Fuel the Fire (Southern Heat Book 8)

by Jamie Garrett

  Shaking, blinking back tears of fear, Rachel pressed the brakes and turned into the wide dirt parking lot at the gas station. Dust pooled and sifted over the van as she sat there, shaking and stunned. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in the van before she finally forced herself to let go of the steering wheel, turn the engine off, and open the side door, her eyes still searching the road for any sign that her to attacker would return.

  She climbed out of the van, not terribly surprised when her knees gave way beneath her.

  15

  Jeremy

  Jeremy and his team jumped from the fire truck, each automatically fanning out around the two collapsed structures, searching for survivors among the debris. It never ended. The calls came in sporadically, spread out not only through Monroe but outlying regions. He wasn’t surprised by the delays in calls for help. For many, phone lines were down, cell towers heavily damaged. Stragglers were eventually finding their way to town to report missing relatives, asking for well checks, overwhelming not only the county sheriff’s department, but the Monroe Police Department, the fire engine company, and even the volunteer fire departments from the most rural of county areas.

  The tornado had done a real number, hopscotching through the county, touching down to wreak total devastation in one spot, jumping a highway or a river, pulling up, teasing, and then down again. In some places, it had created swaths hundreds of yards long, at least fifty to seventy-five yards wide, and in other places even wider. Very little warning had come with this one, not surprisingly, as it appeared on the horizon as a huge wedge, bringing with it rain and in some places hail, obscuring any view of rotating clouds typically prevalent when a tornado began to form.

  “Over here!” Mason shouted. Jeremy and Shane wore full turnout gear as they rushed into the pile of what remained of a wooden-framed farmhouse, literally collapsed in upon itself. A small barn, maybe sixty yards from the house, tilted precariously, half its roof gone, a corner support missing, planks strewn this way and that. A metal grain silo a short distance from the barn had been ripped nearly in half, the top half of the silo collapsed on the ground, hanging tenuously by a strip of metal, the remainder dented and crumpled as if something had landed on it, although Jeremy couldn’t see what had done the bulk of that damage.

  The main engines from the firehouse were still busy on the northwest side of town, but Jeremy, Mason, and Shane, using their own trucks, the beds packed with gear, had spread out to the north, looking for survivors and assessing damage on the more rural roads where people would have fewer opportunities or options for obtaining help. Police cars, State patrol, and the county sheriff’s officers were doing much the same throughout the county, the entire community of first responders going beyond normal protocol to find and help those in need. Resources were stretched even thinner than they usually were. Water lines out in rural areas were as few and far between as their ability to fight a fire. Their main objective at this point was saving lives, not property.

  Jeremy shook his head, staring at the remnants of the farmhouse. Its roof was gone, parts of it lying in a churned-up cornfield a couple of hundred yards away. He was thankful that the tornado had veered away from downtown Monroe, although he doubted that landowners out here felt the same. Not that anybody wanted such damage and destruction to their neighbors; most in the area had experienced a tornado once or twice in their lifetime. Nobody wished ill on their neighbors. But looking at the two-story farmhouse, the ruined crops, the damage to the barn and silo, his heart sank. This family would not be able to recover financially for many years to come. If they had survived.

  “I heard something over there!” Mason shouted, gesturing toward the northeast corner of the structure. A bathtub lay upside down twenty feet from the collapsed east wall of the house. A bed frame here, a water heater lying on the opposite side, pieces of someone’s life destroyed, imploded in an instant.

  Jeremy and Shane ran toward the area where Mason had already crouched down to start pulling debris away from a pile. They dove in, but some of the debris was heavy, trapped under other larger pieces, and after the first few tugs on a two-by-four, he felt a burning sensation in his shoulder. He swore, swapping which arm had the lead, and then tugged harder. Jeremy and Shane worked quickly while Mason started at the debris pile from the other end. Pieces of plumbing, a portion of the porcelain sink, a toilet lid . . . the family must’ve taken shelter in the bathroom.

  Wait . . . he saw something else down here, covered with dirt, an old corn cob, and parts of a television set. What was it? He stooped down under a broken beam, shoved some broken glass away with his booted foot, and tried to determine what he was looking at. It was Shane who recognized it.

