Deep Burn (Station Seventeen Book 2) Read online

  Bright orange flames licked upward from all four windows on the first floor, carving a path for the steady plumes of smoke that followed. There were no signs of entrapment—nobody stumbling through the front yard with panicky reports of a family member still inside; or worse yet, leaning out the second-story windows hollering for help. Still, Shae had been on far too many calls to feel relief until search and rescue came up clean. Although the yard was surrounded by a sturdy perimeter of padlocked chain link fencing all the way around, the house’s front door appeared otherwise unimpeded. But between the swiftly moving fire and the harsh tang in the air that Shae immediately recognized as some sort of chemicals burning, an easy breach would be all the silver lining this call was going to cough up.

  The two-way radio on her shoulder crackled to life. “Okay, everyone,” came Captain Bridges’s calm, controlled voice. “Hawk, you and Dempsey are on search and rescue, but make it fast. Faurier, you and Gates get a vent on this roof. Gamble, tap a hydrant and get those water lines ready to go. Send anyone you can spare with Hawkins for that sweep. If there are people trapped in this house, we need them out now. Go.”

  A litany of “copy that”s filtered over the line, followed quickly by Gamble’s voice in real time as he pegged Shae, Slater, and Walker with a piercing stare.

  “Walker, you’re with me. I want those lines prepped five minutes ago. Slater, today is your lucky fucking day. You’re with McCullough, backing up squad on S&R.”

  Whoa. Score one for the rookie. Shae’s brows would’ve shot toward the brim of the helmet she’d just buckled into place if she’d had so much as a second to spare. But Gamble and Walker were already moving toward the back of the engine to ready the hoses, and shocked or not, she wasn’t about to lag behind.

  “Alright Slater,” Shae said, looking the rookie in the baby blues at the same time she grabbed her Halligan bar from the storage compartment to her left. Breathe in. Breathe out. “Time to put the last three months’ of training to work. You’re on my hip. Not in my dance space, not ten paces behind me, but on my hip until you’re told otherwise. You copy?”

  “Copy.” To his credit, Slater’s nod was firm as he fell in at her six, his own Halligan already in hand. They reached the gate to the front-yard fence just as Ryan Dempsey, the newest member of their rescue squad but the best at breaching everything from back doors to bank vaults, took care of the padlock with a quick snick of his bolt cutters.

  “Now that that’s out of the way,” Hawkins said, the serious set of his jaw a complete one-eighty from his earlier cockiness as he led them over the narrow concrete walkway and up to the house. “Dempsey, let’s make hay on getting this front door knocked in. I’ve got a feeling we ain’t gonna have time on our side for this sweep. McCullough, Slater, you’re on floor one. Dempsey and I will take floor two.”

  Shae nodded, both her lungs and her muscles squeezing beneath the familiar weight of her SCBA tank and the rest of her gear as the four of them clattered to a stop in front of the timeworn threshold of the house. “Copy that, Lieutenant.”

  Heat and potent, chemical-laced smoke poured from the house, grabbing Shae by the throat before Dempsey could so much as get his Halligan bar between the door hinges.

  “Masks on,” Hawk barked, but Shae had been halfway there. Reaching the rest of the way up, she yanked her mask over her face, the oxygen from her SCBA kicking in with a low hiss. Thankfully, Slater’s instincts were as good as his training, and he mimicked her movements to follow Hawk’s command after only a brief hitch.

  Hawkins jerked his chin at the three of them. “Let’s rock and roll, y’all.”

  With a hard jerk of his Halligan and a perfectly placed kick, Dempsey sent the front door flying on its hinges, and a few seconds later, they were all over the fiery threshold.

  “Okay, Slater,” Shae said, scanning the space around them as soon as Hawk and Dempsey cut a path into the house and headed for the stairs. Damn this place was burning fast. “This fire already has a lot of teeth. We’re going to have to split up if we want to cover the whole floor in good time.”

  Dividing forces wasn’t unusual for S&R, although considering the hairy factor of this call along with Slater’s rookie status, it wasn’t ideal. But he’d done plenty of S&R on Gamble’s hip at smaller fires, and he was coming into his own. Plus, they really didn’t have a choice.

  Which he seemed to realize all too well, because he answered with a tight, definitive nod. “Copy that.”

