A Flame To Bear (Fire Bear Shifters 4)

A Flame to Bear

Fire Bear Shifters, Book 4

By Sloane Meyers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

More Books by Sloane Meyers

Thank You For Reading!

About the Author

“Help me! Please, help me!” voices cried from somewhere in the smoke-filled hallway.

Trevor Hayes cursed under his breath as he tried to locate the source of the voices. He squinted through the faceplate of his helmet and felt his way down the hazy hotel hallway, acutely aware that time was running out to rescue the people still trapped inside. He kicked down the door of a room that could have been the location of the voices, but he didn’t find anything inside except an open suitcase on the bed. Whoever had been in the room had hastily abandoned their belongings, and, hopefully, made it outside to safety.

Trevor banged down the door across the hallway and found no one in that room, either. With his bear strength, he could easily knock down the rickety doors in the old hotel. But even his keen bear hearing could not accurately pinpoint sounds through the roar of the fire and the thickness of the smoke. As the heat in the building intensified, Trevor’s radio started squawking with the anxious voice of the Red Valley Fire Chief.

“Trevor, you need to get out of there, now! It’s getting too dangerous and your own life is at risk. Trevor? Trevor, do you copy?”

Trevor reached down and switched off his radio. He didn’t have time for distractions like that right now. He didn’t care what the Fire Chief thought. People were still trapped in this hallway, crying out for help. Trevor wasn’t leaving until he found them.

Trevor saw that the door to the next room stood open, and he peered inside in hopes of finding the people crying out for help. He found a dark-haired woman cowering in the corner of the room. Her outline was barely visible, but he rushed over to her and tried to see through the haze whether she was okay. She whimpered out some words that he couldn’t understand, and he lifted her limp body from the floor.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ve got you. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Conner’s stuck,” the woman choked out.

“Someone else is here? Where is he?” Trevor asked, tilting his head closer to the woman’s face to try to make out her words.

“He’s…hiding in the bathroom. Trying to get away from the smoke. I didn’t want to be stuck in such a small space, but he wouldn’t come out.”

“The bathroom in this room?” Trevor asked.

The woman nodded, and Trevor gingerly set her down on the bed.

“Wait just one minute,” Trevor said, then went to the door of the bathroom. The door handle stuck, even when Trevor jimmied it. He didn’t know if it was locked, or if the heat was warping it, but he didn’t bother to fiddle with it for long. He was almost out of time. He kicked down the door with one giant strike, and a cloud of smoke gusted into his face as he entered the bathroom. Somehow, the smoke trapped in here hung even thicker than the smoke in the hallway. Trevor could barely see, but he managed to make out the outline of a man, slumped against the tub.

Trevor rushed over to him and shook him, but the man wasn’t moving. A quick check of his pulse and breathing confirmed that the man hadn’t made it. He had succumbed to the toxins in the smoky air, and suffocated under the lack of oxygen. Trevor’s stomach turned, and he bit his lip to try to hold back the flood of horrified emotion overwhelming him. Despite his tough guy attitude, Trevor had a big heart. Sadness filled him at the realization that he hadn’t made it in time. He had let this man down. Conner, the woman had said his name was. Probably her husband or boyfriend. She was going to be hysterical when she realized Conner hadn’t made it, which wasn’t going to make rescuing her any easier.

But when Trevor stepped back to the bed of the hotel room, the woman had passed out as well. She was still breathing, and her heart was still beating, but she had lost consciousness from smoke inhalation. Trevor scooped her up, and started heading for the stairwell. He had four flights of stairs to get down, and the darkness and smoke in the stairwell made it impossible to see anything. Trevor couldn’t even see the face of the woman he held in his arms. He tried to move as quickly as possible without risking stumbling down the staircase. As he passed by the second floor, orange and yellow flames blazed through the open doorway. Trevor plastered himself against the wall opposite the door, getting as far away from the hot blaze as he could. He inched along quickly, and made it past the spot just as a mini-explosion sounded and a solid wall of fire shot into the stairway, blocking the pathway completely. He’d shuffled through just in time.

He sped down the last leg of the stairway, and burst out of the exit door into the cool, Northern California night. The blast of cool air that greeted him was a welcome relief, and, even though smoke-filled air still reached the area surrounding the burning hotel, the outside air was much clearer and easier to breathe. Trevor looked down at the woman, limp in his arms. In the clearer air, with the light from the fire trucks and the streetlights, he could see her somewhat visibly for the first time.

Soot covered her face and her closed eyes, but he could still tell that she was beautiful. Her face was shaped like a perfect oval, and her auburn hair, although dirty and tangled, hung in tempting curls. Trevor looked around for a paramedic, and saw two of them rushing toward him. He handed off the woman into their capable care, and then turned to find the fire chief glaring at him.

