Consumed (Firefighters #1)

by J. R. Ward

  “How we doing?” he asked Moose.

  The big man nodded off to the side, and Danny went with him, stepping away from the crew.

  “They Narcan’d him.” Moose lowered his voice. “LaSalle found a needle with heroin residue in it and disappeared the evidence. They’re telling everyone it was a reaction to prescription meds, but that’s a lie.”

  Remy LaSalle was a police officer and a good guy. Looked like the department was going to owe him. “Any other paraphernalia?”

  “They didn’t look very hard, if you know what I mean.”

  “How’d LaSalle know to go there?” Danny patted around for his cigarettes, but then stopped himself because lighting up was a no-go. “Did someone call him?”

  “They were going to play some pickup ball.”

  “If that was the plan, why’d Chavez be doing H?”

  “I don’t know. LaSalle said Chavez called him like an hour before and told him to come by, the door would be open. LaSalle didn’t think much of it until he got there, and . . . yeah, he was just off duty, so he had the Narcan with him because he came in a squad car that had a dose in the trunk. If it hadn’t been for that coincidence, we’d be making funeral arrangements right now.”

  “Where’s his mom? She on her way?”

  “Yeah. I called her.”

  Danny looked at the closed door of the bay. There was a break in the interior curtains that had been pulled, and he could see a sliver of Chavez’s face, so pale, the eyes closed. His body was so big and muscular, it made the hospital bed seem like something a child would put in a dollhouse.

  “Did you call the chief?” he asked.

  “Captain Baker did.”

  “Is he coming?”

  “Yeah, so you might want to leave, right now.”

  “I’m allowed to be here.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Danny put his hands on his hips and debated the odds of an argument between him and Tom. Timing and place were bad, yet the alchemy for ugly was ripe. On that note: “Are we allowed to go in and see him?”

  “They said it was okay. But nobody’s . . . well, you know. We’ve stayed out here. What do we say?”

  Danny waded his way through the familiar bodies, then he knocked on the glass but didn’t wait for an invite. He went into the room and made sure the door shut behind him.

  Chavez didn’t open his eyes. “Danny.”

  That voice was nothing but a croak, and Danny did a quick scan of the monitors. Blood pressure was low, pulse low, oxygen sats down.

  “How’d you know?” Danny crossed to the bed. “Mind reading again?”

  “You smell like a pack of Marlboros.”

  “Stop with the compliments. Mind if I pull up a chair?”

  “Whatever you like.” The man turned his head, lifted his lids and seemed to struggle to focus. “And I could do with a cigarette.”

  “I’d give you one if it wouldn’t get us both kicked out of here.”

  “I should have told LaSalle three hours.”

  Danny parked it close to the bedside and rubbed his face. He’d been debating how real to get and Chavez had answered that one. “So you’d plan this?”

  “Maybe. And don’t pretend you haven’t considered it every now and again.”

  “I won’t deny it.” Especially after John Thomas had been killed. “I mean, who hasn’t.”

  Chavez exhaled. “This is why I can talk to you. Everyone else would preach at me and then call the psych ward.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I am preparing a very stirring rendition of the you’ve-got-so-much-to-live-for speech.”

  “Spare me.”

  Danny linked his hands and stared down at them. “How many times have you tried before now. And don’t lie.”

  “Never.” Chavez put a heavy hand to his heart. “I swear.”

  “So what did it? Seeing Anne?”

  That dark head moved side to side on the pillow. “No. I was glad she was doing good, you know? I mean, I didn’t want her to get hurt, but you saved her-”

  “So why you try to off yourself?”

  “You no want to talk about your woman, huh.”

  “She’s not mine.”

  As they fell silent, the soft beeping of the machines filled the void.

  “I got the HIV, Danny.”

  Danny tried to catch his reaction before his expression changed. But the shock must have showed because the other man looked away.

  “You can’t tell anyone. No one else knows.”

  Danny cleared his throat. “It’s not a death sentence anymore. You have to know that-”

  “I went to my annual physical for the department and they took a blood sample. I forgot all about it.” Chavez’s stare drifted to the far corner of the treatment bay. “But they called three days ago.”

  “This doesn’t mean you can’t do your job.”

  “It’s not just about work. It’s about . . . someone. I can’t tell her that I can’t be with her now. It’s losing her that I can’t deal with. I figured a good dose of H would do the trick, and I was right, or I would have been if I’d just told LaSalle to come a little later. Fucker is always on time.”

  “Jesus, Chavez.”

  “I worried that someone else would find me. You know . . . someone who might be upset.”

  Danny thought back to Timeout’s best waitress. “How’d you get it, Emilio? Do you even know.”

  The guy put both hands up to his face. “I shared steroid needles at my neighborhood gym. I shouldn’t have. It was fucking stupid. I mean, I’m a goddamn EMT. But it’s all guys I’ve known since high school, and compared to doing IV drugs, the risk was so low. Until it wasn’t.”

