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She believed he was in love with another woman. A woman she couldn’t fight against or even think ill of.
But she believed wrong.
He had loved Nina. In some ways, he still loved her and always would. But he wasn’t in love with her. When he’d stopped and the guilt over their argument, over the strain on his relationship with Charles, had taken over, he wasn’t sure. Years ago. Perhaps even before she’d died, although he’d not realized it at the time because he’d been so hurt, so caught up in the idea of being in love with Nina that he’d not let himself see the truth.
Until Sarah had forced him to see the truth.
In such a short time she’d come into his life and turned his whole world upside down.
Made everything brighter, clearer, better.
“Man, watch what you are doing,” Roger warned, when Jude reached for a doorway without checking it first with the thermal imaging camera. “Don’t open that until we know what’s behind it.”
Yeah, he knew that.
He also knew he needed to get his brain in gear until they got out of this death trap. Being distracted wasn’t doing Roger or him any favors.
He checked the door for heat, determined that the hallway was passable so they could get to the known trapped elderly couple and check for any additional trapped victims. Getting low, he opened the door and they made their way into the smoke-filled hallway.
Knowing which apartment the elderly couple had called in to the emergency communication center from, Jude and Roger made their way there as quickly as possible. Their door was unlocked, but the woman had wisely stuffed towels around the floor, which helped keep the smoke out of their apartment, but made opening the door more difficult.
Time was of the essence.
Jude used his shoulder, and shoved hard against the door. It gave and he went flying into the room. Quickly, they located the elderly couple hunched in a bathtub and cleared a path to them.
The man had fallen and injured his leg while trying to get them out. Unwilling to leave him, his wife had managed to drag him back into the apartment on a sheet, pulled him into the bathroom, and somehow gotten him into the tub. She’d pushed towels up around the doorway, trying to keep the smoke out, and they’d huddled together, thinking they were probably going to burn alive.
A hellish feeling for sure.
Thank God, they’d found them.
Roger called for back-up and to check the accessibility of the stairwell they’d come up. It was still open and help to get the Johnsons out of the building was on its way.
Unfortunately, Clara Johnson said there were more people trapped on their floor.
“Betty Kingston lives two doors down. I called her earlier, when I got Ed back to the bathroom,” the woman fretted, looking as if she might drop from stress and exhaustion any moment. “She said part of her ceiling had collapsed in front of her door. I told her we were in the tub and that’s where she was going, too. To her tub.”
Two doors down.
“There’s another couple who live in the corner apartment. Stanley and Estelle Miller,” Mrs. Johnson continued. “Betty said they have to be trapped, too, because the part of her ceiling that caved in knocked part of the wall down with it and would have blocked them in, too, if they weren’t already out.” The woman gave Jude a horrified look. “What if they aren’t out?”
Jude glanced at Roger.
“On it,” his best friend said, calling down to Command to see if a Betty Kingston or the Miller couple had been located.
As they’d feared, neither had.
Jude grabbed Mr. Johnson, having the man hold on around his neck. Roger took hold of Mrs. Johnson.
“This is quite embarrassing, you know,” Mr. Johnson mumbled.
“I bet you’ve experienced worse.” Despite the severity of the situation, Jude grinned as they made their way back into the hallway. Smoke billowed thickly, so he got low, having Mr. Johnson hold onto his back as he hunkered down and moved them as quickly as possibly down the hallway and toward the emergency stairwell.
“Yeah, when that blasted woman of mine dragged me into the bathroom and refused to leave me, despite me begging her to go save herself.”
“Helluva woman you got there.”
“Don’t think I don’t know it.”
