Flint’s Strike (L.A.S.T. Defense #3)

Prologue

Seven Years Ago

Eliot

The building talks. All of them do. Especially when they’re dying. Pops and groans and metal grating against itself in a way that sounds…feral. I aim the spray over the mezzanine rail, Tanner keeping the hose steady a dozen feet behind me just inside the window we busted to get in here.

Another screech of metal—this one harsh enough I feel it in my chest. It’s all around me. But loudest—

Fuck!

The mezzanine drops out from under me, the grating folding like paper. The hose is ripped from my hands, and something hits my left thigh with a crack that sends pure agony driving into my spine.

My mask hits metal, then my hands. Heat rolls over me from below.

“Everyone out! Now!” Captain Felton barks over the radio. “We’re losing it!”

“Flint!” Tanner’s voice sounds too far away. I twist, and the scream ripped from my chest doesn’t sound human. I can’t see him. Can’t see the window. The ladder. The hose is too far away for me to reach.

“Go! Get the fuck out of here!” I wave my right hand—the left is pinned along with my leg—and trust he’ll follow orders.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I hook my fingers in the grating in front of me and pull. Hard. Then harder. My vision goes white, the roar of the fire competing with the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.

When the stars fade away, all I can see is the orange beast below. The inferno pulses, licks up the walls, micro-explosions flaring every few seconds as it eats everything in its path.

“Flint!” Felton’s in my ear now, the IC channel crackling with the distance. “Sit-rep!”

“Pinned. Mezzanine. North side. Leg’s busted,” I grit out. “Fire’s moving toward me. Got five, maybe seven minutes. Where’s…McNulty?”

Zack’s voice breaks through the static. “South side. I can’t get to you, Flint. The floor”—he stops for a coughing fit— “the floor’s gone between us.”

Shit. His voice is steadier than it has any right to be. He’s barely twenty-two, but has some of the best damn instincts I’ve seen.

“McNulty, get out of there,” Felton orders. “Can you get to the stairwell?”

“It’s thirty feet away. Maybe.” He grunts, then adds, “Got to punch through this section of wall to get there.”

“Do it,” Felton orders.

I can hear Zack working over the radio. The hollow bang of his axe, another grunt, a wheezing breath. The radio won’t let you hide. Not in here.

“Flint, sending a team your way.” Felton’s voice has lost the thread of calm he displays in the worst of conditions. Fuck. That ain’t good.

Below me, the fire’s crossed the east wall. It rolls over the support beams, almost liquid in its intensity. Twenty feet. Fifteen maybe.

As waves of heat hit my face shield, sweat drips into my eyes. I can’t wipe it away. Not with the respirator. The sting fades with a blink. Then another.

An ember the size of my fist drops from the ceiling, smoke trailing in the updraft, and lands where the grating tore my suit open at the knee. “Fuck!” I shout, and for a moment, the world collapses into nothing.

“Almost there.” McNulty is panting now. “Ten feet.” Another swing of the axe—I think—and he swears under his breath. “Goddammit! Stairwell’s partially blocked. Metal’s groanin’ like a sombitch. Need another minu—”

A loud crack overhead turns into a roar that vibrates my teeth and the back of my skull, and turns my broken leg into a fucking tuning fork of agony. Debris hits my left side, and a pressure wave punches through my suit like the air itself has turned into a weapon.

Static hisses in my ear over the radio. It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard…until the building folds in on itself. Metal shrieks against metal, the structure becoming a living, breathing animal, writhing in the throes of death.

Then…silence.

“McNulty.” My voice sounds far away. “Zack. Report!”

Felton’s words in my ear are almost soft now. “Eliot. The south side’s gone.”

“No! Zack! Fuckin’ hell, Zack!” I claw at the grating. Twist. Fight with everything I have. Because if I can get to him, maybe…

A low rumble, then a whoosh, and flames lick at my left side. Move!

I wrench my arm as hard as I can. Dark spots blur the flames. The smoke is so thick, the respirator can’t keep up. But my leg is almost free. One…more…

Fuck!

The fire finds a hole in my suit. Crawls over my back, my ribs, my chest. The scream isn’t mine. It can’t be. It can’t…

Zack.

For an eternity, there’s only pain and screaming.

Until a tidal wave of water sweeps over me.

The weight pinning my leg lifts. I’m moving. Can’t see anything. Can’t say anything. Can’t save him. Can’t even tell him how proud I was—am—of him.

The air starts to clear. Sunlight slashes across my face. “Get him to the ambo!” Felton shouts.

