by Kim Amos
Unless she collapsed in a clueless heap first.
Hoping for the best, she followed the beeping to a small box on the wall. The sirens were louder now. The fire house was just up the street, and the firefighters would be here in no time.
A light was flashing, strobe-bright in the dim space. Head fine, vision clear, she thought, accounting for her every breath and movement. Using the flashlight app on her phone, she trained a blaze of light on the panel. There were three lights—green, yellow, and red. But only one of them was flashing.
Yellow.
Service.
The damn thing was low on batteries.
Casey groaned as the thunder of heavy boots came down the stairs. Three firefighters swept into the room, their tanks and gear making them seem like giants. They weren’t wearing their oxygen masks, meaning she could see their faces. Two men and a woman.
“What are you doing down here?” the tallest of the two men asked. His hazel eyes were sharp. The bridge of his nose was slightly crooked, like it had been broken in a fight.
“I just wanted to check and make sure things were all right,” she said. “I was looking—”
“You should be outside with the others. This is a potentially dangerous situation.”
“I know,” Casey said, feeling small and silly, “I was trying—”
The fireman shined his flashlight into her eyes. She blinked. “Do you have a headache? Nausea?”
“No, this is all a misunderstanding. The detector is—”
“Did you make the call?”
Frustration needled her. The man hadn’t let her finish a sentence yet. “No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. An intern called when she thought something was wrong. But the thing is out of batteries. That’s all.”
She stepped aside so the massive firefighter could take a closer look at the white box on the wall. Underneath the smoky, chalky smell of his gear, Casey detected a scent like wood chips and cinnamon.
The other firefighters stayed a few feet behind, sharing a look that signaled to Casey this wasn’t the first time they’d had a false alarm on a CO2 detector.
“Write it up, Lu?” the woman asked. Her dark eyes were striking in her pale face.
The man’s name was Lou, Casey realized. It seemed an odd name for him—like calling bulldog Fluffy.
“When was the last time this device was calibrated?”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea. Lou. Or is it Louis? Louie?” Casey figured she’d better get on this man’s good side, and fast.
“Lu is short for lieutenant,” he replied, eyes sparking with irritation. Underneath the visor of his helmet, the lines of his face were granite hard.
“Oh.” She could feel her cheeks redden. “I’m sorry. Look, I just started here a couple weeks ago.”
The lieutenant trained his jaw at the ceiling. His flashlight beam slid down an old copper pipe. “You got a sprinkler system installed?” he asked.
Was he not listening to anything she said? She was a brand new employee, but he was still grilling her. It may have been her imagination, but Casey could swear the other two firefighters had just groaned quietly.
“I don’t—I couldn’t tell you,” she stumbled. She checked the time on her phone. The employees had been standing outside for a while in the Minnesota cold, and she figured she ought to herd them down the street to the Rolling Pin and buy them all hot chocolate for their trouble.
“Are we settled here? Can I go back upstairs to the others?”
The lieutenant tore his eyes from the copper pipe and looked around the basement—past the boxes of stationery and the old phone books and an oddly placed plastic hula hoop.
“I want to take a closer look at things,” he said. “Quinn and Reese, you two head upstairs, check and see that the smoke detectors all have working batteries and the fire exits aren’t encumbered. I’ll be up in a few.”
Casey watched the female firefighter open her mouth, think better of what she was going to say, and close it. Together, the two firefighters tromped back up the steps in their heavy gear.
“So…can I go?” Casey asked, unsure of what she was supposed to be doing. The lieutenant frowned, a motion that bunched the chiseled lines of his face. He’d be handsome, Audrey thought, if he wasn’t so completely abrupt about everything.
“If you would, I need you to answer a few questions.”
Casey shifted, feeling suddenly like she was under investigation. She quickly texted Raif, their program coordinator.
All clear inside. Take everyone to Rolling Pin. Buy hot choc. I’ll be there in a few.
