Parking across the narrow street from the burning building, Dante scanned up and down, looking for a hydrant or any source of water. The truck was not in service yet and offered limitations. And, apparently, so did this all-but-abandoned town. But if there were baskets of flowers, there was at least a well. Or some water source. He might not be able to save the house or the other old dry wooden structures leaning perilously close to it, but he might be able to make a difference. Hopping out of the cab, he raced over to the white painted wooden gate, just as lovingly maintained as the little house and yard, and hopped over it.
“Anyone inside?” he hollered, approaching the porch cautiously. He couldn’t see actual flames, but they were in there. The front window was smashed out. Maybe where the bastard had tossed in his first dose. “Hello! Is anyone in there?”
While he waited for a response, he looked around for the garden hose and found it to the left of the porch. It was, to his disgust, one of those thin coil-up hoses with almost no pressure, but he turned on the spigot. Kat arrived at his side, phone in her grip, and he handed her the hose. “Use this if you need to, for what it’s worth.” Racing back to the truck, he opened one of the rear cabinets and scanned the array of fire extinguishers available to him.
If nobody was inside, he’d just be standing by and calling it a loss, but if he had any reason to suspect a victim was in there, he’d need whatever he could get. In this case, the truck only held a few experimental canisters. Station 58 would stock it themselves, but as part of their agreement with Andy, they were participating in testing a couple of new chemical extinguishers before they were released for sale. Since he was a delivery guy and not technically a salesman, he didn’t know enough about their properties to feel confident in using them. He needed a…. Yes! One fist raised in victory, he reached way back in the cabinet for a single pressurized water extinguisher. He wasn’t sure what made it experimental but decided to treat it like the ones he had experience using. Usually, they would only work for about a minute, but offered an effective tool in most home fires, and it was the best option.
Next time Andy invited him into the lab to admire the new chemicals, he’d go. He should never have let his bad case of the blues keep him from knowledge. You never knew when, even as a civilian, it would come in handy.
Like now.
The truck also did not come equipped with the suits or personal equipment he’d be wearing in real life. Not that this wasn’t real life. But it meant he didn’t have the protection of suits and shields and boots…anything.
If he had to go into that building, he’d be doing it in jeans and a T-shirt with a can of water.
Super awesome.
Turning to face the blaze, he saw Kat staring at him, pale and wide-eyed. “Dante. She’s in there.”
Oh shit.
Striding across the street to the dark-haired woman he’d spent the night making love to, Dante tried to show confidence. Sure, she was an investigator, but she needed to see that the only firefighter on scene was competent and on top of things. That despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, he could handle anything that came their way. He could save the day.
He could go into a burning building in jeans and a T-shirt and save a civilian with a one-minute-long water spray. Easy.
“Fill me in,” he said. “Did someone call out?”
He heard sirens in the distance again, and the beating rotors of the helicopter. They’d be there in a couple of minutes, but with flames starting to lick out the side windows of the little house, he didn’t have a couple of minutes.
“A woman, screaming.”
Okay. I got this. “Could you tell where she is?” It wasn’t a very big place. If he didn’t see her through the broken living room window, she had to be somewhere in the back, though. Where the fire was.
“Not exactly.”
“Let’s listen for just one second. I don’t have a lot of water here, as you probably know. One minute’s worth, under pressure. And I’m wearing clothes that have zero protection factor so I’m going to have only one shot at saving whoever it is. Just one person you think?”
“Yeah, that’s all I heard. But, Dante, you can’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”
He grinned at her. “C’mon, Kat. If I weren’t here, what would you do?”
“I’d stay out here.” But she couldn’t meet his eyes, the liar. She’d be in there so fast… “Okay, point taken. But what about the secondary ignition? I’m sure this is him again, Dante.”
A shrill wail cut through the crackling roar of the flames, and he at least had a direction to go. “I can’t worry about that. I got past him last time.”
“I’m coming, too.”
“Absolutely not. I can’t worry about the woman already in there and you, too. Wet me down, quick.”