“I told you to get out, Trevor,” the angry chief said. “Next time, you listen, or I’m pulling you from front line duty.”

Trevor nodded halfheartedly, although he knew he would never leave someone behind in a fire. If he heard anyone screaming, he wasn’t leaving the building until he found the owner of the voice. But arguing about it with the fire chief would just be a waste of time. Trevor wanted to go somewhere and be alone right now, but first he had to tell the chief about the man who suffocated.

“There was someone in there on the fourth floor who didn’t make it,” Trevor said, struggling to keep his voice neutral. “Male, about my age. I think the girl I rescued knew him. Possibly her boyfriend or husband.”

The fire chief nodded somberly. “We’ll check it out. Why don’t you head out? You look exhausted. This blaze is contained now, although the hotel is a complete loss.”

Trevor nodded, and walked away from the chief. Trevor had a feeling the older man was actually dismissing him for disobeying orders, not for being tired. But Trevor didn’t care enough to protest right now. This firefighting job was just a side, volunteer job anyways. Trevor worked full time during the summer as a smokejumper, parachuting out of airplanes to fight wildfires. But, right now, in February, the wildfires had died off. Trevor had grown restless, and had volunteered with the Red Valley fire department to keep his mind and body occupied. The first few weeks had been somewhat boring. Most of the calls the fire department received had been medical emergencies. Trevor did know basic first aid, but the fulltime paramedics did a better job of emergency medical care. Things as a volunteer firefighter had been pretty mundane—until tonight.

Trevor squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to block out the image of the man who had suffocated in the hotel bathroom. The man’s face had been frozen in a look of desperate terror, and Trevor could only imagine what the man’s last thoughts had been. Since Trevor usually worked in remote forests, he wasn’t used to seeing people suffering from the blazes. The worst thing he’d ever seen was a deer get burned up, which, while sad, was not the same as seeing a human die from smoke inhalation.

Trevor looked around the scene outside the burning hotel. Several guests were milling about in pajamas, holding their hands over their mouths in shock. Two large fire trucks were parked in the fire lane, and two ambulances were parked not far from the fire trucks. Several emergency personnel still rushed back and forth across the large parking lot, trying to help the dozens of dazed people who had just been evicted so unexpectedly from their hotel rooms.

Trevor tried to spot the woman he had saved, but he couldn’t tell whether anyone laid out on the medical stretchers looked like her. His heart sank as he thought of how she would react when she regained consciousness, and realized her partner hadn’t been as lucky as she had. Trevor frowned, and started walking in the direction of the fire station. His SUV was parked at the station, and, while he could have gotten a ride from someone, he thought the two mile walk might help clear his head.

As he got farther away from the scene of the fire, the air cleared until he could finally breathe deeply again. He removed his helmet completely and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. All he wanted to do was get back to base, where he lived with the rest of his clan of smokejumpers, and sink into his soft, warm, bed. He had been looking for some action and adventure to fill his winter days, but tonight had been more excitement than he wanted. The troubled eyes of the woman he had saved haunted him as he climbed into his vehicle and headed for the outskirts of Red Valley.

Early the next morning, Trevor sat on the grassy area outside the airplane hangar that served as home base for the Burning Claws crew of smokejumpers. He stared at a copy of Red Valley’s daily newspaper, taking in the dramatic pictures of a burning hotel splashed across the front page. The article’s title proclaimed “One Dead in Hotel Fire.” Trevor closed his eyes and felt a heaviness settle over his heart.

One dead.

One that he could have saved, if he had only been quicker to find the voices crying out for help. Trevor threw the newspaper across the grass in frustration, then laid his head back and stared up at the cloudless sky.

The crisp morning air and the deep blue sky felt strange after the heat and haze of the night before. Trevor breathed in deeply, and wondered if he should stay in the volunteer fire department. He had joined to get away from the angst-filled feeling of sitting around and doing nothing all winter. But he didn’t like taking orders from the fire chief, and he didn’t like feeling like a failure. And, after last night, he felt like a failure. How had a bear like him, in excellent physical condition and with excellent hearing, failed to make it to rescue someone in time?

Trevor heard footsteps and looked up to see his fellow clan member, Luke, walking toward him and carrying a small toolbox.

“Hey, Buddy,” Luke said. “What are you doing up so early? I thought you were at a fire until late last night.”

“Yeah, I was. And I’m exhausted,” Trevor answered. “But I can’t sleep anymore. A man died in the fire, and it was my fault.”