  “It’s a trap door!” He looked at Jeremy with a frown of confusion. “Who would put an underground shelter under a bathroom?”

  “Not the bathroom,” Mason said, looking up. “I’ve got cement foundation here. Plumbing lines coming up through it. You must be just outside. You see any foundation there?”

  The two of them glanced around and shook their heads. Had the tornado picked up the house from its foundation and then slammed it back down again? Jeremy shook his head in disbelief, but it was possible with a storm of that size. He looked at Mason. “Do we know who this farmhouse belonged to?”

  Mason nodded, grunting as he pulled a nail-studded two-by-four from the side of the pile he worked on. “The Tomlinson family. A couple, mid-to-late thirties. Two kids. A teenage boy and a six-year-old girl. Eric’s grandfather lives with them. So we’re looking for five.”

  Jeremy paused as he looked over the huge pile of debris, out into the fields, past the torn silo, hoping that he would find somebody alive. So far, they’d been lucky. While some of his rescues had moderate injuries, a fracture here or there, some nasty cuts, he hadn’t come across any bodies. Yet. How long would his luck hold out? That thought had barely processed in his brain before Mason spoke.

  “Got one.”

  Jeremy looked up, as did Shane, eyebrows lifted, but Mason’s still form, his lack of movement with no sense of urgency, told them both that whoever it was, it was too late.

  “Looks like the grandfather,” Mason said, swearing softly under his breath. He glanced at the two of them. “Keep looking.”

  Shane and Jeremy concentrated on clearing the space around the trap door. Jeremy banged his foot on it several times, hoping for a response, but he got nothing.

  “Maybe they didn’t have time to get down there.”

  Jeremy glanced at Shane’s somber expression and nodded. “I’ll finish clearing around here. Why don’t you start pulling debris from there,” he said pointing to a spot about seven feet away. Intermittently, they all called out for the family, but after that first sound that Mason swore he heard, they got nothing.

  It was hard work, tugging and yanking at timbers, watching for broken shards of glass jutting out from metal window frames, tugging at flaps of asphalt roof shingles, coughing with the dust, the insulation, all of it frantic yet controlled. The only sound for a while was the hard breathing of the rescuers, the bang and thud of debris being tossed; two-by-fours, sections of drywall, bits and pieces of furniture tossed aside as they dug, knowing that if someone was trapped in a hidey-hole or storm shelter under this mess—and if the air vents were clogged, they’d soon run out of oxygen, bleed to death, or die from blunt force trauma injuries.

  The minutes passed, infinitesimally slow, like the breeze carrying with it the smell of rain, the clouds building again, and Jeremy constantly looked upward, watching the sky. If they were caught out here in another tornado, without shelter . . .

  “Hold!”

  Jeremy, on his knees pulling at debris, almost to the point where he could stab the end of his crowbar into the edge of the trap door, straightened, looking off toward Shane, who looked at him and Mason, shaking his head. “Looks like the mom.”

  “Dammit!” Mason swore. He turned to Jeremy. “Are you hearing anything from do
wn there?”

  Jeremy shook his head, then got back to work, his shoulder burning with exertion, sweat dripping down his forehead. Nearby, the pile of debris shifted slightly, both Mason and Shane working on it desperately, looking for the father and the children. Jeremy kept tugging, yanking, and shoving against a portion of a rafter, straining, every muscle in his body burning. He ignored his own exhaustion, the growing pain in his shoulder, and his increasing sense of failure. They wouldn’t leave here until they had found the entire family, or their bodies.

  “Shit!” Mason muttered, and once again the other two froze, Jeremy’s heart thudding dully in his chest, sorrow surging through him as he waited for Mason to speak.

  “Looks like the dad and the teenager. They were holding onto one another,” Mason said, his voice gravelly and choked with emotion.

  Whether from emotion or dust, Jeremy felt a surge of wetness in his eyes. Swearing under his breath, angry, frustrated, and weary, he yanked at a piece of four-by-four support post. Pain burned hot and stabbing through his shoulder, and he gasped, hunched over, and grabbed at his arm. “Damn it!” he exploded. He didn’t know if he was yelling from the pain or just the hopelessness of the whole situation. Wincing, he straightened, muttering under his breath as he grabbed the post with his left hand and tugged. Hard. Suddenly, the entire pile he was working on began to shift. Before he knew what had happened, he was lying flat on his back on the ground, half buried in the debris himself.