She hit send as the lieutenant made a low rumbling in his throat. The noise involuntarily sent goose bumps up and down her arms.
“You have a smoke detector down here?” he asked, making his way deeper into the basement. He flipped on buzzing overhead lights as he went.
“I don’t know,” she replied, trailing in his wake.
The lieutenant made the low rumbling in his throat again, and it struck Casey that the sound was of disapproval. Her jaw clenched with irritation. Why were they still down here if this was just a case of low batteries?
Casey tapped her toe on the scuffed cement floor. She watched the lieutenant scan the pipes and boards all around. She caught a flash of blond under his helmet. The lock of hair looked thick and wavy in a way that had her fingertips itching to touch it. At least until he made the low rumble in his throat a third time.
“Can’t find a single smoke detector down here. You’ll want to change that.”
Yes, your highness, she thought.
“I’ll talk to the director,” she said instead.
“And a fire extinguisher. You’ll want one of those, too.”
“I’ll add it to the list.”
“What’s your name?” He was staring at the pipes on the ceiling again. As if he couldn’t be bothered from his all-important inspection to focus on her.
“Casey Tanner.”
“What brought you to Robot Lit?”
It’s complicated.
“Job change,” she said. “I moved down here from Eagan.”
She pictured the bare walls of her new house, the naked wood floors, and the stacks of boxes she needed to empty, and held back an overwhelmed sigh. The mountain of work ahead of her was daunting, made more so by the fact that she was desperate to find her Christmas decorations. It was December first already, and not a single ornament was in place, no matter that she had taped a label on every box, listing all the contents of each one in Sharpie. But the boxes she’d identified as “Holiday”—inventoried with bullet points like “fake snow, tinsel, Rudolph figures” and more—simply couldn’t be found.
“Are you a tutor at Robot Lit?” This time the lieutenant looked up from his writing, and for a brief moment the strict lines around his mouth and eyes relaxed. Casey’s breath caught unexpectedly.
“I’m an accountant,” she managed. “They brought me on to help get their finances in order. And keep them that way.”
She left out the part about taking a huge pay cut to come here and trying to rebuild her relationship with her sister. In other words, the part where she was blind and selfish and in need of a shake-up.
She squared her shoulders, trying to seem more confident than she felt. The lieutenant might have rugged good looks, but she didn’t want him knowing anything about her. The way he was finding every flaw in this building probably translated to finding flaws in people. And Lord knew she had plenty for him to uncover.
She glanced at her phone as a text message from Raif came in.
Everyone at Rolling Pin. Text when you can.
“Almost finished?” she asked, reading the text message again so she didn’t linger too long on the almond shape of the lieutenant’s eyes.
“For now,” he said. “On our way back up, let’s take the elevator. I want to see how the emergency call button is functioning.”
Casey blinked. She didn’t even know Robot Lit had a
n elevator. Which was just as well. Small spaces always caused her heart to pound and her head to hurt. Elevators especially.
She tamped down the lump of worry. It’s not as if they were shooting up to the top of the Empire State Building for crying out loud.
Nevertheless, her throat was dry as she followed the lieutenant into the elevator. Above the collar of his fireman’s coat, she caught a glimpse of his neck. The skin was golden enough to have her picturing droplets of honey on a sunny day.
When the doors slid shut behind them, the lieutenant hit floor three, then punched the brass button with the fireman’s cap on it. The elevator jerked into motion. He kept his finger on the panel, waiting for some kind of response. To take her mind off the cramped space, Casey studied the fine blond hairs on the back of the lieutenant’s enormous hand. They looked so delicate in contrast to the rest of him. His spicy smell was back, so much so that her head was all but filled with it. She told herself the pounding in her chest was from the enclosed space.
The lieutenant pressed the fire call button again and again. No response.
“Has anyone used—” the lieutenant began. But the words died on his lips when the elevator squawked to a halt, and they were plunged into darkness.