Kat turned the pathetic excuse for a hose on him “full blast” then tore her shirt off, wetting that down, too. “Wrap this around your face and be careful. I’ll update Granddad and Bob Waggoner when they arrive.”
“I’ll be out in a minute. Don’t go anywhere.” He kissed her hard, wrapped the shirt around his lower face, and headed into the building, tense, on alert, and more himself than he’d been in over a year.
Chapter Six
Kat watched Dante go into the burning building, clutching the little green coily hose and hating that she couldn’t go in with him. But he was right. She knew how fires worked, could operate a lot of equipment and drive the apparatus, but she didn’t fight fires on a daily basis and, in a case like this, a small space with active flames, her skills were better suited for figuring out later what happened than wandering into it while flames roared around her. Much as she hated to admit it, she’d be more of a liability than a help.
So, after she returned to the beast and dug a black T-shirt out of his pack to avoid shocking all the folks soon to be on scene, she stood there like a useless lump, focused on the doorway, willing him to come out with the victim, both healthy and intact. She buried her nose in the neckline, drawing in the scent of Dante, a calming aroma when the rest of the world smelled like smoke.
A minute or two later, the chugging rotors of her sister’s helicopter neared and she set down at the end of the street, on the highway just outside the little town. Both her granddad and Brigit came running toward her.
“What’s going on?” Brigit asked, getting there first.
Her granddad, in good shape but still not a young man, paused to catch his breath. “There will be men on the ground in about three minutes. Where’s Dante?”
Her eyes puddled at the presence of her family, the worry about Dante threatening her professional veneer. She’d be okay when there were others there, but with just Brij and Granddad, she wanted a hug, and she wanted Dante out of that damn building. Now!
Just as she’d decided she was going in no matter what and reached for the hose to douse herself, a shadow appeared in the doorway, and Dante stumbled out, holding a small, elderly woman in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. He no longer had the extinguisher, having no doubt used it up inside to get to the lady whose bright caftan was covered in soot. He brought her out into the middle of the street by his truck and laid her down. She held a squirming sweater to her chest.
She wanted to hug him, to kiss him and tell him never to scare her like that again. To demand of the woman why she stayed inside the obviously burning house, but Dante turned soft, kind eyes on her.
“Kat, will you take these so I can make sure Mrs. Orion is okay?” He handed the sweater over and murmured, “She said we can keep one if we like.”
What on earth went on in that house in the middle of a fire? She opened one corner of the old, faded-brown sweater and peeked inside. A trio of little kittens stared back. Unlike their mistress, they were not coughing and gasping for breath but cuddled together, purring.
“Mrs. Orion came home to find the house ablaze and went in to get them,” he told her. “The house shifted, and the bedroom door jammed.”<
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Brigit ran to her chopper and returned with a first aid box just as a trio of trucks careened into town and the crew began to work the fire. They might not be able to save the one house, but they could probably stop it from spreading with the water they carried. Suddenly, a dull boom emanated from the rear of the house, and the roof lifted and fell into a burning pile of splinters. No, Mrs. Orion would not be going home.
“Don’t worry, Kat,” Granddad said, handing things to Brigit while they waited for the EMTs to arrive on scene. “Mrs. Orion will just fix up another house. She owns the whole town.” At her incredulous look, he shrugged. “She’s a gifted psychic, and people drive here from all over to get readings. Not that I believe in that stuff.”
“Of course not.” But interesting that he knew so much about a mystic living in the middle of nowhere she’d never heard of.
The boxy rescue truck pulled up next to Dante’s wheels, facing the other way. The men set right to work on Mrs. Orion, giving her oxygen and checking her for burns or other injuries, and checking Dante out as well. One spoke quietly to the elderly woman while the other stood and moved back toward his vehicle. Returning with an armload of supplies, he shouted out, “Hey, Chief Mac, did you see that Range Rover driven by an old guy come through here? We were way out on a call and he flew past us, almost knocked us off the road.”
