Chapter 2
TWO
J ust when Eddie Rice had begun to think that being voluntold to attend the auction as the Last Chance County Fire Department representative might not have been the worst thing ever, he had to witness a kind of potential bribe.
He released Bianca’s hands. It was probably for the best not to spend any more time with the beautiful and funny woman. He had to stay focused on the kids who depended on him.
“Where are you going?” Her voice pitched high.
The security guard who had taken what appeared to be a bribe followed behind the man in the black suit, leaving the door unwatched. “It looks like now would be a great time to go talk to the mayor. Good luck finding your Carter.”
“But…”
Eddie jogged to the door. He twisted the handle, and it opened to a hallway with sconces along the wall and more wood paneling than would fill the entire decade of the eighties. The edge of the man’s suit jacket zipped around the corner at the end.
This very well could be a misunderstanding. Or very much not. The latter kept Eddie moving forward.
At the curve of the hall, the smell of something burning hit his nose. Eddie fisted his fingers. Perhaps the mayor’s rushing away could be kitchen or food related?
Eddie rested his hand on the first door. It wasn’t warm. No signs of smoke billowed from under any doorway or in the hall. The fire alarm on the ceiling remained silent. All appeared normal—except the handoff he’d witnessed.
He had to find the mayor.
A thud sounded from the other side of the wall. Eddie tried the handle and the door opened. Inside, he nearly ran into a tower of crates that had fragile stamped on the sides.
He backtracked and flipped on all three light switches, which were next to a keypad on the wall. Only a light aimed at the far wall actually kicked on and shined onto a floor-to-ceiling portrait of some medieval-looking knight.
Either someone had lied about their organizational skills, or what was more than likely the storage for tonight’s auction had been blessed more than expected.
Along the other wall was a line of filing cabinets. A variety of vases rested on the cabinets. A glass piano was in the corner, surrounded by a stack of paintings, and when he spotted what looked like an abstract metal peacock, the smoke smell hit him once more.
Eddie slipped farther inside. Signed football helmets and basketballs in clear cases. Boxes each labeled for the night’s auction. But no fire.
Eddie sniffed. Something still smelled like smoke. An item in here could have survived a fire elsewhere and simply have smoke damage.
He stepped around another stack of memorabilia. Based on the sheer number of items, there would be more than enough funds brought in tonight. Maybe he didn’t need to fear why the mayor was taking so long about signing the grant needed for the rec center.
A flash of light in the shadowed corner to the left of the exit made Eddie do a double take. Between a stack of boxes, another flicker of light revealed the man in the black suit, who stood beside a set of mannequins wearing dresses. He flicked on a lighter and moved the flame straight for one of the dresses.
Eddie shoved his shoulders between two towers of boxes. “Hey!”
The man twisted around. He had a dimpled chin and a spotty five-o’clock shadow. His eyes behind his domino mask widened, and he froze. Except behind him, a piece of fiery sleeve fabric fell onto the dress’s skirt. Flames shot up the entire dress.
Eddie hurdled over a set of cases. There’d be no arsonist on his watch. “Stop!”
The man smirked and tossed the lighter at the flaming dress. He ducked behind a barrier of boxes that zigzagged to the exit as the greedy fire engulfed the carpet around the mannequins.
Eddie’s gaze swung back from the fleeing arsonist and onto the fire roaring up the sleeve of the other dress. Eddie sprinted for the door. There would be no stopping those flames without a fire extinguisher.
The man stood from his hunched position. Eddie leaped over a section of the clear cases only to land on a box, his foot trapped inside.
Eddie kicked the broken box off his shoe, but the man reached the door first. He swung it open only to stop.
A feminine voice that sounded like Bianca said, “Goodness, you scared me. You haven’t by chance seen?—”
The arsonist grabbed hold of Bianca and shoved her.
Her heel snapped, which sent her straight into an arched pane of painted glass propped up against a box.
The shattering glass wasn’t as loud as Bianca’s whimper as it crashed into Eddie’s heart.
The man raced out, and the door banged shut.
Eddie raced to Bianca. Blood and glass sprinkled the carpet. A gash ran along her hairline.
Bianca pushed herself up. “This was so not a part of tonight’s deal.”
Eddie steadied her. “You can turn in your complaint after we get out of here. You sure you can walk?”
