“He’s alive!” Nate repeated, collapsing to the ground next to Montgomery as exhaustion suddenly hit him so hard he worried he might not be able to stand.
“How far are you from the front door?” Odgers’s voice came through clearly. The police had obviously stepped in to help.
Nate tried turning to see the door. “Not far.” He couldn’t see shit through the thick smoke.
“Can you bring him out? How hurt is he?”
“He’s got a pulse, but he’s not responding. He was buried under a few fallen beams, but I think it was the falling drywall that knocked him out. There’s no way to determine if anything is broken.” Nate could barely see his hand. Heat engulfed him, making it hard to breathe even with the helmet and mask on his face and head. “John helped me find him.”
Campbell started barking orders. They weren’t directed at Nate. He crawled to the downed man, touching the man’s face and searching for blood. He didn’t see any. His equilibrium seemed to be off kilter. Nate swore the floor was starting to slant. He braced his feet so he wouldn’t slide into Montgomery.
“Hold on, buddy,” he said, for a moment seeing John and not Montgomery. “You won’t die again on me. I won’t allow it.”
Nate ran his hand down the back of Montgomery’s head, still not finding blood but feeling a decent-sized lump.
“It’s just a knock to the head, old boy. You’re thickheaded enough it won’t hurt you any. I’ve never known a man more stubborn than you, Johnny boy.”
Apparently Montgomery felt the need to bring Nate back down to earth. He coughed and blinked, staring blankly at Nate through his dirty mask. His mouth moved, but Nate didn’t hear what he said. Nate stared and his brain shifted as he stared at Shawn Montgomery and not John Corelli.
“Can you stand?” Nate asked, raising his voice as he realized the crackling from burning wood exploded around them so loudly it was impossible to hear anything, including his own voice. Another minute in this house with his brain seeing and talking to people who weren’t there and both of them would be dead.
Nate reached for Montgomery and the younger man held out his hand, gripping Nate’s. A few minutes later the man stood, willingly wrapping his arm around Nate’s shoulder. It just took a few steps toward the door for the rest of Nate’s rational thinking to kick in. At this rate, they’d never make it to the door in time.
“I sure as hell hope nothing is broken inside you,” Nate grumbled, turning to Montgomery and lifting the man, then tossing him over his shoulder as if he were a very large and incredibly heavy bag of potatoes.
Nate damn near fell on his face when Montgomery relaxed, almost crushing Nate with his weight. Nate put one foot in front of the other, focusing his thoughts on Mary and carrying her up her stairs. That had been nothing, and he’d moved up a flight with a hard-on that had raged with enough fierceness it almost threw him off balance. He would get out of this house and he would carry her up that flight of stairs again. It wasn’t his time to go. He hadn’t thought it was John’s time, either, but Nate’s lifelong friend was dead. Nate wasn’t; Mary wasn’t. And he wanted a future with her.
Nate saw the door. The damn thing had shut. Nate didn’t remember when it had shut. He’d left it open when he entered the house. How in the hell was he supposed to open it with a two-hundred-pound man draped over his shoulder?
“Campbell!” he yelled into his mic. “Open the goddamn door.”
“What? Repeat, Armstrong. Open the door?”
He hadn’t stuttered. “Open the fucking door. My hands are full.”
“Armstrong, the front door is wide open. Hold your position. We’re coming in.”
The door was open? Nate spun around and crashed into a wall. Montgomery howled and stiffened, his uniform belt grinding into Nate’s shoulder. Nate swore the asshole had ripped his uniform to shreds and filleted his flesh while he was at it.
“Christ almighty!” Nate wailed, fighting to hold on to his balance and not let Montgomery slide to the ground. “Relax, damn it, or I swear I’ll leave your ass in here to melt.”
That would be the last thing he would ever do and Nate didn’t doubt for a moment Montgomery already knew that. The man relaxed, though, once again turning into a boneless mass of incredibly too much weight as his arms draped over one side of Nate and his heavy legs, with his heavy steel boots, barely missed kicking him in the balls.
