Burning Up

by Susan Andersen

  But before Gabe had put an end to the dunk-o-rama, she’d begun to catch glimpses of the crowd. And she’d noticed that no one except Mayfield’s usual Idiot Brigade appeared amused by her predicament. They’d looked, in fact, royally pissed on her behalf, an impression that had proven true the minute Gabe commandeered Mayfield’s bucket of ammo. Then, when she’d returned to the booth, dozens of people had gone out of their way to be neighborly. Several former classmates had been in the throng and all except one had mentioned the reunion, going out of their way to say they hoped to see her there.

  Maybe she should reconsider her stance against going to the damn thing.

  The wind was beginning to kick up when she cleared a slight rise and found herself almost to the Kilimner place. She got her first good look at it.

  “Crap,” she muttered, discouraged by its condition. It was much more dilapidated than the last time she’d seen it.

  A self-deprecatory laugh escaped her. Because big surprise, considering how many years ago that had been. All the same it was disappointing. She was looking for a run-down farmhouse for Jack’s video, not a place this far gone.

  Hoping the interior might be more usable than its exterior, she climbed two steps to the creaky front porch. When she found the door unlocked, she pushed it open, laughing when it groaned like a cheesy sound track in a bad horror flick.

  She stepped inside, sneezing at the cloud of dust she raised. In the bright wash of sunlight that poured through the open doorway and murkier light filtering through grime-encrusted windows, she gazed around.

  It actually was in better condition inside than out. And maybe…just maybe—

  She pulled out her recorder and notated possibilities as she subjected the first floor to a thorough, inch-by-inch inspection. When she reached the door to the cellar, she opened it but couldn’t bring herself to go down the dark steps. It wasn’t as if she were a big ’fraidy cat or anything, she assured herself. The cellar simply contained nothing she’d need for the video. Then she grinned and turned back to the kitchen.

  Because a scaredy-cat was exactly what she was when it came to spider-infested cellars.

  A spot in the kitchen floor felt spongy beneath her left foot and she was squatting to examine the entire surface for its ability to bear weight when the front door suddenly slammed. “Hello?” She surged to her feet, her heart thumping in her chest. “Is anyone there?”

  No one answered, and the porch boards didn’t give the telltale squeak she’d heard when she’d crossed them. Blowing out a breath, she gave her shoulders an impatient hitch. It was probably just the wind.

  All the same, she went over, reopened the door and poked her head out. No one was in sight, and the overgrown drive showed no signs that a car had recently been anywhere near it. Besides, what were the odds that two people would choose the exact same time to hike to the same dilapidated old building? Zippo, that’s what.

  Shrugging aside the slight uneasiness that remained despite her logic, she went upstairs to check out the second floor.

  The doorknob to the front bedroom twisted loosely beneath her hand, and she had to press it in and jiggle it a couple times before it finally engaged. Stepping into the room, she gave it a quick inspection.

  And decided that while the farmhouse interior could be made to work with a great deal of elbow grease, why bother? She’d thought if this one turned out to be just right, it would be cheap and convenient for her friend. But the convenience factor went down the tubes if Production needed to find another place for the exteriors she envisioned, so they might as well look for everything they needed in one package. It would save a lot of time and energy for everyone.

  Decision made, she left the room, but then paused as she smelled an acrid, smoky scent on the air. Going back in, she crossed to the window and pushed aside the grimy sheer, disturbing more dust in the process. Boards filled the glass-free expanse but were separated from each other by a couple of inches, and peering through a gap, she didn’t see anything that posed a threat. She hoped, however, that a neighboring field wasn’t on fire. It had been so god-awful dry this summer.

  Behind her the bedroom door banged shut. “Oh, for God’s sake!” she snapped, wondering where this sudden spate of poltergeist slammings was coming from. She tried to remember if she’d closed the kitchen door to the cellar but couldn’t recall.

