“Micah didn’t get the memo on your change of heart?”
“No.”
“Men can be such clueless lugheads sometimes. He was just here earlier trying to figure out how to win you over once and for all. I swear, there’s nothing to be done but love our men through it until they come to their senses. My Tyson was the same way, as stubborn as a cat on a leash. Just like Ty, and just like your Micah. It’s the Texas in their blood.”
Remedy liked everything about the Texas in Micah’s blood, even his stubbornness, so she’d have to forgive him for jumping to conclusions about her leaving Dulcet for California again. She wouldn’t dream of compromising his focus on a Code Two injury situation by calling him now, but she fully planned to wait at his house for him to return so she could lay her heart bare for him.
“I should get back to my office. My clients are waiting.” Though the idea of spending another minute with Cambelle, Wynd, and Helen—and, really, with her parents, too, if she was being honest—sounded as much fun as flying a red-eye in economy class from L.A. to New York while surrounded by crying babies. None of those components on their own were inherently odious, but combined they made for one hell of an unpleasant night.
Granny saw the pigeons first. “There they are. Oh, this time we’ve got the jump on ’em, because I’m a crack shot.” She flipped Remedy her golf cart keys. “You drive; I’ll shoot.”
There was a time when Remedy would have relished the chance to wipe those flying rodents out, but no longer. Remedy wasn’t sure how it’d happened, but somewhere along the line she’d developed a soft spot for those darned runaway-from-home pigeons, as though she’d imprinted on them as surely as they’d imprinted on her. Luckily, she’d seen Granny’s aim in action and knew she didn’t have a prayer of hitting a moving target—especially if Remedy ensured that she didn’t with a bit of strategically erratic driving.
What better excuse to delay her return to the meeting from hell?
Remedy stood, keys in hand. “Let’s get ’em!”
Moving with a spry step that defied her age, Granny shrugged out of the peach blazer she’d been wearing, retrieved a shotgun from inside the golf cart’s rear bench seat, and scrambled into the passenger seat.
“Couldn’t we use a net to trap them?” Remedy asked.
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, call Skeeter to come get them?”
Granny loaded cartridges into her gun. “Not when I’ve got a hankering for dove stew.”
“Just don’t invite me over to eat it with you.”
“Fire in the hole!” Granny shouted.
Remedy timed a tug on the steering wheel with Granny’s shot. She nicked the edge of the bench and it tipped forward, overturning.
Remedy slammed on the brakes, so annoyed with herself she could spit. Would she ever get the hang of driving these ridiculous things? How complicated could it be?
“Keep going!” Granny said, gesturing with her shotgun as though they were headed into battle. “We’re losing them.”
The birds sought refuge in the trees beyond the edge of the resort grounds, tucking themselves out of sight in the thick brush. Remedy floored the golf cart and sped in the direction she and Granny June had last spotted them, skirting the edge of the wilderness.
Granny got another wide shot off. Remedy swerved, pointing them in the direction of the chapel.
Remedy was the first one to spot the smoke. “Granny, look. The chapel.”
Against the fading light in the sky, she saw the unmistakable glow of a bright orange flame. The trees surrounding the chapel’s east wall were burning.
Remedy drove them to the resort at top speed while Granny hollered for help to any resort workers within earshot. With Remedy’s heart racing, she dialing Micah’s number. He didn’t answer by the fourth ring, so she ended the call and dialed 911.
By the time she got through, the chapel roof had caught fire.
“The chapel at Briscoe Ranch Resort is on fire,” she told the dispatchers. “It’s on the northwest side of the resort, on a hill and—”
She crashed the golf cart into a low brick fence. Granny fell from her seat to the ground. In horror, Remedy flew out of the cart and dropped to her knees next to Granny, but she pushed Remedy away and stood. “I have to get to him. My Tyson.”
Granny’s forearm and right hand were bloody, the skin ripped like tissue paper. Still, she evaded Remedy’s efforts to take hold of her and lurched up Chapel Hill at a fast clip.
