The Firefighter's Appeal (Harlequin Superromance) (22 page)

“Find cover or something to hang on to.” There was a small coffee table and four metal-and-wood chairs, none of which were bolted down, a plastic magazine rack and a trash can. He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly remembering he’d put his handheld radio in his back pocket. Garrett grabbed it and flipped to the sheriff department’s frequency.

“This is DFD Assistant Chief Mateo to Brown County, do you copy?”

There was a small chance the transmission would go over in an atmosphere like this. Remembering the static he’d experienced on the pager earlier, he didn’t dare hope. But then a weak response came through.

“Copy.”

“I’m inside the jail lobby with a civilian. Can you radio the warden to buzz us in for shelter?”

Before he’d finished the word
shelter,
the front door began to rattle as if it were possessed. No light could be seen through the glass. A slight dizziness went through Garrett’s head, the lower channels of his ears yelping in protest to the pressure within. Garrett turned, grabbed Doug’s sleeve and pulled him down.

“Get down!” He threw an arm over his head and pressed against the security door that separated them from safety. The windows on each side of the lobby exploded. Glass cubes flew through the room, pebbling down the back of Garrett’s shirt, settling in his hair. Doug cursed next to him, but the sound was carried away as wind filled the small space. It swooped over them, spiraling glass around the room.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Garrett swept glass from his hair with one quick movement of his hand, glancing at Doug.

“I’m okay,” Doug offered, hunkering down a little lower.

Garrett’s mind filled with the aftermath of this... The town. Casualties. Fires and water main breaks and all the mess that could unfold if this tornado decided to have a raging bitch fit. He needed to be at the fire station, getting ready....

“Come on! Come on now!” The door they were leaning against buzzed and cracked open; a hunched-over deputy waved them in.

Garrett scooted back, ushering Doug ahead of him. He looked behind them, watching the front door rattle, thinking about his crew, hoping they were all safe...thinking about Lily and hoping she was on her way to her brother’s by now.

Safe.

* * *

T
HE
SOUND
OF
trickling water tempted Lily to fall asleep, but she knew she shouldn’t. She wanted to...just close her eyes and let go. Yeah, that sounded nice. A little nap to ease the tiredness. She was so exhausted that even opening her eyes was a struggle. It was dark anyway, and cool. Perfect for sleeping.

Something poked her in the hip, hard and sharp. No matter which way she turned, the bed was uncomfortable—like sleeping on broken rocks. She shifted a little more, froze when pain seared up from her ankle to her thigh.
Damn.
What did she have on her bed that would hurt like that? Was she lying on a—

Wait. Rubble beneath her palm...cold, wet, rocky ground beneath her bottom. She wasn’t in bed; there was no way she was in bed.

Lily tried to sit up, but a clamp of pain smacked her right in the forehead as another gripped her leg like talons. The dream state began to clear, but the darkness didn’t. The sound of water didn’t go away. The pain remained. And the scream begging to escape her throat stayed put, melting into panic. Her flight instincts kicked in, begging her to run away. Run away from the threat.

A threat she couldn’t see, but she felt down to the core of her bones.

* * *

“I
S
YOUR
DOG
on crack?”

Garrett took off his firefighting helmet and ran a forearm over his sweaty face. Six hours of searching through the debris and devastation the F3 twister had left behind had brought him a lick away from exhaustion. Forty minutes after they’d taken shelter in the jail, the tornado had left. They’d stepped outside, disbelieving when they’d seen the area around them virtually untouched. A few shingles were missing and debris was strewn around like a frat house after a kegger, but for the most part, the damage was minimal.

The east side of Danbury was leveled.

Garrett had dropped Doug off at his house, which was in an unaffected area of town. Frantic over Lily and the safety of his employees, Doug made calls on the way and reached everyone but the woman who cleaned the Ashden building. And Lily.

Garrett made a wide loop to the devastated part of town, but there was no way to get to the block where Lily’s apartment was because of the debris. Frustrated, he held in his anxiety, praying that she really had headed to Nashville, and went to the firehouse. The station had sustained minimal damage.