I’d fight them if I had the strength. Try to go back in. Find Zack. But the world turns quiet and dark. And eventually… I let go.

After five days, I know every tile, every stain, and every imperfection in the ceiling over this hospital bed by heart.

The nurses change shifts at six—morning and night.

The steady drip of pain medication turns the hours in between soft at the edges.

But it doesn’t take them away. Doesn’t stop me from thinking about Zack at nineteen, standing on the corner with his baby sister in his arms, staring at his burned-out shell of a home.

The kid decided to become a firefighter that afternoon.

Nothing and no one was gonna talk him out of it, but I was the one who planted the idea in his head.

I’ve had one hundred and twelve hours—give or take—to think about everything I should have done differently, from the first words I said to him all the way to the last. How I could have kept him alive.

My left leg itches. I can’t do a damn thing about it. Can’t sit up on my own. Can’t piss on my own. Can’t even eat properly. The NG tube snakes through my left nostril, delivering enough calories for my body to function, but every swallow reminds me how helpless I am.

The first two days, I kept clearing my throat around the damn thing. I don’t do that anymore. Because every time I tried, the pain sent me to my knees. Figuratively, anyway.

Mornings are the worst. The nurses come with a cart full of supplies, and the iron grip I keep on my emotions shatters. Debridement is an agony I wouldn’t wish on Satan himself. It’s even worse when they have to roll me over to take care of my back, jostling my shattered femur in the process.

Morphine can’t touch the pain. Nothing can. For the hour or so they work on me, I lock my jaw shut to stop myself from screaming and cry like a baby.

Dressing changes are just as bad. That’s when the second-degree burns hurt the most. Skin that’s almost okay shouldn’t be worse than what was nearly destroyed, yet it is.

I’m still working through the aftershocks from this morning’s torture session when someone raps on the open door.

“Eliot.” Captain Felton drags a chair over, drops into it like he owns the place, and sets a greasy bag on the table over the bed. The one that’s somewhere north of my knees, but might as well be in fuckin’ Alaska for how well I can reach it flat on my back.

The scent of an egg sandwich from Dot’s makes my stomach turn. Not because I don’t want it. Fuck, I want it more than life itself at the moment. But because eating is its own kind of hell right now.

The nurses angling my head so I won’t choke. Cutting my food into tiny bites. Feeding me. It’s like a kick to the gut after I’ve gone ten rounds with a prize fighter.

Felton tries not to stare—at the bandages covering me from the waist up, at my leg in traction, at the feeding tube—and shakes his head. “You look like shit.”

“Been told,” I rasp.

“Zack’s service is Thursday.” He leans forward a little, elbows on his knees. “His mom wanted you to know. She understands you can’t come— Fuck.” He takes a deep breath before he continues. “She wanted you to know Zack talked about you all the time.”

I don’t look at him. It’s that magical hour of the morning when a thin shaft of sunlight catches the texture of the tile in a way that’s almost…relaxing. Or would be, if that particular emotion were one I could muster these days.

“Eliot, you’ve gotta—”

“No.”

Felton turns his cap over in his hands. I barely catch the motion in my periphery. “He was a good firefighter.”

“He was twenty-fucking-two.” The tube catches when I swallow, one more reminder how fucking helpless I am.

“Some idjit handyman wires a ceiling fan ass-backwards and we get called to the scene. Next thing I know, he’s standin’ on the street, holdin’ his baby sister, askin’ how hard it is to become a firefighter. ”

The words—more than I’ve spoken in days—leave me out of breath and in so much pain, I’d kill for another dose of morphine. But they keep me on a strict schedule. Too easy to get addicted to that shit.

“He chose this life,” Felton says. “We all did. Gotta be a bubble or two off plumb to do it, and Zack was as batshit as the rest of—”

“Leave,” I snap.

“Flint—”

“I. Said. Leave.”

“I’m your goddamn captain—”

“With respect. Sir.” I turn my head enough to look at him. “Leave. Or I press this button here and get security to remove you.”

Flipping my palm up to show him the call button pulls at the burns across my chest, but I don’t care. I can’t take another fuckin’ minute of Felton trying to convince me Zack’s death was anything less than my fault.

The chair scrapes over the tiles, and Felton pushes to his feet. His gaze holds enough guilt for half of Texas, but I don’t care. I’m the one who sent Zack to the south side of the building.

I’m the reason he was there in the first place.

And I’m the reason his mother never got to say goodbye.

Three Months Ago

Parker

My hands itch under the bandages. Dr. Morris wasn’t thrilled I waited three days to come in. Even less thrilled when I wouldn’t tell her what happened.

What was I supposed to say?