Nothing Left to Burn (32 page)

“Dispatch, Engine 21. We are 10–8 and proceeding to alarm.”

“Engine 21. Acknowledged.”

The sirens faded, and the bay doors rolled back in place. We turned to walk back into the conference room. We’d taken no more than a few steps when the lights cut out and even the always-present current that hummed inside the house faded until there was nothing.

***

“Why haven’t the emergency lights kicked in?” My voice echoed off the corridor walls.

“Give it a minute,” Steve replied.

We stood there for a full minute, but the emergency lights never illuminated.

“Hell,” Steve muttered. “You got your phone?”

I pulled out my smart phone, tapped a button, and we had light. Steve did the same.

“Logan, let’s go check the generator.” Steve led us to the closest exit, which faced the front of the firehouse. We hurried around to the rear entrance that led to the kitchen. “Jesus, you can still smell the fried chicken.”

The generator was in a green utility box, and that was inside a cage on the side of the building near the kitchen. Steve opened the gate and then popped open a panel on the box. He held up the light from his phone and frowned. Abruptly, he stood and scanned the area. “Reece, somebody deliberately interrupted this circuit. I want you to call 911, tell them that LVFD is on fire, and the fire marshal suspects arson. Tell them no one is here except me and you.”

The bottom fell out of my gut, and my heart plunged straight to the ground. “Uh, right. Copy that, Captain.” I called in the 911 report just as he’d directed. Steve moved to the rear door, the one that led directly to the kitchen, and jiggled the handle.

We heard screams.

Steve looked at me. “Did you hear that?” He banged on the door. “Hello!”

“Steve! We’re trapped!”

My stomach dropped to my feet. “Amanda. Oh God, that’s Amanda!”

“Reece, stop!” Steve grabbed my arm when I ran. “Look. This door’s hot.” He put my hand over the kitchen exit, and I felt the heat.

Okay, okay. I could do this.
Think!
I tried to remember my training. Smoke wisped out from the top of the door. I dragged both hands through my hair. “We can’t wait. We have to help her.”

Steve nodded and ran back to the front of the station house to the main entrance. The doors wouldn’t budge. He rattled them, but it was no use. “Look.” Someone had chained them together.

“The apparatus bay,” I suggested.

Steve clapped my back. “Good thinking. Let’s go.” We ran around the building and tried to pry up one of the bay doors. “What I wouldn’t give for a Halligan right now,” Steve said.

“How about this?” I grabbed a long branch.

Steve grabbed it and wedged it under the door. Frantic, I searched the area and found a cinder block someone had left near the Dumpster. I hefted it up and hauled it to the door. Together, we pushed the branch down on the block, and inch by inch, the door lifted.

Teeth clenched, Steve held the branch down. “Can you shimmy under, hit the control?”

“Copy.” I dropped to my stomach, army-crawled under the edge of the door, and hit the control panel. Nothing happened.

“Use the manual!” Steve shouted.

I cursed. The power was cut; of course the controls wouldn’t work. I grabbed the chain and hauled the door up so Steve could enter.

“Okay, Logan, listen up. The panel out back was sabotaged, and there are chains on the door. What does that tell you?”

Jesus, did we really have times for guessing games? “He’s here. Mr. Beckett. And he’s got Amanda.”

“And there’s smoke in that kitchen. So you and I are going to suit up in full PPE, and you are going to follow every one of my instructions to the letter, is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain.”

We ran to the storage room on the side of the apparatus bay. Steve unlocked the door and handed me gear. I kicked off my shoes, stepped into the boots, and snapped on the suspenders. He did the same. In two minutes, we were fully dressed.

“Tank level?” He spun around so I could see his gauge.

“Green, sir.”

“Turn around.”

When I did, he slapped my back. “You’re green too.” He moved down the wall and grabbed some fire extinguishers. “Take this. And this.” He handed me a can and a Halligan tool, then grabbed an ax for himself. As we left the storeroom, I grabbed another bunker coat.

Amanda had no gear.

I swallowed down the terror that nearly paralyzed me at the thought of her burning and followed Steve.

We flipped on the flashlights clipped to our bunker coats and headed down the main corridor. Steve waved a hand at the smoke wisping at the ceiling.

“Conserve your tank. Got it?”