Remedy raced to catch up, calling, “Granny, no. It’s not safe!”
Workers from the hotel swarmed around Remedy shouting directions and asking Remedy what had happened. “I already called 9-1-1,” she told them. “But let’s hook up garden hoses to use until Micah’s team gets here.”
She turned back to Granny in time to see her racing up the chapel’s front steps, shouting Tyson’s name. Remedy gave chase, only to watch Granny disappear into the burning building.
Remedy followed her in through the main doors, calling her name. Smoke had filled the air inside the church, reducing visibility to a few feet off the floor. Remedy crouched, looking for Granny’s legs amid the worsening visibility. If she were Granny June, she’d try to save their wedding album first. Remedy ran to that side of the vestibule. The wedding album was gone.
She ran to the other side, where the family Bible was kept. But the glass was broken and the Bible gone. In its place was a wooden cross.
Choking on the dense smoke that now licked at her knees, Remedy dropped onto all fours. Calling Granny’s name, she crawled through the main aisle of the sanctuary, trying to decide where Granny would go next. The altar that Tyson made? The cross hanging behind it? None of that made sense.
Remedy’s lungs burned. Her eyes watered, stinging so badly that she had to force herself not to close them. It was hard to tell given the darkness and smoke, but she thought she saw the flicker of a flame against the wall. The fire was spreading, but she still hadn’t found Granny June. She crawled on her belly to the altar, but Granny June was nowhere in sight.
“Granny!” she called before devolving into a coughing fit.
The light in the room grew dim as only a couple feet of breathable air remained. Maybe Granny had gotten the wedding album and Bible and left again through another exit. She snaked her way around the corner, to the small room behind the organ.
Granny’s legs were visible, though she lay facedown, clutching her precious treasures in her bruised and bloodied arms.
“Granny! Oh my God. Please be alive. Please, please, please.”
She rolled her over. Granny coughed and her eyes fluttered open.
“I’m going to get you out of here!” she called above the roar of the fire and snapping wood and breaking glass.
“Door won’t open,” Granny said weakly. “I need to get to my Tyson out behind the church.”
But Tyson’s grave was too close to the building to be safe for Granny June. “I’ve got to get you out of here first.” Remedy threw her shoulder against the side door. The wood was hot. Reaching up through the smoke, she searched blindly for the doorknob only to burn her hand on it. “The other side of the door’s on fire. I think we need to break a glass window to get out.”
“You go,” Granny said. “I need to get to my Tyson, but you need to get to your man, too.”
Every last remnant of Remedy’s cynicism about weddings had been vanquished. This church, and the weddings it had held within its walls, meant something deep and holy, something beyond the superficial displays that Remedy had thought they were. She wanted to marry Micah in this building. If she got out of there alive, she’d tell him how she felt; she’d make him understand that she didn’t want to live without him ever again. She wanted what Granny June and Tyson had, a love that lasted forever.
“I’m not leaving you,” Remedy said. “You and I are going to rebuild this chapel, Granny. I can’t do it without you. You have so many more weddings to bless
here with your presence. Hopefully even mine someday soon.”
Granny clutched her wedding album and Bible, burrowed her face in the carpet, and wept.
“Let’s get out of here, Granny.”
Granny tried to pull herself forward, but she was weak. “You go ahead. I’m right behind you.”
Remedy put her arm around Granny’s back. “No. Crawl with me.”
“I can’t, child.”
Over the roar of flame and the crackling of wood, a man’s voice called Remedy’s name, or at least she wanted to believe it was real.
Remedy twisted, putting her back to Granny. “Hug me; don’t let go. I’m getting us out of here together. I’m not leaving without you, Granny, so if you want to save me, then hold on tight.”
The clear air in the room was limited to only inches of space above the floor. Remedy flattened, securing Granny on her back. She pushed with her feet, pulled with her elbows, and army crawled back into the sanctuary toward the voice she’d heard.