  Pulling off Ty’s pack, she retrieved her water bottle and knocked back a long gulp to wash the farmhouse’s dust from her throat. Then she capped the bottle, shoved it back into the bag’s outside mesh pocket and, swinging the pack onto her back, strode over to the door. It was time to go; her concept was a good one, but this wasn’t the place she was seeking. Reaching out, she twisted the knob.

  “What the—?” She turned it harder. But it merely rattled on the rod connecting it to the knob on the other side and turned loosely beneath her grip. She tried the same press and jiggle that had gained her admission into the room.

  And still it didn’t open.

  “Okay. Deep breath here.” Maybe she’d turned it the wrong way. Trying it in the other direction she discovered that wasn’t the case. So, all right. Not far enough in the original direction, then.

  But although the knob turned it didn’t seem to be operating the latch, and she gave it an impatient yank.

  It came off in her hand, its twin hitting the floor on the other side.

  “Crap!” Now what, genius? Whirling around, she paced over to the window, then back to the door again, where she squatted to see if there was a way to jam the rod in there and somehow jury-rig it to work long enough to get her out of this room.

  There wasn’t, or at least nothing that occurred to her. Rising, she stalked away again, then stopped in the middle of the room, breathing hard, and tried to think.

  Fine, then. She turned back to eye the hinges on the door. Going up on her toes, she grasped the balled head of the pin and tried to rock it free of the metal loops holding it.

  “Damn!” Although rusty, it was solidly lodged, and without tools her odds of prying it out were slim.

  She blew out a breath. Her odds were worse than slim. They were zero.

  As she’d noted with the other interior doors, however, the paneling was flimsy. Maybe she could kick a hole in it big enough to climb through. She studied it. It really didn’t look very substantial.

  She could do this—so what if she’d never tried anything like it before? Grace had said that night at the bar that if Mattel made a doll, Macy’s would be an action figure. So it was time to actually do something to earn the grade-school teacher’s admiration.

  She stepped back. Shook out her hands. Then, hoping to hell she didn’t break her foot, she braced herself and took a deep, calming breath.

  And coughed.

  Looking down, her heart slammed against the wall of her chest. “Omigawd. Oh. My. Gawd!”

  Curls of smoke wafted along the door’s bottom edge, wisps drifting into the room.

  “Shit!” Going over, she reached out to touch the wooden panel with the vague intention of getting an idea how near the threat was to the room holding her captive. But every time she tentatively extended her fingers to the door’s surface, she snatched them back before she could bring herself to touch it. Finally mustering the courage, she slapped her palm against the door…then blew out a relieved breath when she didn’t recoil from a hot surface.

  That had to be a good thing, right?

  So what now? Even if she could open the door to assess the situation she probably shouldn’t, since all she could think of was some movie she’d once seen where opening a door had caused a big, hurking ball of fire to roar into the room, incinerating everything in its path.

  She could hear the faraway crackle of the fire now, and seeing smoke begin to roll more thickly beneath the door, she raced across the room to rip the sheers from both windows. Coughing on a combination of dust and smoke, she rolled them up and squatted to stuff them in the crack between the bottom of
the door and the threshold. Smoke then curled through the hole where the doorknob was supposed to be, and she removed her bra. Compressing the underwiring, she fit it into the opening, then wadded the delicate lace band and straps around it until the space was stuffed.

  She drew another relieved breath when the smoke’s entry into the room began to slow. Going back to the windows, she sucked a big gulp of clear country air deep into her lungs, then wedged her fingers into the space between two of the boards and tugged with all her might. When she stepped back a few moments later, her heart pounding and her arms hanging limply by her sides, the board hadn’t budged so much as a centimeter. She’d managed to make the nails that held it in place creak slightly, but all she really had to show for her efforts was a broken nail and filthy hands.

  She was rubbing the worst of the dirt off against her cargo shorts when she felt her phone.

