Another ember filters down, my throat becoming raw as I shriek, desperate for someone to hear me, begging him not to do this.
“That’s it,” he says, coming over to collect his backpack from on top of me. “Panic. Fight. Give it your all.”
He taps the side of my face a few times, smirking. “You’re about to find out how good of a firefighter your boyfriend is. Or maybe you won’t. I’m counting on the latter.”
Then, I’m alone. To roast on the table like a pig on a spit.
Chapter 48
Wyatt
Jumpingoutofthetruck with my irons—a Halligan bar and flathead axe—I do my best not to sprint towards the main door of the building that leads to the stairwell. The one that will take us straight up a flight of stairs to the massage clinic.
Nate’s shouting from the door, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” so I know I’m not doing a great job, but Bryn is in there.
We’re the first truck on scene, and things looked okay when we first pulled up. No smoke billowing out of windows or the roof, but we all know that looks can be deceiving. My gut tells me they are.
Nearly ripping the door from its hinges, I make entry, Brody hot on my heels. We’re not two steps inside when there’s a cry from above.
“Help! Help!”
Both our heads lift, finding a man coming down the stairs with a limp body in his arms.
My heart lodges somewhere in my throat, stomach sinking. Bryn. Fuck.
But as he rounds the stairway to the second half of the flight, it’s clearly not Bryn, and the breath billows out of me into my mask. Celeste, the receptionist.
The relief is short-lived. Bryn is up there, I’m positive of it. Every instinct screams that she’s there and I need to get to her.
I need to stay focused. It’s what Nate kept repeating in the truck on the way here.
“Can you get her outside?” Brody questions the guy, taking point and ushering him towards the door. “There’s more help out there.”
I’m already on the radio. “Two victims coming out.”
As the guy passes by me, our eyes lock for a fraction of a second, and something in them pulls at a thread of recognition, but Brody hits me in the shoulder before I can tug on it. Following behind him up the stairs, I let him lead the way with the thermal imaging camera. So far, visibility is good, but I’m expecting things to get a lot worse.
“Division two, bravo side, fully engulfed. We need water on bravo side, and roof ventilation,” Brody says into his radio at the top of the stairs. He opens the rescue rope bag at his side, pulling the end out to tie around the stairwell railing. To anchor us outside of the IDLH, or Immediate Danger to Life and Health, area. “Clip in.”
Acid slices through my veins at the sight, and it takes every ounce of willpower not to storm through the massage clinic doors when I see the way the vacant business to its left is lit up. The flames are in the ceiling. Bryn’s room is the last one on the left at the back. It shares a wall with next door.
Flames are already in the ceiling, which means they’re already above her room.
“Easy.” Brody glances back to me, then down at my mask. “Slow it down. We’ll find her.”
At his command, I realize how fast my breath is coming, and concentrate to even it out. The faster and harder I breathe, the more oxygen I consume, the less time I have inside.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
Pushing into the clinic’s reception area, we’re met with smoke. It does nothing to help calm my nerves as we do a quick sweep through the room, the smoke not yet thick enough to make it hard to see the floor for any victims. When we reach the doorway that leads to the back hallway, we pause, Brody assessing it with the camera.
Nodding, he says, “Doors good, vent it.”
Grabbing the handle, I open it a crack, my body buzzing with adrenaline like it always does when opening a door. As much as I want to knock the thing down to get back there and find Bryn, I know I can’t. The risk of a flashover if we were to straight up push the door open is a chance I’m not willing to take when we don’t know what the conditions are.
Semi-dark smoke rushes out of the hall when it’s finally safe to open the door all the way, so much thicker and darker here than reception. Clenching my jaw, I look to the left, my soul leaving my body.
Thick, gray smoke consumes the end of the hallway, puffing out from the doorframe to Bryn’s room. It’s like a hungry beast, ready to consume and devour, never satiated. It lives to be a monster, and I live to conquer it, but in this moment, I don’t know how to slay it.