An explosion shook the house as the staircase crashed. Wood split and shattered, falling into black holes. Other fragments of burning wood floated upward as flames whipped around them. The heat in the room reached dangerous levels. Nate’s lungs burned so badly the ventilation in his helmet wasn’t cutting it against the fire quickly closing in around them.
The clothes both he and Montgomery wore were completely fire retardant, according to multiple tests they had endured in order to pass safety codes required for firefighters to wear them. Nate wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t melt inside them, leaving his body no longer identifiable but clothed in the intact uniform.
“Cut it out,” he grunted to himself, wheezing against the thick smoke that was now successfully burning his eyes in spite of the protective helmet he wore. Which at the moment felt as if it weighed a good hundred pounds.
There would be no morbid thoughts. “Sorry, John,” he said under his breath, searching the growing flames as they taunted him and maneuvered themselves as if they plotted to trap him in the house. Smoke shifted and grew, taking on different shapes and making it damn hard to tell what around him was real and what wasn’t. He might have to let Campbell know he had been right. Nate was exhausted. His eyes were playing tricks on him. Already he’d lost the front door, which supposedly was wide open. “Damn it, buddy,” he complained, squinting to see in front of his face. “You’d be a good friend right now to get me to the goddamned front door.”
Something tall and rectangular appeared through the waves of smoke. Nate forced one foot in front of the other. There was the front door. He was sure of it. He grinned, thanking his lifelong best friend in his head at the same time as Holden and Randy Smith stormed into the burning house.
Nate had never been happier to see either man.
Nate stumbled outside as rain pounded the ground. He ripped off his headgear and shook his head, feeling his world teeter but no longer caring. Holden and Smith took Montgomery from him as paramedics rushed to them. Raindrops splashed on his face, in his eyes and his mouth. Nate stumbled away from all of them, enjoying every fresh breath of air he inhaled.
“It’s going to be damn hard to give you an award when you’re being reprimanded.” Campbell gave Nate a look that was as close to a grin as the chief ever came. “You’re definitely going to give me a detailed report,” he continued. “Talking to dead people,” he grumbled, turning away.
Nate was about to ask why he would be reprimanded, or awarded, for that matter, when the structure of the house collapsed and men around him shouted as hard sprays of water continued dousing it from the long hoses extending from the trucks. As if trying to compete, immediately following the explosion thunder roared from the sky and lightning lit up the night.
The quick light showed Nate a small group of reporters, hovering under umbrellas and snapping pictures. Jennifer Wilson, one of the reporters and someone he’d seen a few times over the years for a quick fuck, grinned and waved. She said something to her cameraman and he shot a picture of Nate. Jennifer’s smile turned toothy. She expected him to come talk to her, possibly give her an exclusive. It wouldn’t surprise him if she wanted more than news for her article. Neither was going to happen, though. There was only one woman he wanted to see.
He didn’t give Jennifer more than a moment’s attention when he spotted Mary. She looked like a drowned rat as she hurried forward, her concerned expression changing into a wide, happy smile as she started running.
If the reporters weren’t sure a burning house would grab everyone’s attention, they sure as hell would shift their focus to
Mary Hamilton when she leapt into Nate’s arms, wrapping hers around his neck and laughing.
“Thank God you’re okay,” she whispered into his ear as she clung to him.
She jumped back, letting go of him just as quickly when he staggered, suddenly feeling as if he’d just tied one on.
“Oh hell, Nate.” Mary slipped her arm around his waist and searched the crowd around them. “I wonder if I can take you home yet.”
She was here. Better than that, she was here at his side, already thinking for him, making sure he was taken care of, and ready to step up to bat for him when she’d decided he’d had enough fun. This was what it felt like to have a woman by his side, what some men so callously referred to as their ball and chain. Nate felt anything but trapped. His heart swelled over her concern. At the same time, though, exhausted or not, he couldn’t leave if there was still work to be done.