  “God, I’m so stupid!” Fishing it out of her pocket, hoping to hell there was reception out here, she punched in the emergency number, knowing that that, at least, would be correct. Nothing ever changed in Sugarville.

  A sob broke in her throat when Becky Newith, who had been the town’s crisis dispatcher for as long as Macy could remember, said a brisk, “Emergency.” But she forced it down. She didn’t have time to fall apart.

  “Becky, it’s Macy O’James.” She had to clear her throat. “I’m trapped in an upstairs room at the old Kilimner place and the farmhouse is on fire. Smoke—” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat again. “Smoke is coming in under the door.”

  “Stay on the line, Macy,” the older woman calmly instructed. “I have to switch over for a moment to dispatch the truck and call Chief Donovan, then I’ll stay with you until somebody arrives.”

  The amount of smoke getting through the sheers under the door began to escalate, and she crossed to the window, not only to put as much distance between it and herself but in hopes of seeing help the minute it arrived. But her view was limited at best and she didn’t have a view of the overgrown drive at all.

  She did, however, hear Gabe’s voice roar her name from the other side of the house and, dropping the phone, she screamed his in return. Staring through one of the gaps in the boards, she strained to catch her first sight of him.

  He charged into sight and even from up here she could see him methodically scan the building. But he was looking at the end nearest him. “Macy?” he called again. “You on this side?”

  “Yes, yes!” She banged her palms against the boards and his gaze promptly homed in on her.

  “Hang on!” he yelled. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t leave me!” Panic licked at what little calm she’d managed to hang on to up until this point.

  But he pinned her with that cool, steady gaze and she immediately felt herself regain some composure. “I’ll be back in just a second,” he called. “There’s a ladder against the other side of the house and I’m going to get it so we don’t have to wait for the truck to get you out of there.”

  She nodded and he loped away.

  The panic threatened to return but then she heard her phone squawking and remembered Becky. She picked it up and, staring at the spot where she’d seen Gabe disappear and was fervently willing him to reappear, said, “He’s here.”

  “Chief Donovan?”

  “Yes. He said there’s a ladder and he went to get it—oh, God, there he is! He’s got it.” She watched him stride toward her end of the farmhouse, the ladder clutched in his big hands.

  “Okay, good,” Becky said. “The truck is on its way, as well. So you’re gonna be okay, Macy.”

  The top rungs of the ladder thumped against the windowsill and she nodded. Realizing the dispatcher couldn’t see her, she whispered, “Yes.” Heartfelt appreciation for the older woman’s lifesaving voice on the other end of the line suffused her. “Thank you, Becky. God, thank you so much!”

  “You’re welcome. You held it together real good. Will you be okay if I hang up now?”

  “Yes.”

  Seconds later, Gabe’s gray eyes appeared one in of the breaches. “You okay?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not okay! I’m trapped in a burning building!”

  Lines fanned out from his eyes and she knew he was smiling.

  Then he sobered. “Move to the side and stay against the outside wall,” he said. “I’m going to break these boards.”

  She did as he commanded, and an instant later one of them cracked with an explosive sound. She jerked skittishly but stayed in place until he called an all clear.

  She raced back to see him swiveling one of the remains of the board on its nail until it hung jagged-side-down from the window frame. Laying his ax on the floor inside the room, he climbed through.

  The second he unfolded to his full height, she launched herself at him, climbing him like a treed cat. Legs locked around his hips, arms clinging around his solid neck, she burrowed her head in the latter’s warm curve, trying to absorb his strength. The wail of the pumper truck sounded in the distance, rapidly gaining volume as it drew closer.

  “Much as I dig this,” his voice rumbled over her head, “you’ve got to let go so I can get you out of here.”

  It took everything she had to relinquish her grasp. Then she squealed like a startled six-year-old when he promptly bounced her up and flipped her over his shoulder, his hand clamping her thighs to his chest. The next thing she knew he’d maneuvered them both out the big window and onto the ladder, and she was staring down at the ground about a gazillion feet below.

