Backdraft…

“Veronica!” I called out, and the tall redhead whirled to tell me off, the rage in her face smoothing out when she realized it was me. I shut off the bike and jogged over to her.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” she demanded by way of greeting. “She thinks you hate her!”

I cursed and sighed. “I smashed it, right as she left the damn firehouse,” I told her. “I went to call Torrid, to ream her a new asshole and I realized that’d be playing right into her hands and I threw the damn phone without thinking. I just got a new one, but I lost Lil’s number when I destroyed my old one like an idiot.”

“And you didn’t try to come here?” she asked.

“Yeah, the security turned me away, said Lil wasn’t taking any visitors.”

Veronica swore and dug around in her purse saying, “She’s a wreck. The lawyers are on it, the PR firm has told her to keep her mouth shut and –“

“Yeah, I know, they called me, told me to keep my mouth shut, too. I been toeing the line, but it’s fucking ugly, Ronnie. I mean, I thought Chrissy had it bad, this is… I’m speechless.”

“Welcome to the land of celebrity,” Veronica said dryly. “It’s true what they say, though.”

“What?”

“That no publicity is bad publicity.” I frowned and she rolled her eyes, clarifying, “That there’s no such thing as bad publicity! Her sales are through the roof, she’s making bank off the scandal. People are so stupid. They have to buy those books to burn ‘em.”

“I don’t care about money,” I seethed. “I care about Lil. She’s my fuckin’ life and this? Being apart from her? It’s killing me!” I swallowed hard and said, “I don’t know what to do.” She looked at me with sympathy and my voice cracked when I said, “Just tell me what to do… please?”

“Can you prove any of it is a lie?” she asked. I straightened and thought about it for a few. She held out her hands, a pen in one of them, what she’d been digging for in her purse, and I held mine out. She pulled up my sleeve on my jacket and wrote along the inside of my wrist. “Call Lil,” she said sternly and when she took her hands away there were two numbers scrawled along my skin. “The second one is mine in case you need it.”

“I will, and thanks,” I said. “I need to get back to the house. Captain is letting me skate for a little while but I can’t leave them a man down for long. I get off the day after tomorrow, in the morning.”

“Okay, program those numbers into your phone and don’t smash it this time. And if you think up any proof, you call me. We can take it to the PR firm. They’ll likely tell us to stuff it and to stay the course, but we can always try.”

I didn’t like that answer. I swallowed hard and nodded, and she made her way into the obsidian tower holding my princess high and far away from me. I sighed and went back to my bike, cameras snapping away across the street. I gave them the finger and fired up my bike and took my ass back to the station.

The guys had the doors up and stepped aside from where they were washing trucks and rolling hoses for me to park in the back near the locker room doors. Fucking paparazzi motherfuckers had fucked with my bike the night before to get me to come out so they could grill me. As soon as I was parked, I programmed the numbers into my phone.

I shot a text to Lil first thing:

I don’t hate you. I love you more than life itself. I’m so sorry.

I didn’t have time to do anything other than hit ‘send’ when the fucking house lit up in a full alarm.

“Structure fire! Let’s roll, boys!”

I got off my bike and laid my colors over the back, leaving my phone lying on top. I was in my uniform, had just thrown on my jacket and cut over everything when the Captain had told me to go run my errand, that he’d look the other way for me.

I ran to my gear hanging along the wall and suited up. Brody was pulling on his gear next to me and asked, “How’d it go?” I pressed my lips into a grim line and shook my head.

“Shit,” he said. “Sorry, bro.”

“Fuck it for right now, we got a fuckin’ job to do.”

“Right, we do. Let’s go be a fuckin’ hero,” he said. I nodded and marched to our truck, pulling myself up into my seat.

The structure fire was a projects building six blocks away and it was bad. Smoke billowed out of the third-floor windows. The building itself was six stories tall.

“Going down from the top!” I yelled and the ladder was already moving into position. I shouldered my tank and put my mask over my face. I bundled up, making sure my jacket was secure and my gauntlets were in place. The smell of campfire was strong and cloying, the harsh overtones of burning plastic riding the air and stinging the eyes. I made sure I had airflow, that comms was working with a swift radio check, and I moved my ass, hauling balls up the ladder with more of our guys on my six.

“Watch yourself, Calder!” The Captain came over the radio.

“Copy that. Brody, you with me?”

“On your six, Calder. Let’s do this.”

I cleared the ledge of the roof and strode across the tar-paper roof. I tried the door to the emergency stairwell, but it was locked.

“Ram!” I called and Brody thumped me on the shoulder. I set aside my axe and took up the other side of the battering ram. We hauled back on it and it took two-and-a-half tries for the door to bust loose.