I nodded and slowed down my breathing, the way Amanda and the guys had taught me.

We checked the conference room. Empty. We proceeded down the main corridor, crouched low, my hand on Steve’s shoulder, just like in practice.

When we reached the kitchen, he stopped, put the back of his hand against the door, and nodded.

I gulped. Oh God.
Amanda.

Steve pushed the door open, and we stepped into hell.

Chapter 32

Amanda

Mr. Beckett shut the door that led from the kitchen to the main corridor and rolled a utility cart in front of it to block it.

“You think I’m a monster, but I’m not. I never hurt anybody. I never let the fire get out of control, and I never caused injury to anyone. All you had to do was just leave it alone. Now, we’re all going to get hurt. I already called your social worker, told her what I just discovered you were up to.” He moved around the kitchen, eyes wild behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He turned on the stove top burners—all six of them. An enormous pot covered two burners. Someone had fried a ton of chicken in here earlier.

I could smell it, and my stomach rolled over.

He searched through the trash and piled up papers in little bundles in a trail leading from the stove to the table…right where Larry and I sat. My hand tightened on Larry’s.

He found a huge jug of cooking oil and started pouring it on the floor. From his pocket, he took out a folded-up potato chip bag and a long, slim lighter—the kind he used to light the barbecue grill. He turned to us with a grin. “Watch this!”

He flicked the lighter, held it up to the bag, and laughed like a little boy when it whooshed into a fireball, which he threw at the pot of oil on the stove.

I had just enough time to shut my eyes and fold my body around Larry’s before the room lit up.

Chapter 33

Reece

So that’s why I’m doing this, Dad. For Matt. For me. And yeah, even for you, because even though you’re too tough and macho to admit you have any feelings, I love you. But this isn’t about love anymore. It’s about living without guilt. So just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m saying good-bye. Maybe someday, you’ll miss me.

Letting you go,

Reece

My mind shut off.

Click.

What was I supposed to do? What the hell was I supposed to do?

“Logan! Do not pant.” Steve shoved a cart away from the door.

Don’t pant. Don’t pant.
Right. Right, okay. Deliberately, I slowed down my breathing and followed Steve into the kitchen, eyes sweeping the scene. The first thing I found was fire.

A lot of it.

Then my eyes found Amanda. She and Larry were sitting at the table, arms wrapped around each other, faces tucked into the collars of their shirts. I hurled the extra coat toward her. Fuck! I wished I’d thought to drag another tank in with us.

“Rear exit blocked,” Steve shouted. I squeezed his shoulder to acknowledge that. First order of business was to kill the fire at the stove. The pot was fully engulfed, sending a tower of flames to the ceiling, which had already ignited. When those flames started crawling, the whole room would go, and us with it.

Steve moved for the stove and aimed his fire extinguisher at the base. I remembered the cart he’d rolled away from the door. It held large pans—giant cookie sheets the guys used as serving trays.

I tapped Steve’s shoulder, pointed to the cart and made a gesture to indicate smothering a fire. He nodded. I grabbed a tray and got ready to drop it over the fire. Just as I did, a figure moved out of the smoke and tackled Steve.

Amanda screamed. “No!” She’d managed to get both Larry and herself under the bunker coat.

I dropped the tray on top of the pot. The plume of flame immediately died, but it did little to stop the rest of the fire. I felt my skin crisping like buns in an oven. Jesus, the heat was unholy. Pieces of ceiling rained down on us, some pieces in flames, others in melted drops, all of it hotter than my mind could grasp. I had to get them out of here; they had no oxygen tanks.

I looked at Amanda and saw fear in her eyes, but not panic. I took a step, and a wall of fire suddenly erupted between us—a circle trapping her and Larry in the center of the room.

Mr. Beckett, pinned under Steve Conner, held a lighter in one hand.

Steve’s eyes met mine, and I saw his look of horror turn fierce. With one punch, he knocked out Mr. Beckett and grabbed for his fire extinguisher, meeting me at the wall of flame. Together, we aimed streams from both fire extinguishers at the floor, directing them away from Larry and Amanda. We’d gotten the floor fires out, but the flames at the ceiling were rolling. Smoke, black and thick as tar, coiled and billowed inside the room—the inside of a dragon. Amanda and Larry coughed and gasped. Steve and I ran to them. He whipped off his mask and held it to Larry’s face while I did the same for Amanda.

