by Ashe, Lila
Samantha.
He broke through the fire at Taylor where two fountains of flame sputtered. Maybe whatever underground tank had caught was running out of gas? If it were storage, that would make sense, but not if it was an incoming distribution line. If was incoming, it could get even worse, and fast. He darted toward the back of the bagel shop, but the heat was too intense. If he went toe her staircase was, the super-heated gas would rip into his lungs.
He had to get her out of here.
The front of the building was the only way to go. When the kid had fallen off the rock, Hank had gone down by climbing the drain pipe—he could go up it now.
Hand over hand, carefully placing his feet square on the wall so they didn’t slip, Hank pulled himself up. One long reach and he pulled himself over the balcony’s rail. From inside her apartment, and from the one next door, curled wisps of black smoke. The roof, then, had caught. In a minute, maybe less, the entire building would be burning.
Inside, he found her down on the kitchen floor. The smoke had taken her out. Not dead. Not dead. She couldn’t be dead. Frantically, he pushed his fingers against her throat. He found her pulse, still strong. Relief tasted like sugar in his soot-filled mouth.
Hank grabbed the nearest two pillowcases and shook them free of their pillows. He wrapped one around her face and then one around his. It wouldn’t do much to prevent the gas inhalation, but it would help with the heat, at least. Scanning the apartment, he caught sight of the blankets on the back of the couch. Perfect. Wool. Wool was naturally fire retardant.
He wrapped one afghan around his body as best he could, then he pulled the other one around her prone body. She held something soft and heavy in her hands—the cat. She’d come back for her neighbor’s cat. Well, at least it was unconscious, too, and wouldn’t present much of a problem to carry out, if he bundled it inside his blanket. Hank’s hands fumbled as he attempted to tighten the blanket around Samantha’s arms, her hair. If he didn’t hurry, he too would be unconscious in about thirty seconds, if he didn’t get them all out of here right now. Unceremoniously, he shoved the cat into his blanket, using it like a Snugli, the way women at Mabel’s Cafe did in the mornings.
Then he slung Samantha over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
He put his hand on her door. Too hot.
It was way too hot.
He’d be lucky if the stairs were even still there. If they weren’t there, then he and Samantha weren’t getting out of this place alive, not with active fire surrounding the block it sat on.
It was against every protocol in the book to open the door to her stairs. It would have been better for him to go out the French doors and drop her off the balcony, following her over. But he couldn’t protect her that way, couldn’t guarantee that she’d fall the right way, that she wouldn’t land on her head and die instantly—or worse, die later, slowly, after a painful injury.
Damn it all. The whole block could ignite any second. It could go up like San Bruno had. There was no time to waste, none.
Hank tore open the door, ignoring the initial blast of heat he felt against his face. The entire parking lot behind the building was on fire—even the pavement was burning. Four or five cars were fully involved, but miraculously, the stairs were just starting to singe from the heat and weren’t actively on fire yet.
He ran toward the water with her. He ran toward dusk’s sunset faster than he’d ever run on any fire department test, faster than when he’d been sprinting 5ks every weekend. He ran faster through the heat than he’d ever run with the work dummy over his shoulder. He raced so fast over a plume of flame that shot out of the pavement that the wool they were wrapped in didn’t even scorch.
But Hank wasn’t running as if his life depended on it, even though it did.
He was running as if hers did, and that was the source of his speed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AN OLD MAN Hank didn’t know was at his elbow, tugging.
“You saved his life. You saved his life.”
Hank looked down at the grass where Samantha lay. Smoke from the smoldering asphalt blew across them. PG&E had capped the gas line, and there was no more active fuel for the fire, but the fire department was just now attempting to fight the two active blazes—the bagel shop and Skip’s Ice Cream. Usually, Hank would do anything to fight any one of those fires. On a normal day, there would be nothing that would keep him away from helping his department and his community.
Today? With her lying in front of him, that mane of hair tangled and dark with soot, Barger could have offered him a million dollars and a promotion to deputy chief and he would have quit before leaving her side.
