tried to kill her, I suspect he played on the insecurity she does her damnedest to hide from the world,” he said. “My agreeing with him only made it worse. W
hatever happened between you that’s made her miserable for the last week is probably our fault.”

  Chris snorted. “Oh, so yours is the advice she listened to? You and the obsessed psycho nutjob got her so worked up that she not only ran a background check on me, but somehow managed to convince a judge to unseal my juvie record. We got into a fight about it because it pissed me off, and rightly so. So thanks, Antonio, for ruining a perfectly good relationship before it even got started.”

  “You’ve got a juvie record?” Tony countered.

  He snorted again. “Figures that’s the only thing you’d pick up on,” he said sardonically. “Look, what I did as a dumbass kid twenty fuckin’ years ago is nobody’s business but mine, and Martie’s if and when she chooses to listen—preferably with an open mind, and not one clouded by insecurities which are fed by brothers that are better off keeping their noses out of personal business.”

  Tony held up his hands in a position of surrender. “You’re right, I should have stayed out of it. But Martie and I are close, and I love my sister. She’s unfortunately had to put up with more than her fair share of assholes and I would hate to see her get hurt again. That’s the only reason I said anything.”

  Suppressing a growl, Chris nodded acquiescence. “I get it,” he admitted. “I’ve got two brothers of my own, and I’m protective of them too.”

  “Any sisters?”

  “No, thank God,” he replied, and when Tony looked at him questioningly, he added, “If I did, I’d probably be just like you, or worse—as in have an adult record as well as a juvenile one, because I’d knock the shit out of every one of the men in her life that turned out to be an asshole.”

  Tony grinned. “Who says I haven’t rolled a few dumbfucks all in the name of brotherly love?”

  Chris studied him for a moment, and then chuckled. “Now that you’ve said that, I might just have to start liking you.”

  “And now that I know you love my sister, I might just have to do the same,” Tony agreed. “Albeit on one condition.”