by Julie Miller
He hadn’t felt like that much of a man in months. He hadn’t felt that kind of normal. He hadn’t felt such a deep connection to another human being since opening that first letter overseas all those months ago.
And already he felt like that connection was fading.
“Come to the damn door, woman.” The wintry night air was moving past being a healing remedy and was becoming a nose-numbing reminder that he’d been out here far too long without having any contact with her.
Harry pulled out his phone to call her and swore. He’d known Daisy for almost a year and a half and had been with her most of the past twenty-four hours—and he’d never once remembered to get her phone number. Not very slick. Or practical.
He was scrolling through information on his phone, looking for the Central Prep Academy number when he heard the first siren in the distance.
If an empty parking lot had given him a bad feeling, the sinuous noise of two more sirens cutting through the crisp night air was telling him to trust that feeling. “Daisy?”
A shrill, uninterrupted ringing from a much closer source jerked him around. Fire alarm. “Daisy!”
He needed her with him. Now.
Harry pulled a crowbar from the toolbox behind the seat of his truck. He ran to the front doors, tried two of them, but they were both locked. He didn’t bother with the third or fourth door. He jammed the crowbar between the door and frame and forced it open. He’d probably just triggered another alarm in the office or at a nearby police station. But he knew he could use the backup the moment the door swung open and he dashed through the vestibule. A thin, gray haze hung in the air, stinging his sinuses with the distinctive smell of smoke. The memory of an explosion went off inside his head, but he clenched his jaw, forbidding the nightmare to seize hold of his thoughts. No Tango. No bomb. He was home in Kansas City. The damn school was on fire and Daisy was in it.
Harry surveyed the lobby and saw no one, just a folded-up table with Daisy’s pink purse hidden behind it. He found the custodian inside the gym on his cell phone, talking to a dispatcher. Harry waved him toward the front doors, ordering him to report that there were at least two other people inside the building.
Then he followed the hazy wisps of toxic fumes to the top of a stairwell where a darker cloud of smoke was gathering beneath his feet. He inspected the open padlock and gate, heard the distinctive whoosh and pops of live flames. The smoke swirled around his ankles as he went partway down the steps. “Daisy? Daisy Gunderson, are you down here?”
His answer was a couple of loud bangs, a muffled curse and then a croaky, “Harry? I’m trapped. There’s smoke. I called 9-1-1. I pulled the fire alarm in here.”
Smart woman. Harry took the stairs two at a time, running straight at the sound of her voice. “I heard the sirens. The fire department is on its way.” The smoke was denser down here, the breathable air more pungent. There was nothing accidental about this blaze. The fire itself was a small pyre in the middle of the hallway, piled with rags, a bag of trash and what looked like a woman’s coat, all shriveling into ash and goo as they burned and melted. The concrete and metal down here would be hard to burn, but he smelled enough acetone, probably varnish or paint solvent, to make his eyes water. He shoved open the first door and discovered the boiler room. “Daisy?”
He heard her coughing again and kept moving. Metal banged against metal. “In here.”
The next door. Right beside the blaze. With more accelerant splashed on the door itself so that rivulets of fire ran down the heavy steel.
“Hang on, honey, I’m coming.” Harry edged around the puddle of flames dripping on the floor to get his hand on the door, but he quickly snatched it away. Even through the leather and lining of his glove, the rising temperature scorched him. “Don’t touch the door,” he warned. “It’s hot.”
“That’s why I’ve been hitting it with this metal chair.” Her brave voice stuttered with another fit of coughing. “I can’t get it open.”
He couldn’t, either, unless he could put out some of those flames and get closer. He swung his gaze around. Through the chimeras of heat rising toward the ceiling, Harry caught a glimpse of a ghostly figure climbing the stairs at the far end of the long corridor. Was that a trick of the smoke? A flashback to tracking insurgents in that village outside Fallujah? The instinct to give chase to the potential enemy tensed through every muscle. “Hey!” he shouted. “Stop!”
