Chapter 1
Amaris
Amaris Carter was no stranger to the silent whisper of death.
It could clasp around her throat and choke her of her last breath, but she’d still welcome it.
The raging fire surrounding her and Charlie was a testament to that.
Charlie drenched the staircase in a shower of mist and rain, but the fire grew, feeding every last ember.
Amaris gripped the fire hose behind Charlie, feeding him more as he pushed up the stairs.
She sucked in a breath, eating the beads of sweat pooling in the bottom of her mask.
Each salty breath was a reminder. Her hands tightened, clinging to the last bit of hope as a wave of memories flooded her mind.
No longer were her gloved hands clasped around a fire hose, but a single piece of driftwood. The waves rolled over her face, threatening to suffocate her and drag her into their depths, along with the ship it’d claimed all those years ago.
“Amaris!” Charlie’s scream pulled her from her memory.
Her eyes shot open, stinging in a murky haze from the sweat dripping from her brows.
“I’ve got a room here for you to search!”
Amaris blinked to clear the sweat. The fire hose sat between her gloved hands. She tracked the red hose, one of the few things visible in the heavy smoke surrounding them.
The fluorescent stripes on Charlie’s gear and his panting breaths came from the top of the staircase. His helmet shifted, and a stream of light illuminated the cloud of gases, piercing Amaris’s sensitive blue eyes. She faltered in his beam like a damn deer in headlights.
She took in a warm, stale breath and shut her mind to the morbid memory threatening to pull her from the fire. Bile filled her throat, but she swallowed it.
I need to keep my head in here. She couldn’t allow herself to surrender to her grief. Since she’d been promoted to lieutenant, Charlie was more than her friend now—he was her responsibility.
It was dangerous to let the anxieties stirring in her stomach cloud her mind.
A neighbor had seen the couple come home from a walk this morning.
Amaris and Charlie had searched the entire downstairs with nothing to show for it but aching knees and waterlogged socks.
As the officer in charge, she’d chosen to send them inside. She had to follow it through.
What if we’re too late? She shook away the horrendous thought and climbed the stairs, pushing past Charlie. She eyed the shut bedroom door. Hopefully, it’d kept the smoke and fire from the room.
She entered, darkness overtaking her, and sprawled out onto her stomach, feeling for a wall nearby.
Her only ally was the muscle memory and second sense she’d developed through grueling hours of training with her mask covered.
She reached out, moving over the carpet until she smacked into a dresser.
Groaning, she righted her face piece and checked she didn’t have a mask leak.
Her senses pulled her further—a lamp, a chair, but no human life.
She found the corner, marking her surroundings in her head, creating a map to lead her. Her hand slid along the wall until she met a large object, a bed. Lunging forward, she felt around and gripped a hand. Her heart lurched into her throat.
“I’ve got a victim!” She croaked, the acceleration of her heart seeping into her voice.
Calm down. You can do this. A quick cough rid her mind of further anxieties, and she reached farther onto the bed.
She met a tangle of limbs and grabbed under a pair of bony shoulders. They were light—probably the wife.
A rumbling of her face mask regulator startled her as she dragged the wife to the floor. How could she be at the end of her air bottle already? Her attention snapped across the room to Charlie. His hummed the same alert.
She took in a short breath, switching her breathing pattern to make her air last. She only needed a few more minutes.
Lunging for the bed again, she grabbed the husband. Her feet pushed off the bed frame to leverage his large body onto the floor.
An air horn blared from outside, pricking the hairs on the back of her neck.
No.
A second blast followed and then a third, signaling them to exit the structure immediately.
She grabbed her webbing from her pocket, wrapping one around the husband and the other around the wife to get a better hold to drag them out. Her mind homed in. I can make it.
“Get out of here, Charlie!” she shouted. “I’ll meet you outside!”
“No way!” Charlie hollered back, but his heavy breathing increased. He was probably exhausted after lugging the hose all over the house. “You can’t drag them out by yourself!”
“I’ve got this!” she yelled back. “Get out! The roof might be collapsing!”
Why else would they sound the evacuation signal?
When they’d rolled up, the fire had been pushing out half of the windows on the second floor, and smoke had been puffing out from the eaves of the roof. A voice in her head had told her to make a defensive attack, that she shouldn’t go inside, but she’d silenced it.