  Shane ran toward him, calling for Mason. In a matter of seconds, they worked to get his out, but he paid no attention. Instead, his eyes were riveted to the piece of bright yellow fabric not two feet from his outstretched hand. From under that piece of fabric he saw a small hand, smudged with dirt, sticking out from under that pile of debris. He cursed, loud and long.

  “What is it?” Mason asked. He didn’t wait for Jeremy’s answer before he muttered another, “Oh shit.”

  Shane helped Jeremy scramble out of the debris pile, and still favoring his uninjured shoulder, he helped the other two, working like mad dervishes to uncover the little girl. To their surprise, her hand moved, and then her eyes blinked open, caked with dirt and tears.

  “Mommy . . .”

  “You’re all right,” Jeremy said, kneeling beside the small child, attempting to assess her injuries. She had a nasty bump on her forehead, a few cuts, scrapes, and bruises, but otherwise, she looked to be in okay shape. No obvious fractures, though that didn’t mean there weren’t any. The same applied to any internal injuries. But the way she lay, in a cave-like area of debris, it didn’t look like anything had landed directly on top of her.

  “Let’s get her out of here,” Mason said.

  “We can put her in my truck,” Jeremy said. “I’ll get her to the hospital.”

  Mason nodded as Shane looked around for a board or something that would hold the girl’s weight while at the same time provide some support for her neck and spine, just in case. He found a piece of shredded plywood, big enough to support her head and upper torso. In a matter of minutes, the three of them had the girl out of the debris and bound onto the piece of plywood with tie straps that Shane kept in his vehicle. They carefully placed her into the cab of Jeremy’s truck, her feet lying over his lap. They hadn’t wanted to put her in the bed of the truck, with no cushioning and exposed as it was.

  “You better have Rachel take a look at your shoulder to while you’re there,” Mason said. “At any rate, you’re off-duty for the next twelve hours. Get some rest. Shane and I are due to be relieved pretty soon as well by county volunteer wildfire services.”

  Though Jeremy didn’t want to leave his friends to retrieve the bodies of the family members on their own, he needed the little girl to the hospital as quickly as possible. Despite the fact she looked okay right now, he knew how quickly things could deteriorate if she was bleeding internally or had some other hidden serious injury. He couldn’t deny that he was looking forward to seeing Rachel, maybe even spending more than a couple of minutes with her. She’d give him hell for hurting his shoulder again, but it couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t going to stand around on the sidelines while everyone was pitching in. He could still do plenty with one hand.

  He drove as quickly as possible to the hospital while at the same time trying to mitigate the number of bumps and swerves to make the trip more comfortable for the little girl. The roads were a lot better than they had been just hours before, but there were moments when he had to slow to a crawl to navigate moderately sized tree branches, maneuver around damaged vehicles, pieces of homes, another silo, and a hot water tank. He spoke quietly to the girl the entire way. She didn’t respond, but her eyes were half open, and she offered him a smile once or twice along the way.

  “We’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes,” he assured her. “You hang in there, okay?”

  The little girl tried to nod, though her head was still anchored to the plywood, then once again mumbled, asking for her mother. Jeremy was forced to pretend that he didn’t hear the question. No way in hell was he going to tell her that her family was dead, that she appeared to be the only survivor.

  At the hospital, he pulled up as close as he could to the Emergency-Room entrance. Several cars were parked there, double-parked even, and in one spot, even triple-parked. He climbed out of the truck, moved over to the passenger side, and then called to a couple of bystanders, perhaps family members waiting for news about their loved one, to come help him. Without hesitation, they did, and in a matter of minutes, Jeremy and another man carried the small child into the Emergency Room. He glanced around quickly, looking for help, and caught the eye of the first doctor he saw—Moeller, emerging from one of the trauma bays.

  “Doc!” he called over the murmurs of the crowd, working his way through those waiting for treatment or news of their loved ones. Seeing the child, they quickly moved aside.

