Chapter One #3
Nothing much. Like the living room above, the furniture in here was sparse, just a large desk in the center of the room with empty pizza boxes and crumpled, grease-stained napkins scattered over its surface.
Thankfully, no one was huddled up or trying to hide beneath it, and he turned to complete the sweep of the room.
The beam of his flashlight landed on a set of bi-fold doors on the opposite wall, and finally, Kellan had found an opening in this place that wasn’t bolted shut.
He yanked the closet doors apart on their track, crouching down low to do a quick search of the crawl space beneath a set of crude wooden shelves. But before he could so much as open his mouth for a call-out, a burst of static sounded off from the two-way on his shoulder.
“Hawkins to Command,” the lieutenant clipped out. “We’re a negative on entrapment on the second floor. The house looks abandoned, but the structure’s fully involved. This fire’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
“Command to Hawkins,” came Captain Bridges’ voice in return. “Fall out immediately, before this thing flashes over. Hawkins, Dempsey, McCullough, Walker, I want all four of you in front of me in sixty seconds. Do you copy?”
Kellan’s rib cage threatened to constrict, but shit, he had no time for body betrayal. He needed to finish clearing this room and find Shae. Now.
“Walker to Command. Copy. Falling out,” he said into the two-way.
Steeling his breath, he sent his stare on one last tour of the closet before unfolding himself to standing.
The back of his helmet banged against something in a hard thump—ah, fuck, he’d forgotten about the wooden shelves—and Kellan ducked back into the closet out of sheer instinct.
His heart slammed in surprise as whatever had been on the now-upended wooden plank tumbled over his shoulder, hitting the concrete subfloor with a metallic crash.
He cursed under his breath, wrangling his pulse back down from its code red.
There was no saving the lock box that had burst open at his feet upon impact, so Kellan stepped over the scattered papers and other items spilling over the floor.
Racing toward the door, he swung himself back in the direction he’d come, his chest loosening just a fraction at the sight of Shae barreling in from the opposite side.
“I’m clear,” she said, and Kellan jerked his head in a nod, leading the way up the steps.
“Me too. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They retraced their steps back to the main level, and holy shit, the fire up here had doubled in intensity in the sparse minutes he and Shae had been in the basement.
Flames had snaked down the living room walls to grab hold of the curtains in their absence, illuminating the room in a rolling orange glow at the same time heavy billows of smoke clogged their path.
But they were a dozen steps from daylight, and Kellan wasn’t stopping for love or money.
He charged ahead without pause, sweat stinging his eyes beneath his mask and his chest burning from exertion.
Barging back through the front door, his boots punched over the porch boards, the sudden flash of over-bright sunlight leaving him momentarily disoriented.
But muscle memory was a powerful thing, and his arms lifted up, his hands tugging off his helmet and mask even though his brain had little to do with the motions.
Breathe. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four, five.
The cool air hit Kellan like a titanium-reinforced wrecking ball. Although he had zero doubt that Captain Bridges had eyes on him, he still reported in over the radio, and by the time he’d heel-toed his way back to Engine Seventeen, he was more than halfway back to all systems go.
“Nice to see you in once piece,” Gamble said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a rare smile. “Heard shit was going a little sideways in there.”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Shae answered from over Kellan’s shoulder, still on his six even though they’d more than cleared the hot zone.
Gamble jutted his chin at the water lines he and Slater had prepped per Captain Bridges’ orders. “Glad to hear it, because Hawk and Dempsey are clear and Squad’s got a good vent on the roof. We’re about to get this place wet.”
The words shifted Kellan back into gear.
He replaced his helmet over his sweat-damp head, buckling the straps in seconds.
Captain Bridges’ command came a breath later, springing Kellan and the rest of his fellow firefighters into action.
Move by move, minute by minute, the teams on both Engine and Squad worked in tandem to control the blaze, first from the outside, then strategically maneuvering their way back over the threshold once the flames had been partially subdued.
Kellan tunneled in on each task, methodically completing the necessary steps with his team until finally, the fire had been completely put out.
“Jesus,” he breathed once they’d returned to Engine Seventeen, his inhale leaving the acrid taste of smoke on his tongue. “We haven’t seen a job this sketchy in a while, huh?”