The glow of the fire blossomed from the dress and a tapestry hanging from the ceiling. The fire roared up the tapestry and hopped over to the nearest stack of wooden crates.
Bianca gasped. “Is that…”
“A fire? Unfortunately, yes.” Eddie pulled out the handkerchief from his suit jacket. “Does anything else hurt besides your head?”
She stumbled on her uneven heels and pointed a shaky finger at the fire. “We’ve got to call a firefighter.”
The masquerade mask had disappeared, no longer shielding her full beauty. Nor was it hiding the paleness of her skin or the gash the length of his finger on her forehead. She wasn’t simply Bianca who had mistaken him for someone else. She was the Bia Pearl—movie star.
How he wished he could be in two places at once.
He shifted the handkerchief against her wound and tucked her against his side. “Honey, I am a firefighter, and first, we’re getting you out of here.”
She leaned against him, and he yanked on the door handle.
Except the door didn’t budge. Locked.
He tried again. The keypad on the wall flashed red.
“Are we locked in?” Bianca whispered.
“We can’t be locked in from the inside. That wouldn’t meet fire codes.” He used both hands and tugged on the handle again. Even rammed his shoulder into the door.
Still nothing.
Bianca coughed, and Eddie whipped his gaze back to the fire. Flames rolled up the wall. A ceiling that wasn’t tiled, so they couldn’t escape through the crawl space.
Zero windows. Only one door. No easily accessible vent system. Trapped.
The fire popped and hissed, pillaging closer. This room would be gone in a matter of minutes. So would they. Unless he got them out of here.
Think.
Eddie ripped off his mask from around his eyes and turned in a circle. Lieutenant Crawford had applauded him on his quick and creative decisions in the smoke house training, however, this was a real-life scenario. God’s mercies were new every day. Just like the fresh chance to prove himself, especially when it actually counted.
Lord, we really need You.
He pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and handed it to her. “Call 9-1-1.”
As Bianca dialed on speaker, Eddie rummaged in the first crate. There had to be something in here that he could use to break open the door.
A female voice answered the call. “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“Yes, I…” A cough stole Bianca’s voice.
“This is Eddie Rice, firefighter with Eastside.” He yelled over his shoulder as he dug into the next crate. “I’ve got a fire inside the mayor’s event. We’re trapped in what looks to be the auction storage room. Flames escalating fast with no accessible exit. We’re locked in with some kind of electric keypad.”
“Did you say the mayor’s?—”
“Yes!” Bianca added in, with blood now trickling down her face.
“A fire truck’s five minutes out,” the dispatcher said.
“That’s too long.” Bianca banged on the door and used the handle to stand. “Help! Someone help us?—”
Another cough thundered through her.
Eddie’s chest squeezed. He slipped off his suit jacket. “Hold this over your mouth. Stay low to the ground and remain on the line with dispatch.”
Smoke embraced his lungs like a thief. He bent over and squinted at the door handle. There was a spot for a key. His foster brother’s lock-picking skills would have actually come in handy. Too bad Eddie had never paid attention.
Eddie pushed the numbers one through four on the keypad, but it only beeped angrily.
“Four minutes out,” came the dispatcher’s reply over the phone’s speaker, which remained in Bianca’s grip.
Eddie winced.
Bianca was right. That wouldn’t be quick enough.
Sweat dripped down his forehead. This was his job. Firefighters rescued people. But there was no way to save Bianca on his own strength.
Lord, help.
Smoke burned his eyes. The heat prickled the back of his neck as sweat dripped into his vision. He shoved over the first stack of disheveled crates. The crash was dwarfed by the crackle of the roaring fire. A diamond necklace, a piece of broken pottery, and a box of chocolates tumbled onto the floor. None of which was going to save them.
The ting of metal hitting the ground sounded—an axe that looked like it belonged in that medieval painting. He gripped it and took a running step, forcing all his strength through his swing. The axe struck the door handle and vibrated through Eddie’s body. A ting and a thump ricocheted through the air as the axe head flew off the handle and sailed somewhere behind him.
But what mattered most was that the door handle dropped to the ground.
Eddie spun around. “Bianca!”
Where was she? Please, let the axe head not have struck her.
She popped up from behind a piano.
Eddie reached out his hand to her. “Our eviction notice is overdue.”
Her gaze flicked to the opened door but snagged on the bright flames engulfing what was more than likely an antique harp. “Wait! This stuff is priceless. We need to put out the fire before it’s too late.”
