But all he could hear was the rumble of emergency vehicles and the roar of the fire.
Captain Casey waved them over. “ Dalton and Myers are in the bucket. Relieve them. Station Forty-two is around the corner working the other side. Dalton and Myers will relieve them when they’ve rested. We’ll work rotation until we’re done.”
Their pumper was parked nearby and David could see the lines extended into the building. He pulled an oxygen can from the truck’s storage locker. “Who’s inside?”
“Perry and Jacobs from B shift. Station Forty-two’s also got a team in there with nozzles and Thirty-eight’s doing a search on the inner units.”
Jeff pulled his hood over his head. “Can we get support from out east?”
Casey shook his head. “Bomb threat at a residential school.”
David stiffened. “The university?” Where Tom was.
“No, a deaf school. Kindergarten through high school.”
The girl he’d pulled from the condo was deaf. No coincidence. “Was this fire here set?” he asked tightly, already knowing the answer.
Casey nodded. “Yeah. We’ve already transported half a dozen residents and two firefighters from this fire. ERs out here are strained, but the hospital out east is waiting for possible casualties from the school. Move out. Be careful.”
David jerked a nod, fury rising in him as he rushed to the bucket. He thought of the condo, of the dead girl’s face. Tracey Mullen. These monsters had murdered her, just as if they’d shot her in the heart like the guard. In his mind he could see the faceless body of Barney Tomlinson. But this… this was devastation. How many would die tonight? How many were already dead?
Hundreds of kids went to the deaf school. What was so damn important that endangering hundreds of lives with a goddamn bomb was okay? He drew a steadying breath. The family coming down in the bucket was alive and they were his priority. Focus, he told himself sternly. You can be angry later.
When the bucket reached the ground, David helped a terrified woman and her three children to the ground and into the care of the paramedics. The woman grabbed his coat.
“My husband is still in there. Please get him out.” Her eyes were glassy with shock.
David nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He and Jeff traded places with Dalton and Myers.
“We were going to search the place for the husband on our next pass,” Myers said. “Living room to the left, bedrooms to the right. These are all three-bedroom units.”
“Thanks.” David hooked on the belt, fixed his mask in place, and sucked in a hard breath to get the oxygen flowing. Jeff did the same and jabbed his thumb upward.
They rose to the fourth floor and David got an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu, remembering how his legs had dangled into nothingness when the floor gave way. Brushing it aside, he followed Jeff through the window, his ax handle extended, checking for soft spots in the floor.
It was a child’s bedroom. Mothers always went to their children’s rooms before seeking safety themselves. Okay, dad, where are you? Left living area, right bedrooms. There was fire in the hall, licking at the walls from the inside out.
In front of him, Jeff turned right and shouldered his way through a door, then jumped back. Flames covered the far wall and in seconds licked across the ceiling.
Go back. The room was seconds from flashover. He reached for Jeff’s coat, but Jeff was hunched over and moving forward. David followed, ax handle down. He hit something soft, but it wasn’t the floor.
A body. “Zell!” he yelled. He grabbed the man under the arms and started dragging him out into the hall. “Get his feet,” he shouted to Jeff.
Jeff turned to get the man’s feet when the room went up.
And the ceiling came down.
“Zell!” David dropped the man and lurched forward. A beam had come down, pinning Jeff’s torso. Jeff lay on his back, not moving. David wedged his ax under the beam, lifting it so that Jeff could drag himself out. But Jeff wasn’t moving.
“Firefighter injured,” David said into his radio. “Need assistance in the bucket.”
David grabbed Jeff under his arms and dragged him out, around the unconscious man, until they were back in the child’s room and at the window. He knelt beside him. His partner was breathing, but it appeared through the mask that his eyes were closed.
“I’ll be back,” David shouted, unsure if Jeff could hear him or not. He went back for the woman’s husband. The bedroom in which they’d found him was now fully engaged.
David got him back to the kids’ bedroom to find Myers at the window.
“Zell’s down,” he shouted, pointing to the floor. “Unresponsive.” Together he and Myers lifted Jeff into the bucket and Myers laid him as flat as the small space allowed.
David knew they couldn’t fit the woman’s husband in the bucket as well. “Take him down and come back for me and the victim.”
It seemed an eternity, watching the bucket descend. Waiting paramedics moved Jeff to a stretcher. Then Myers started back up.
The entire hall was now engulfed in flames and the fire had licked its way into the kids’ bedroom. Fifteen more seconds ticked by while the fire raced up the walls. Finally Myers was back and the two of them lifted the woman’s husband into the bucket. David climbed through the window and into the bucket just as the room went up.
Myers maneuvered the bucket several feet from the building as he took it down.
“You okay?” Myers shouted.
David nodded mutely. His chest felt like it was going to explode. His fingers itched to rip off the mask now that he was out, but he quelled the need, breathing evenly.
They got to the ground and David opened the bucket door, letting the medics drag the victim out and to a waiting stretcher. David yanked his mask from his face.
“Zell?” he asked loudly and the medics pointed to a retreating ambulance.
“He’s conscious but can’t feel his legs. He said to tell you that you’re even now.”
David’s chest felt frozen. Oh God. Spinal injury. God. He thought about the way he’d dragged Jeff out but knew it had been the only way to get him out of the fire. Please, don’t let me have made it worse. He looked back up at the building. Six more windows had terrified residents waving frantically for rescue. Zell’s in good hands. Those people are in yours. Do your job.
He strapped his mask back on and looked at Myers. “Back up?”
Myers nodded tiredly. David took the controls and sent them back up, casting worried glances at the ambulance as it screamed away.
Wednesday, September 22, 1:35 a.m.
“Olivia.” Noah Webster burst into the ER, pale. “Abbott called me.”
She was leaning against a wall outside the room in which Kane lay. She looked up, met Noah’s eyes. “They called it.” Kane’s time of death. As she’d stood and watched, helplessly. “There was nothing they could do.”
Noah closed his eyes for a long moment. “When?”
“Five minutes after we got here. I don’t know the exact time.”
“What happened?”
“I was too late. I wasn’t there.”
Noah grabbed her shoulders. “Stop that. Right now. This is not your fault.”
“Fine.” In the minutes since they’d taken Kane from the ambulance, her mind had moved from chaotic to precise. Clear. Logical. Still, her heart pounded like hell. “It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
Noah pinched her chin, made her look up at him. “You’re in shock.”
“No. I’m not. I’m waiting for Jennie and then I’m catching a ride back to the scene.”
“No, you’re not,” Noah said.
She jerked her chin from his fingers. “I’ll function. I owe Kane at least that much.”
“Olivia, you didn’t cause this.”
“No, but I might have prevented it. And I know damn well who could have prevented it.”
“Who?”
“Kenny Lathem. That’s who this guy was after. That’s why he called in a bomb threat. One of the cops at the scene followed us in. He said when the evac started, the staff had all the kids together. One of the staff told him that a guy dressed like a cop gave Kenny a note that said the detectives wanted to talk to him again. He led him away and forced Kenny into a white van at gunpoint. And no, nobody got a plate,” she said before he could ask.