Luke raised an eyebrow as he pulled out a measuring tape from his toolbox. “Your fault? How?”

Trevor shrugged. “I didn’t get to him in time. He and his girlfriend or wife or something were trapped on the fourth floor of the hotel. They were shouting for help, but it took me a long time to figure out where they were. The heavy smoke seemed to really mess with my bear hearing. I managed to save the woman, but the man had shut himself up in the bathroom. He died of smoke inhalation. He must have thought he was shutting out the smoky air, but he actually just trapped himself in a small space with the heavy smoke. He suffocated.”

Luke stretched the measuring tape across the width of the lone picnic table that sat in the grassy area, then wrote down the measurement in a small notebook. “That doesn’t sound like your fault. It sounds like the guy panicked and sped up his own death.”

“I guess,” Trevor said. “But not being able to figure out where the screaming was coming from was frustrating. And the fire chief kept yelling at me to get out of the building. He’s not willing to take the slightest risk, even when there are people to rescue. I don’t think I can keep working for him. After working for someone like Ian, who trusts me and doesn’t treat me like a stupid little kid, it’s hard to respect this other guy.”

Ian was the alpha and crew chief of the Burning Claws Clan. He led the team of six smokejumpers on their missions to fight wildfires, and, even though he held the powerful title of alpha, he treated his crew with dignity and respect.

“Ian’s a rare breed,” Luke said as he measured the length of the picnic table. “Not too many bosses balance power and trust so well. But what would you do with yourself all winter if you didn’t keep working for the fire department?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to think of something. But the Red Valley Fire Department hasn’t exactly been the distraction I’d hoped it would be. Other than last night, the work has been slow and sometimes nonexistent. I guess there aren’t actually a lot of fires around here.”

Luke furrowed his brow and glanced over at Trevor. “There’s got to be something else you can do. I personally think that after fighting wildfires all summer, it’d be good for you to have a break from fires during the winter.”

“I guess,” Trevor said in a noncommittal tone.

“I also think you’re being too hard on yourself. It’s not your fault that guy died. Even bear hearing can be affected by heavy smoke and roaring flames. You know that. And you managed to save the woman. That’s something to be proud of, Trevor.”

Trevor sighed. “I know, but it just feels wrong to celebrate saving a person when that person just lost someone they loved. I keep imagining her waking up in the hospital alone, disoriented and looking for her partner, only to learn that she’ll never see him again. Maybe she would have rather not been saved. I know after we lost most of our clan in that rockslide, there were a lot of days that I wished I had just been killed along with them. The pain was agonizing.”

Luke silently stared down at the picnic table for several moments. Years ago, the Burning Claws Clan had lost all but five of their members in a rockslide. The remaining clan members had leaned on each other and made it through the tragedy, but it was hard to imagine anything being more painful than that time.

“Why don’t you go talk to her?” Luke asked.

“Talk to her? And say what? ‘Sorry I couldn’t save your man. My bad.’”

Luke sighed. “No. But maybe knowing that you did everything possible will help her feel better. Maybe the simple human act of reaching out to tell her that you wish he had made it will help. Since she was staying at the hotel, odds are good she doesn’t have any other family or friends around here. She’s probably in the hospital feeling very alone right now. Get over yourself and go be a friendly face for her.”

Trevor picked blades of dewy grass one at time, flicking them away as soon as he had pulled them from the earth. After thinking about what Luke had said for several long moments, he nodded. “You’re right, as usual. I should go offer my condolences, and see if there’s anything I can do to help. Maybe I’ll even take her a pie from Riley’s pie shop as a gesture of kindness.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Luke said.

Trevor stood and wiped the remnants of his grass pickings off of his jeans. “By the way, why are you measuring the picnic table?”

Luke grinned. “I’m going to build a new one. Maybe two new ones. I’m tired of not having enough space for everyone to sit, so I figured it’d be a good way to flex my woodworking muscles.”

“Good luck,” Trevor said, and laughed. The clan had been short a picnic table since their alpha, Ian, and his lifemate, Charlotte, had broken the second table into smithereens during a particularly hot and heavy makeout session. Luke was spending the winter sharpening up his woodworking skills, and a new picnic table would be a useful addition to the clan’s base.

Luke shooed Trevor off. “Get out of here. Go take care of that poor girl.”

Trevor didn’t wait to be told again. He went into the bunkhouse to grab his wallet and keys, and then fired up his SUV. He stopped by The Sweet Crust first. Another one of the Burning Claws clan members, Hunter, had encouraged his lifemate, Riley, to open a pie shop. The Sweet Crust had been the result. Riley could outbake anyone for miles, and Trevor had never met anyone who didn’t like her pies.