  “Put her in Bay Three,” Moeller said, gesturing.

  In a matter of seconds, Jeremy and the stranger had placed the child on the gurney. Immediately, the gurney was surrounded by nurses, technicians, and Dr. Moeller, calling out orders, scissors cutting clothes, blood pressure cuff wrapped around the small arm, an oximeter on her finger, and the doctor asking the child’s questions to assess her responses.

  Jeremy quickly stepped back out of the way and turned to thank the stranger, but he was already gone. Outside the trauma bay, he looked around for Rachel, but he didn’t see her. That wasn’t unusual, considering that she was probably doing the same thing as he had been for the past few hours: helping out where she was needed. He headed toward the Physical Therapy department, no stranger there, grinning in anticipation as he imagined her sitting behind her desk, filling out paperwork. Pushing open the swinging door, he felt a surge of disappointment ran though him. She wasn’t there. He had just turned around to ask at the first-floor nurse’s station when he nearly bumped into another nurse whom he didn’t recognize.

  “Excuse me, would you have happened to see Rachel Sorensen around lately?”

  “She’s not here. She went home. She was in an accident after transporting a couple of patients over to St. Mary’s in the next county.”

  The nurse moved off, but Jeremy reached out, his heart pounding, and if he could literally feel blood draining from their face. “Accident? What happened? Is she all right? How did she get home?”

  “I’m really sorry, sir, I can’t tell you much more than that. It’s been crazy around here.” She quickly moved off.

  Jeremy reached into his pocket for his cell phone. He had a couple of bars, maybe enough to get in touch with Rachel. Why hadn’t she called him? Was she hurt? What happened? What kind of an accident? God, so many questions and no answers.

  He dialed Rachel’s phone, and after three rings, pacing with impatience as he rubbed his forehead with his other hand in worry, she finally picked up.

  “Jeremy, where are you?”

  “I’m at the hospital. You’re home? Your apa
rtment? What happened? I heard you were in an accident, what—”

  “I’m at your house, Jeremy. I can’t go back to my apartment until they make some repairs. I hope you don’t mind. I had the cops bring me here.”

  “Cops? What the hell happened? Are you all right?”

  “I got a bump on my forehead, but other than that and my shaky nerves, I’m all right. Please, don’t worry.”

  “Too late for that. I’ll be home as quickly as I can. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Not planning on it,” she said, sounding relieved. “Thanks, Jeremy, I could use a shoulder right about now.” He smiled when a small chuckle came down the line as she realized what she’d said.

  “I’ll be right there. Don’t worry,” he said, then disconnected the call. As quickly as he could, he made his way back through the crowd at the Emergency Room, through the doors, practically running to his truck. He slammed the passenger door shut, then quickly moved around the hood and climbed in. Accident. Police. What the hell was going on?

  16

  Rachel

  Rachel showered and rummaged in Jeremy’s closet hoping to find something to wear. Before she’d climbed into the shower, she’d tossed her scrubs into a short wash cycle. The scrubs had stunk . . . stress and sweat, and she couldn’t bear the thought of putting them back on after her long, hot, somewhat-relaxing shower. She dropped the towel to the floor, hoping Jeremy wouldn’t mind her intrusion, but she couldn’t go back to her apartment until it was deemed safe. She found a pair of jogging pants that dragged the floor even after she rolled the waist a couple of times, but they kept her warm. She also found a T-shirt in his dresser drawer. Chills raced over her body, more likely from the scare than the room temperature, and so she grabbed a well-worn flannel shirt from the closet.

  Rachel headed for the small laundry alcove, pulled her scrubs from the washing machine, and moved them into the dryer. She set the timer and then turned down the hallway, thinking she might snoop around in his refrigerator. She paused when she heard the familiar rumble of his truck pulling into the front of the yard. Her heart skipped a beat and she froze a moment, hoping he wouldn’t take offense to her borrowing the shower, his house, his clothes, or, eventually, his refrigerator. Then again, they had slept with each other, so how much more sharing could one do? Besides, she was sure he wouldn’t mind. He knew her apartment was off-limits for the time being and—