Playing with Fire (13 page)

At twenty reps, he stopped and lay there, catching his breath. He stared at the ceiling as she stared at him, wishing she could will him to speak.

“You want to go back, don’t you? To firefighting?” she said quietly into the heavy silence.

He hesitated. Shook his head minutely. “Can’t do it.”

“I get that. You’ve said that. What I asked was if you
want
to. I saw it on your face when the truck went by, Derek.”

“What I’m trying to tell
you,
and you’re refusing to hear, is that it doesn’t matter if I have a random urge to go back to it. God, if I could go back to a year ago, I would in a heartbeat.”

“Yeah. I know some of what that feels like. Experienced it when my dad died. Again when my mom was so sick. It sucks.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t what she got. He shook his head again, subtly at first, then he sat up and shook it with so much conviction she straightened, alarmed.

“No. You can’t know what it feels like. You can’t begin to imagine how it is to be responsible for the death of someone you were supposed to love.”

Macey’s mouth gaped open. “I—”

“Don’t. Don’t try to tell me you have any idea what it’s like.”

He was blaming himself for not saving Julie and Billy. Un-be-lievable.

Or maybe not.

As the seconds ticked by and Macey thought about it, it wasn’t such a shock, after all. She was an idiot not to suspect it or consider it before now. He’d worked the fire. Julie and Billy had died. He’d been right there and not been able to do anything to help them.

Why hadn’t Macey seen it? She closed her eyes against tears.

“The building collapsed, Derek.” One of the few de tails from the fire that she knew. She swallowed. “That happens during fires.”

Derek got up and walked out of the room.

She sat there for a good ten minutes, wondering how in the world to make him see this objectively. It wouldn’t get rid of his grief—nothing ever would—but alleviating his unwarranted guilt could only be a positive step.

The shower in the master bedroom turned on. She rushed out, remembering the steaks were still in the oven. Ready to be turned over, at the very least. Maybe charred beyond recognition. She had no earthly idea how much time had passed while they were in the other room.

They were salvageable, whether she and Derek would have appetites or not. Macey flipped them over and distractedly added the pan of potatoes to the upper rack of the oven.

When Derek walked into the kitchen a few minutes later, Macey watched from the couch, sitting next to Burnaby, who hadn’t stirred. Derek surprised her by coming all the way into the living room and sitting down on the floor. He leaned against the couch in front of the dog, propped his elbows on his knees and covered his eyes with his palms.

She took it as a good sign that she hadn’t had to chase him down. It was all she could do, though, to wait for him to say something.
He
had to begin. She stroked Burnaby’s fur over and over to distract herself from all the questions she wanted to ask, the things she was dying to say. Finally, Derek uncovered his face and stared straight ahead.

“It was a four-alarm fire. We were the second team in. Julie wasn’t supposed to be working that day, so when I realized the shop she worked in was involved, I kept it together, thanking God she was with her family and nowhere near the fire.” His voice was gravelly, full of raw emotion.

“The fire had started in the shop next to hers, so we were sent in there to help Engine 17 put it out. We ran a dry two-and-a-half hose line up there because there was so much fire and smoke showing. I was on the nozzle. Place was so full of smoke we couldn’t see a thing, but we made our way to the second floor.”

He exhaled hard, as if this was taking a toll on him physically, then ran his hands through his hair.

“We’d no sooner gotten into position than flames started to roll across the ceiling. Aaron Maloney was with me, hauling hose. I radioed the pump operator to charge the line with water, and then the next second the whole thing flashed over.”

Macey’s pulse raced as she imagined Derek in such danger. He’d explained to her in the past that sometimes the rapid buildup of heat in a fire caused everything combustible in a room to spontaneously ignite, spreading the fire instantly—a flashover—often trapping the firefighters inside a room entirely filled with flames.

“We had to get the hell out of there. The flames made it brighter than the sun and just as hot, but the smoke was so thick it was still nearly impossible to see our way. We followed the hose line to the staircase we’d come up, and dived down it. It all happened within seconds.”

“You dived down stairs?” Macey asked, her heart pounding.

“We had no choice. Aaron took a pretty hard fall, cracked some ribs and broke his arm, but he softened my landing. The fire seemed to follow us down and I lugged him along, trying to find a back exit, because the entire front of the building seemed to be involved now.”

Macey crept onto the floor next to him, folded her legs beneath her and propped one arm on the couch so she faced Derek’s side. He didn’t move or appear to notice that she had.