“I’ll let you know when I can leave.” Nate started to move and caught the chief giving the two of them a rather curious stare. Campbell wasn’t the only one watching them. The firefighters and paramedics glanced their way repeatedly as they walked along with Montgomery, who was now secured in a gurney.
“You can barely stand,” Mary complained, moving so she stood facing Nate. Her soft violet eyes were loaded with concern. “Nate,” she said, speaking quietly so they weren’t overheard. “You’ve been awake over twenty-four hours, haven’t you? And with everything that we did,” she added, then let her voice trail off.
A hell of a lot had happened just this evening. Finally seeing how Mary had been his all along was overwhelming in itself. Hours of mind-blowing sex and he had to admit he was lucky to still be standing.
“I’m fine,” he told her stubbornly, and absently shoved a wet strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear.
“You forget,” she said, her tone still calm but her eyes focused and staring up at him. “I grew up in a firefighter’s home and I don’t know how often I heard my mom tell my father if he didn’t keep up on his sleep he would make a situation dangerous by not thinking straight. So please, let’s see if we can’t get you home to bed.”
He watched her cheeks flush and her eyes darken to their pure, raw natural color as she suggested taking him to bed. Nate doubted he would be able to do much else other than crash on his pillow at this point. But give him a bit of sleep and, with Mary cuddled next to him, he didn’t doubt for a moment he would wake up eager to consummate their new relationship all over again.
“Now if this is going to mean you aren’t going to dispatch any of the good fires to us anymore, I might have something to say about all of this.” Campbell actually grinned as he rocked up on his toes and smiled approvingly at Mary as she leaned into Nate. “And I am sorry, Miss Mary, but I’m not sure you’re going to be able to hold this stubborn brute up much longer.”
“I think you might be right about that. I told him he needed sleep.”
“Mary,” Nate warned under his breath.
She pressed her lips together, but her eyes glowed with satisfaction as she beamed up at him.
“You think you can drive him home?” Campbell turned serious and focused on Mary, ignoring Nate.
“No one is driving me anywhere,” Nate informed the chief. “I drove myself here and I can drive home.”
“From what I hear you can’t even find a front door.”
“I drove here as well,” Mary said softly, chewing her lower lip.
“I doubt anyone would ticket your car, Mary. Take the man home. He’s already a hero. Let’s keep him that way.”
“A hero?” Mary’s grin seemed to make the night a bit brighter.
6
Mary sipped coffee and stared at the morning paper. The front page was plastered with several impressive pictures of the house fire next to the school, as well as a rather large shot of her leaping into Nate’s arms.
She stared at the picture, which showed her backside, her hair pulled into a ponytail, and her arms wrapped around Nate’s neck. His arms were possessively pinning her against him. She glared at the caption underneath the picture of the two of them, knowing Jennifer Wilson, the bimbo who’d stalked Nate during high school and flirted with him like a brazen hussy throughout their adult life, had written the article about the fire and the captions underneath each picture.
The caption under Nate’s picture rudely and boldly stated: Hero of the day, firefighter Nate Armstrong, Who will be in his arms next week?
Jennifer was jealous, having tried over the years repeatedly to snag Nate and now having learned she’d finally failed. Mary had Nate now and didn’t plan on ever letting him go.
The phone rang at the same time the light lit up on her switchboard. Mary lowered her mic in front of her mouth and answered the call. “Police,” she said, holding on to her professional voice in spite of how that front-page picture pissed her off.
A cruel whisper hissed into her ear, “Have you figured out who started the fires yet?”
Mary instinctively checked to make sure the call was being recorded. “What fires?” she asked, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest.
“Those two house fires. I almost got rid of both of them.”
Mary stared at her switchboard, not blinking once. No one else was in the station right now. The new kid, Lawrence Pearson, was on crossing guard duty, Meyers was in the patrol car cruising the town, and Odgers was down at city hall visiting with the mayor.