“That’s another firefighter’s job.” He pressed the handkerchief up to her head and placed her hand over the top of it. “You’re far more priceless than any material stuff. If only more people realized their true worth.”
Eddie put his arm under her elbow and did a quick sweep of the smoky hallway, but there was no fire extinguisher hanging anywhere. He didn’t remember seeing one in his quest here either, but he’d been focused on finding the mayor.
Where had he gone?
The dispatcher’s voice vibrated over his phone’s speaker. “Your fire crew is pulling up the drive.”
Out in the hall, Bianca stared at the phone in her hand as if she’d never seen it before. “We could have?—”
Eddie pulled the door shut to keep the fire from escaping faster. The how and why of the arson would have to wait.
With a glare at her broken heel, Bianca kicked off her shoes. “This is why I shouldn’t ever wear heels.” She glared at the smoke detector up ahead on the ceiling. “Shouldn’t that be going off?”
“A great question.” Things were adding up, and not in a good way.
Eddie clenched his jaw and examined the woman as he took her hand in his, setting off in a run. Her dress had ripped up her leg on one side, and a portion of her sleeve was stained with blood. “You should have stayed in the ballroom. This isn’t a movie stunt.”
She exhaled. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I think someone might need my help. I’ll let them know I can only pretend.”
Eddie shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
While keeping up with his pace, she pulled his blood-soaked handkerchief away from the wound on the side of her head, and the broken skin glared at him. “Pretty sure you needed me in there. I helped get the other firefighters here. But more importantly, how did the fire start? Who was that man? And what was that exchange we saw between those two men?”
“Right now, I’ve got to get you and everyone else out of here. And you need to put pressure back on your head. Use my jacket now.” Eddie’s dress shoes slid on the floor as he rounded the corner. What he wouldn’t do to have his boots on.
At the start of the paneled hall, a light-blue-suited man, not a black-suited one, strolled toward them, still wearing his masquerade mask, a cigar in his mouth.
He frowned. “Bia? We’re about to miss our opportunity to…is that blood?”
Bianca released Eddie’s hand. “Carter, there’s a fire! We have to get everyone out.”
No wonder Bianca had thought Eddie had been Carter, with their similar build and hairstyle.
Eddie ran around Carter and through the same doorway that returned him to the ballroom only for Janice to block his path.
Not the grouchy lady. Again.
Eddie put his hands up around his mouth. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.”
The music stopped. People lifted their glasses at him as if awaiting him to raise a toast.
The angry woman huffed beside him. “What do you think you’re doing? I knew you were trouble with that truck of yours. I never should have allowed you to enter. Invitation or not.”
Eddie motioned for the main doors. “There is a fire in the building. Please proceed to the exit in an orderly fashion.”
A collective wail erupted, and then the door to the ballroom flew open. A wave of suits and dresses thundered through the exit.
Janice took off for the door.
Eddie checked over his shoulder. Where was Bianca? Carter?
Carter sprinted past him as Bianca jogged toward Eddie with her dress tangling around her bare feet.
She blinked at him. “Don’t you need to get a fire extinguisher?”
“Lives are more important than buildings.” He reached down and grabbed the section of her dress off the ground. “I can’t let you be trampled by the stampede of frightened people leaving the mansion. Especially not after you helped rescue them by calling the fire department.”
That and the fire was past the point of a typical extinguisher.
She sent him a faint smile as they trailed the others.
As they broke the threshold of the house, the siren of a fire truck overtook the disorder roaring a few steps ahead of them.
Rescue Squad 5’s fire truck pulled up to the curb, Ridge Foster, back from the accident that had injured his leg, in the driver’s seat. Chief Macon James hopped out of his chief’s truck. The masquerade attendees swarmed down the steps, but they weren’t the only civilians the crew needed to deal with.
Ambulance 21 had made it to the security gate, except the picketers and nosy bystanders at the end of the drive, waiting to steal a peek at the famous guests, were now slipping past security and running up the drive, blocking the route for the ambulance.
A woman with hips wider than the feathered hat on her head bumped into Bianca, who stumbled on her bare feet. Eddie steadied her and spotted Macon heading for the stairs.
“Chief!” Eddie yelled, and Macon jogged up to them. “Sir, the fire is in the east wing. It’s taken over a section of an inner room’s wall. A man deliberately set a dress on fire.”