“Never did find a back door, so I passed him out a window to a bystander and climbed out after him. Carrying him caused him excruciating pain, so I left him with the civilian and went to find a way around to the front to get an EMT there. I’d lost my portable radio inside.”

Burnaby stood and shook, making his collar jingle. He turned around on the couch a couple times, lay back down, and Derek continued.

“Those buildings were built about three feet apart, which is why the fire consumed so many of them. It just jumped from one to the next. I had to run up to the end of the block to get around. I didn’t know it then but they’d called in two more companies after mine. At that point, my first concern was for Aaron, getting him some help.”

“The EMTs were all on the other side?”

Derek nodded absently. “We’d been told when we arrived that most of the businesses were closed on Sunday. No one was aware of anyone inside. Residents of the top floor of the building to the north had been the ones to call in the alarm, and had gotten out safely long ago. The other buildings didn’t have residential units. All commercial.

“While I’d been inside, though, the initial report had changed. There were two cars in the parking lot, in spaces employees of the different businesses usually used. They’d sent some guys in to search the buildings that hadn’t been burning when we’d arrived.”

His face tightened and she saw him swallow hard. Macey sat up straighter.

“When I got around to the battalion chief in charge, I could see the fire had jumped south to Julie’s building and the one next to it. I heard about the two cars, and when they said one was a silver Camry my knees nearly buckled.”

“Julie’s?” Macey asked quietly, knowing the answer from Derek’s agony.

“Chief Valencia had Billy on the radio. He and Carlos had found two people in the basement of Julie’s shop. Both blonde females, both unconscious. Carlos had just taken one out a back window—apparently flames blocked the way to the door—and Billy was carrying the other woman, a few feet behind Carlos. I took off running, trying to find a shortcut to them, as soon as I heard.”

He leaned his head back on the couch, so he stared at the ceiling—or would have, if his eyes had been open. Macey could tell he was struggling to keep his composure. Grief pulled at his features and she wondered if he was even breathing.

She reached out to him but stopped short, her hand hovering above his arm as she hesitated. She drew it back without making contact, and waited for him to continue with the most horrible part.

“It took forever to reach them. First we had to get the fire under control, then dig through feet of debris. Chief Valencia tried to make me leave several times. Did everything short of shoving me in the truck and driving me away himself. But I couldn’t leave her, even once hope for their survival was gone. There was no way they could’ve made it. No pockets of air, no way they hadn’t been crushed under the weight of the two stories.”

Macey scooted closer and rested her head on his shoulder, her chest tight.

The timer on the ancient oven started beeping, the tinny, shrill sound dragging her back to the present moment. She couldn’t imagine eating now. “Be back in a sec.”

She got up and methodically, numbly pulled the steak and potatoes out, paying no heed to whether they were done or not. Tears blinded her and she couldn’t care less about the state of the food. After twisting the oven dial to Off, she rejoined Derek, who hadn’t moved a muscle.

She didn’t hesitate to slide right up next to him and weave their hands together again. He didn’t acknowledge her, but that was okay. Minutes passed without them speaking.

“Dare?” she finally said softly. “How do you think you could’ve stopped the building from falling on them?”

He stared straight ahead, dully, almost catatonically.

“I mean it,” she continued. “Firefighters are some of the biggest, bravest heroes out there. You run into burning buildings while everyone else is running out. You save lives, save property…. But you’re not God. You can’t stop a building from falling down after fire has ripped through it. Can you?”

She saw him struggle to swallow again. His eyes darted around the room, still avoiding her.

“Derek? You can’t. Admit that.”

His eyes shut and he shook his head.

“So then her death couldn’t be your fault. It was just horrible, awful luck that she and Billy were in that basement.”

He didn’t hesitate in his answer, as if he’d already asked himself this question and had formulated the answer in great detail. “If I’d figured out what was happening just feet away from me—literally maybe fifty feet—when I hauled Aaron out of the first building, I could’ve gotten in there to her. Could’ve got her out before the building came down. Maybe even before she lost consciousness.”

“You were getting help for Aaron.”

“I should’ve known. You always have to expect the unexpected when you’re working a fire. That’s rule number one. I could’ve guessed the fire would move south.”

“You’d been told there were no people inside. You were saving the one person you knew had been injured. What could you have done, ignore Aaron and run off on the slim chance your info had been wrong? That’s not even logical.”

“I failed her. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s not.” Macey kept her voice down when she wanted to scream at him. “I don’t care how good you are at your job, Dare. You’re still just one man. One man who made the best decisions you could based on the information you’d been given. Until you develop some kind of superpowers, I’m pretty sure that’s all anyone can ask of themselves.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It has to be. There was nothing else you could’ve done. Derek, you loved her. If you could have done
anything
else, you would have. I know that as sure as I need to take my next breath.”

