Page 73 of Reckless
No one was there.
“Did you see that?” he asked, swinging toward Jones. “I swear I saw someone in that back room.”
Jones gave his head one tight shake. “I was concentrating on the line.”
Shit.Of course he was. It’s what Alex had told him to do.
“Not the time to stop getting chatty, Donovan,” Westin grated through the radio, and Alex arrowed his stare back to the bedroom, nearly engulfed by smoke and shadows.
“I saw something in the rear bedroom, east side. I swear.” His legs itched to bolt down the hall, but he settled for a lung-burning shout. “Fire department! Call out!”
The only answer was the incessant rush of flames and Alex’s breath sawing in and out of his own ears.
“Neighbors say there’s nobody home,” Westin radioed, yanking Alex’s attention back to the landing. “I can’t green light a search on a maybe. Not with a fire like this.”
Alex assessed the line, a sharp curl of relief spiraling through his gut as he saw it advancing, albeit slowly. “We’re straight down here on the landing. I’m telling you, Cap.” He turned again, taking a few steps toward the mouth of the long, tightrope-thin corridor. “I had eyes on somebody.”
“Is that an affirmative?”
Alex paused. “Not entirely, but?—”
“Can’t do it, Donovan.” Westin’s growl was all bite, and for a minute, Alex froze. He hadn’t run a fire call in over five weeks, and his screaming muscles and overeager adrenaline were living proof. While they were able to advance the water line right this second, Alex knew shit could go south on a dime—hell, he’d seen worse consequences from more stable situations. His brain cautioned him to stay put, to stand down on the search and work with Jones to back up Everett so they could all put this fire out as fast as possible.
But then the figure reappeared, and Alex lunged down the hallway.
“Fire department!” he bellowed, sweat streaming between his shoulder blades as his heart pumped his blood on a lightning-fast circuit through his veins. Blocking out the shouts from behind him—presumably Jones’s—as well as the abundant stream of curse words coming in from the radio that were definitely Westin’s, Alex barreled toward the bedroom.
A man, thin and frail and wrapped in a bathrobe, stood bent over by the bed, his face pale white and panic-stricken as his chest heaved with weak coughs, and holy hell, he looked barely a step away from keeling over.
“Tried…to call out, but…I came home sick, and…I think I passed out…”
“Don’t worry,” Alex said with a shake of his head. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
He crossed the threshold to grab the guy and haul ass out of there, but he only got three steps inside the bedroom before his gut plummeted all the way to his feet. More than half of the Charlie side wall was on fire. Bright streamers of flame hovered over the doorway, reaching up to the ceiling in a bright-orange arc, and hell. No wonder the man hadn’t come running out to the safety of the hallway beyond.
Alex reached for his radio with one hand while guiding the man away from the door with the other. “Donovan to command, I’ve got a man trapped on the second floor, Charlie side. Needs medical attention. Our exit is compromised.” Big. Fucking. Understatement. More than half the damn door frame had gone up in flames in the fifteen seconds Alex had been inside the room. “I need a ladder to this window, and I need it now.”
“This fire’s burning like a sonofabitch. We’re trying to get to you, but it’s going to take a couple of minutes.”
The man swayed in place, his coughs rattling all the way through him as he gasped for air, and Alex turned to yank the window as far as it would go against the sash. Ah hell, there wasn’t even so much as a tree or a porch roof within range of the twenty-five-foot drop, and a straight jump would be upper-level dangerous. “I don’t have a couple of minutes,” he said. “Hurry.”
Alex stabbed his boots into the floor, looking around the room for something—anything—he could use to get them either out the window or past the deteriorating door frame. But there was nothing usable in the tiny room, and the odds of surmounting either obstacle were growing more shitastic by the second.
The man collapsed into a heap on the floor.
“Whoa!” All of Alex’s air abandoned his lungs on the shout. He hit his knees, the jolt running up his legs even through his heavily padded turnout gear. But the man was unresponsive, his breathing thready and irregular as Alex checked his vitals. He craned his neck to look at the window over his shoulder, and cold fingers of dread slithered up his spine at the realization that no matter how fast squad appeared with that ladder, he didn’t even have ten seconds to wait.
“Okay, buddy.” Alex choked back the harsh tang of fear before scooping him from the carpet. “Let’s get you out of here.”
The man’s frail body was an easy lift, even for Alex’s wailing muscles. The left side of the door frame was completely swallowed up by flames, so he swung the man’s body over his right shoulder. Locking his molars together with a determined clack, he aimed himself at the burning exit, not even giving himself a chance to second-guess as he burst past the falling ash and flames.
And slammed right into Cole and Jones on the other side.
“Christ, Teflon!” Everett shouted, and Jones reached out, sliding the unconscious man from Alex’s shoulder in a quick grab.
“He’s barely breathing. Get him to Rachel. Go,” Alex barked. Relief blasted through the unchecked adrenaline, making his vision shaky and his mouth tilt upward into a holy-shit-that-was-close smile. He jerked his chin at Cole, signaling for his best friend to follow Jones down the hall so they could get the hell out of Dodge.
But before Alex could take a single step, the door frame he’d just charged past came crashing down over the left side of his body, and then everything went black.