Once he’d been suited up in his turnout gear, Garrett had ridden with the department as far into the affected area of town as they could, and he’d walked the rest of the way. Lily’s apartment building was missing part of the roof and had some structural damage, but it was standing. Tenants milled around, looking lost and stricken. Garrett made it safely to Lily’s apartment and knocked for good measure before he kicked the door in and found her gone.

He’d already heard from another team that the Ashden building was leveled, but there wasn’t a vehicle matching Lily’s anywhere in the area. The relief he experienced almost buckled his knees.

Mia Smith, a member of the search-and-rescue team, narrowed her brown eyes at Garrett’s blunt question. “Kiki indicated human scent inside a building down the street.” She patted the search-and-rescue dog’s head. The German shepherd eyed Garrett as if challenging him to refute her nose.

“That block already had a first pass hours ago. The dog didn’t indicate then.”

Mia’s eyes became slits. “But she did
now.
”

Garrett scoffed. He’d been in and out of more houses than he could count today. Had helped recover forty people—thirty-eight of whom were still alive. The remaining two had spent their last moments trapped under brick and wood. Between the cacophony of people and machines digging through the rubble, the sounds of human emotions made a disturbing cadence. That was the part he hated the most because it was the hardest to block out—the sounds of crying, the wails of disbelief and heartfelt agony. The gut-wrenching cries and sobs of grief.

Around him, people milled through what was left behind. And through every minute, in the back of his mind, he hoped Lily was tucked in nice and tight at her brother’s house. He loved being a firefighter, but sometimes, like now, it twisted him up inside and made him hate the day he’d first pulled on his turnout gear. Scenes like this reminded him of why he did what he did—helping people get through the worst times. But now, since meeting Lily, they also reminded him of what he had to lose.

He hedged. He was confident the building Mia wanted him to go into was empty, considering that everyone who had reason to be inside was already accounted for.

“Look—”

“Kiki only indicates human scent. You saw her indicate—we all did.
What’s
your problem?”

His problem? He’d already dealt with horrendous injuries and pulled two deceased victims from rubble today. He was running on a handful of sleep and no food. He’d never fully recovered from all the sleep he’d been lacking lately. He and every other firefighter had worked nonstop to clear roads to let emergency vehicles through and search houses, barely taking a break to hydrate. The initial surge of adrenaline that made him feel like a superhero with never-ending energy had worn off hours ago, leaving him tired, cranky and barely holding back his emotions.

Garrett wiped sweat from the side of his face and let some of the angst out with a deep sigh.

“Which building?” He’d search one more. “And I’m in and I’m out, okay? If no one responds to my call, I’m out.”

He sidled up to the rescue truck, cracked a water bottle and put another in his front jacket pocket. Garrett guzzled the water and stripped off his heavy turnout jacket and pulled the suspenders of his pants down. A breeze whipped over his soaked T-shirt, making him shudder. Damn, that felt good.

“The Ashden building.”

The water bottle fell from his hand, hitting Kiki on the side of the head.

“What did you say?” Garrett spun to follow Mia’s gaze down the block. They’d worked their way down the street until what was left of Lily and Doug’s building was in view. But he’d been assured it was clear, so he hadn’t worried another moment about it.

A huge crack sounded through the air, making them both jump.

Mia gave Garrett a hard look. “It was cracking like that when we were over there. I’m afraid we’re running out of time for a search and rescue before the whole thing comes down.”

The brick building was old, a historic home the Ashdens had converted into office space. Most of the upper level had collapsed. Garrett had no doubt the sound they’d just heard was the foundation cracking under the weight of all that brick and mortar.

A big hand squeezed Garrett’s shoulder.

“Damn, I hate to send you in there.” Dabney Grail had a smile that emphasized every tiny line in the crow’s feet around his eyes. How he managed to always be smiling and laughing after eighteen years as fire chief, Garrett didn’t know. “I’m sending Roan in with you. You cool?”

Garrett drained another bottle of water and kept his feelings to himself. Who else would be inside the Ashden building? Doug had said all his employees were accounted for except the cleaning lady who came early in the morning. But the odds were that she’d left long before the tornado struck.