Bianca removed the jacket from her wound, and her arm brushed against Eddie’s side. “He locked us inside that room.”
Macon eyed Bianca. “Thanks, Rice. Now, better get her to Bently and Russell.”
Eddie placed his arm around Bianca. “Yes, sir.”
Bianca put her hand on his chest. “Wait, the mayor!”
Eddie tensed. How could he have forgotten? “We witnessed something that makes me fearful for the mayor’s well-being.”
Macon nodded and hollered instructions to the crew as Eddie tucked Bianca against himself and headed down the driveway.
A cameraman joined them. “Ms. Pearl? What’s happening inside?”
Bianca curled further into Eddie’s side.
“Let us through.” Eddie dodged the man with the camera.
Another person with some sort of microphone connected to a phone stuck it close to her mouth. “Bia, has there been an explosion? Has anyone else been injured?”
Bianca covered her face with his jacket.
Eddie jerked away from the paparazzi, but that only seemed to alert the crowd to their direction.
“Bia!”
“Bia Pearl!”
“Give us a quick look.”
The incomers swarmed around them.
“What happened to your dress, Bia?”
“Who are you wearing tonight?”
“Is it true that you’re dating your costar, Carter Cane?”
“Ms. Pearl, how is tonight going to affect the film’s timeline?”
“What do you think about your ex’s not-guilty plea?”
Bianca fisted Eddie’s shirt beneath the covering of his jacket.
Eddie tugged her closer. “No comment.”
He hadn’t paid attention to the trial of Nathan Kensington. But no one’s past needed to define someone else’s.
Trace Bently, who was driving Ambo 21, laid on the horn. The paparazzi made a path. Kianna Russell, in the passenger seat, pointed to the rear of the ambulance, and then she disappeared to the back.
“Hang on tight,” Eddie whispered in Bianca’s ear. “Almost there.”
A muffled “thank you” came from under his jacket.
Eddie shouldered his way through the crowd and made it to the back of the ambulance.
Kianna opened the door, and Eddie helped Bianca climb in. “I assume she’ll need stitches. She’s lost a fair amount of blood and?—”
“Blood.” A gulp came from a girl with a beanie on and two braids resting on her shoulders who had snuck up behind him.
The man with the microphone returned. “Will Bia Pearl be disfigured?”
Someone wearing a ball cap shoved his phone in through the open crack in the ambulance’s rear door.
Kianna snatched the phone and tossed it out, then pulled Eddie inside.
Eddie shut the door. As he turned, he expected to see Bianca curled into a ball on the stretcher, but her eyes locked onto his.
She swallowed. “How bad is it?”
There was little good from the evening so far.
Eddie rubbed his hand through his smoke-scented hair. “Our crew will get the fire out. No one else should get hurt.”
Her eyes slipped closed. “Good. That’s really good.”
Kianna leaned in and inspected Bianca’s incision.
But Bianca didn’t lift her attention to Kianna. Her gaze remained on Eddie. “And my face?”
Eddie inhaled. He was afraid that’s what she’d really meant.
Kianna grimaced.
Bianca pulled the slit in her dress closed over her leg. “Give me the truth. Is this an end-of-my-career type of scar we’re looking at?”
Kianna wiped Bianca’s cheek with a cloth. “Several stitches. Not as many as I first expected with the amount of blood. The actual wound is near your hairline, which will be helpful to hide the scar. Bangs might help some.”
Bianca pressed her lips together.
Eddie cleared his throat. “My grand-ma’am used to say that scars give character.”
Fear filled her eyes. “Unfortunately, the entertainment industry believes differently. The world wants what it wants. Perfection.”
Eddie shook his head. There was only One who was perfect. He could still hear his foster mother’s voice in his head. “Doesn’t mean?—”
Out through the front window, a couple of guys rocked the front of the ambulance. “Let us see Bia!”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Kianna said to Trace, who sent a look to Eddie.
Eddie nodded. “I’ll clear them away.”
He jumped out and did as promised. Cleared a path for Bianca to leave. The ambulance’s flashing lights reversed back down the drive, and Bianca’s fearful words rang in his memory.
The world wants what it wants.
Eddie raced toward the mansion to help his crew. Raised his eyes to the sky.
He hadn’t gotten what he wanted in too long, but now, it looked like even the kids wouldn’t get the rest of the needed funds for their youth center.