“What is it?” Daisy gasped.
The apparition was gone. The reality was here. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“He’s jammed the door or broken the lock.” Daisy’s coughing reminded Harry that his priority was to keep her safe. That meant finding a way to get her out of there.
He spotted the fire extinguisher cabinet anchored to the wall. On the other side of the fire. “Are you hurt?” Harry asked, using the crowbar to shove the center point of that fire, a heavy bucket that was melting with the heat, off to one side. The bucket tipped, and more flames shot out across the floor. But in that split second the fire was moving away from him and the door, Harry darted past.
“I burned my hand on the door, but it’s not serious. It’s getting harder to breathe.”
He couldn’t breathe. The old memories snuck around his defenses, blending with reality. Tango had hit on something. He knew that dog’s reactions the way he knew his own thoughts. Harry raised his fist, warning his patrol to stop their advance. “What is it, boy? Show me.” He heard the thwap of the bullet and watched Tango fall. “Tango!” Harry’s world exploded around him. IED. The dog had known. He ran toward the heat. He couldn’t leave his partner behind. “Top, you got to leave him! We have to retreat!” He jerked his arm away and raised his rifle, charging toward his downed partner when the second blast hit.
“Harry?” It was a woman’s voice calling his name. Daisy’s voice. “Harry, are you still there?”
Do this, Marine!
Harry swore, forcing himself into the present. He ducked his head and swung the crowbar, shattering the glass in front of the fire extinguisher.
“I’m here, honey.” Harry pulled the pin and fired a stream of foam into the flames, dousing a path before aiming the extinguisher at the door itself. “I’m going to get you out.”
The sting of the burning chemical was in his eyes now. The toxic air tickled his throat and filtered into his lungs. The heat from the flames themselves had puckered every pore in his skin, making him feel like his boots and clothes were melting. The foam trickled down the door, taking the flames with it. Every new inch revealed burnt streaks and blistered paint and a single word etched into the metal itself. Mine.
A rage as hot as the fire itself seared through Harry’s brain. How could one person be so sick in the head that he would want to hurt a woman with a heart as big as Daisy’s? He turned down the smoke-filled hallway. He should have run down that SOB. He didn’t need to be armed to take a man down. He could have put a stop to this insane terror campaign once and for all.
“Harry, please.” She was coughing again.
Stay focused on the mission, Top. Harry tossed the extinguisher aside and picked up the crowbar. “Stand back. When I open this, it may suction the flames into the room.”
“I’m ready.”
The latch was busted, useless. This was going to take brute force. Finally. Something he could manage without thinking twice. Harry wedged the crowbar between the door and wall and pushed against it, then pulled back, roaring with the strain through his arms and shoulders before the warping metal finally gave way. Once he’d moved the door a couple of inches, he dropped the crowbar and muscled the hanging door across its track. He was coughing now, too. “Daisy?”
“Harry!” She launched herself against his chest, heedless of the flames licking into the room she’d just vacated. He cinched an arm around her waist and turned her away from the c
onflagration, carrying her several feet beyond the worst of the fire. He felt her lips press against his damaged cheek and jaw again and again. “Thank you. Thank... Oh, my God.”
Harry turned her away from the hateful epithet and tried to keep moving. But she squiggled in his grasp, wanting to see. “Did you see him? Was that who you were yelling at? Who was it? Is that my coat? Why would he—?”
“I didn’t get a good look.” Her body shook with another fit of coughing and he tried to pick her up. “Keep your head down. The smoke is getting thick.”
“He slipped a card under the door. We need it for evidence.”
She batted his hands away, turning sideways against him, although he wasn’t letting her get any closer to the blaze. “No you don’t. The cops will know this was intentional.”
“There may be fingerprints.”
“No.”
“I heard the scratching. He was carving...” Her toes touched the floor, tangling with his feet. He lost his grip as they stumbled into the wall. She fought with him, struggling to get a better view of the destruction. “...that. Mine? I belong to him? He owns something I need to stay away from?”
