Mcqueen's Heat
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Harper Allen
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16.7K
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18
Chapter One
The beast had devoured her world. At five years old she’d looked into its face and had barely escaped from its jaws. Now she was twenty-six—okay, twenty-seven in a couple of weeks, Tamara King thought grimly. She was still battling the beast.
She was a firefighter. She hated fire.
“Anybody in there?” She saw Joey Silva spare her a glance from a few yards down the corridor, but already she was kicking the door open. She entered, moving quickly through the tiny rooms before racing back into the corridor.
“These freakin’ rooming houses.” Under his helmet, her partner’s expression was disgruntled. “Freakin’ fire-traps. Come on, I found another freakin’ hallway.”
“Gosh darn it all anyway.” Tamara looked at the stairway behind them. “You know, Joey, you’re going to have to get a couple new cuss words one of these days.”
He followed her glance. “We can’t wait for the hose. Let’s go rouse the rest of the rubbies and the junkies.”
She fell into step behind him, not taken in by his seeming callousness. It and his profanity were part of the protective shell that all of them had to grow, in their own individual ways.
The yellow bands on Joey’s coat were bobbing smears of color in the smoke, and she reached with her leather-gloved hand for the air-pack at her chest. Following him into the secondary corridor Tamara realized that although a few tendrils of smoke were eddying in from the hallway they’d just left, this one was clear.
Bad sign, she thought, instantly alert. It’s trying to trick us.
“The bitch is around here somewhere.”
Joey’s gaze had narrowed in identical suspicion, and despite the situation she hid a smile as she scanned the hallway. She called it the beast. For reasons known only to himself, he saw fire as a heartless female who—
Her thoughts screeched to a halt. Running along the top of the walls in front of them was a tracery of glowing red.
“Hell, Joey—it’s in the ceiling,” she whispered hoarsely.
“And the freakin’ ceiling could go any minute.” He wiped his mouth. “Come on, Red, the faster we check this hall the faster we can get out of here.”
He’d bestowed the roughly affectionate nickname on her the first day she’d walked into the stationhouse six years ago, her auburn hair scraped back into a braid that kept unraveling. His use of it now didn’t mask his apprehension. Her gaze sharpened.
“Where’s your air-pack?”
He shrugged, avoiding her frown. “Guess I’ll just have to eat the smoke. You take this room, I’ll check out the one at the end of the hall.”
With a father and grandfather who’d both been Boston firefighters, Joey knew better. But too often he arrived at a fire without his air-pack and ended up having to eat the smoke, as the old-timers called it. Tamara thudded her gloved palm on the door before pushing it open with more force than she needed.
Even as her gaze took in the man standing at the window with his back to her, she knew he was going to be trouble.
He was big—six foot two or three at least, to her five-six. As she entered he spoke without bothering to turn around.
“Don’t worry about me, buddy, I can take care of myself.” His tone was flat. “Up until yesterday the room down the hall was unoccupied but you might want to check it out anyway. The fire’s in the ceiling, so there’s not much time.”
She tamped down the spark of anger that flared in her at his offhand attitude. Except for his height and the breadth of his shoulders, it was obvious he was no different from the rest of the lost souls she’d glimpsed as she’d run into the building. His hair, dark brown and too long, brushed the collar of his sweatshirt and his khaki pants had seen better days. The leather of his military-style shoes was cracked.
He wasn’t a junkie. His build was too solid for a drug-user, so the addiction that had brought him to a room in this rundown building had to have been alcohol. Still, he’d travelled so far down the road to self-destruction he couldn’t even recognize how much danger he was in.
But he’d known the fire was in the ceiling, and he’d known what that meant. She didn’t have time to wonder how or when he’d gained that kind of knowledge.
“My partner’s checking it out.” From another part of the building came a muffled crash as something fell. “You’re my responsibility, mister. Let’s move.”