Kat shoved the kittens into her granddad’s arms. “We’ll keep the brown and white for the station house mascot if the offer is still open. Brigit! Let’s go!” She tore away toward her sister’s chopper. “The Fresno Firebug is getting away!”
The two raced down the street, their grandfather calling after them, but she just shouted over her shoulder, “Send the sheriffs when they get here. We’ll radio you when we get a good look or a license plate…anything.”
In less than a minute, they lifted into the air, heading north, following the highway. The EMT hadn’t said how far away the guy was but he couldn’t be more than a few miles. The highway was eerily still, not a car going north or south, and they began to think the guys had been seeing things or maybe it was just an innocent traveler who happened to own property way out here somewhere. But then the trees thinned out, opening onto open grassland, and, in the distance, Kat spotted a cloud of dust.
“I think that’s him over there. See it, Brij?”
“I see someone.” She spoke into her mic, giving their coordinates as they followed the Rover down the deserted road. “So can you believe Sarabeth and James tried to set me up with John Felix, her ex? It was an unmitigated disaster. He’s totally not my type, and he was just as horrified. Hurt my pride a little, but I get it. I think I’ll just stay single for the time being.”
Kat stared at her. “Now, Brij? Really?”
Brigit piloted the chopper expertly, staying just behind the racing vehicle, which sped up even more, but it couldn’t outrace them. “What? Do you think that was okay? I never agreed to a blind date, and neither did he! We were both embarrassed.”
Sometimes sisters were maddening, no matter how adept they were at flying helicopters. “Brigit, let me fill you in on what we’re doing here. We are chasing a man who committed a series of famous arsons ending in at least one death in the 1950s. Now, over sixty years later, he has turned up again, not only here but, apparently, in Texas. If we help to take him down, we will be solving one of the longest strings of crimes in the history of the United States.”
“Wow.” Brigit came up even with the silver Rover. “So we’ll be sister superhero crime fighters?”
“What?” The car sped up again, but the road had begun to twist some, and he seemed to be having trouble sticking to it. “Yeah, sure, all of that. Just be careful. He could be armed.”
To her horror, the driver’s side window went down and an arm came out, holding something shiny.
“Brij, he’s got a gun, abort! Abort!”
The bird lifted and moved to the right, over the passenger side. “Abort? What do you think this is?”
“You’re the one who said we were superhero crime fighters. Isn’t that the term? I’m an arson investigator, I don’t engage in helicopter chases. Be careful!” The car slowed down, and so did the chopper. Brigit’s skill as a pilot was well known for so many reasons.
“I got this, sis. But we need a plan. This far out in the country, moving this fast, the sheriffs might not get here anytime soon, and my fuel is limited. If I have to turn around, we’ll lose him.”
“So what plan do you suggest? I don’t suppose we could just drop a net over him and carry him to the sheriff’s station.”
Now Brigit gave her the fish eye. “Ha ha. I’m serious. If he’s everything you say, we’re looking at a super criminal. A sixty year history of arson? And we don’t actually know what he did in between. Did he set other fires in a different way? Rob banks? Is he responsible for any of the people who’ve gone missing?”
“I don’t know,” Kat admitted. “I agree, we don’t want him to get away. But since it seems he has a firearm…and we don’t… You don’t, do you?”
Brij shook her head. “Water is my usual weapon.” She spoke into her mic again, updating the rest of the team.
“Okay, so how do we take down a guy like this and hold him until the police come?”
They were both silent for a long moment then Brigit said, “The wind is really kicking up. Not helping with fuel or control here.”
“Let’s finish this. Set down in front of him.”
“So he can run into us then shoot us? I just washed the chopper.” She loved that bird. God forbid they got it dusty.
“No. Don’t really set down. Just come in front of him, very low, and see if you can get him nervous enough to make a bad move. He’s got to be going well over a hundred miles an hour down there, you know. And he’s really old. Maybe his reactions have slowed down.”