When he stepped into the pie shop, Riley’s voice called out from somewhere in the back room. “Be with you in just a minute.”

Trevor shifted his weight back and forth anxiously while he waited. He scanned the list of pies written in chalk on a blackboard above the counter, trying to decide which one would be best for offering condolences to a complete stranger. A few moments later, Riley appeared, wearing a dark apron and covered in flour.

“Hey, Trevor! Nice surprise. I haven’t seen you in here for a bit. How’re things?”

“Uh, they’re okay. Except last night was pretty rough. I helped out with a hotel fire, and rescued a girl. But her boyfriend didn’t make it.”

“I heard about that,” Riley said, her voice taking on a sympathetic tone. “It sounds like the fire burned the whole hotel to the ground.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Anyway, I wanted to get a pie to take to the hospital for the girl that survived, but I have no idea what kind to get. I don’t even know her name, let alone what kind of pie she likes.”

Riley scrunched up her face in thought. “Hmm. Well, apple is our bestseller. I make a version that’s got a lot of cinnamon notes, and people seem to like it a lot.”

“I’ll do an apple pie, then,” Trevor said. “It’s as good a choice as any.”

Riley nodded, and went to box up a pie for Trevor. She tied a red ribbon around the box and handed the pie to him.

“I hope a red ribbon is okay. It’s the only color I have right now, since I’ve been making a bunch of pies for Valentine’s Day.”

“It looks great,” Trevor said, handing his credit card to Riley. After he paid, he carefully carried the pie to his SUV and then headed for Red Valley’s Hospital. When he arrived, he walked up to the information desk and waited several moments for the bored looking receptionist to look up at him.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a yawn.

“Uh, yeah, I’m a volunteer firefighter and I worked the big hotel fire last night. I saved a woman from the building, but she had severe smoke inhalation damage, so I’m pretty sure she’s still here in the hospital. I’d like to see her, if possible, and give her this pie.”

“What’s her name?” the receptionist asked.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d be able to help me find her.”

The receptionist arched one of her eyebrows at Trevor, and looked confused. “You don’t know her name, and you brought her a pie?”

Trevor shrugged. “I’m just trying to be nice. I think she lost her boyfriend in the fire, so she’s probably feeling a little down at the moment.”

“Well, I know we have two different women here being treated for injuries from the fire last night. One’s an older lady and one I think is about your age.”

“I’m looking for the one who’s my age.”

The receptionist typed something into her computer. “Bailey Webb. She’s on the third floor. Let me call her room and see if it’s okay to send you up.”

The receptionist dialed something into her phone and waited. After about a minute, she hung the receiver up. “There’s no answer. She might be sleeping, or out having a procedure done or something. I can’t send you up without permission, but you can wait a while and I can try calling again in a little bit.”

Trevor frowned. “No, that’s okay. I don’t want to bother her. Could you maybe just send this pie up to her?”

“Sure. Do you want to leave a note?”

“Uh, yeah. Do you have something to write on?”

The receptionist handed him a small scrap sheet of paper. It looked a little ridiculous next to the fancily wrapped box, but Trevor decided it wasn’t worth trying to pester the receptionist for something better. A mug on the counter held an assortment of abandoned pens, and Trevor grabbed one. It didn’t work, so he grabbed a second one.

“What did you say her name is?” he asked.

“Bailey Webb,” the receptionist said.

“B-a-i-l-e-y?” Trevor asked, spelling out the name.

“Yup.”

Trevor had just started to write on the note when a nurse came up behind him and clapped him on the back.

“Did you say Bailey? Bailey Webb? You know her?” the nurse asked.

“Not really,” Trevor said. “I’m a firefighter who helped save her last night. I wanted to check on her and drop off this pie, but I guess she’s sleeping or something right now.”

“Oh, lord, yes. The poor girl’s been asleep almost the entire time she’s been here. She suffered pretty bad smoke inhalation. She’s actually pretty lucky she made it out of there alive.”

“Has she said anything about her boyfriend or husband that was in the hotel with her?”

The nurse frowned. “She hasn’t mentioned anyone. But she’s been sleeping my whole shift so far. The only emergency contact name she gave us was her boss, so we haven’t had any friends or family to notify that she’s here. I was hoping you knew her.”

“Nope, sorry. I don’t know her outside of rescuing her last night. Do you think you could drop this pie off for her, though?”

“Sure, no problem,” the nurse said, and took the pie.

Trevor thanked the nurse and the receptionist, and then left the hospital. He needed to go for a long run, or do something to take his mind off the events of the last twelve hours. Sitting around here waiting for someone he didn’t even know would definitely not improve his mood.