Hawkins sauntered up from Squad Six’s vehicle, fixing him with a slow grin that said there was a whole lot of smartass incoming. “You know the drill, Walker. Just ’cause the fire’s out don’t mean the fat lady has sung.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kellan said, although the words were far from a grumble. Hawk was right—there was a helluva lot more to being a firefighter than the name suggested, and if they didn’t want this place to reignite for round two, they still had a lot of boxes to check. “You ready, McCullough?”
“Darlin’, please,” she said, affecting the heavy Irish accent that went with her heritage as she shoulder-checked him with a wry smile. “I was born ready.”
Even though he knew the move would buy him a ration of shit with sprinkles on top, Kellan nudged her right back. “If you say so.”
They fell into step next to each other and headed back up the concrete sidewalk.
RFD protocol dictated that they monitor the scene of any structure fire with thermal imaging devices post-incident to make sure nothing got hot enough to flare back up.
With a blaze this big, chances weren’t small that the house still had hot spots in the walls that hadn’t been destroyed, and they had to sweep every inch of the place just to be sure nothing lurked where they couldn’t see it.
“Okay, friends, let’s make this easy,” Hawk said, tipping his chin at the front door Dempsey had put a hurt to.
“Retrace the ground you covered on your search and rescue circuit. Scan everything you can safely get to, and mark off any rooms too hazardous to reach. We’ll use the aerial on Truck Three to get to ’em if we need to. Y’all copy?”
After a chorus of affirmative answers, the four of them crossed the threshold.
The bitter tang of waterlogged ash and stale smoke filled Kellan’s senses and invited his throat to tighten, but he kept to his smooth cycle of inhale/exhale.
He still had plenty of work left to do. No way was he going to take a chance on his system shorting out before this scene was secure.
Or, okay. Ever.
“Damn.” Shae whistled under her breath, her footsteps sounding off in soggy splashes as she swung her gaze around the living room.
The fire had ravaged the curtains on two of the three side windows, allowing sunlight to spill past the burned-out spaces where the glass used to be.
Although the couch and the bookshelf were still recognizable, they were pretty well torched, not to mention waterlogged, and all of the surrounding area in Kellan’s line of sight matched.
“Definitely looks like a total loss,” he agreed, leading the way back to the basement door and turning on the flashlight still strapped over the front of his turnout gear. “You think this was an accident?”
One shoulder rose and fell beneath the heavy black material of her coat.
“I think with a fire this big, the team at arson investigation always take a glance at the report. But truth? This house is old and vacant. Chances are there hasn’t been any upkeep in a while.
With how fast the fire moved from floor to floor, it wouldn’t shock me if crappy electrical sparked the whole thing. ”
“Makes sense,” Kellan said. The scorch marks spider-webbing over the walls sure backed up the theory.
Shae stopped at the bottom of the basement steps, just long enough to give him one last shrug. “Anyway. Shout out if you find something, yeah?”
“Sure. Back atcha.”
Kellan turned his flashlight down the right-hand side of the hallway.
The basement had escaped most of the fire and water damage, although there were still signs of both in the musty passageway.
He took careful heat readings on the walls regardless, working his way down to the room he’d checked just before getting the order to fall out.
Shouldering past the door he’d kicked in, Kellan trailed his flashlight over the space, re-noting the desk, the pizza boxes, the discarded napkins.
His stare snagged on the lock box he’d knocked from the shelf, busted wide on its hinges from the fall, and shit, he hadn’t meant to wreck what little was left in the place.
Bending down to plant one knee against the concrete, he reached out to gather the papers—no wait, they were photographs—scattered like confetti over the ground.
He dusted off their surfaces with his gloved fingers, hoping maybe the move would knock off any ash or dirt marking the photos as a result of their trip over the floor.
But then the images in front of him registered, and all the air left the room.
“Walker to Command,” Kellan said into his two-way, trying like hell to steady his voice along with his suddenly slamming heartbeat. “We’ve got a problem in the basement.”
“This is Command,” came Captain Bridges’ voice over the line. “Do you need backup, Walker?”
“No, sir,” he said, dread cranking down on his gut as he looked at the pictures again.
“We need the police. I’m pretty sure they’re going to want to see what I just found.”