by Amie Denman
“What’s our plan of attack?”
“I’m starting with hoping the caller gave the dispatcher the wrong story. Drunk girl walked away from a fight with her boyfriend, last seen heading toward the water. If we’re lucky, the girl went home with someone else.”
Three police cars were already on scene when Kevin maneuvered the heavy rescue squad through an access gate. He dodged cars and tourists and drove directly onto the beach where a couple of uniforms, guys he knew, directed him. A clump of teens were talking with police officers, pointing and gesticulating. It was not a good sign.
The cop waved Kevin and his partner over. “They think she’s in the water,” the cop said, his face like a funeral. “Sixteen. Last seen entering the water just about right here. Another witness thought she saw someone out in the water but lost sight of her.” The cop pointed straight out from the spot on the beach.
Kevin pulled off his boots and handed his radio to Travis. “Stay here. Mark the spot where I entered the water. Don’t move, no matter what. Radio the fireboat and tell them to haul ass.”
Four years of swim team in high school. Five years belonging to the Cape Pursuit Water Rescue Division. And his chances were still slim to none. There were already two cops and a few bystanders in the shallow water, searching.
Kevin ran as far as he could before he started swimming, strong strokes taking him toward the spot where a bystander had seen someone. The sun slanted low, stabbing out from behind the hotels. Even full daylight wouldn’t help him see below the water. He stopped swimming for a second, treading water and checking his orientation from his partner’s position on the beach. Travis was new, but he followed directions. He stood like a statue, watching Kevin and talking on the radio.
Where the hell is the fireboat? The city marina was just down the strip.
Small waves slid past him, and Kevin eyed their direction, trying to reason and feel at the same time. Where would a girl be if she slipped under the water right here? He let himself sink. Bobbing up and down, he mapped out a pattern on the sandy bottom, hoping desperately not to find someone down there.
He took on water, felt his stomach filling up with air even as his lungs fought for oxygen. Travis was still his marker on the beach; a large crowd had gathered at the water’s edge. More bystanders entered the water.
Please, no more victims.
Kevin moved out a little farther, continued bobbing and diving, searching the water’s surface and the bottom. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up this search. He glanced toward the shore. A cop he knew swam toward him, wearing a bright yellow life vest. Kevin had no flotation device. It would slow him down and prevent him from searching below the water.
It might also save his life if he was too tired to make it to shore, and he recognized the dangerous fatigue settling into his muscles.
Where is that fireboat and the rest of the dive team? An eternity had gone by since he parked the rescue squad on the beach.
He took a deep breath and dove below the surface, a glance toward the crowded shore and the approaching cop the last thing he saw before he went below. He was not going to stop until he found her. If she was even under the water.
Kevin felt the bottom, seaweed and shells falling through his fingers. He searched for ten seconds, fifteen seconds. And he touched something. Something cold and solid. He used both hands, palpating the object. It was a leg.
With nothing left in his lungs, Kevin grabbed the torso and pulled, dragging the body to the surface. It was heavy. He knew it would be. He’d trained for this dozens of times.
There was no way he could do this alone. He’d end up a victim, too.
The cop with the yellow life jacket was only a few yards away, struggling for breath, but ready. The cops trained with the fire department a few times a year, so Kevin knew the guy and didn’t have to say anything. Couldn’t have found the breath to shout.
The cop grabbed the girl under one arm, her long, dark hair swirling in the water. She was lifeless, pale. How long was she under?
Kevin filled his lungs enough to give her a rescue breath, grabbed an arm and started swimming. The cop kept up with him, the two of them towing the girl to shore and stopping every few feet for Kevin to breathe for her. It wasn’t helping.
It wasn’t helping. He’d found her, but a deep chill of realization settled in his limbs with every stroke.
It was too late.
As the water grew shallower, Kevin staggered to his feet and gathered up the girl. He carried her out of the ocean to the waiting ambulance, and her dead weight taunted him with every step. Travis met him and put a strong arm under his, supporting Kevin the rest of the way to the backup squad that had just arrived.
Sharp pain streaked through Kevin’s leg, but he didn’t stop until he’d handed over the girl to his newly arrived partners. Charlie and Ethan shoved a backboard under her and began CPR instantly while Kevin crashed onto the sand. He rolled onto his back, gasping for breath. He didn’t want to watch the desperate attempt to revive her.
“Stay with him,” he heard his uncle’s voice bark. The chief was on scene even if he was technically off duty. Patrick Ruggles slept with his radio next to his pillow and showed up to every scene that had the potential to be ugly.
And this was ugly. A call for a missing person, upgraded to possible drowning.
Kevin opened his eyes and saw Travis standing over him, looking lost. He rolled to his knees, trying to get up in case they needed a driver for the backup squad. Chief Ruggles shot a long look at Kevin and nodded before getting into the driver’s seat. The nod told Kevin his uncle had it under control.
Of course he did. He’d never seen his uncle fail to control a scene or handle a tense situation. What would Chief Ruggles say about the way Kevin handled this call? There was nothing else he could have done. No fireboat on scene, victim in the water. What was he supposed to do?