* * *
Casey couldn’t breathe. The blackness was thick and all-consuming. Blinking, she swiped at the heavy nothingness, as if to push it away.
“Help!” she cried, pawing at emptiness. “Help us!”
Strong fingers wrapped around her forearm. She looked down, but couldn’t see even an outline of a hand. “Easy there,” came the lieutenant’s deep voice. “It’s okay.”
His unrelenting grip should have offended her. What right did he have to touch her? But instead, it grounded her reeling mind. Fragments of logic pierced through. I’m in an elevator. This man is a firefighter.
Still, her breath was ragged. She couldn’t get enough air. The space pressed against her. She was aware she might be panting.
“Casey, listen to me.” The lieutenant had stepped closer. She could feel him acutely. “I want you to close your eyes and count to ten.”
“We need to get out of here. I have to leave. Why won’t the door open? It’s time to go.” The words were a tangle. The darkness was in her lungs, fighting with all the air. She was beginning to get light-headed.
His grip vanished. She was unmoored, reeling and lost in the smallest space possible. Come back, she thought wildly.
Then a flashlight beam sliced through the inky blackness. The lieutenant held it, even as both of his hands came to rest on her shoulders. Heavy and strong. “I’m going to take that breath with you,” he said. “Both of us. We’re going to do it together.” His face was lined with shadow. It reminded her of face paint at a carnival.
The hand that wasn’t holding the flashlight slid palm-down from her shoulder, along her biceps, all the way to her fingers. He pulled her hand through emptiness until it came to rest on his chest. “Now you know if we’re breathing together. You’ll feel it. In and out, okay? Just like me.”
He held her hand tight against his sternum. His heartbeat was there, too, steady underneath his fireman’s gear. “In and out,” he said. “Easy does it.” The rise and fall of his chest was like the waves on Lake Superior—great swells that rolled along, one into the next. She squeezed her eyes closed. She pictured the lake, concentrated on matching her breathing to his.
“Good,” he said. The rumble of his voice was so near she could feel it. If his chest was a rolling wave, then his voice was rich sunlight full of heat. “You just keep breathing like that, and I’ll keep holding your hand. I’m going to use my other hand here to set down this flashlight, then I’ll call for help on my radio. The rest of the fire crew can get us out in no time. I need you to speak and tell me you understand what I’m telling you.”
“I understand,” she managed. He squeezed her hand. In the cramped space, it should have made her more claustrophobic to be this near to a stranger, touching like this. Yet she found that she suddenly wanted to wring the last ounce of distance from between them.
The radio was on the lieutenant’s shoulder. He turned his head as he spoke into it.
“Dispatch from unit sixteen, we have an elevator entrapment. It’s a single elevator, and we’re between floors one and two.”
“Dispatch copy. Do you have any injuries on scene?”
“No injuries. There are two other firefighters here also from unit sixteen, responding initially to a C02 concern. We don’t need a cruiser—just an elevator tech.”
“Unit sixteen, message received. We’ll get a technician en route.”
“Copy. Thanks.” A pause, then: “Lieutenant to firefighters and unit sixteen, go to channel two.”
A crackle of static. “Yeah, Lu. What’s up?” It sounded like the female firefighter.
“I’m in an elevator entrapment situation. I called dispatch, they have an elevator tech en route.”
“You doing okay?”
“Yeah. Just try to get the stupid elevator going from your end if you can. And somebody wait outside for the elevator tech, help them get to the scene.”
“Copy that, Lu. We’ll get you out in no time.”
“Copy. Thanks.”
The conversation was over, apparently. The flashlight beam was a tiny lamp in an ocean of black.
“They need to call the elevator company to get those doors open,” the lieutenant said. “They’ll get a tech out here, and we’ll be out in no time.”
How long? Casey trembled, wondering if she’d suffer for minutes or hours.
“My name is Abe Cameron,” the lieutenant said after a moment.
