Analyze, then hypothesize.
The words anchored her calm into place. Buckling her helmet with suddenly steady fingers, Shae shouldered her SCBA unit, waiting for orders from Bridges as he moved back to his command post in front of the scene.
“Engine Seventeen and Squad Six, this is Command. We have reports of two men still inside the structure, last known location Bravo side. Hawkins, this place may be under construction, but it’s also fully under roof, so we’ll need a vent. Take Dempsey.”
Shae craned her neck to look up at the roofline, her shoulders tightening at the sight of the slate tiles, the multiple gables and turrets, and the dramatic pitch.
But all Hawkins said was, “Yes, sir,” turning to grab the circular saw from its compartment in the squad vehicle before he and Dempsey fell out in a clatter of boots on pavement.
“Engine Nine just arrived, and they are on lines,” Bridges continued, his eyes never leaving the house, carefully scanning and assessing the scene. “The rest of you are on search and rescue. Gamble, take point. Time is an issue. Go.”
The lieutenant didn’t pause. Just moved, and Shae forced her legs to copy his strides as best she could with their nine-inch height differential. She had to analyze. Focus. Help find the men trapped inside before the roof collapsed or the fire flashed over.
They had minutes. If they were lucky.
“Alright,” Gamble said, eyeing up the gigantic expanse of stone and glowing flames in front of him as they cut a path over the ridiculously long, ridiculously ostentatious stone-paved walkway. “We’ve got a ton of ground to cover, and visibility is going to be for shit. I’ll radio Cap and see if he can get some spotlights going from the engine.”
“Fuck. This place has to be twenty thousand square feet,” Faurier murmured, his eyes sweeping over the house in front of them. Shae nodded in agreement—between the thick cover of smoke, the eerie shadows being thrown off by the emergency vehicles, and the sheer size of the house itself, she was struggling to keep up with her own scene assessment.
Doubt panged at her breastbone in a demand for re-entry, but oh no. No way was she scaling back on this call. “We can tether ourselves to anchor points to keep from getting turned around,” she said.
Gamble nodded, just once in agreement as they reached the bottom of a set of stone steps leading up to two mahogany and stained-glass doors that looked like they belonged on a cathedral. “Good call,” he answered, shifting forward to advance.
But Slater’s arm shot upward, fist closed in the universal sign for hold. “Wait! Do you smell that?”
The unmistakable chemical scent pinched at Shae’s senses, her gut dumping toward her knees. “That’s gasoline,” she said, and oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. “This is arson, Gamble. This fire was set deliberately.”
Gamble swore in acknowledgment, radioing Bridges with the find. “We still have two men to find, so mask up and watch your backs. McCullough, you’re with me on floor one, Bravo side. Walker, you’re with Gates on second floor Bravo. Faurier, take Slater and sweep first floor Charlie side in case these guys tried to escape out the back and got jammed up. Copy?”
Without so much as a nanosecond’s worth of a pause after their affirmative replies, Gamble smashed through the stained glass with his Halligan bar, reaching in to release the deadbolt he’d rightly assumed would’ve been a pain in the ass to breach any other way. The door—which had to be four inches thick—thumped inward on a heavy swing, and Shae followed Gamble into the near black depths of the foyer while everyone else fell out on their S&R assignments.
“We’ll have to split up,” Gamble shouted past his mask. “I’ll take the rear section down this hallway, you take this part of the house right here. And Shae?” He spared her only a lightning-fast glance before continuing, because truly, it was all they had. “Do not do anything stupid.”
“Copy that, Lieutenant.”
Turning on her helmet-mounted spotlight along with the one clipped to the front left side of her coat, Shae stepped farther into the part of the house she’d been assigned to search. Sweat popped over her forehead in a near-immediate physical reaction to the blast of heat coming from the interior of the house, and her heart went from a steady rhythm to an out-and-out brawl beneath her gear.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Analyze. Make a plan.
Her voice flew out, clear and strong. “Fire department! Call out!”
