Page 63 of Combust
“Not without my daughter,” the woman protested. Maggie’s flashlight picked up tear-tracks cutting runnels through her soot-stained face. “Emily ran away when we found the kids playing in here.”
“Because she knows she’s in big trouble,” the man growled. He had hard features and mean eyes. “She and Cody know better than to play with matches, and now look what’s happened! We’re gonna lose everything we worked for!”
“—just w-wanted to put c-candles on a t-tree, like a C-christmas card!” wailed the boy. “I’m sorry, Dad! I’m really sorry!”
“Yeah, I’m gonna make you sorry,” the man threatened in a hoarse voice. “And your sister, too. Now stop sniveling.” He got the last word out and bent double, coughing.
“We have to leave,now!” Maggie shouted. “You’re all in extreme danger!” She looked at the woman. “Emily may have passed out from the smoke. I swear to you, I will come back in here and search for her. But first I need to get you out of here before you breathe too much of this smoke.”
“All right,” the man agreed. “C’mon, Denise, let’s go.”
The woman looked around wildly. “Emily!” she screamed, then collapsed to her knees in a fit of coughing. Her shoulders slumped in defeat.
The man wasn’t happy when Maggie ordered them both down on their hands and knees. But the air was definitely less smoky close to the ground. She led them at a crawl out of the barn’s side door, luckily located only a short distance from where they stood.
She reported what she was doing, and breathed a sigh of relief when the four of them emerged, blinking, into bright sunlight and fresh air.
Cade spotted them immediately, and sprinted over to meet them.
He handed her a bottle of water from the flat she kept in her car, and she took it gratefully. Despite the cold air out here, she was sweating heavily in her turnouts, and parched.
“I need to go back in,” she told him, lifting her mask to drink. “The place is full of stolen Christmas trees, and their little girl is still in there, somewhere.”
He looked sick at the news, but just nodded. “I’m prayin’ you find her safe and sound. Be careful.”
She finished off the water, and checked her air pressure gauge. She was shocked to see that she was already down by half a bottle…only fifteen minutes of air left at most, but probably less, considering how fast she’d consumed the first half.
She had to find Emily before her air ran out, because she didn’t have any spare SCBA bottles in her car. Those were all stored in the fire engine compartments…and there was no way the engine would arrive before the structure was completely consumed by fire.
Gritting her teeth in determination, Maggie plunged back into the smoke and darkness of the barn.
* * *
Cade tried his best to keep everyone—including himself—calm while he examined the soot-smeared couple and their little boy.
Maggie’s big, soft-sided first aid case sat on the ground next to him, but except for symptoms of smoke inhalation, which would need treatment with oxygen once the rest of the fire department arrived, the couple and their boy seemed uninjured.
At least performing his first aid checks helped tamp down his worry about Maggie and the terrible risk she was taking by searching the barn on her own.
His bear wasn’t helping. It insisted thatCadeshould have been the one to brave the flames, not their intended mate. His job was to protect Maggie, and he couldn’t do that standing out here.
But Cade’s human side knew better. He wasn’t a real firefighter, not yet. So far, all he’d done was read the textbooks, and attend the first of his training sessions on his day off.
That training had been more fun that he wanted to admit.
Dane and a couple of his brothers had taught him how to smoothly unroll fifty feet of fire hose by tossing the giant coil underhand like a slow softball pitch. Then they’d challenged him in a race against the clock to see who could gear up the fastest, the prize being a six-pack of beer.
Mark had won, but not by much. And he’d shared the beer after the training ended.
And then they’d tutored Cade in how to operate a hose. Even with his shifter strength, the three-inch-diameter hose had been as powerful and unpredictable as an angry boa constrictor, writhing and shaking with the force of the water flowing through it.
He’d done okay at first, aiming the jet of water at various targets, and practicing figure-eight sprays. Then the hose had bucked unexpectedly and knocked him down like a bowling pin. It had been a humbling lesson.
“Okay, thanks, you’ve done enough,” snapped the man, who’d grudgingly introduced himself as Austin Harrier. “We’re good. And we hafta gonow.”
“But we can’t leave without Emily!” his wife, Denise, protested. She stood next to the flatbed pickup, her body tense, her eyes never leaving the barn.
Austin strode over to her. “Look, we gotta get out of here before more people show up,” he told her urgently, in a low voice that Cade wasn’t meant to overhear. “If the cops come, they’re gonna confiscate the entire shipment. And Mrs. B is gonna bepissed.”