He grasped her shoulders. “We have to move.”
“He must have been watching, waiting until I was—”
“Stop talking and get your butt moving!” Daisy flinched away from him, her red-rimmed eyes wide behind her glasses as she clutched at the wall instead of him. Harry heard his voice echoing through the hallway and truly understood why Lt. Col. Biro had been so worried about his ability to serve. “I’m sorry.” He backed away to the opposite wall, his hands raised in apology. He’d just yelled in her face as if she was a raw recruit. As if he wasn’t any better than that bastard who’d hurt her. The fumes rubbed like grit in his eyes. “My head’s not right. I didn’t mean that. Don’t... Don’t ever stop talking to me. Please.”
And then that woman did the most remarkable thing. She pushed away from the wall, grabbed the front of his coat and dragged him toward the stairs. “Get me out of here, Top,” she ordered. “We both need fresh air.”
When she doubled over in another coughing jag, Harry’s training took over. He swung her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs and out the front door. By the time he reached the median in front of the school, his lungs were screaming for oxygen and he collapsed to his knees in the snow. Daisy tumbled from his arms. He bent over, coughing again. But suddenly, she was on her knees in front of him, rubbing a palmful of snow across his face and another along the nape of his neck, coughing right along with him as she shocked his senses. “Are you with me? Harry, are you okay?”
He raised his head to meet her worried gaze. He hoped her eyes were irritated and watering, and that she wasn’t wasting any tears on him. Still, he pulled off his heat-damaged glove and reached out with the pad of his thumb to wipe away the lines of moisture cutting tracks over her soot-stained cheek. “I’m okay.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Even red-rimmed and weepy, that look over the top of her glasses wasn’t one he could ignore.
“I’m okay now,” he amended. Her skin was cool to the touch and she was shivering. “You’re freezing.” From the snow soaking through her jeans or the adrenaline leaving her system, it didn’t matter. Harry pushed to his feet and peeled off his coat to wrap it around her shoulders. He hugged her to his chest and guided her to the cleared asphalt of the circular drive as a third fire engine pulled up.
A team of firefighters was already grabbing gear and fanning out around the building. A tall man in a white helmet was on his radio as he stepped down from the last truck. His slight limp didn’t detract from the square set of his shoulders and air of authority. He was clearly the man in charge. After a brief chat with the principal and custodian, he sent one of his men off to cut the power to the building. Daisy huddled even closer against Harry when the chief approached them. “You’re the teacher who called this in?”
“Yes. Daisy Gunderson.”
Harry relished the cold night air seeping through his sweater and T-shirt because it kept his head clear, but he wished he had a little more body heat to share with Daisy. If she wasn’t coughing, she was shaking, but he held her upright in one of those bear hugs she was so fond of. While she detailed the events and the chief deployed his crew into the building, Harry surveyed the parking lot through the swirl of emergency vehicle lights and first responders. The car with the yellow sticker was gone. Why hadn’t he written down the license plate number? He hadn’t even thought to look. Of course, the arsonist could have walked out the back door or had a car waiting for him someplace else. He was still no closer to identifying the creep terrorizing Daisy than he’d been when he’d first set up camp outside her home.
Harry snapped to when the crew chief addressed him. “She said you saw someone?”
Had he? “He was running up the east stairs, away from the fire. I didn’t get a good look at him. That was five minutes before we got out of there.”
“So, chances are he’s clear of the scene and there’s no one else inside. Can you describe him in case we run into him in there?”
Harry closed his eyes and replayed that brief impression distorted by heat and smoke. “Taller than me. Slender build.” Shrugging, he opened his eyes. That was almost less than nothing to go on. “I can’t even give you a hair color. I saw him from behind and he was wearing a blue coat and yellow hat.”
Daisy lifted her chin. “Blue and gold? Like school colors?”
“Maybe. It was a blur.”