She surveyed the room as quickly as possible for any potential hazards, cursing inwardly as she realized the whole fucking place was a potential hazard. Stacks of building materials, the unfinished sheet rock panels of all four walls, the rafters and sub flooring above her, all of them were covered in the deep glow flames.
Still, she wouldn’t be deterred. Attaching the nylon tether she carried specifically for calls like these to the anchor on her coat, Shae wrapped the opposite end around the only support beam she could find that wasn’t actively burning. Her muscles screamed beneath the weight of her gear and the heat swamping her from all sides, but still, she hollered, “Fire department! Is anyone here?”
Shae made her way into the space one step at a time. Although she hadn’t thought it possible, the fire grew even stronger, the smoke and lack of daylight making it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her even with her helmet lamp going full blast. A section of the rafters broke off and fell to the floor with a spark-filled crash, and okay, yeah. Shit had just gone from zero to pear-shaped.
Just as she reached for the two-way on her shoulder, though, Kellan’s voice broke through the whoosh of the flames. “Command, this is Walker! We have two men down, Bravo side, floor two.”
“Walker this is Command,” came Bridges’s voice. “Are you clear for the primary exit?”
The pause was excruciating even though it lasted only seconds. “Affirmative. Gates and I are a go for the primary exit.”
“Copy that. Command to all units, fall out immediately. Gamble, McCullough, Slater, Faurier, I want you out of there right now.”
God, Shae didn’t need to hear the command twice. Pivoting on her boot heels, she reclaimed her tether, tracing her strides—ten, eleven, twelve—back to the spot where she’d started. She sent a quick glance around the foyer to make sure there weren’t any new hazards in her path before she reached for her tether to release it, goose bumps chasing the sweat on her skin and freezing her movements at the sound of Gamble’s voice crackling over the two-way.
“Command, this is Gamble. I’m on floor one, Bravo side…I think. There’s zero visibility in here, and I lost my anchor…”
He trailed off. Ice slid over Shae’s spine despite the hell-hot conditions around her as she registered his tone, strung tightly with something she’d never, ever heard in his voice in the entire five years she’d known him.
Fear.
“Command, this is McCullough. I’m still in position, first floor, Bravo side, and I’m already tethered to an anchor point. Requesting permission for search and rescue.”
“McCullough—” Gamble cautioned, and frustration welled in her throat.
“I’m the closest person to you, Gamble, and you’re wasting time by arguing! Give me sixty seconds, Cap. I can do this. I can.”
Bridges paused, but only for a breath. “Copy that. Gamble, hold your position and set off your PASS device. McCullough, you have sixty seconds. Go.”
Shae was in motion before he’d even started sentence number two. With swift, methodical movements, she double-checked her equipment, forging a path down the hallway toward the screeching signal coming from Gamble’s personal alert safety system. The hall branched off in what looked like two identical passageways, both equally twisty and clogged with smoke and flames. God, no wonder the lieutenant had gotten turned around back here—
Shae could barely see a foot in front of her. But that alarm on Gamble’s PASS device was cranking out ninety-five decibels of Olly Olly Oxen Free, and she swung toward the noise blaring from the left-hand passage.
Damn it, she’d have to do this the hard way.
Hitting her knees, Shae crawled her way deeper into the house. Sweat stung her eyes, her breath impossibly loud in her ears over the hiss of her respirator, but still, she pressed forward carefully, hand over knee, until—fifteen, sixteen—yes! Her heart surged up toward her throat at the sight of the high-powered strobe light on Gamble’s alarm flashing through the ashy haze. Like her, he had crouched down low for better visibility, and two more crawl-paces had her within arm’s length of him.
“Hey, big guy. Fancy meeting you here,” she said, her pulse spiking even faster as he jerked to attention as if he’d been trapped in a trance, eyes wide behind his mask.
“I told you not to do anything stupid, you know.” The words were oddly quiet. In that scissor-sharp instant, Shae recognized the depth of the fear embedded in his stare, and she forced herself to speak even though she wasn’t certain her throat would obey.