“Okay, we can hope.” Brigit moved forward to just over the car no more than ten feet or so above it. “With the wind he’s already battling and what we’re creating he’ll need at least two hands on the wheel.”
“Sounds good.” All sense of adventure was gone in their intense focus now. Brigit could be silly, but she could also be as serious as a gut wound. Lovely picture, huh?
“Hang on, Kat.” She brought the bird to ride right over the windshield, the rotors kicking up dirt and dust and shading the driver’s view. That did it. “He’s sticking that pistol out the window again but that means he’s only got one hand one hand on the…wheel.”
The Rover came to a curve and between the wind, the helicopter-generated dust storm, and the fact he only had a single hand on the steering wheel, the driver lost control. Instead of following the turn, the vehicle drove straight off the road and onto the dirt and brush ahead. Brigit rose into the air, and they watched as the Rover slammed into the single tree within at least two miles and steam poured from under the hood.
Brigit reported what happened then said, “They want us to hold position. But the sheriff is at least fifteen minutes out.”
“Did you acknowledge hearing the instructions?”
“No…not yet. Why? What do you have in mind?” She peered out the window at the crash. “He’s not getting out. Do you think he’s hurt? Dead?” she asked cheerfully.
Kat looked over the seat and confirmed what she had hoped to see. “Set down. Not too close but maybe thirty feet away?”
“I can do that.”
As soon as she was on the ground, Kat unbuckled her harness, grabbed the big fire extinguisher, and hopped down to the ground. The driver’s door looked jammed, crushed from impact, and there were no signs of life from the vehicle yet. She approached from the rear, crouched low, in case. As she got within about ten feet, the passenger door opened and an elderly man stumbled out. He turned to face her and lifted a pistol in her direction, but she was ready.
The pressurized water was good for up to forty feet, she recalled, and an eighty-year-old who’d just been in an accident was no match for i
t. The spray hit him full in the face and knocked him backward, the gun flying from his hand.
Kat raced toward him, still gripping the tank, in case. She arrived to find him lying on his back, out cold. Brigit joined her and picked up the gun with a paper towel from the roll she carried in her chopper. “They know we heard them. Granddad is pretty mad. I suggest we just sit on him until the sheriff gets here.”
With no better ideas. Kat sat on his legs and Brij his abdomen. They studied him. “I hope he’s really our perp,” Kat said. “Or we’re in bigger trouble than even Granddad can get us out of.”
“It’s him. Nobody runs from a fire helicopter unless they’re hiding something. And he’s got all the makings of his devices in the car. Look.” Sure enough. Paraffin, cord, gasoline, lots of goodies for making fires and blowing things up. “Who is he?”
“No idea. I think I hear sirens.”
Brigit tsked. “Who uses sirens in the middle of nowhere? Lights are enough, and actually procedure in this—”
“Did I tell you I met someone?”
They settled in, and she told Brigit all about meeting Dante.
“So that was where the sexy Dallas truck came from? Wow, sis, you have all the luck. Do you think it’s going to go anywhere?”
“He’s on the road all the time delivering trucks and, if he is over his injury, he’ll want to go back to work as a firefighter so I guess that means Dallas.”
“Would you move to Dallas?”
Kat leaned back, looking for a more comfortable spot than the unconscious perp’s knobby knees. “We haven’t even known each other a full twenty-four hours.”
“C’mon, sis. You know. Is he the one?”
A flurry of sheriff’s cars, Highway Patrol, and a red chief’s truck arrived at just that moment, saving her from answering.
Yeah, she knew.
But did he?
Dante didn’t get out of Chief Waggoner’s truck, at first, when they arrived at the scene of the takedown. Treated to the astonishing sight of Kat MacKay and her sister sitting on an elderly man next to a crashed Rover with Brigit’s chopper set down some yards away, he was speechless.
Dallas Fire & Rescue: Wheels on Fire (Kindle Worlds Novella) (MacKay Destiny Book 4) Page 6