My throat immediately constricted and burned. It was like trying to breathe on the sun.

“Come on! Let’s run for it!” Steve urged.

“No! I can’t leave Larry!” Amanda choked out. And then we saw the tape holding him to the chair. Frantically, I searched the pockets of the coat I was wearing—maybe there was a knife? No such luck.

I grabbed Steve’s hand, put it on the chair next to mine, and lifted. He got the hint. Together, we hefted Larry’s chair up and made our way toward the interior door.

The room was pitch black now.

Amanda pressed my mask back to my face, and I hungrily gulped down cool air. How the hell were we going to manage this? She needed my air, and I needed both hands on Larry’s chair. Inch by painful inch, we made our way to the door, then crashed into something blocking our path.

The utility cart!

I swiped everything off the top of it and put Larry’s chair on top. I wrapped my free arm around Amanda, then gave her the mask again. She sucked down air. My tank’s warning alarm rang, and my heart stalled. This was it. It was over. We were done. I aimed my light toward Amanda and saw her cheeks hollowing with every breath.

Matt.
I’d get to see him after all. I’d decided to live after that whole incident with the note and the hospital. I wouldn’t give in to the pain then, and damn it, goddamn it, I wasn’t ready to give in to it now either. If we got out of this alive, I would prove that.

I
swear.

I held my breath and shoved the cart holding Larry’s chair toward the main hallway. Suddenly, air and light rushed into the room, and there was a second—less than a second—before that air and light got sucked into the dragon’s belly, powering the fire’s second life, and I could see it. I could see through the tarlike smoke, two flashlight beams breaking through.

The cavalry was here.

Hands lifted me and strapped another mask to my face, and cool oxygen flowed again.

“Reece! Jesus Christ, Reece.”

That voice, I knew. Dad grabbed me in arms strong enough to crush iron. “They wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t think we’d get to you in time.”

I wasn’t sure if it was desperation in his voice or the smoke that made my eyes burn and tear, but I hugged back until the oxygen mask was strapped to my face again. The cool air was heaven after the apocalypse we’d just survived. I blinked up, only peripherally aware of the lights blinking and sirens wailing. An ambulance drove off, tires squealing, and a surge of panic nearly choked me.

I pulled the mask off. “Amanda!” I croaked out.

“She’s okay, Larry too. They just pulled out in the ambulance,” Dad replied into the hair that was matted to my head with sweat.

I sat up and took off the turnout coat.

“Beckett.”

“Yeah. We know.” Dad pulled away and looked across the parking lot. Rescue 19 from the next town was working on Mr. Beckett. One of the techs looked up and shook his head. I panned across the lot and found Steve Conner rinsing out his mouth with a bottle of water. He saw me and flashed a thumbs-up.

“It was a ruse to get us out of the station house. He started a small fire, kept us busy for about an hour. And then the calls came over the radio about a fire at LVFD. And we all knew. It took the truck crew forever to vent that roof so the guys could move in. And all I could do was watch.” He grabbed me again, shaking as he held me. I tightened my arms around him. I didn’t have a lot of memories of my dad holding me. I wanted this one to last for a long time.

“Dad, please.” My voice was rough. “Please don’t hate me anymore.”

“Jesus, Reece, I love you. I love you so much, and if I—” His voice cracked, broke. Tears fell from his eyes in streams. “I swear to God, if I have to put another son in the ground, I won’t survive it.” The last of that was shoved out on a sob, and my dad—my big, tough, macho dad who never had the right words—cried in my arms in front of the entire Lakeshore Volunteer Fire Department, and it was okay, because he wasn’t the only one crying. I looked around and saw big Chief Duffy mopping his eyes too.

“Love you too, Dad. So much.”

***

“Stop fidgeting or you’ll wilt,” Alex said, rubbing sunscreen on his arms.

Four weeks had gone by.

Despite Alex’s warning, I couldn’t stop fidgeting under the blazing sun, trying not to sweat through my station uniform. Dad held Mom’s hand and chatted to Chief Duffy. Someone waved to me. I squinted and recognized Ken Tully. The entire battalion was here at the training facility, wearing their dress blues.