She straightened, knowing she could handle this. If everyone on duty were at the station they’d be huddling around her making her nervous. This way she could think clearly, and the first thing she heard from her caller was that he claimed responsibility for two fires, one of which had killed a firefighter.
“Who else were you trying to get rid of?” she asked, locking her fingers together tightly and staring at the small light that showed the call was recording.
“Oh, come on, Mary,” the man said, his voice dropping a notch. He chuckled. “I bet even you could figure that out.”
He was speaking to her as if she knew him. Mary would worry later about who he could be. Right now, she needed as much information out of this man as she could get.
“That’s why I answer the phones; I’m not an investigator,” she said, also laughing, and at the same time reaching for her second phone to contact the captain. Being alone while talking to this creep might have its advantages, but it was her job to alert Odgers or report a possible crime as soon as possible.
“You’re one of the lucky ones, though. Your good looks will get you far in life. Those who aren’t as blessed spend their entire life struggling and being ignored. But I’m smarter than the most gorgeous person in this piss-ass town,” he informed her, his tone turning sinister. “I figured out how to get everyone’s attention. And this call has confirmed what I already guessed. You stupid cops don’t have a clue about those fires. Pretty people spend their time fornicating and ignore obvious clues until they disappear and fade away.”
“It sounds like I’m not one of the pretty people.” She didn’t want to chide him, but at the same time, anything and everything he said would be used against him. Already he’d given her some valuable information. “If you and I are the same, maybe you could give me a hint about one of those clues you mentioned.”
His laughter turned her stomach, bringing bile to her throat as she activated her backup phone, then clipped it to the recorder that would send out an automatic message once the captain picked up. He would be told there was an emergency at the station and to return ASAP.
“Every single clue is already in your pretty little head,” the caller whispered.
Mary watched the light on the recorder begin flashing, telling her Captain Odgers was hearing the emergency message right now. She returned her attention to the switchboard, then closed her eyes, trying to concentrate.
“Your voice sounds familiar to me. Do we know each other?”
“It does?”
She panicked
when his voice suddenly sounded rushed, frantic. “Please don’t hang up.”
“So now you want to talk to me, when before all you had time to do was run after fire-chasing assholes.”
What? Mary’s jaw dropped. Her caller was talking about Nate and John, who were also the two men he wanted dead. This guy had killed John and wanted Nate dead. But why? And if he knew she’d chased after Nate and John that meant he grew up with her. Who the hell was he?
“I have plenty of time now.” She fought to keep her voice calm. “And I don’t chase assholes anymore.”
“I knew you’d see how they really were. Good looks don’t make a person, Mary. Do you know that? You have to see what is inside.”
He paused for a moment, but Mary couldn’t think of a thing to say. Her mind raced, trying to remember every kid in her grade while growing up. For the most part, other than a few students coming and going, she went to school with the same kids from kindergarten through her senior year in high school. If she could just keep this guy talking maybe she’d figure out who he was.
“What did you think of my fires?” he asked, whispering again.
Mary snapped her attention to the doorway leading to the main entrance and exhaled, grabbing her heart, when Odgers damn near slid into her cubicle area.
“What?” he began.
Mary waved her hand, using her other hand to cover her lips with her fingers, indicating the captain should be quiet. She flipped the switch to put her caller on speaker while Odgers continued looking at her wide-eyed, his gray hairs standing up, windblown, over his brown hair.
“I thought they were quite beautiful, didn’t you?” the caller asked. “Wait a minute. Why do I sound different?” he demanded, his tone turning harsh.
Mary stood, continuing to gesture to her captain, whose expression still looked bewildered.
“It’s okay. I put you on speaker. I needed more coffee.”
“No! I’m not talking to anyone but you, Mary.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, laughing and ignoring the strange look Odgers gave her. “I’m here all alone. Everyone else is out on their beat for the day.”
Feel the Heat Page 9