Not that Barger would have. Mutual aid engines and trucks from Eureka had arrived, along with a fleet of ambulances to treat the injured. Darling Bay would lose the two buildings, but it had lost buildings to fire before. Hank hated that Samantha would wake to find her home—and her second job—gone, but at least she was here. With him.
“Her life,” he corrected the old man. “Yeah, she’ll be okay.”
Chaos swirled around them—parents rushing to find their kids who’d been hanging out after school at the marina, news vans who’d crawled out of the woodwork the moment “gas fire” had been said on the radio. People were yelling, crying.
None of it mattered.
Samantha would be okay—just fine to live her life, to leave and start new elsewhere, because when did someone like Samantha settle down, really? He was just lucky she’d stayed as long as she had.
“No, his life,” insisted the man. He gestured at the orange blanket under his arm. Only it wasn’t a blanket.
“Anchor. That’s your cat.”
“I’m Gus. The girl has told me plenty about you.”
“She has?”
“Yup. You’re all she talks about.”
“Anything I want to know?” Probably not. Most likely, what Samantha told her neighbor was about what a close call she’d had. Maybe she’d even confessed that she’d made a man fall in love with her twice, the second time about a billion times worse than the first.
Gus shrugged. “It’s hard when you’re in love with someone.”
“Thanks, man, but you can keep your pity.”
Gus looked startled, but only said, “Are you the one who brought my cat back to life?”
He was, actually. Bonnie Maddern, one of their medics, hadn’t let him touch Samantha when he got her out of fire danger. You can’t. You’re too close to her. Get out of my way. I mean it, Coffee. You’re on thin enough ice with Barger as it is. He said he’ll have your badge by the end of the day. Go fix that cat you dragged out.
Fine, Hank had thought while giving the cat oxygen and massaging its chest. Barger could take his badge, but Hank would know for the rest of his life that Samantha had lived because of him. She would be dead right now—Hank had given a choked cry as the cat stretched and yawned under his hands. She wasn’t dead. The cat, too, was alive. “Anchor,” he’d said. “Anchor. You’re back. You son of a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Hank said now to Gus. “I did bring him back to life.”
“Samantha said you didn’t take no risks.”
“Normally I don’t.” He stood taller to look over the short man’s shoulder. On the lawn, Bonnie was still attending to Samantha. She was talking now. Awake. He saw her sit up halfway and then be encouraged by Bonnie to lie down flat again. How were her lungs? What was her O2 sat now? What if Bonnie didn’t keep a close enough eye on it?
“Anchor and I thank you.”
“Why do you call him Anchor?” Anything to take his mind off Samantha and his need to rush to her side.
“I was a sailor, see.” Gus grinned. “That’s funny. See, sea, get it?”
“I get it,” said Hank shortly.
“I met this girl when I put in to Darling Bay in my boat. Well, you know, I fell in love. I was young. Okay, younger than I am now. I was sixty-eight when Sheila and I met. She was younger, only
sixty. A looker, too. Did you know her? Sheila Westin, from just north of the harbor?”
Hank shook his head, barely able to focus on the man’s words. Samantha was sitting up all the way now, moving her hands as if she was arguing with Bonnie about getting up. Uh-uh. Bonnie better not let her up. He put one hand on Gus’s shoulder. “I don’t think I knew her. I should get over there—”
“You listen to me just one goldarntootin’ minute, you hear me?” Under Gus’s arm, Anchor hissed as if on cue. “I got something to say to you.”
“Okay?”
“She’s in love with you, and she’s terrified that she’s not good enough for you.”
The middle of Hank’s stomach lurched. “For me? I’m not good enough for her.”
“Yeah,” said Gus, nodding. “She’s worried about that, too. That’s what I’m trying to say. I didn’t think I could take care of Sheila on my pension, what with how much money I blew on my boat every year. She didn’t want to be with a sailor—she hated water. And the fact that I was allergic to cats was the capper. I left. Sailed away.
