What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  She glanced away from him, toward the place on the grass where the truck was being moved into position, as close to the back right corner of the burned-out building as it could get.

  He reached for her arm and held it gently but firmly until she looked up at him. Her face betrayed a mix of defiance, apology and frustration.

  Tain shook his head. “I can’t let you go up there.”

  “What if there’s evidence, Tain? What if there’s something in that room that could help lead us to the killer?” All the other emotions that had flickered across her face had dissipated into one sincere appeal, to his determination to solve this case.

  “Christ, Ashlyn, you don’t pull your punches, do you? Did you ever stop to think of what Daly would do to me if something happened to you up there, and he found out I knew you were prepared to take a risk like this?”

  “Daly knows that, at the end of the day, I’m a police officer. I face risks on the job. Just like Craig.”

  Craig. Tain swallowed, feeling his breath stick in his throat. “This isn’t about you being a cop. It’s about acceptable risks. If you’re go—”

  “It looks like we’re ready,” Daly said. Then his gaze went to Tain’s hand, still on Ashlyn’s arm. “Is there a problem here?”

  “No,” Ashlyn said. She stepped back as soon as Tain loosened his hold.

  Daly frowned. “Good. Then it’s time for you to get up there.”

  She turned and walked toward the truck. Tain started to go after her, but Daly put his hand up to stop him.

  Daly looked him straight in the eyes. “When you were assigned to work with her, I told you I didn’t want any problems.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “Why do I get the impression personal feelings are clouding your professional judgment?”

  “I disagree. You’re jumping to conclusions without all the facts.”

  “Really? Then enlighten me, Tain. Why don’t you want Ashlyn going up there?”

  Tain looked at Ashlyn as she put the required safety gear on. She’d be furious. And Daly trusted her. But Tain knew he couldn’t forgive himself if anything happened to Ashlyn.

  He looked at Daly and took a deep breath. “She’s prepared to go into that room if she thinks there’s evidence.”

  A voice called, telling Daly they were waiting for them. Tain held his gaze, unblinking.

  Then Daly turned on his heel and marched toward the truck, pausing midstride as he saw the lift already being raised toward the window.

  “No issues with heights?” Adrian Vaughan asked her.

  Ashlyn shook her head. “It isn’t like this is even that far up. I imagine twenty or thirty floors might be enough to make you catch your breath.”

  “When you’re dealing with a fire you’ve got a lot of things triggering the adrenaline. I never really notice the difference.”

  “Really? I’d think it would be foremost in your mind.”

  “You think more about the kind of fire, potential explosives, people who are caught inside. And those are the background thoughts. You have to keep your training front and center, or you’ll make mistakes that could cost you your life.”

  “I know what you mean,” she murmured.

  The radio crackled. “Ashlyn Hart, I expect you to follow your instructions to the letter. That means absolutely no unnecessary risks. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Is your sergeant always so touchy?” Adrian asked.

  She sighed. “If Tain were going up, Daly wouldn’t care.”

  Adrian’s eyes widened, and she put up her hand.

  “It’s not like that. I’m a friend of the family.” She knew the part-truth was the easiest way out of the situation, not that she owed Adrian an explanation. Ashlyn picked up the radio. “Absolutely, Sergeant.”

  “I’m serious, Ashlyn.”

  “So am I. I’m only going to do what’s necessary to help us solve this case.”

  “Ashlyn…”

  “Look, Daly, I’ll radio you every step of the way.”

  She passed the radio to Adrian as they jerked to a stop. He called in adjustments to line them up with the window in question.

  The next few minutes were the worst part of the lift experience for Ashlyn. The jerking to a stop, jerking into motion, jerking to a stop again made her stomach flip because she couldn’t prepare for the sensation. When the lift operator dropped them a little too much too quickly, she felt her throat fill and clenched the railing, white knuckled.

  Once they were in position, Adrian offered her a sympathetic smile. “That’s as bad as it gets.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” She removed the camera and took a wide shot of the window, followed by a closeup of the pane of glass, still very much intact.

  The window had been propped open on the far side with a piece of wood. Ashlyn photographed it as well and then peered between the ledge and the bottom edge of the window, moving from side to side in the basket and zooming in on the markings on the wall.

  No wonder Carl didn’t have a clue what it was. It looked like nonsense.

  She started with the fingerprint powder next, covering the window ledge first and dusting it for prints. Then she dusted the bottom of the window.

