Chapter 49
Wyatt
Maybe I have a death wish. When I turn left into the hallway and hold up the camera, the smoke is so much thicker than it was when we were here a minute ago.
The heat traveling in the direction of the room where that fucking asshole touched her is at levels that make my blood run cold despite the sweat dripping down every inch of skin, plastering the t-shirt beneath my jacket to me.
“Bravo side, status report.” Nate’s voice comes through my radio.
“Fire department, call out!” I yell, stomach churning for the moment I know I’ll hear my name over the comms.
Bryn has me saying more prayers than I’ve said in years, and I throw another one up as I crouch low and move through the hallway, getting lower as the layers of smoke descend on me.
Getting into that room at the end is going to be dangerous when I feed the fire new oxygen, but I have to do it. I’m going to get her out.
“Fire department!”
Please, please let her be okay. Let me find her before—
There’s a loud bang behind me. Loud enough that when I hear it, I pause, turning to look in the other direction. The smoke is billowing down the other end of the hallway, but it’s not nearly as thick or hot when I put the camera up to look through it.
It’s the wrong end of the clinic. Bryn’s room was toward the fire.
But that sound…
It can be difficult to hear within a fire because of the fire hood, the roaring of flames, and thickness of smoke. This was significant.
“Dalton, status.”
I ignore the check-in, focusing on the noise. If it had come from the direction I was traveling, I wouldn’t be thinking twice. Fire is thunderous, but whatever that was nags at me.
I look down the hallway towards the room I know was Bryn’s. If I make the wrong decision here, there’s no coming back. If I go towards the noise and she’s towards the fire, she’s dead.
She might be dead anyway.
The thought I was refusing to allow takes shape, becoming front and center, making me want to throw up in my mask. Emotion climbs my throat, clawing its way past all my defenses, and I roar as loudly as the fire to combat the thoughts, the emotion, and the fire putting me in this situation.
“No,” I growl to myself. “She’s not fucking dead. I’d know if she was dead.”
Turning towards the other end of the hallway, now crab crawling, my hand brushes against something on the floor.
My irons. Holy shit, my irons. I dropped them when I grabbed the other victim, but I pick them up now in one hand, using the imaging camera to guide me down the hallway and out of the thickest parts of the smoke. Towards the noise.
In the direction my gut instinct screams at me to go.
“Fire department, call out!” A second later, I shout, “Bryn!”
Visibility is a lot better at this end, and the heat isn’t anywhere close to being as intense, though the smoke is stalking behind me at a quick clip.
Coming upon a door, I raise the camera, finding it dark grey, unlike the white at the other end of the hall.
It’s cool. Cool enough that I’m not worried about a flashover inside, though I need to be careful about changing air flows.
I don’t want to fuck around with that and change the pattern in any way when I can gauge how it’s behaving for now.
When I crack the door open, my heart hanging out in my throat, my stomach somewhere near my knees, I blow out a breath when I see what’s inside.
Restroom.
I don’t need the camera to tell me there’s no one in there. There’s hardly any smoke inside, so I close the door back up, not wanting to give the monster behind me any extra fuel.
“Fire department, call out!”
Pushing forward down the hall, there’s another door, wide open.
Adrenaline surges through me, dread and anticipation braiding through every fiber of my being at the potential airflow this could create.
I’ve stemmed most of the fear until now, but this is the moment of truth, and it rushes up to claim me.
If she’s not in there, I might as well take every piece of my gear off and walk through the fire at the other end of the hall.
One last foot in front of the other, one last drag of my knee across the floor, three quick breaths through my mask to prepare my racing heart, and I round the corner of the doorway.
Fuck.