Ethan and Charlie had the patient loaded, back doors closed. The squad barreled off the beach, Kevin’s uncle at the wheel, leaving sand and silence in its wake. The huge crowd on the beach gaped at the departing ambulance. On all fours, trying not to puke from all the water and air in his stomach, adrenaline rushed through Kevin and nearly blinded him. He pounded his fist into the sand.
Why couldn’t he have found her sooner? And where was that fireboat?
“Tell me what you need, Ruggles,” Travis said, leaning close. “Oxygen?”
Kevin shook his head, trying to clear it and slow his breathing.
“Help me up.”
Travis pulled Kevin up. The pain in his left leg nearly knocked him back down. He leaned on his partner.
“Okay?” Travis asked.
“Not sure.” His soaked clothes clung to him. Seaweed tangled around his toes. And he wanted to punch something. But even adrenaline couldn’t mask the pain radiating from his ankle.
The back doors of the remaining ambulance hung open. Kevin leaned on his partner and limped over. He sat on the bumper and pulled his heavy, wet pants away from his ankle.
He didn’t remember how he did it, but his ankle was already swollen. Come on. Five years on the job and the only injury he’d had was a paper cut. A Band-Aid wasn’t going to fix this.
But he was a heck of a lot better off than that dark-haired girl he’d tried to breathe life into. And failed.
* * *
WHAT HAD STARTED as a fun night out at a beach party had turned heart-wrenching as soon as Nicole and Jane heard the sirens. They abandoned their place by the stage, where the band was playing, and hurried to the water’s edge.
When Nicole had seen Kevin race into the water, she’d wanted to run in, too. There had to be a way she could help. Jane had stopped her. “Not a chance,” Jane said when she suggested it. “The firefighters hate that. You’d just be one more potential victim.”
Nicole a
nd Jane had stood watching along with the rest of the silent, shocked crowd. A few teenagers talked with two police officers on the edge of the beach. They were crying. Friends of the missing person. Poor kids. No one should have to see a friend die. At any age.
Shock and relief had rushed through her when she saw Kevin stagger from the water, carrying a girl whose dark hair swung with every one of his uneven steps. She watched him hand over the girl and collapse on the sand. Jane’s hand was tight on her arm. Kevin’s partner, the man who had stood guard on the beach, leaned over him as the rest of their colleagues took the girl away in the ambulance.
When he’d pounded his fist into the sand, she’d wanted to go to him.
When he’d gotten up and staggered, walking painfully to the ambulance, she’d wanted to go to him. Wanted to offer comfort.
“Are you okay?” Jane had asked. Even in the deepening sunset shadows, Nicole could see her concern. She knew what Jane was thinking—that Nicole was reliving the death of her brother. And she was. She would always live with that. It was part of her as if it were written in marker on every nerve in her body.
But there was something else wrestling with her grief. She wanted to go to Kevin and take away his grief, even a little part of it. Anything to ease the expression on his face.
She knew that terrible agony. Wished she could tell him it would be okay. It would just take a while.
She knew.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I really am. Just devastated for that girl and her family. Do you think she’ll live?”
Jane bit her lip, dug her foot around in the sand.
“You never know,” Jane said.
Nicole glanced back at the water’s edge, trying to imagine what would make a person walk into the waves and not come back. But she saw no answers there. Just a pair of heavy black boots.
She tapped Jane’s arm to get her attention and pointed to the boots.
“Probably Kevin’s,” Jane said.
Without a word, Nicole walked toward them. The sand was firmly packed close to the water and waves lapped within inches of the boots, but they remained dry. She picked them up and brushed the sand off them, then walked to the ambulance. Jane followed.
Kevin’s head was down. He only looked up when she stopped next to him, her pink flip-flops probably cluing him in. His expression was of exhaustion and pain. She dropped to her knees so she could look him in the eye as he sat on the back bumper.
She put his boots on the ground next to his bare feet and put both her hands on his knees. “What you did out there was incredible.”
Kevin dropped his eyes and shook his head. “It wasn’t enough.”
Nicole squeezed his knees. “You don’t know that. The girl may live. You gave her a chance, at least.”
Kevin swallowed hard. Met her eyes. “Maybe.”
“Are you okay?”
His partner stepped out of the ambulance with an instant ice pack and an elastic bandage. Kevin swung his leg up on the bumper, causing Nicole to sit back on her heels. He reached out and touched her shoulder, trying to steady her. “Sorry.”
He left his hand on her shoulder. It was ice-cold against her bare skin. Looking at his swollen and already bruising ankle made her even colder.
“Is it broken?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. Probably get an X-ray just in case.”
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Kevin looked at her, surprise wrinkling his brow as if he hadn’t considered the question.
“Don’t worry,” the other firefighter said. “They’ll look him over at the hospital.”
The younger man fumbled with the medical supplies, trying to hold the ice pack on with one hand while unrolling the bandage with the other.
“Give me that,” Kevin grumbled. He took the ice pack and bandage, leaned toward his ankle and took care of it himself. Nicole wanted to help, but he obviously didn’t need it. The set of his jaw was probably pain, but something else, too, and it made Nicole back off.