He’d obviously assumed she was a man, because at her first words he’d turned to face her, his eyes widening as they met hers. Now he gave her a hard smile. She blinked, feeling as if a tiny shock had just gone through her.
“You passed the department physical so you’re probably pretty strong, honey, but I’ve got almost a foot on you and I’m a whole lot heavier. I don’t see you getting me through that door if I don’t want to go.” His shrug was dismissive. “Find your partner and the two of you get out while you can.”
His eyes were the color of smoke—so pale in the tan of his face that it seemed as though they were looking through her. The tan she could understand, even in an unseasonably wet Boston May. Men like him picked up odd jobs, usually outdoor work, to pay for their habit.
His age was impossible to pinpoint. From the hard planes and blunt angles of his face he looked to be in his mid-thirties, but though his smile had held little humor and no warmth, for the briefest of instants it had transformed his whole expression. Not so long ago the man in front of her had been a very different person, Tamara thought with sudden certainty. If even now there was a destructively dangerous aura about him, what impact had that smile had on women before his life had spiralled out of control?
Who cares, King? Abruptly she shoved her speculations aside. The man’s past didn’t concern her. How and why he’d arrived at this dead end wasn’t her business. Her job was to get him out of here, whether he wanted to go or not.
But that wasn’t going to be easy. The sleeves of his sweatshirt were pushed up to his elbows, and the corded muscles of his forearms and the strength of those hands looked formidable. Squaring her shoulders, she clamped a gloved hand on his arm.
“That’s not the way it works,” she said, some of the anger she’d tried to suppress seeping through into her voice. “I’m a firefighter. If you understood anything at all about what that means you’d know I can’t walk away and leave you here.”
“Yeah, you can. You’re going to.” Under her hand his arm felt like a slab of rock maple. His tone was even harder. “Let me put in words you’ll understand, honey. I don’t want you risking your life for someone like me.”
“Then both of us just ran out of luck, honey,” Tamara grated, her grip on him tightening. “Because risking my life is part of the job, and I’m not about to make an exception in your case.”
For the space of a heartbeat their gazes locked, hers coldly stubborn, his opaquely unreadable. Then he exhaled sharply, his posture rigid.
“My conscience seems to have taken everything else I’ve thrown at it over the years, but even I’ve got my limits,” he said, his tone tight. “You win. Let’s find your partner and get the hell out of here.”
The whole encounter had taken only seconds, but somehow she felt as if she’d just gone ten rounds with Holyfield and had only squeaked by on a technicality, she thought as she stepped out into the hall, acutely aware of the man behind her. What the hell was his problem?
Or maybe she should be asking herself what her problem was, Tamara conceded. His wasn’t that hard to figure out. In a city like Boston men like him came to the same decision every day: that they’d reached the end of the line, and it wasn’t worth the pain and effort of going on. So why had she been so sure that if she hadn’t gotten him out she would never be able to forgive herself, never be able to forget a distant gray gaze that for only a moment had held hers?
Because this is my watch, she told herself sharply. If the man decides to jump off a bridge next week, fine. But he doesn’t get to do it on my watch, for crying out loud.
“Where’s your partner?”
Coming out of the room and carefully closing the door behind him—he knows that about fire, too, Tamara thought in faint surprise—the big man frowned at her. She felt her eyes tearing up, and realized that the smoke had thickened noticeably. Through the haze she could see Joey appear in the open doorway at the end of the hall.
“He’s coming,” she said curtly. “It looks like you were right. There couldn’t have been anyone in—”
Beside her he tensed, his glance swinging quickly upwards. Following his gaze, her own widened in instant dread.
“Move!” Even as she opened her own mouth to scream out a warning to Joey the stranger’s sharply shouted command overrode her. “Goddammit, man, move! The damned ceiling’s giving way!”
Joey jerked his attention to the pulsating red above him, and through the intervening smoke she saw sudden fear on his face. He looked down again, his expression strained. “There’s some—”
He never got to finish the rest of his sentence. Since she’d stepped into the hall, Tamara had been increasingly aware of a dull rumbling sound coming from above. She’d known it was the beast, feeding off the rapidly depleting air supply of the building’s attic in order to gain enough strength to break through into another rich vein of oxygen.