  Everyone on the fire service needed to be in shape, and yeah, sure, some of the guys juiced to get bigger. It was what it was; Danny had never judged. And now, in a quick rush of paranoia, he thought about what he had done in the gym. No ’roids or hormone shots, for sure. And thank God he’d been religious about condoms, especially during the last ten months when he’d been making some questionable choices.

  But he’d be a fool not to recognize that there but for the grace of God went he.

  Chavez shut his eyes so tight, his lips curled off his teeth as if he were in pain. “And now, I don’t know who else I might have infected, you know? I’d have to tell them, and I can’t—I don’t want this, Danny. I can’t handle this.”

  “Yeah, you can.” Except even as he said the words, he was worried he was lying. “You can. You just need to . . . figure out a plan.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Chavez said bleakly.

  “How about I go get Josefina-”

  “No fucking way, Danny.” Chavez looked over. “She can’t . . . no, she can’t ever know.”

  “She’s going to find out what happened—I mean, about all this ER shit. She’s going to hear you were admitted from someone else. You don’t have to talk about the HIV now, but you could at least . . . I don’t know, tell her that you made a mistake. With the overdose.”

  It was the only thing Danny could think of to suggest. Sometimes, the woman you loved was the sole reason you stayed on the planet.

  He knew that firsthand.

  Maybe just seeing Josefina would calm the guy out.

  “If you love her,” Danny said, “and I know you do—’cuz I’ve seen the way you look at her—you don’t want her hearing you tried to kill yourself from someone else. People know you guys were getting close. Even if Remy is leading with the reaction-to-prescription-drug line, you never know what else could be said.”

  HIPAA was great for patient privacy. But New Brunswick was a very small town.

  “I’ll bring her over.” Danny put up a hand. “Again, you don’t have to go into the HIV thing right now, but at least you could see her and
remember why you’re going to want to see her again.”

  “There’s no future for us.”

  “You keep saying that, but you don’t know if that’s true.”

  “Why would anyone want to be with someone who’s infected.”

  “Do you honestly think that every person who’s positive is living alone in a dark corner like a fucking leper in the Middle Ages? Really? Seriously?”

  As they got quiet again, the monitor keeping track of Chavez’s heart rate measured a steady beat with steady beeping, and Danny supposed he should be reassured by how steady it was. But that was temporary. Undoubtedly, Chavez would reassure whoever needed the platitudes that it had been a garden-variety OD, and he would agree to go to a drug-awareness program. But that would just be to get out of here.

  They sat there for what felt like an hour but was probably only ten minutes.

  “I guess I should go.” Danny got up. “Your mom’s on the way.”

  “She needs to stop worrying about me.”

  “Then quit giving her reasons to.”

  Chavez cursed. “Look, if Josefina were to come here, I don’t know what I’d say. I mean, it’s early for us. Or was. She has no reason to get involved with me.”

  “Don’t make your mind up about that. Lemme bring her over. Come on, Chavez. She’s a good woman, that’s the reason you love her. You don’t have to talk it all out right now, but at least let her know you’re okay firsthand before she hears something from a customer at Timeout.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re gonna be all right.”

  When Chavez looked away, Danny wondered whether he was doing the right thing. But if you had to have something to live for, it might as well be love, right?

  “I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Chavez rolled his eyes. “Like they’re letting me out of here anytime soon.”

  Outside, anxious faces stared at him like they were trying to read the future in his expression. But he couldn’t give them that. Hell, even if he could, he doubted any of them would like the prognostication.

  “I gotta have a smoke. I’ll be back.”

  Leaving the crew behind, he went past the nursing station and out into the ambulance bay. There were a couple of guys he knew standing out of the rain with their rigs, so he went away from them but stayed under the overhang. As he took out his cigarettes and lit one, he was violating the hospital “No Smoke Zone” rule and told himself not to feel bad about it.

  Didn’t work.

  After three deep inhales, he stabbed the thing out just as a set of headlights flashed as an SUV pulled into the restricted area. He didn’t pay any attention to the who and what of it, but then a man with salt-and-pepper gray hair was heading over to him.

  Anne Ashburn’s brother was the last person he wanted to see. That was the way shit was rolling down his hill lately, though.

  “Chief,” he muttered. “Here to see Chavez?”

  “Captain Baker called me. How’s he doing?”

  Danny crossed his arms over his chest. It was unwritten policy that members of the crew didn’t comment on questions like that. At least not truthfully. The response that was expected and the one he knew he should give was: He’s fine. He’ll come through. He can’t wait to get back on a ladder.

  The words refused to come out of his mouth. He just kept seeing Chavez in that bed.

  There was no looking at the chief as he spoke. “He’s suicidal. He’s going to lie to get out of here, and in a matter of weeks, I’m fucking terrified that we’re going to be in dress blues next to his weeping mother.”

  Tom’s recoil told him more than he needed to know about what he’d just done. But it was what it was. He was willing to keep Chavez’s secret about the HIV, but that was as far as it went for him.