“Goddamnit!” Brody cried when some of the folks from the units stumbled out onto the roof.

“Barnaby, get these people out of here! Brody and I are going in.” I took up my fire axe.

“Copy that!” Barnaby’s voice came over the radio as he helped people out of the stairwell. Smoke roiled out against the deepening twilight, and I took one last look up into the sky. I spied a star or two starting to come out and then I couldn’t see shit. I let the respirator do its job and pushed past bodies until suddenly, there was no more resistance from the press of people attempting to flee.

We plunged down the stairs to the first landing and started kicking doors, pushing people, coughing and choking, towards the stairs, creating a human chain with the few who stubbornly wanted to stay put despite the blaring alarm and faint wink of the emergency lights through the smoke.

We pounded on doors and made our way, floor to floor, until we reached the inferno chewing through the third floor.

“Brody! Here!” I shouted. I could hear someone coughing, someone crying, even through the chaos and rage of the flames.

“It’s bad in here, Boss,” I heard over the radio. “Fully engulfed, out into the hallway.” I almost didn’t recognize my own voice, the adrenaline surging, my blood rushing through my ears even as the fire roared up the hall. I kicked, and kicked again, the screaming and crying getting louder, forming words in thickly-accented English.

“Help! Help us!”

“One, two, three!” Brody kicked out with me in unison and the door gave, flying into the apartment.

An older woman was coughing and wheezing, choking something out in Spanish, a little girl nearby clutching a doll or something to her chest, crying. Brody went for the old woman; I dove for the kid and scooped her up. She screamed and wailed in terror, coughing and hacking, making these little mewling sounds between. Brody went first, the old woman screaming, probably for her granddaughter. I couldn’t make it out and honestly, I didn’t care. I had a job to do, get them out alive.

It was pitch black except for the heat and angry glow off to our left.

“Down!” Brody shouted over the radio and I turned my back on the flames. The heat was so intense that I could feel it even through my gear. I hugged the little girl close and bolted for the stairwell, moving down and nearly crashing into the rescue crew coming up from the bottom. They about-faced and we hauled ass down the stairs.

The kid went limp by the second floor and was totally fucking out by the first. I burst out onto the sidewalk and pelted for Angel, my mask so dirty with soot I could still barely see. The little girl roused and asked, “Mr. Mittens?” and I passed her off to Angel, who put oxygen on her.

“Here!” Lind passed a limp kitten and another mask off to me. I knocked off my helmet and ripped off my mask and put the oxygen on the cat, coughing the stench of the fire out of my own fuckin’ lungs. Still, I had to work on the kitten, because if that little girl lost her cat I’d feel fuckin’ terrible.

“Come on, little man!” I urged, rubbing his tiny limp body with my fingers, shoving his whole face into the mask. I swore to myself, soft and full of heat, angry, wanting to just save one fuckin’ thing. If it wasn’t my relationship with Lil, let it be this girl and cat.

Brody poured a bottle of water over the little ball of fur to cool him down and with an indignant cry, his little eyes rolled back into focus and he writhed in my hand, mewling up a storm. I grinned and let out a laugh and looked up and over to Angel and felt the fuckin’ smile die on my lips.

His shoulders were slumped and he wasn’t knuckle-dragging against the girl’s sternum trying to get her to open her eyes anymore. Lind looked like she’d taken a hit to her lady-balls too, and was pulling a sheet out of the back of their bus.

“No,” I said, and he shook his head and reached out to Lind to take hold of the sheet to cover the little girl. “No, no, no, no, no! Man, no!” I yelled. “You have to keep trying.”

Angel shook his head and looked like even he was close to tears and said, voice cracking, “Man, I can’t. It’s too late, she’s gone.”

“This is bullshit!” I screamed at him and threw my helmet off the top of my head onto the ground. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I screamed at no one. “The girl fucking dies but the goddamn cat lives?”

I shook my head, my rage suddenly fueled by the unfairness of everything! The girl fucking dies but the cat fucking lives. Lil gets fucking cheated on but her life gets turned upside down and inside out and I’m just supposed to sit here, her man, and not do a goddamned thing!

They weren’t even close to one another but it still tore at my soul, ate me alive, and was destroying me from the inside out. I looked down at the crying, mewling cat in Barnaby’s hands where I’d thrust it and bowed my head. Helpless to do anything, I just stood in the rush of activity around us as Lind looked at me with the same horror in her eyes that I felt.

The girl fucking dies but the cat fucking lives.

This was some seriously fucked-up shit.

All. Of. It.