“By the time I turned around at the Farrallons and sailed back, she was gone. She went into the hospital with a stomachache and left dead of a cancer she didn’t know about till the end. She had time to write a will on the back of a hospital tissue box, and she left me this damn cat right here. Anchor, she told me to call him. Because this cat was my anchor to this place, to her memory.” Gus swabbed his lower lip with a purple-checked handkerchief. “What she didn’t know was that I was already on my way back to her side. I was never gonna leave her again. And I guess, in my way, I haven’t.” He hoisted the cat rear-end first, waving his luxurious tail in Hank’s direction. “I’m saying go to her, you fool boy. What if you can change her mind? You have that chance. Take it. I never had mine.”
Hank stared at the old man for a second. Then he turned and ran toward Samantha.
From behind him floated Gus’s quavery voice. “Just kiss her, boy! Don’t be an idiot!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SAMANTHA CLOSED HER eyes and concentrating on stilling her breathing. Her lungs hurt, but not too badly. It felt as if she’d never get the smell of smoke out of her nose, and she knew it would stay in her hair for weeks. She was freezing, too. Dusk had almost fully dropped, and the already cold day was turning to ice as the cold ocean air pushed its way inland. It was clear tonight, no fog, making it even colder. Samantha saw one star struggle to draw breath as the sunset reddened the sky.
Bonnie Maddern was nice enough. She’d started to tell Samantha how she’d gotten out of her apartment, but then she’d been called away by a man in uniform with a huge mustache and a booming voice.
Oh, her poor beloved apartment. The one that Hank had thought she would burn down with her crappy extension cords. If she looked over her right shoulder, she could see it, a blackened hull, the fire now out, having left little behind. Her heart ached for Johannes—the bagel shop was all he had. She hoped his insurance would let him rebuild.
Her photo album. The only remaining pictures of their parents, gone. She’d only been borrowing them from Grace—they’d talked about making copies at some point, or digitizing them, and they hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Now they never would. Her mother. She’d never see her mother again.
It hurt too much to cry.
The man with the loud voice stood next to her. She shaded her eyes against the low sun behind him.
“You okay, ma’am?”
“I think so,” said Samantha. “For having just lost my home.”
From behind her came Hank’s voice. “You can stay with me.”
Samantha swiveled her head, her heart lifting ridiculously high—sleeping in his bed, touching him, being with him—before it dropped again. “No, thanks.”
“We can talk about it,” said Hank. “After you get a good night’s rest. At my place.”
She shut her eyes, opening them again only reluctantly. “You’re too bossy.”
“He is,” growled the tall man who was obviously both the boss and in a terrible mood. Samantha supposed if she’d just had to fight an entire block’s worth of fire, she’d be grumpy too.
“You’re fired, Coffee,” said the man. “You are so damn fired. Sorry, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t be,” said Samantha, waving a hand. “I fire him all the time, too.”
“You can’t fire me, Chief,” said Hank cheerfully. “I just saved her life.” He pointed at Samantha.
Ah. So that’s how she’d gotten out. She should have known. “Anchor! Did he get out? Where’s Gus’s cat?”
The chief paid her no attention. “You broke every rule in the book, Coffee, and considering that you’ve personally worked on rewriting most of the policies in that book, that’s pretty shocking. We’ll take this up in the after-action report but you blatantly disregarded the safety of our department, our citizens, and yourself.”
Samantha’s jaw dropped. “You broke a rule?”
Hank nodded. “Yep. A bunch of ’em.”
“All of them. In order to get you to safety, ma’am.”
Samantha could see the chief almost biting his lip not to insult a member of the community. It was okay, though, she could take the criticism. “It was my fault, sir. I ran across the street to try to save my neighbor’s cat.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “Oh, Anchor. He was Gus’s girlfriend’s cat. I wish…”
“I saved him, too,” said Hank, looking even brighter.
“You did?”