“That narrows it down to about three-hundred people,” she grumbled in a wheezing voice.
But the description seemed to be enough for the fire chief. “I’ll go ahead and send a team in to sweep the building. Once we have the fire contained, we’ll check the basement, too.”
“He’ll be long gone,” Daisy added. “He thrives on me not knowing who he is.”
“We’ll check, all the same.” He nodded toward the uniformed police officer waiting a few yards away. “The police will want to ask you the same questions.”
Daisy nodded, but Harry felt her fingers curling into the front of his sweater. Her spirit might be willing, but her strength was flagging. “She needs a medic first. Probable smoke inhalation and shock.”
“The ambulance is pulling up now.” Harry and the chief walked her over to the ambulance where two EMTs sat Daisy in the back of the truck and immediately gave her oxygen and a blanket, and started taking her vitals. Before they made room for Harry to climb up, the tall firefighter tapped him on the shoulder. “Marine?” Harry nodded. The crew chief extended his hand. “John Murdock, USMC Retired. Did a couple of tours in Afghanistan.”
Harry shook his hand, appreciating the bond that was always there between Marines of any generation. “Master Sergeant Harry Lockhart. First Marine Expeditionary Force out of Pendleton. How did you know?”
“Not many men run into a fire except for firefighters and Devil Dogs.” And maybe a crazy guy who thought he was about to lose someone he was learning to care about more and more with each passing minute. Before Harry could process exactly what that revelation meant, Murdock continued the conversation. “Lockhart. You any relation to Hope Lockhart Taylor?”
Harry nodded. “My sister.”
Murdock nodded. “I thought something about you looked familiar. My boss, Meghan Taylor, is Hope’s mother-in-law. I went to Hope and Pike’s wedding a few years back.” That had been the last time Harry had come home to Kansas City. He’d never realized how many people he was connected to beyond his sister here. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“Bigger than I thought, actually.”
Chief Murdock inclined his head toward the ambulance’s interior. “Your friend hasn’t taken her eyes off you. You’d better get in there and get checked out, too, so she stops worrying.”
“Yes, si
r.”
Harry realized he shared another connection with John Murdock. As the older man limped away, he saw the distinctive void space of his pants catching around a steel rod above his boot. The KCFD crew chief had an artificial leg. They’d both sacrificed for their country. And apparently, John Murdock had adapted to civilian life just fine, even though all of him hadn’t come home from the war, either.
Harry had never considered civilian life as an option for him. But if he did ever move on to life outside the Corps, he wanted it to be his choice—not because he was so broken that the Corps didn’t want him. If he wasn’t good enough for the USMC, how could he be good enough for anything, or anybody, else?
How could he be good enough for Daisy?
Forty minutes later, the fire was out and the building had been cleared. There was no sign of the man who’d set the blaze, unless his footprints were one of the hundreds tramped through the snow in the parking lot left by students and fans attending tonight’s games or by the firefighters and police ensuring the entire school was secure. Harry sat on a gurney across from Daisy in the back of the ambulance as she sorted through her bag, making sure all her belongings—beyond the coat that obsessive creep had burned—were there. They reeked of smoke, and he couldn’t detect that homey sweet scent that was uniquely hers anymore. He’d given his statement to the uniformed officer and a pair of detectives. He’d had his eyes rinsed, his vitals checked, and he’d held an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth for longer than he wanted, simply because Daisy took her mask down and asked him if he was all right every time he stopped the flow of purified air he wanted her to keep breathing. They were both wrapped in blankets, waiting to be cleared by the EMTs.
If he wasn’t scaring her, then she was worried about him. He was raw with guilt. Hard to feel like much of a Marine—like much of a man—when the only two emotions he could evoke from a pretty woman were fear and concern. He should reassess this unofficial mission. While he wasn’t about to leave her alone against the jerk who wanted to hurt her, maybe he needed to rethink his whole plan to have Angel Daisy help him heal. She didn’t need his kind of mess in her life.