“I’m not leaving you!”
Amaris rolled her eyes. Why does he have to be so fucking stubborn?
With each step, her heavy SCBA on her back was a growing reminder of their limited time.
She forced herself into a crawl, dragging the couple farther.
A cough erupted from her lungs, but she resisted any urge to stop.
She’d never pulled someone from a fire before.
Training with a mannequin on the slippery floor of the truck bay was one thing, but two bodies was excruciating.
It might have been only inch by inch, but she was getting them out of there.
Charlie wasn’t going to leave, but neither was she.
Steam burned against her skin, slick with sweat as Charlie whipped the stream of water in circles to douse the room.
Her mask rattled off and on. She was nearing the end of her borrowed time, but she wasn’t even halfway across the room.
Charlie banged his hand against the floor, alerting her to his direction.
The webbing pressed against her gloved hands, squeezing her fingers till they grew numb.
A gasp escaped her lips, but she kept pulling, dragging, barreling through the room. Whether it was her own darkening vision or the smoke pressing in on them, she was blind. She relied on her ears—the power of the hose as it blasted the ceiling and the final warning of her mask regulator.
She couldn’t drag the couple down the stairs in time. She scanned the dark room, searching for any visible light. There had to be a window. They’d close the door to keep what smoke and fire they could out and flag down a crew outside to throw a ladder.
“Charlie, close the door! We’ll get them out through a window!”
“I can’t. We’ve got fire poking through the ceiling!”
Hope for their rescue plan evaporated as flames ate away the drywall over their heads and a deafening crack filled the room with hot smoke. It covered Amaris’s mask and burned the tips of her ears. Shit, shit, shit!
“Amaris, what do we do?” Charlie shouted.
The couple hung limp, wrapped in the webbing, pulling the blood from her fingers.
“There’s too much fire above us!” Charlie screamed, but his shouts were muffled by a high-pitched tinnitus piercing Amaris’s eardrums.
I can’t get them out. Each moment she’d spent training had been for nothing. She didn’t have the strength to pull them out and couldn’t even shout to Charlie to drop the hose and save himself.
Despite her hopelessness, her feet continued to try. They planted beneath her and made one more surge toward the door, but all Amaris could focus on were the grunts from Charlie as the hose sprayed sporadically around them.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Amaris’s mind reeled. Hunt down the fire and put it out. Locate a victim, drag them out. We don’t die.
A hand gripped Amaris’s shoulder, startling her from the endless ranting in her head.
“Get the hell out! I’ve got them,” a familiar woman shouted.
Amaris needed to move, but her body froze. How is Viv here? The air horn went off. Viv should’ve been outside, but her strong arms wrapped around Amaris, pulling the webbing from her hands and gripping her SCBA. Viv shoved Amaris into the hallway.
“Get out before I kick you out,” Viv yelled.
“Charlie?” Amaris called, attempting to get her feet beneath her.
“He’s already headed downstairs,” Viv said, handing one of the strings of webbing to her partner. “Follow him.”
Amaris’s dwindling air and her speeding heart ignited panic. This should be me stuck here to drag them out, not her. But as her mask sucked to her face, she found herself heeding Viv’s orders.
She took one of the last few breaths from the air bottle growing heavier with each passing heartbeat.
The rambling in her mind stilled. The fire ripping above her head was only a subtle warmth.
Viv’s grunts were only distant echoes. Amaris had trained for how long she could make her tank last, how many breaths she could suck down before she was out of air.
She took one, two, and another, three. Her feet buckled beneath her, four.
Pressure built in her head, five. Her foot caught a hole gaping in the stairs, flipping her forward, six.
She struggled to peer over her shoulder at her boot caught under the rise of the step, seven.
She tugged, but her boot wouldn’t give, eight.
The light from the front door stretched to the bottom of the steps.
I can do this. It was right there, nine. She tried another breath but was out of air.
Another set of three air horn blasts sounded, sending her heart rate thundering in her ears.
She pulled her foot from the boot, her sock the only thing protecting her skin from the heat.
She leapt off the steps, slamming onto the front porch.
The brim of her helmet smacked the concrete, and her chest burned for air.
She ripped the regulator from her mask and sucked in a ragged breath.