Kevin swung his leg down. “We should get going. Get this squad back in service.”
“Can I help you up?” Nicole offered. She expected him to growl at her and refuse. Instead, he held out his hand.
“I’m wet and sandy,” he said. “I’ll try not to get it on you.”
Jane took one of his arms and Nicole pulled his other arm over her shoulders. They walked him to the passenger seat of the ambulance and helped him in. Nicole pushed the red door shut, feeling that there must be something more to say. Kevin’s partner closed the back doors and got in the driver’s seat.
“Don’t you dare turn on the siren,” Kevin grumbled. He looked at Nicole, reached through the open window of the truck and touched her hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Take care of yourself.”
He met her eyes. “It’s my job to take care of other people.” He sighed while his partner pulled on his seat belt. He shook his head, eyebrows drawn tight together, and stared at the floor of the ambulance.
“I think you’re a hero,” Nicole whispered. She didn’t know if Kevin heard her because his partner turned on the engine as she said it. It didn’t matter if he’d heard. What mattered was how she felt.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“IT’S ONLY FOR a week,” the chief had said. “You can’t shove your bum foot in a fire boot or climb a ladder.”
Only for a week. A nice long week for him to think about the ways he wished the water rescue had turned out differently. Wished that poor girl, just a child, had lived.
But she didn’t. Every second he’d searched had equaled too much time in the water. She’d been robbed of her life, no matter how desperately he’d tried to save her.
He couldn’t fight fires, respond to emergencies or climb a ladder, but he could still paint. The one-story home he was currently working on had plenty of trim and shutters, no climbing required. Kevin set up sawhorses in the driveway of the half-painted yellow house and waited for Charlie to drop off the sky blue paint for the shutters and the rest of the yellow house paint.
He sat on the open tailgate of his truck. Arnold slept under the truck in its shade, even though it was too early in the morning to be hot. The dog was old enough to think ahead. Kevin dangled his feet, frustrated by waiting. Frustrated by missing work. Frustrated by life.
A yellow VW Beetle pulled in the driveway and Jane got out. “I just stopped by the station to talk with the chief about the big event later this summer,” she said. “Then Charlie drafted me into delivering paint. He had it in his truck but got called in to cover a shift.”
“Probably my shift,” Kevin said. “I’m off for a week.”
“And this is your idea of recovering?”
Kevin shrugged. It was impossible not to like Jane, but he had a hard time liking anything right now.
Jane crossed her arms and stared him down for a minute. The dog wandered out from under the truck, stretching his hind legs and taking his time greeting her. “Sorry to wake you, Arnold.” She knelt and scratched his floppy ears.
“So you have paint for me?” Kevin finally asked. “I’ll help you unload it.”
Jane gave the dog a final pat and popped open the trunk of her Beetle. “One gallon of sky blue, three gallons of sunshine yellow.”
Kevin grimaced. “Charlie’s choice. He thinks it will sell better if it looks like the weather forecast.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Jane said. “It’s certainly more cheerful than you are.”
With two of the cans in each hand, Kevin walked slowly to the tarp under the sawhorses. He tried not to limp, didn’t need or want any attention.
“I saw that,” Jane said. “It’s only been three days. You should stay off your ankle.”
“Thanks for coming by, Jane. I think your gallery opens in five minutes.�
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“Nice try. I’ve got a half hour.” She leaned on the side of her car. “Just in case you feel like talking about what happened.”
“Looks like you’ll have twenty-nine minutes to get coffee and donuts before you open your doors,” he said gruffly.
Jane stalked over and snatched the paint can opener right out of his hand. “My dad was a fire chief my whole life. I’m an expert at listening to crybabies like you.”
Kevin glanced up sharply. Jane was smiling.
“You’ll drive yourself crazy if you bottle up all those feelings,” she continued.
Kevin sat on the tailgate of his truck, leaving enough room for Jane. She hoisted herself up next to him. Usually the guys at the fire station found their own therapy when something terrible happened. Dark humor, talking about it in their own way, throwing themselves into the next call. The problem was that he wasn’t at the station. Not since the drowning, and not for another five days at least. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to talk to someone.
“That wasn’t the first time you saw someone die,” she said, her tone gentle.
He shook his head. “Not by a long shot.”
“But there was something different about it.”
He nodded.
“Because she was just a kid?” Jane prodded.
Kevin inclined his head.
“And you fought so hard to find her. To save her. Practically by yourself. I heard what happened with the fireboat. Lousy time for it not to start.”
Wow. Jane was good at this.
“And it doesn’t seem fair that you can try so hard, do everything right, and you still can’t save everyone,” Jane said.
He swallowed. Stared at the mailbox, the cracks in the driveway, the neighbor’s tree with one dead, swinging branch somebody ought to trim.
“You can’t save everyone,” Jane said. “But I’m sure glad there are guys like you who try.”
Kevin had not said one word. Didn’t have to.
She patted him on the back. “Time for paint therapy. That house isn’t going to paint itself,” she said. “Unless you can train your fat old dog to do it.”