They were not going to die like this. Not now, not when they both had so much more living to do. Micah’s image in her mind spurred her on. Was he the one calling her name? Was he searching for her? If he was, then he was in danger, too. The sooner she got to him, the sooner they could all get to safety.
Though her eyes stung bitterly and her lungs were closing, she did not stop. She did not think of the pain or the weight of Granny on her back, pressing into her ribs and lungs, making the labor of breathing nearly impossible. She reached her arm out, dug her nails into a wooden floor beam, and pulled them toward the voice calling for her.
* * *
Micah didn’t remember the drive to Briscoe Ranch Resort from the Code Two garage fire he’d been overseeing. He didn’t remember coordinating with his crew or pulling to a stop in the Chapel Hill parking lot. The only thing in his head was the call he’d gotten from Ty Briscoe only seconds before that workers had told him that his mother and Remedy had run into the burning church.
Resort workers had three garden hoses trained on the blaze, but their efforts were in vain in a fire raging this much out of control, with so much old, dry lumber as fuel.
Muffled voices spoke all around him as he buttoned his flame-resistant uniform jacket and donned his hat and mask, suiting up to face the blaze.
A hand grabbed his jacket by the scruff. Chet, getting in his face, slamming him against the side of the fire engine. “You’re not leading this operation. You’re too close, emotionally.”
“Screw you, Chet. I’m tired of you dogging me with your jealous bullshit.”
“I’ll sock you if I have to, man. You’re not in charge this time. Turn it over to me. It’s the only way. Look at you.” He flipped Micah’s radio, which was dangling at his waist, though it should have been affixed to his chest. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“You want to run this?” Micah said. “Fine. Makes no difference to me. I’m going in after her.” He’d rather die with them in that building than stand outside and watch a fire murder the love of his life and the woman who was like a grandmother to him.
“Not alone, you’re not.”
“Damn right, I’m not. Send the whole crew in. Every man. We’ve got to get her and Granny June out of there before a flash point hits.”
“Roger that. I’ll get the crew together. You wait for my call after we get water on those flames.”
Sure he would. He’d get right on that. Micah fixed his radio, shrugged into his breathing apparatus, and strode to the front door of the chapel, the only spot on the building not engulfed in flames. That building’s wood had been baking under the Texas sun for a half century. There would be a flash point as soon as the interior temperature crested and the chapel’s whole interior would incinerate as though a nuclear bomb had exploded, no actual flame necessary.
He paused by Granny June’s bench, which had been reduced to smoldering shards of wood and carbon. Surrounding the bench, tire marks dug into the earth below the singed lawn as though the bench had been hit by a car. Or a golf cart. Micah had been so upset with Remedy when he’d left the resort that he hadn’t stopped to say hello to Granny June while she took her usual cocktail hour on the bench with her glasses of bourbon and a candle. Flame and accelerant. My God …
He had to get them out of there. The alternative was too overwhelming to consider. He was angry with Remedy and Granny for going into such a deadly situation and angry at God for screwing him over like this. After all the sacrifices he’d made, the devotion with which he’d undertaken the burden of protecting what he loved from fire, this was what he got in return. Two of the people he loved the most in this world trapped in mortal danger by a fire.
Dusty and three other men fell into step behind him.
“We’ve got your back,” Dusty said. “Let’s go get ’em.”
Ty Briscoe was his next obstacle. He met Micah near the chapel steps, a frantic, desperate look in his eye. “I’m going with you.”
Micah shoved him out of his path. “You’re not trained and you don’t have the right gear. I do. My men do. Do not get in our way and make our jobs any harder. Do not make this about you.”
“I can’t just stand here and wait.”
Micah leveled his fiercest glare at him. “You’d better. That’s the only way you can help right now.”
James Decker appeared behind Ty, restraining him the best he could.