The chief said in a low voice, “You saved a cat?”
“Yep. You think the media has that yet?”
Groaning, the chief said, “A cat. I’ll never be able to fire you. Ever. Damn you to hell, Coffee.” He stalked away, his gait stiff.
Hank dropped into a cross-legged position next to her on the grass. “Well, I guess we handled that.”
Samantha tried to speak, but ended up coughing instead.
Hank’s lightness disappeared. “We need Bonnie back here. Why didn’t she transport you to the hospital already?”
“I told her I’m not going. Tell me about the rules you broke.”
A smile played across his lips, and that muscle jumped in his jaw. Samantha’s fingers ached to reach out and touch it—but she couldn’t. How could she trust herself to touch him and then let him go again?
“What didn’t I do wrong? I disobeyed my chief to stay out of the way. I went through a fire line without protective equipment. I scaled a building up a drain pipe because the stairs were too dangerous, and then, when I couldn’t get you down that way, I took you out the dangerous way, wrapped in blankets. When we got back through the flames again, your blanket was on fire, and I beat it out with my hands.”
“You did?” She noticed for the first time that both his hands were bandaged. “Hank.”
He held them out as if surprised by them. “They’re fine. You know what? I prayed. The whole way down your steps, I prayed, and Samantha, I’m not a religious man. I haven’t prayed since my grandmother got sick a few years ago and we thought we were going to lose her. What I did could have killed you.” His voice wobbled, and his eyes squinted, as if the sun had gotten suddenly brighter. “I could have killed you instead of saving you. I can’t believe I did that.”
“I guess this means your prayers work.”
“They don’t.”
Samantha stayed quiet. It was his moment to speak. She’d had her moment, when she’d closed his bedroom door. She’d said all she needed to say by not looking at him every time they worked with her students, when she was the only one in class who didn’t touch him. She couldn’t. She’d been using Wally to demonstrate the moves, and if he wasn’t there, she’d been describing them verbally, praying her students didn’t notice the way her knees shook when Hank got too close to her.
Hank continued, “If my prayers worked, you never would have gotten on the back of Vicente’s motorcycle that night. If my prayers were any good, I would hav
e figured out the words to make you stay with me, where you belonged.”
Where she belonged… How could the words feel so right? And yet…
“If my prayers worked,” he said, “you would have been in my bed every night all these years. You wouldn’t have hurt yourself with the things you did, and I wouldn’t have wasted so much time looking for a woman who was anything like you. Trouble, there’s no one like you anywhere in the whole world. I could hire a flock of monks or a battalion of priests to pray around the clock, and I’d never run across someone I loved the way I love you.”
“Oh.” The word was a breath.
“You can’t be with me because you don’t want to give up your dreams. If you give up your dreams, you let down your mother, do I have that right?”
It sounded small, almost silly, when he put it so simply. But it wasn’t small or simple at all. It was who she was. She had to do more than just exist.
He dug in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out an envelope. “Water bill,” he said. “It’ll do. Hey, Bonnie! You got a pen?”
The medic looked up from where she was bandaging a little girl’s arm. She gave a long-arm toss and threw Hank the pen that was in her shirt front pocket.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the pen and paper at her. “Write them down.”
“What?”
“Your dreams. All of them. Write ‘em down for me.”
“Hank…” But something started to grow inside her, a green tendril of hope uncurling, slowly.
“Write.”
She made a list. She handed the folded envelope to him.
He read it, tiny wrinkles creasing at the corners of his eyes. “Okay. Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. Yes.” He nodded with each word.
“What? You think all of that’s possible?”
Looking at the paper, Hank said, “Climbing the side of a volcano? Bungee-jumping in New Zealand? Riding the Trans-Siberian railway? You think we can’t do all this? Have I mentioned that not only do I get four days off a week, but I have two months of vacation a year and I can get trades for up to four more months? And they pay me well for this gig, not sure if you knew that. I’ll order my passport online as soon as I get home and pull these bandages off.”