  She grabbed the belt loops on his jeans waistband and slammed her eyes shut. Her stomach made slow, hinky somersaults as he climbed down the ladder.

  A moment later they were on solid ground.

  He lowered her to her feet as the truck rolled to a stop on the other side of the house and the siren trailed into silence. Doors slammed and men’s voices called to each other.

  “How’s your breathing?”

  She promptly fell into a coughing fit, but nodded as her throat cleared. It felt scratchy but not seared, and her lungs didn’t have that pneumonia feel she imagined they would if they’d sustained real damage. “It’s fine.”

  He made a yeah, right sound. “I’ll take you to the clinic.”

  “No. I don’t need it. Really,” she insisted when he narrowed his eyes at her. “I was able to keep most of the smoke out.”

  A crooked smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I saw the rags under the door and your bra in the doorknob hole.” For a second his gaze dropped to her lingerie-free breasts beneath her tank top, but in the next heartbeat returned to meet hers. “Excellent use of the materials at hand.”

  Taking her elbow he escorted her around the house. He settled her in the passenger side of the truck and handed her a bottle of oxygen. Showing her how to fit the face piece over her mouth and nose, he turned it on. “Stay here and breath this. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  But he didn’t move. Instead, still leaning into the cab where she sat, he glided his fingertips down her cheek, brushed them against her temple and gently tucked her hair behind her ear. His gaze traced her features one by one before dropping to track his thumb as it rubbed over her bottom lip.

  Then his hand suddenly dropped away and he straightened. “If your condition changes and you start feeling worse, hit the horn and we’ll get you to the clinic. Or I can call your uncle—would you prefer that?”

  “No.” She probably should, but at the moment she just wanted to remain where she was, and given the choice, she’d have Gabriel get in with her.

  But of course she’d never ask for anything so…needy. She wasn’t the clinging type.

  Still, she’d give her left pinkie to climb in his lap, wrap those strong arms around her like a protective shield and do exactly that—to cling like a barnacle. But that was simply reaction. Hell, she’d been trapped in a burning building and the man had saved her. No wonder she felt bonded and so, so grateful.

/>   Making herself lift the mask from her mouth, she waved him away. “I’m shook up, but okay. Go fight the fire. I’ll just sit here and catch my breath,” she said.

  And prayed she was the only one who heard that pathetic little tremble in her voice at the thought of him leaving her sight.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “TOLD YOU I WAS FINE,” Macy said as they walked out of the town clinic a while later.

  “Yes, you did.” Over and over again. But Gabe kept his voice neutral because she’d been through the wringer and he knew she was probably still dealing with vestiges of a huge adrenaline spike. He’d sure as hell felt the effects of his own overload and he probably had ninety pounds on her.

  Then there’d been the surplus of attention she’d received at the clinic. He’d admit it, all the exclaiming and fussing probably hadn’t helped. So he kept his tone gentle when, for the umpteenth time, he said, “And I told you smoke inhalation can be a tricky thing and it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  He looked down at her wet hair, pulled back in a low ponytail, her bangs already starting to dry in the hot afternoon sun. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup and she looked soft-skinned and pretty.

  He cleared his throat because he really didn’t want to go there. Not after the helluva time he’d had turning away from her back at the Kilimner place. Usually, he jumped at the opportunity to fight a fire. But she’d looked so shell-shocked and forlorn as she’d sat in the SFD’s truck that it had been all he could do to tear himself away.

  It was uncomfortable knowledge and he promptly shook it off. “At least you got to get cleaned up,” he said as they stopped at the passenger side of his SUV and he opened the door for her. That was the beauty of a small town; they’d let her shower off the acrid smoke smell, lent her a pair of purple scrubs, and one of the nurses had even scrounged up a tube of lip stuff to help Macy restore her girlhood or some equally incomprehensible shit. He tried to imagine that happening in any of the hospitals he’d been in and out of in Detroit and shook his head. Not likely.