“Which side am I going in on?”

Twenty minutes later, Garrett was back in his turnouts and helmet, a respirator secure over his face to keep dust out and oxygen in. He and Roan Stokes surveyed the building for an entrance point close to where Kiki had indicated human scent.

The building swayed and creaked, reminding them of its ability to crush them at any given second. Garrett swallowed his unease. If he could get in, he’d do a quick thermal sweep and a few callouts to see if there was any response. If not, he was gone.

Roan tapped him on the shoulder and thumbed to a split in the exterior. It was just wide enough for them to squeeze through. Two-by-fours and piles of reddish-brown brick marred their path. Dust and bits of debris clouded the air like smoke. Daylight streamed in from the breaks in the structure as they slipped inside, making the dust and tidbits sparkle like diamonds.

Garrett shone his light through the rubble. He spotted a bright orange X in a corner—the mark Mia had made when she’d been inside sweeping with Kiki earlier. He assessed what was left of the ceiling, trying to see any sign that it was going to fall on them, before easing his way to the X.

He followed the wall, holding back a bitter taste in his throat as the floor creaked and sagged against his weight. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, blocking their way into the next room. They were cramped inside a ten-by-ten space, thanks to the cave-in. The X indicated where Kiki had picked up scent, but it only gave them a vague location, not an exact pinpoint. There could be a body under the rubble or behind the wall in the next room. Worse, there was no way to know if they were looking for a living person or a dead one.

After breathing deep inside his respirator, Garrett called out, “Is anyone here?”

Tapping the wall with the butt end of his ax, he found a hollow spot. With another glance upward and a silent prayer, he whacked the wall, slicing through weakened Sheetrock with ease. Using his hands, he carved out an opening big enough to see through. The room on the other side appeared to be completely caved in. He called out again, hoping his voice would carry through the hole and density of rubble.

No response.

Taking another look around the small space, Garrett saw scattered remnants of the business—papers, pens, file folders—tossed like leaves between bricks and drywall. Roan called out again and both men waited, listening. More debris falling around them and the squeak and slide of wood rubbed the silence.

Garrett pulled back from the hole; Roan shrugged. “We done? This house is coming down anytime. I can feel it.”

Garrett bit his lower lip. He could feel it, too—that sinking, hollow sensation in the pit of his gut that told him things were about to go down.

He looked at the X. They’d only been inside a few minutes. It didn’t seem like enough time when they were possibly holding life and death in their hands. But if they looked too much more, they could be the ones buried. Compelled to check it out a little more, Garrett wedged himself between the support beams inside the hole he’d made and aimed his beam to cut through the darkness.

“Anyone here?”

He managed to squeeze through the opening, finding a narrow space on the other side that wasn’t filled with debris.

“Fire department!”

He took a deep breath of the oxygen coming through his mask and waited again. If anyone was trapped under all this rubble, there’d be little to no chance of getting them out without collapsing the rest of the house. A sick, heavy feeling welled in his chest. This was why he hadn’t wanted to come in here. The threat of finding someone or suspecting someone was present and not being able to help was crushing.

“Garrett, let’s go.”

“I’m coming.”

He was just about to take a sideways step when he heard it. Garrett stopped dead, holding his right hand out to signal Roan to be quiet. His chest grew tight as he tried to restrict his breathing. Each breath made his turnout coat rustle, drowning out anything quiet or faint. He was just about to blow out a huge, pent-up breath when he heard it again.

“...help.”

A new surge of adrenaline flooded his body, making his senses suddenly crisp and focused. He signaled Roan with a thumbs-up.

“Hello?” Garrett called out, moving back into the dark, rubble-filled room.

A reply came from somewhere inside, muddled and hard to pinpoint. His flashlight beam bounced off the mounds of debris and highlighted falling dust. Another sound came, pulling his attention to the far-right corner. Garrett stepped into the narrow opening between wall and cave-in, his heart racing like a derby horse. A few inches from meeting a dead end, he saw it. A hole in the floor, barely wide enough for a person to slip through.