As if a door had suddenly opened into a forgotten anteroom of hell, suddenly she saw the decades-old lathe framework standing out in stark black relief against the billowing crimson just above it, like a lattice holding back some nightmarish burden of roses in a poisoned garden. She heard Joey’s boots striking the carpet of the floor as he ran toward them with desperate speed. She saw the lathe seemingly vanish into nothingness and knew with terrible certainty he wasn’t going to make it.
“Get back!”
The hoarse shout in her ear was obliterated by the roar of the fire as it poured triumphantly downward. A powerful arm slammed across her upper body, and she felt herself being jerked almost off her feet even as her horrified gaze saw Joey’s anguished face disappear behind the wall of flame that came down between them.
She fumbled with the air-pack at her chest but her hand was struck away, her wrist grabbed in a steel grip.
“No time for that. Run!”
“He’s my partner!”
Furiously she turned to confront him, but already he’d pulled her into motion, his hold on her wrist unbreakable. She darted a look over her shoulder and saw the air waver, as if some unimaginably strong force was tearing at the atmosphere.
That was exactly what was happening, Tamara thought in sharp terror. Wrenching her gaze forward, she put on a burst of speed, saw the man at her side gather himself and leap the last few yards to the main corridor, felt her shoulder joint scream in protest as she was yanked along with him.
And then they were flying through the air, the drag created by her heavy turnout coat more than counter-balanced by the strength of the arms now wrapped tightly around her. There was a deafening whoosh behind them, and her helmet was knocked from her head as her face was pressed into a sweatshirt-clad chest. A moment later the ground crashed up to meet them.
The beast had needed oxygen. At the instant it had broken through and found it, it had opened its jaws and sucked in the whole hallway-full of air, replacing it with a heat searing enough to burn anything it came in contact with.
Guess I’ll just have to eat the smoke. Joey had been caught in that maelstrom, Tamara thought sickly—as she would have been, if not for the reaction of the man holding her. She felt the blast of boiling air pass over them and ebb back again like a spent wave. Only then did she raise her head.
His face was so close to hers that his lashes, dark and thick, brushed against her cheekbones as he blinked. Raggedly he exhaled.
“You all right?” His words came out in a gasp, and she nodded, unable for the moment to speak. His jaw tightened.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Unsteadily he stood, hauling her up with him as her boots scrambled for purchase on the carpeting. “The rest of the roof’s going to fall in on us any minute now.”
He was right, she thought, glancing up at the spreading inferno above them and at the wall of flame devouring the hall. But he was wrong, too. She shook her head.
“My partner’s in there. I have to get him out.”
“Your partner’s probably dead.” His tone was as brutal as his statement. “I didn’t want you to throw your life away on me, and I won’t stand by and watch you do it for him. He was a firefighter. He knew the risks involved.”
“And if it was me instead of him trapped there, Joey would take the risk,” she rasped unsteadily. “I’m a firefighter, too. We don’t let each other down, dammit!”
As she raced back toward the flames she heard his footsteps pounding behind her. She felt him grab at her once more and she spun around, fury and fear spilling through her, but as she turned she saw something out of the corner of her eye.
She whirled back to face the fire in disbelief. Then she broke free, and this time he didn’t attempt to stop her but instead ran with her to the figure emerging from the flames just as it took one last staggering step and crashed face forward onto the floor.
“Joey!”
Falling to her knees, Tamara turned him over. In the instant before she shut her mind to what she was looking at, she felt stark horror sweep through her. The bitch had gotten him, she thought frantically. His face was badly burned, and as she clapped her air-mask over his mouth she saw his eyes open dazedly to meet hers. He pushed the mask away and she saw with shock that he was trying to speak.