“I’m happy to see you, too, Lieutenant.” Flames danced up both sides of the hallway over Gamble’s shoulder, reaching toward the ceiling Shae could no longer see, and yeah, they could hug it out later. “Now what do you say we get the hell out of here?”
He focused his stare on the light attached to the front of her coat, his nod coming back stronger than his voice had been only seconds before. “Copy that.”
She reached down to lock the snap hook on Gamble’s coat to her secondary line, then reached for the radio at her shoulder. “Command, this is McCullough. Gamble and I are tethered and clear for the primary exit. Repeat, we are clear for the primary exit.”
“McCullough, this is Command. The primary exit is unimpeded. Fall out.”
Pushing her boots to the subfloor, she crouched down low while Gamble did the same. They needed the speed of their feet to cut a fast path to the exit, and anyway, now they had a lifeline. Getting out would be a hell of a lot easier than getting in. Shae turned, wrapping her gloved fingers firmly around the tether while Gamble fell in at her six.
They made it exactly four steps down the hallway before everything above them erupted in an over-bright flash, then faded instantly to black.
Chapter 19
Capelli stared at the massive fire in front of him, absolutely unable to breathe. His brain, which had refused to lose its hard-wiring even in the face of his body’s adrenaline overload, catalogued everything in excruciating detail. The call he’d gotten from Sinclair that had roused him from his bed, where he’d slept alone for the first time in a week. The faster-than-was-safe drive to get to the scene. The fear and dread and high-octane tension that had ricocheted through his chest as he’d stood between Sinclair and Captain Bridges with the rest of the team, listening to events unfold on the Captain’s radio.
“Walker and Gates are clear with the victims,” Bridges said, and Capelli’s brain registered the sight of Isabella’s body loosening with relief from beside him. “Both men are unconscious, but breathing. They’re being prepped for immediate transport to Remington Memorial.”
His unfailing brain formed words, kicked them out of his mouth, and somehow, despite the riot in his chest, they were smooth, steady. “Have the trauma docs run a tox screen. Chances are extremely high you’ll find sufentanil in both of their systems.”
Bridges’s nod was interrupted by the crackle of static on the two-way radio at his shoulder.
“Command, this is Faurier. Slater and I are clear at the primary exit.”
“Copy that,” Bridges said. Tension that Capelli could neither rationalize nor ease cranked harder between his ribs. The countdown that had been steadily ticking down in his head ever since he’d last heard Shae’s voice on the two-way was dwindling fast—nineteen, eighteen, seventeen—and he stared at the front door as if he could ridiculously, impractically will her over the threshold.
Damn it, it was just like her to want to go back for Gamble. Brash. Impulsive. Reckless—
At the fourteen-second mark, the house exploded in a rush of fire, shattered glass, and ungodly noise.
“Shae!” Her name tore from his throat, covered in raw terror. Capelli’s brain—Christ, his stupid fucking brain that never fucking stopped moving—sent fragments of information past the slamming of his heart and into his awareness. The flurry of movement toward the fireball that had just blown through every window on the left-hand side of the first floor. The rough timbre of Bridges’s voice as he yelled into his radio. The pressure of multiple hands and arms on his body, holding him back as he involuntarily launched himself toward the brightly burning flames.
Shae had been in the house. The fire had flashed over. Vaughn had set the fire.
Capelli was going to find that son of a bitch and murder him, slowly and without a scrap of remorse.
“McCullough. Gamble. Report!”
Bridges’s repeat command echoed in Capelli’s head, and the burst of static that arrived a beat later took a direct shot at his knees and the center of his chest simultaneously.
“Command, this is McCullough. Gamble and I are clear. Repeat, we’re clear. We’re okay, Cap.”
Relief didn’t even belong in the same stratosphere as the feeling that left Capelli’s body on a sharp exhale.
Shae was alive. Talking. Unhurt.
He was still going to kill Vaughn.