  “I’m not saying this because I’m under psych review myself.” He turned to the chief. “I’m tired. I’m fucking tired of getting eaten alive by shit I can’t get out of my head. And if Chavez kills himself because I didn’t say something? I don’t have room for that. I can’t carry that. My arms are full.”

  Hell of a mic drop: He’d triggered a mandatory suspension and review of a man who was a terrific firefighter and an even better human being. It was the worst betrayal.

  Danny had just put the poor bastard on the very path he himself was walking.

  But he was done adding wrongs to his conscience.

  * * *

  Anne headed for the University of New Brunswick’s ER the second Moose texted her, grabbing her keys and going out into the rain so fast, she forgot to put Soot in his crate. Halfway across town, she’d realized her mistake, and if she came home to ruined sofa cushions and shredded running shoes, it was on her.

  The UNB hospital campus was like a small city, the cluster of buildings ringed by a grass verge that had glowing signs with directions to all the different departments, clinics, and services. The emergency room was around to the side, and as a trained EMT who had served on the 499’s rescue squad, this was where she had been brought for treatment.

  She had very spotty memories of the trip in the ambulance. The assessment of her arm. Her transfer to an inpatient room.

  All she’d been focused was whether Danny had made it out alive.

  As she pulled into the parking lot for visitors, her wipers slapped back and forth, offering clear glimpses of the lineups of cars that did not last long. When she parked and got out, she pulled the hood of her windbreaker up and shoved her hands into her pockets.

  Just as she started off for the glowing entrance, a tall figure came out from the ambulance area.

  She recognized who it was immediately.

  Changing trajectory, she headed for Danny, and he seemed to know it was her because he stopped.

  “Hey,” he said gruffly as she came up to him.

  “Moose got in touch with me.”

  “He does that, doesn’t he.”

  He hadn’t bothered to shave, his face rough with stubble, and his windbreaker was wrinkled, as if it had been wadded up somewhere. But his jeans were clean and he smelled like soap even in the rain.

  Which he didn’t seem to notice, even as it dripped off his nose and hair.

  “What the hell happened?” she asked.

  “Moose didn’t say?”

  “No, he just texted that Emilio was going to be admitted for observation. Was it a fire?” Danny shook his head and she frowned. “So he was in an accident?”

  “No.”

  “Oh . . . God.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Where?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “I’m doing a favor for Chavez.”

  Danny said a quick good-bye and walked away. And Anne told herself to stay put.

  She lasted two heartbeats with that before she jumped forward to catch up with him. “I want to help.”

  Danny didn’t slow down. Didn’t look at her. He just kept striding through the storm. “What?”

  “Emilio.” The wind changed direction and blew her off-balance. “I want to help you with the favor. It’s all I can do for him.”

  “It’s nothing I can’t handle myself.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Danny.”

  He stopped and stared over her head. “I don’t need your help, okay.”

  “Please, this is about Emilio. Not us.”

  “Right. Sorry. I forgot we’re supposed to put our head in the sand and pretend there’s nothing going on—and spare me the there-isn’ts. Everything is about us. Your fucking arm, my shit. It’s all about us, Anne. And yeah, sure, you’re more mentally advanced, or whatever you want to call it, than I am. But out of the two of us, I’m the only one who sees clearly.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “This is about Chavez—”

 
Danny threw up his hands and walked off into the storm muttering to himself.

  Anne ran after him. “What does Emilio need?”

  Lightning flashed overhead, the strobing reminding her of being on a scene, and as the answering thunder rolled through the night sky, rain got into her eyes, making them burn. As they came up to Danny’s truck, she expected him to just get in and drive away. But of course, he refused to follow any pattern of behavior.

  He stopped again, put his hands on his hips, and stared down at her. “What’ll you give me.”

  Anne blinked and pulled her hood further forward. “Excuse me? Are you even serious?”

  “I want something.” He didn’t seem to notice it was pouring or that gale force gusts were tackling them from all sides or that they were having to shout over the storm. “And no, not sex, for fuck’s sake. But quid pro quo.”

  She pointed back at the ER, and on cue, more lightning flashed. “There’s a man in there fighting for his life.”

  Danny shrugged, his face slick and reflective of the hospital’s security lamps. “I have something you want. So gimme something I want and I’ll let you help.”

  “You are an asshole.”

  “I know.” He tilted his head and adopted an expression like he was doing long division in his head. “Let’s see . . . I need help out at the farm clearing brush. Could be another opportunity for you to prove you’re perfectly fine—plus, if we need to call an ambulance out there, it won’t be one of us who responds, so there’s that. Or . . . you could promise me that you’ll come to Moose’s Saturday night—”

  “Fine. I’ll go with you,” she snapped.

  “See.” He started to smile. “So easy. Now get in my truck. We’re going to Timeout to find Josefina.”

  Anne was talking to herself as she went around and got in. As her feet squished in her soaked running shoes and a trickle of water snuck passed the open collar of her Patagonia jacket, she was cursing him.

  Sending Danny a glare, she didn’t care that she was getting his truck cab all wet. Then again, he didn’t seem to care, either.