  “Are you going to do this to everything you can reach?”

  Ashlyn nodded. “Actually, it would help if you could hold the window up so I can dust the wood.”

  He took the gloves she passed him and pulled them on before pushing the window up from the outside of the pane of glass, instead of the frame. Adrian raised it just enough for her to remove the piece of lumber. “It’s staying up, actually.”

  “How is it going up there?” Daly’s voice crackled over the radio.

  Ashlyn and Adrian exchanged a smile, and she reached for the radio. “Fine. The window hadn’t been broken. It was propped open.”

  When she was finished with the wood, she leaned in through the window and started dusting the table. It was just like Carl remembered. She was beginning to understand why it could be so difficult to find usable evidence at an arson scene, with soot and pools of water intermixing to ruin potential remnants of DNA or fingerprints that might have helped their case.

  The legs. If I can just get to the legs …

  That was when she saw the bundle on the floor. Ashlyn pulled herself back into the bucket and removed her gloves.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure.” She secured the camera strap around her wrist and wriggled back into the opening as far as she could.

  Once she’d replaced the camera and put on a new pair of gloves, she grabbed the kit. “I’m going in there.”

  “Wait a second. I was told—”

  “To take me up here and navigate this bucket into the correct position.”

  He glared at her. “You’re going to get me into shit with your boss.”

  “Why is it that everyone seems to forget we’re investigating a murder here? The murder of a child?”

  “What good are you to her or those other kids if you fall through those floorboards and get yourself killed?”

  She pulled herself up on the ledge. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  “Is she doing what I think she’s doing?”

  Daly raised the radio without relinquishing the binoculars. Beside him, he could feel Tain stiffen, craning his neck to see what was happening.

  “Ashlyn Hart, if you don’t get back into that basket right now, I’ll write you up for disobeying a direct order.”

  He could see the firefighter turn to look down, shrugging as he held the window. Then the man turned around and reached for something, still holding the window with one hand.

  “All you can do is yell at her. I can’t put this window down or she’ll be stuck in there.”

  “What the hell is so important that she’s gone in for?”

  “Something on the floor. By the table.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. We could
n’t tell. Jesus—”

  The radio cut out, and Tain grabbed the binoculars out of Daly’s hand.

  “Can you see anything?”

  Tain’s shoulders sagged. “He’s clipped himself to the basket and is halfway in the window.”

  Daly’s hand covered his face. “What the hell have I done?”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Small consolation if something happens to her.”

  Tain lowered the binoculars. “Why do you think I told you? You think she’s going to tell me the next time she plans to do something foolish?”

  “If I’d listened to you, at least we could be certain there’d be a next time.”

  “That was the whole point, Sergeant.”

  Daly watched Tain walk over to the truck and lean against it as though he was stretching for a race, his head down.

  Ashlyn had gently nudged the table aside, lowering her feet to the floor cautiously, hands still on the ledge.

  The floor seemed solid and stable, though she had a fleeting recollection of the crack that had broken the silence when Tain went through the boards in the hallway.

  She started with the table legs, completing the two closest to the window first and then moving to the third, the one nearest the bundle on the floor.

  Just as she’d finished taking the prints from that leg, she felt the board under her left foot sag. Zipping her pouch hastily, she took a step to the side, toward the bundle, and heard the snap as her body jerked downward.

  “Ashlyn, give me your hand,” Adrian called. She knew it was pointless: She was too far from the window now, her body twisted away from him.

  “Okay, give me your foot. Can you get your other foot out?”

  Her left leg tingled, but there was no searing pain, no sign of blood. She put her hands as close to the hole as she dared and started to pull her leg up.

  That was when things got tricky. She heard the tear before she felt it, presumably a nail slicing the skin.

  Ashlyn lowered her leg again until she felt her pants pull free and moved her leg away from the nail. Then she lifted it slowly.

  She managed to wriggle her foot through the opening, marveling at how something that found a way in could suddenly be too big to get out, when she heard the long creak as the floor beneath her groaned. Realizing she didn’t have much time, she reached for the bundle and just managed to grasp it with her fingers as the boards sagged again. She fell a few inches and then she felt her body being pulled back toward the window.

  “Stay as still as you can,” Adrian told her. She could feel his arm tightly wrapped around her ankles, the bite of pain in the injured leg and guessed he was trying to wriggle back through the window without letting it fall on her.

  Ashlyn could see through the floor now, to the room below.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked frantically. “Are you…”

  “Oh, nothing. I mean, I’m okay.”