“McCullough. Gamble. What’s your location?” Bridges asked, and finally, the hands on Capelli’s shoulders and waist—who he belatedly realized belonged to Sinclair and Hale—eased their vise grip.
“The ceiling collapsed in the hallway and blocked our primary escape route,” Shae reported through the two-way. She was alive. Alive. “We had to cut our tether and fall out through the Charlie side, first floor, but we got out before the fire flashed over. Returning to the rendezvous point.”
Less than a minute later, she appeared on the far side of the house beside Gamble, covered in soot and sweat and looking so beautiful it hurt, and of all the slideshows gathered in his brain, Capelli knew in that instant he’d remember this one the most.
His emotions surged in a rush so fierce and intense, it took him completely by surprise, paralyzing him to his spot on the pavement. He wanted to grab Shae and check every inch of her to be certain she was unhurt, to yell at her for her sheer stupidity, to kiss her until his lungs gave out. He wanted everything, he felt everything, with so much intensity that he had to fight it. He had to find his composure, his control.
Because if he so much as touched Shae right now, his emotions would flash over just like that fire, and he wouldn’t be able to stop them from burning him to the ground.
“Jesus, you two. Not so close next time,” Bridges said, his own relief palpable even as he sent a string of commands to the secondary firefighting units with the rest of his breath.
Shae nodded while Capelli forced himself to go numb. It was that or go crazy, and he could not—could not—let his emotions ruin him.
“It was a little hairy for a second or two, but we’re fine.” She slid a barely there glance at Gamble before trying on a lopsided smile. “I mean, my ears are ringing from that flash over, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to smell like a charcoal briquette for a couple of days, but other than that…”
Shae’s voice faded for only a second, then came back with the sort of determination that could only belong to her. “This fire was set intentionally. It’s definitely arson.” She looked around, her startled expression a clear indicator that she’d just registered the intelligence unit standing a handful of feet away. “The place was doused in gasoline, Capelli,” she said, and God, he felt the way she said his name in the deepest part of his bones. “There’s no way this wasn’t Vaughn.”
Capelli swallowed hard and focused on the curve of her earlobe, half-covered by a wisp of errant honey-brown hair. “We know.”
“The fire marshal has been called in,” Sinclair added. “Patrol officers are already canvassing the area for anyone who might have seen him.”
“There might be evid
ence inside the house. We can run secondary lines from Seventeen to help knock this fire down faster,” Gamble said, but Bridges stopped the guy’s forward movement with a hard shake of his head.
“Dispatch has three more engines en route, and their ETA is less than two minutes. You and McCullough have had enough for one call. You’re off-shift for the rest of the night. Not as a punishment,” he added, because of course, Shae had just opened her mouth to protest—“but because I like my firefighters in one piece, and that includes their minds.”
Gamble and Shae looked equally pissed off and put out, although neither one argued. Sinclair sent a glance over all the members of the team, starting and ending with Capelli, and fuck. Fuck, he needed to work, to push his mind to exhaustion in order to buy himself some order, some sanity.
And yet the only thing he wanted was Shae.
“CSU is on the way,” Sinclair said, his voice low enough to keep the conversation between the team, yet firm enough to allow no argument. “Once the fire is out, we’ll have them work with arson investigation to comb whatever’s left of this scene for any traces of Vaughn. Moreno, you and Hollister check in with the patrol officers running the canvas and pull all security cam footage within a mile of here. See if anything pops. Maxwell, you and Hale head over to Remington Memorial to sit on those victims. I want full statements as soon as they’re able to make them. In the meantime, I’ll go deal with the mayor myself so we can figure out how he’s connected to Vaughn. Capelli…”
Sinclair paused, and to anyone else, even the detectives in the unit, he probably looked like his regular old hard-assed self, giving out orders and running a case. But Capelli had no choice but to notice everything, right down to the muscle in the man’s jaw that tightened ever so slightly when he was about to say something he wasn’t about to budge on, and he braced for impact.
Deep Burn (Station Seventeen Book 2) Page 23