Casey’s brain fumbled, trying to process how to respond. Where were her manners? She couldn’t remember what to say. All she knew was that she couldn’t think past the four walls pressing so close around her.
“I used to spend a lot of time at Robot Lit,” he continued when Casey didn’t say anything. “I was tutored here. When I started, I was in fifth grade and could barely read.”
The idea had emotion swelling in her chest, though she had no idea what to do with it. “My teacher, Mrs. Wills, brought me to Robot Lit after school one day. They had time to spend with me that she didn’t. She really helped. This place really helped.”
The clouds in her mind broke enough for her to wonder if that’s why Abe had been such a stickler in the basement. Because he cared about the place.
For some reason, the idea of Abe being gruff because of affection for Robot Lit calmed her. Moment by moment, Casey became aware of the present, of what was right in front of her, which included Abe’s skin against hers. She could picture the blond hairs on his forearms, the tiny pores, the blood warm underneath. His breath was so close. Every exhale was a whisper of reassurance.
Abe’s fingers were steady and firm. A working man’s hands, Casey thought. Not like the hands of all the other accountants at her last job.
“You’re doing great,” Abe murmured, leaning forward and speaking the words into her hair. Casey’s breath nearly vanished again, but not from fear. It was the fact that his lips felt mere inches away.
She wasn’t used to being this near anyone, let alone a firefighter. She tried to recall the last time she’d been kissed—been held—but the fog of time was too thick. She couldn’t glimpse through it.
Casey was suddenly grateful for the darkness so Abe wouldn’t see her grimace of shame. There was a word for women like her, she knew. Spinster. It might not be the 1800s, but the label fit. Spinster even had the right sound to it. The spitting, biting consonants were the perfect reminder that she’d been living a prudish, uptight existence for far too long, batting back the part of her that secretly wanted to break free and live with abandon. With adventure, even.
“Easy now,” Abe said. “Just keep relaxing. The tech is coming.”
Casey stilled, figuring she must have tensed up just then, and Abe had felt it.
“I’m—I’m doin
g okay,” she replied. Her voice sounded small and tinny.
Abe shifted, his leg grazing hers. An unexpected jolt shot through her nerves. There was so much of him, Casey realized. He must be at least six-foot-four, whereas she was barely five-foot-five. Unlike her sister, Audrey, she didn’t have an athlete’s body underneath her clothes. All she had was her plain brown hair and her plain figure from being a plain office worker for the past decade.
Here in the darkness, though, maybe it didn’t matter. She shifted just slightly, inching closer to Abe. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard a soft grunt from him.
Time either slowed way down or sped up. Casey couldn’t tell. She had no idea how long she’d been pressed against Abe when there was a scuffling sound from above them. Casey jerked, wondering if the elevator ties were finally going to give way, and they were going to go plunging downward.
“That’s just Quinn and Reese working with the tech to open the doors on the floor above us. While they do that, I want you to tell me about a place that you love,” Abe said. Was it her imagination, or was he clutching her more tightly? “We’re going to picture it together. You’re going to tell me all about it.”
Tears prickled her eyes. Surely it was the claustrophobia jerking her emotions from one extreme to another. That’s why she was getting so worked up over a silly question.
And yet, her chest ached as she tried to think about a place she loved—as she tried to think about anything she loved, frankly.
There was her sister, of course.
Audrey was generous and kind and beautiful, and Casey had loved her so ferociously it had almost ruined their relationship. Casey’s stomach twisted at the memory of how she’d driven a wedge between Audrey and the man Audrey loved, Kieran Callaghan. She’d done it out of fear, out of a need for control, and it had been terrible. Ruinous, even. Fortunately, Audrey and Kieran were married now, and Audrey had forgiven Casey. But Casey wasn’t sure if she had yet forgiven herself. She wasn’t sure she’d earned it.
Then of course there was Christmas. Since she was a little girl, Casey had adored Christmas with its sparkling tinsel and glittering streets and freshly cut trees and warm cookies and spiced cider.