“Don’t talk, Joey. Don’t try to talk, for heaven’s sake,” she gabbled, fighting to get the mask back on him. “The hose crew’s on their way.”
His hand in its still-smoking glove swatted the mask away with a strength she hadn’t anticipated, and his eyes glared up at her. His seared lips stretched open.
“For God’s sake, Joey, don’t—”
“What the hell is it, buddy?” The big man shot her a look. “He’s trying to tell us something. What is it, pal?”
Joey’s eyes bulged with strain. He drew in a shallow, rattling breath and raised his head a few inches from the floor, clutching urgently at Tamara’s coat. “Child,” he wheezed. “Mother…dead. The child ran. Too much smoke to see her…flashlight broke.” He fell back, his desperate gaze holding hers a moment longer before his eyes lost focus.
What she’d told him hadn’t been a comforting lie, Tamara thought, tearing the air-pack from around her neck and affixing the mask over his face. From the main corridor she could hear shouts and the splintering sound of axes sinking into wood. But if there was a child trapped behind that wall of fire she couldn’t stand around waiting for help to arrive. As she got to her feet, she glanced over her shoulder.
“You stay here with him. I’m going—”
She blinked. The stranger wasn’t there anymore. Her head jerked up and her disbelieving gaze flew to the encroaching fire just in time to see a broad-shouldered, sweatshirt-clad figure run into the devouring flames.
“King, thank God! Where’s—”
Crew chief Chandra Boyleston turned to bark out an urgent command. “Man down here! There’s a man down here, dammit!” She switched her attention back to Tamara. “Silva wasn’t wearing his air-pack?”
“There’s a civilian in there, plus at least one 10-45 already.” Her own voice edged as she used the code that veiled the harshness of the word body, Tamara ignored her superior’s question. “Joey said he also saw a child, but the kid ran away from him. He was coming to get my flashlight when he…when it…”
She flicked a glance at the wall of fire dividing the hall. Bending down, she picked up her helmet from where it had fallen and crammed it onto her head.
“The civilian went in for the child. I’ve got to go after him.”
Without waiting for Boyleston’s reply she took off down the hallway, covering the lower half of her face with her glove as she got nearer to the roiling mass of crimson and orange. Beside her a wall burst into flame, but instead of increasing her fear, she felt an eerie calm settle over her.
“You want me. You want me, the man and the child,” she ground out. “You might get one of us. You might even get me and the man. But if there’s a child in there, either he or I will make sure you don’t take a life that hasn’t even had a chance to begin yet.”
Just ahead of her was solid fire. She took a last desperate breath, put on a final burst of speed and nearly stumbled in shock.
He came toward her from out of the flames. The sweatshirt had caught on fire and his face was a grease-smeared mask, but his stride didn’t falter. In his arms he carried a bundle tightly wrapped in sheeting, and from the steam that rose from it she guessed that the sheet, along with its precious cargo, had been doused with water only seconds before.
Red-rimmed gray eyes met hers as she ran to him, holding out her arms for the child. A corner of his mouth lifted, and right then and there the full force of his basic and overpowering maleness struck her like a blow.
Something sliced through her, as bright and as piercing as pain. Unable to tear her gaze from his Tamara simply stood, drinking in the sight of him.
Her first impression had been right, she thought shakily. He was a man who’d been to hell and back sometime in his past. He’d returned unhesitatingly to the inferno to save the life of a child or die trying.
“Smart little girl,” he rasped. “She was in the bathtub. She was holding this in her hand—wouldn’t leave until I promised to keep it safe. Then she fainted.”
Dragging the smoldering shirt over his head and dropping it to the floor, he peeled a piece of paper from his sweat-drenched chest and held it out to her.
“Bet you didn’t figure you’d end up right next to my heart when we met a few minutes ago, did you, honey?” he asked, his voice cracking with hoarseness. “Where the hell’s the hose crew, anyway?”
Taking one more step forward, he crumpled heavily to the ground, the photograph of a much younger Tamara King fluttering from his fingers.