Micah shut out the sight and pounded his chest, forcing the air from his lungs, draining the fight from his blood. This rescue had to be accomplished with nothing but cold, calculated skill or it wasn’t going to work. He shut it all down. His fear, his love. Everything except his job. The only emotion coursing through his veins was resolve. He was not coming out of that chapel alone.
“You bring me my mother and you can have anything you want!” Ty bellowed to him. “My money, the resort, power like you’ve never known. I’ll give you anything; just bring her out alive, goddamn it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Micah dropped to his knees at the chapel entrance and proceeded forward, crawling, into the building. There was still a good six inches of visibility beneath the smoke, which filled him with hope that smoke inhalation hadn’t killed both women yet.
On their hands and knees, the firefighters fanned out in the vestibule, each taking a side to methodically search, not only for Remedy and June but for any other unknown victims. Micah took the center, crawling through the open doors to the sanctuary and down the center aisle, his head on a swivel. Visibility was declining rapidly, and he strained to scan down each row of pews.
Every few feet he called Remedy’s name, but he was nearing the front of the sanctuary and had yet to find any sign of them. The altar and stage behind it were completely engulfed in smoke. He couldn’t even tell where the flames were and which walls were on fire, the smoke was so dense. He was running out of time. A flash point was coming and it would kill them all when it did.
Then, through the darkness, a woman’s hand reached out on the wood flooring.
Micah rushed forward. “I’ve got two women, alive but injured, in the center aisle of the sanctuary,” Micah said into his radio. “Need backup in here.”
He crushed any emotions he felt back into a safe, locked box in his heart and reclaimed his cold, calculated skill. “I’m going to get you both out of here, but we need to hurry.”
Dusty scrambled through the encroaching darkness and reached Micah’s side in no time. More firefighters swarmed around them. “We’re getting you both out of here. Right now.”
Micah lifted Remedy’s semiconscious body into his arms. Dusty did the same with Granny June. The men didn’t think, they didn’t take their time—they headed for the doors at a sprint. They’d barely cleared the base of the hill when the flash point struck. Windows exploded. A piece of the roof splintered, then caved in. Angry orange flames licked at the sky as the building started to collapse.
Micah and Dusty and the rest of their team
kept running toward the waiting EMTs, past the additional fire trucks that had arrived on scene and had their fire hoses trained on the building. In the distance, Micah could see that another couple fire crews were maintaining the firebreak line between the chapel and the wilderness beyond the resort.
Micah and Dusty gently laid the injured women on two stretchers, then stepped back so the EMTs could get to work. From under Granny June’s shirt slid a bound volume. It fell to the ground and opened, its pages flapping in the wind. Ty and his children and wife crowded closer.
“My mother’s wedding album,” Ty said, his voice cracking. “That’s why she went in there. To save her album.”
“We need space to work. I need everyone to back up,” an EMT said.
Micah turned his attention to Remedy. Chet hovered over her, affixing an oxygen mask to her face while another EMT started an IV drip.
“Tell me she has a pulse,” Micah said.
“She has a pulse and it’s strong. As soon as I put the oxygen mask on her, she opened her eyes,” Chet said.
Praise God.
Micah leaned in nearer. Remedy’s eyes shifted to look at him.
He tamped down the relief and fear and lingering anger, all the emotions that would undo him if he let them. He’d fall apart later, when no one was counting on him. Meanwhile, he had a family to update.
Standing behind the taped-off barricades along with the rest of the curious hotel guests, he found Remedy’s parents. The only way he could think to describe the looks on their face was stricken. It was ironic how these two larger-than-life celebrities had sunk so low in his mind, the more he’d learned about them. But they were Remedy’s flesh and blood, and they deserved to know what was going on with their daughter.
“She’s awake again and lucid,” he told them. “Not sure about smoke inhalation damage yet, but she’s alive.”
Remedy’s mother bowed her head and wept uncontrollably.
“Let’s go,” he heard an EMT behind him say. “She’s ready for transport.”
One Hot Summer Page 31
