“I know that part.” She looked up at him from her crouch. “I just meant you scared me.”
Greer bent over and rubbed his shin. “You’re so violent.”
She rolled her eyes and gathered the gauze. “Did you need something? I’m busy.”
He grabbed the clipboard and looked at it. “Isn’t this Dean’s chore this week?”
“Maybe.” She stacked the gauze back in the closet. “I needed something to do.”
“In that case, you can do my chores as well, yeah?” He tossed the clipboard back on the shelf. “I don’t mind.”
The station siren blared. “Engine 4, respond to a commercial fire alarm. Marshal Samuel Dennison High School.”
Sam’s breath caught. Bella’s school.
She raced to the engine and donned her turnout gear.
Once everyone was loaded, Murph pulled the truck onto the road.
Lieutenant Fischer turned to them. “Looks like an alarm activation from the pull station on the west side of the building. Evacuation in progress. No sign of smoke or fire.”
Sam’s leg bounced on the engine floorboard. It was just a pulled alarm. There was no danger. “That’s Bella’s school.”
Greer clapped her on the shoulder. “I’m sure she’s good.”
Sam stuck her helmet under her arm and nodded. “She better be.”
Murph turned the engine onto the school’s road, and Sam studied the structure, looking for any signs of fire. “Everything looks normal.”
Except for the students calmly filing out of the school and congregating in class groups on the field so their teachers could do roll call. Sam strained to see if Bella was among them.
Fischer shoved his door open. “Williams, take the panel. Greer with me and Captain Bennett on three-sixty. Murph, you man the engine.”
The ladder truck pulled in, and its crew unloaded, having gotten their instructions from Captain Bennett.
Sam hoofed it past a line of students streaming out the main entrance, none of them her sister, and made her way to the school office. Using the universal key she kept clipped to her belt loop with a carabiner, she unlocked the panel and flipped the plastic cover. She juggled the helmet and squeezed her radio. “Pull activation Zone 3, west side of the building. No smoke alarms tripped.”
“Three-sixty complete and clear,” Captain Bennett said. “Williams, silence the alarms. Let’s clear the building. Engine, take the west. Ladder, take the east.”
Sam silenced the audible alarms, then met Lieutenant Fischer and Greer at the entrance. Captain Bennett would be with the school personnel.
“We’ll sweep out.” Lieutenant Fischer gestured down the hall, indicating they’d start here and work out. He readied the thermal imaging camera and took the lead, sweeping to determine if there were any hidden fires, like in walls or lockers. Meanwhile, Sam and Greer followed behind, listening. Greer carried the Halligan and axe as they moved along. If a thermal area was detected, they would have the iron tools to gain entry to the area to check for certain.
The trio walked methodically through the west side of the school. No smoke was visible, so every few feet, Sam took a deep breath, sniffing for the smell of fire.
They reached the end of the hall. “No thermal indicators, and no visible or olfactory indicators,” Lieutenant Fischer relayed to the ladder team. “West wing cleared.”
Even with the building evacuated and the hall cleared, unease settled in Sam’s stomach. Putting eyes on Bella would be the only way to relieve it.
“Ten-four. We’re checking the auditorium now,” Dean advised.
“Williams, you go reset the panel, and I’ll go talk with the captain,” Lieutenant Fischer instructed.
“Yes, sir.”
Sam repeated the process of opening the panel and did the necessary steps to reset the system. She was locking the clear protective case when the principal and school resource officer entered the room.
“We can look at the surveillance and see who pulled the alarm,” the resource officer said as he passed by Sam and into his office, leaving her standing in the lobby with Principal Duncan.
