Page 65 of Inferno

He was going to head right to Samantha’s room as soon as he could. Through the glass of the door and the wall around it, he could see across the hall. The emergency department of the hospital in Benson had all glass-fronted rooms, so staff could see in if they needed to.

It meant he saw the fire chief, Greyson Frayer, step into view and speak with a different nurse than the one he’d been treated by.

Inevitably, Julio’s thoughts slipped back to Samantha and the conversation they’d had. Not so much an end-of-life confessional, but pretty close to it. Each knew how the other felt.He’d stated his case as much as he could. Put all his cards on the table.

Taking her to his house—the place that was supposed to have been theirs—would either seal the deal or put an end to the whole thing. Which was probably why he hadn’t invited her over yet. Though, he was pretty sure he would soon enough.

As soon as they’d been pulled from the burning wreckage of the firehouse, they’d been separated. Put on different ambulances. Treated and rushed to the hospital. He wanted to get on his knees and thank God no one else had been inside the building when it blew.

Though, he needed to figure out the implications of other possible scenarios.

Julio had no idea where his phone ended up. Samantha’s had been shattered, but she’d used it for a flashlight. Even after her sister had replaced the screen after it was smashed when she was nearly strangled to death by Walter Barnes. He needed to message his parents and let them know he was all right, assuming they’d heard something happened to him. The need to connect was probably a result of nearly dying, realizing the frailty of his own mortality.

Live or die, he wanted it to be together with Samantha. He didn’t want to think what would have happened if he’d lost her. Which he very well could have. Or she could have lost him.

They could’ve both died today.

Greyson knocked on the door, dressed in his chief uniform, minus whatever jacket he’d been wearing at the scene. Though his face and hands looked clean, ash had smudged his shirt front between two buttons, and his neck and hair were slick with a layer of grime.

Julio lifted his chin, and the chief came in. “Hey.”

“Feeling okay?” Greyson looked him over.

“Better than I might’ve been if we’d been anywhere else.” Another thing to ponder.

“Good. Ready for a rundown?”

Julio nodded.

“Two explosive devices at either end of the firehouse, so he was going for maximum destruction. One of them malfunctioned somehow. The resulting explosion wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. Wallace from your team is going through it. That was his initial assessment.”

“Good. I trust Wallace.” His colleague on the bomb squad was an officer in Benson PD and a former explosives expert in the army. “I wanna get in there. Take a look at the scene.”

“I figured you probably would. But not before tomorrow. The whole place needs to be secure and cleaned up, and everything needs time to cool.”

Julio pressed his lips together.

“You’re okay. So is Detective Jesse,” Greyson said. “I saw her on my way over. She’s two rooms down with another woman and Detective Alvarez. They were talking.”

“Thanks.” Julio ran his available hand over his face. “Explosives?”

“It’s a deviation,” Greyson said. “All these fires, and elaborate scenes where he’s blocking HVAC and trapping people. Now this?” He sighed out all the weight of being a chief that he carried every day, made worse by the fact they still didn’t have a suspect.

“What about the school? Wasthattypical?” Julio turned so his feet hung off the side of the bed. He needed clean clothes—and shoes.

“Actually no. More like smoke bombs, according to your guy.”

“Samantha said the kids were hiding in closets, like a lockdown drill.”

Greyson nodded. “Vents were stopped up, so the smoke had nowhere to go. Heat cranked up, so it felt like there was a fire blazing somewhere in there. But no actual flames. Though, at the rate everything was going, something would’ve caught eventually. Electrical. Mechanical. There would’ve been a blaze, albeit pretty small at first.”

Things always escalated if left alone. Everyone in the department knew to check and double-check elements of a scene to make sure all potential flares were taken care of. Anything ignored had the ability to come back to life in a second on its own.

Fire was like nothing else. It had a life of its own.

It acted. It reacted. It found a path and consumed fuel reaching for more. Like it was alive…and hungry.

“Did Wallace take a look?”

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