  “I’m going to lift you up now. Try to keep your body steady, keep it from snapping down.”

  She tensed muscles she barely remembered she had. He jerked her up quickly, her legs not even impacting the ledge until her knees were back beyond the edge of the bucket.

  “Give me that,” Adrian grumbled, releasing her legs after she assured him she was secure. She reached back and passed him the fabric bag.

  He grabbed the wood and stuck it back under the window ledge. “Now, let’s get you back in here and get down. You’re done.”

  “Not before you give me the camera.”

  Adrian glared at her. “You tempted fate once. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Look, you can hold me, right? I won’t move forward an inch. Just give me the damn camera.”

  “What the hell is going on up there?” Daly’s voice cut in over the radio again. They both ignored it.

  “Fine,” Adrian said, bending for the camera and passing it to her. “But I take it back.”

  “Take what back?”

  “I wouldn’t want you working with my squad. You’d get somebody killed.”

  The worst thing about the drive to the emergency room had been the silence.

  Daly had dealt with the evidence, since he had to return to the station to check up on another case. That left Tain setting Ashlyn gingerly on the front seat, treating her like some delicate doll he thought would break if he didn’t wrap her up properly before transporting her.

  The pain that hadn’t felt so bad when she was being cut open had become steadily worse. Adrian had wrapped her leg while they were being lowered, but the blood was spotting through already.

  Once they’d reached the hospital, Tain had stuck a police identification tag in the window and left the car near the ambulance bay before picking her up and carrying her inside.

  She tried for an appreciative but apologetic smile. “I can manage with just a bit of help, you know.”

  “Clearly, you can’t.”

  “What does that mean?” she demanded.

  “The Ashlyn I know would have taken my head off for treating her like a damsel in distress.”

  “The Tain I knew from a year ago would never—”

  “Constable Hart?”

  She pushed herself up on her good leg.

  “I’m Dr. Zaid. There’s no need.” She held up a hand as Tain stood, about to pick Ashlyn up again. The doctor dis appeared into the hallway and returned with a wheelchair. “Seems to be my week for police officers. Now, what have you done to yourself?” she asked as she wheeled Ashlyn away.

  Daly glanced at the call display and groaned. He hadn’t left the arson scene yet, and he knew he was running late.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” he said instead of a greeting.

  “Good. I’ve already started dinner.”

  “Okay. I won’t be much longer.”

  He hung up the phone as Paul Quinlan marched over.

  “What the hell was she thinking?”

  Daly tossed his hands in the air helplessly. “You’ve never had a problem holding a man back when he knew someone was inside?”

  Some of the fire left Paul’s face. “You’re going to give her a pass?”

  “I’ve got an officer who was just raped by the perp she’s been trying to catch, two girls who have been abducted and two more who have already turned up murdered and a serial arsonist running around, playing with matches.”

  Adrian Vaughan came into view as he walked around Daly to stand by Paul. “You knew she was going to cross the line. That’s why you radioed up there.”

  “I didn’t know anything until Tain told me. If I’d listened to him right away, I could have grounded her.”

  “Look, this fire department has had enough to deal with. The arsons, two of those missing kids turning up at fire scenes, and now one of our own has to bury his wife because she was raped and murdered.”

  Daly blinked. “Mr. Sandhu is on your squad?”

  “Rav was transferred temporarily to fill in for someone on sick leave.” There was silence for a moment, and then the remaining tension in Paul’s shoulders dissipated. “Look, I know you’re under pressure. I won’t file a formal complaint, as long as everyone here agrees to let it go.”

  Daly glanced at Adrian, who stared back at him for a moment and then nodded. “You kick her ass,” he told Daly, pointing at him. “She might be willing to take risks, but I wasn’t prepared to let her die for it, not when I’m backing her up.”

  “Noted. Don’t worry. I’ll deal with her later.”

  “You’d better.” Adrian walked away, giving Daly a chance to thank Paul for his leniency.

  “It doesn’t excuse what she did, but it sounds like—”

  A voice cut through from behind them. “Boss! We’ve got another fire. A biggie.”

  “Suspected arson?”

  “Not this time. Hotel fire. Occupants inside.”

  “Let’s move.” Paul Quinlan turned and started giving orders, Daly and Ashlyn’s recklessness ap
parently forgotten.

  Daly watched as, within seconds, the truck was pulling away, sirens blaring.