He lowered his head to his hands, defeated. Tired and hopeless.

Darkness had fallen at some point and the only illumination came from a security light outside that shone in through the side window. The air conditioner was running and the usual din of the waves seemed a distant, vague sound in the closed-up condo.

Macey stood slowly, feeling as if she’d been dragged along a bumpy track by a freight train. She stretched to get some blood flowing. Burnaby stirred again, jumping down to sit at her feet, tail wagging.

“I need to take him out. Want to come with?” she asked.

Derek shook his head.

“I’ll make it quick.”

“Take your time. You can’t fix my problems, Mace.”

She knew that, but she
could
be there with him, and that was something.

The leash was still attached to Burn’s collar so she picked it up and followed the excited dog to the door. She held on tightly as she opened it, inhaling the fresh sea air as they stepped outside.

Burnaby did his duty quickly, then wanted to run. Macey was barefoot so she kept to the softer dry sand and jogged along with the dog for a short distance up the beach. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees since the heat of the day and actually felt good. Almost cool. The exhilaration from running with Burnaby gave Macey a second wind to go back in to Derek and do what, if anything, she could for him.

She took a reluctant dog inside with her and turned on the dim light over the stove to search for the mini bag of dog food she’d brought. She found two old bowls—actually, all of them were ancient—in the cabinet and put down food and water for Burnaby. Derek still sat in the same place in the living room and didn’t say a word. His eyes were closed but she didn’t think he was asleep. He looked too stiff and uncomfortable to have drifted off.

She put the steaks and potatoes in the refrigerator for tomorrow and gathered a couple of pillows and blankets from the bedroom. On the way back to the living room, she turned out the stove light. Burnaby was still going at his dinner, famished from all the exercise he’d gotten. Macey dropped the pile of bedding on the floor near Derek.

“What are you doing?” he asked, coming out of his trance.

She went back to the sliding door, opened the glass part and closed the screen, testing it to make sure it would stand up to a determined dog. She left the glass panel open about half a foot—just enough to let in the fresh night air and the meditative sound of the waves.

She spread Derek’s comforter on the floor. “Might as well get comfortable,” she told him, adjusting a pillow at one end of the makeshift bed. The other she put on the couch, along with the second blanket. “You can stretch out up here.”

“That couch isn’t suitable for sleeping or even not sleeping. Got more lumps than the Rocky Mountains.”

“Then lie on the floor,” Macey said, taking the couch herself. It was about ten o’clock, and she was beat.

Derek did stretch out on the floor, on his back, but even in the dim light she could tell he wasn’t going to let himself wind down. “Why don’t you go home?” he asked her after a few minutes of tense silence. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Sorry. Not leaving you right now. Besides, I’m too tired to move. You’ll just have to deal with me.”

She tried to get comfortable, but no matter which way she turned, one of the couch’s lumps pressed stubbornly into a tender part of her body. After a few more minutes, she sat up. “Move over.”

Derek obeyed, proof of how out of sorts he was, since he’d never really been the obeying type. She considered ordering him to roll over and let her massage him again, but she flashed back to the last time she’d tried that, and decided touching him so much wouldn’t be wise. Not as run-down and exhausted as they both were. She wouldn’t have much willpower to keep it friendly, and it was risky enough to settle just a foot away from him.

She couldn’t concentrate on her own feelings right now, or her wishes and desires that always seemed to include this man lying so close to her. Tonight was all about Derek and doing what he needed,
being
what he needed. If that was someone who was just close to him, who kept quiet, then that’s what she’d be.

They both lay there without talking for a long time. She wondered if he’d fallen asleep, but there was no even, relaxed breathing. She flipped onto her side, hoping to get more comfortable. The floor wasn’t much better than the wretched couch of lumps.

“You still awake?” Derek whispered.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

He turned on his side toward her and Macey wrapped her blanket snugly around herself, arms tucked in, for protection—from him, sure, but also from herself.

“What bothers me the most is imagining what must’ve gone through her mind before she died,” he said after another few minutes of silence. “She knew I was on duty that day. I wonder if she was waiting for me to get there, for one of us to save her. I wonder if there was ever…a moment, a thought that flashed through her mind, where she realized I’d let her down.”

That was it. Macey’s defenses went down and she threw her arms around him. “Oh, jeez, Derek. No. She never thought that. You absolutely didn’t let her down.”

He wrapped his arm around Macey and held on.