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“Those are her keys.” I point toward the set lying on the porch right beside Hannah’s beat up phone and heave for breath. For sense.
I do everything my chief didn’t want me to do. I skip grabbing my helmet. My mask. I didn’t grab my air tank. I have nothing but Hannah’s phone, blistering from the heat emanating from inside my house, and a Tupperware container, spilled across the porch.
“Hannah!”
“Feeney.” Nix’s voice is too calm. Too measured, as it crackles through the radio. “You’re already fucking up, kid. What’s the problem?”
I spin toward the truck and shout, “I think Hannah’s inside, Chief!” I sprint back onto the lawn and grab my tank when Dawson tosses it my way. I slip my arms through the straps and tighten it, then I take my mask and helmet. “Search and rescue.”
“Then you’re out.” He thrusts a thumb over his shoulder, as though to tell me to leave, and with the other hand, he grabs his radio. “We have a potential victim inside the house,” he informs us all. “Female. Early twenties. Brown and brown—”
“Stop speaking about her like we don’t all know who Hannah Sullivan is!” I grab my Halligan bar and drop the mask over my face before sprinting back to the porch. “You work the aerial!” I shout to Ruiz. “We need you on this one, but you can’t be inside.”
“Your girl is in there?” His cheeks pale as he looks back through the door. As the house creaks, and an upstairs window blows out. “Fuck, Feeney. I don’t—”
“This isn’t gonna be like Cootes.”
I kick Hannah’s things aside and glance to my right when Ivy Patrick steps up beside me. She’s suited up, masked, and helmeted. She carries a folded hose on her shoulder that weighs an easy hundred and twenty pounds. But she’s ready. Her eyes are on the job.
So I grab my radio. “Patrick and I are heading in, Chief. Primary search of the bottom floor first.”
Releasing my radio, I duck low and charge into the inferno that has already gutted the bottom level of my home.
Fire licks across the ceiling, and smoke sits heavy, staining what was once white.
“Report, Feeney!” Nix’s voice booms across the radio.
So I keep low and make my way through the living room. I peek under the couch, and around the back to make sure Hannah hasn’t burrowed in to escape the heat. “Blaze is rolling, Chief.” I glance up at the ceiling and know it’s coming down soon. “We need the wet stuff in here to cool her down.”
“Rizz is working on the water,” he replies. “The hydrants outside have been tampered with. But we’re trying.”
“Maybe try a little harder.”
I use my Halligan to push my coffee table aside and over, so I can look under it. Then I tap Patrick on the shoulder as I pass and continue into the kitchen. “Living room’s clear. No one in there. But it’s coming down soon. Get that aerial to the top floor so we have a way out.”
“I’m bringing it up,” Ruiz’s machine-like tone comes across the radio. “Can you search for my wallet while you’re in there? I seem to have misplaced it.”
I want to laugh. I want to cry. Fuck, but I just want to find Hannah safe and okay. Then I want to go pop that asshole in the face.
“Do the job, Ruiz. Stop screwing around.”
“I could say the same to you,” he grumbles. The warning in his tone brings me back to the million jumps we did together over the summer; the impatience he carries, but with the underlying concern that a lieutenant has for his crew. “Dawson, you wanna climb the aerial and see what you can see?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. On my way up.”
“We’re heading up, too.” I check inside my fridge, just in case Hannah caught a wild hair and thought hiding in there might help, then under the counter when the first is empty. “Searching the kitchen now, Chief. Then we’re ascending.”
“I’ve got a body!” Patrick’s panicked tone has me spinning. My heart in my throat. My stomach ready to release.
I sprint back in her direction and squint through the smoke to find her crouched, her still-empty hose laid out on the floor beside the body.
Jeans. A shirt. Boots.
I skid to my knees and check for a pulse, but it takes only a second to ascertain the body doesn’t belong to Hannah.
“Report, Patrick!” Nixon’s voice roars in competition with the flames. “Feeney!”
“We’ve got a male vic,” Patrick answers. “Significant burns to his left side. Arm, chest, face.” She pushes up to stand, but when I’d rather turn away and leave him to die, she grabs his arm and grunts to bring his hundred and eighty or so pounds up over her shoulders.