  “You take the Delta side and I’ll go Bravo. Be quick but don’t rush.” Flames climbed the walls around them in irregular patterns, heat and uncut adrenaline forcing an instant sheen of sweat over Shae’s brows, and oh hell, as much as she loved the rush of her job, they needed to do this sweep and get gone. “Don’t be shy about using your radio if you need it. I’ve got your back. Go.”

  She turned toward the left-hand side of the house, her boots already in motion on the floorboards. The place was fully involved, the fire spreading at a rate that bordered on ridiculous for a run-of-the-mill house blaze. Keeping her eyes wide open for both people and potential hazards, Shae moved into what she guessed to be a living room, surveying the sparsely appointed space.

  “Fire department! Call out!” she bellowed past her mask. The windows were covered by dark, heavy curtains, which made visibility jack with a side of shit even though they’d already been half-eaten by the quickly moving flames. An odd sensation plucked at Shae’s spine, growing both stronger and stranger as she took in the erratic pathways of fire and the sheer intensity with which they burned. The couch in the middle of the room was in even worse condition than the curtains, and a fresh bloom of sweat trickled between her shoulder blades as she crouched down low and picked up the pace into the next room.

  “Fire department, is anyone—”

  Shae’s words crashed to a halt at the sight of a figure lying slumped on the floor. Things went from bad to cluster fuck when she registered the table along the far wall holding what looked like a full-scale science experiment, complete with two—dammit, three portable gas burners, and her heart launched against the wall of her chest, smacking every last one of her ribs for good measure.

  “Sir! Sir, can you hear me?” she called out, dropping to her knees beside the lifeless figure. She palmed his shoulder, assessing him for obvious injures with a lightning-fast glance. But then flames rolled out over the ceiling above her, sending the curtains from the window in a heavy, flame-fueled thump, and dammit, there was no more time to waste.

  “McCullough to command,” Shae reported into her radio, shifting the unconscious man onto his stomach to get him in position for a fireman’s carry.

  Captain Bridges came back with a steady, “McCullough, this is command. Report.”

  “I’ve got an unresponsive civilian down on floor one, Bravo side. Affirmative on the meth lab, too. This fire is going to flash over, Cap, and soon.”

  “Command to McCullough, copy that. Are you clear for the primary exit?”

  Shae shot a gaze toward the living room, now clouded by a nearly impenetrable haze of dark gray smoke. Not gonna be a cakewalk with fiery debris raining down harder by the second and the pretty much nonexistent visibility, but… “Affirmative, Command.”

  “Good,” Bridges said. “Hawkins, Dempsey, Slater, I want you out of there now. McCullough, paramedics are standing by at the primary exit. Fall out.”

  “Copy that.”

  Coiling her muscles so hard they burned, Shae hooked her hands beneath the man’s linebacker-esque shoulders, stabbing her boots into the floorboards. Her training merged with her survival instinct and the adrenaline already cooking in her veins, and she hauled the guy up and over her shoulders despite what had to be a fifty-pound weight difference. Shae forced her lungs to expand—breathe in—and her heartbeat to slow as she retraced her steps—six, seven, eight, nine—through the room and toward the front door. Shock popped in her veins at how rapidly the path through the living room had
deteriorated, but with the window frame and half the wall around it now totally engulfed in smoke and flames, the front door was still her best viable exit.

  Breathe out. With a deep-down burst of energy, Shae powered her way to the door. The thing stood wide on its hinges from Dempsey’s earlier breach, and finally, finally she got close enough to see fragments of blue sky and clear daylight beyond the threshold. For a second, Shae’s senses short-circuited, her vision and balance and brain all scrambling to adjust to the searing brightness of the sun as she cleared the front door. But then Parker Drake and Quinn Copeland rushed up the concrete walkway, and the hard clack of the gurney wheels yanked her focus all the way into place.

  “He was down when I found him,” Shae said after lowering the guy to the gurney and tugging her mask from her face to suck in a lungful of natural air. Parker’s gloved hands became a blue nitrile blur as he started a rapid trauma assessment, concern knotting his nearly black brows.

  “Between the smoke and the fumes, that’s not too shocking. Ah, dammit. No pulse. Starting compressions.”

  Shae shifted back to give him room to work, and God, what a cluster fuck of a call. “Is everyone else clear?” she asked Quinn, swiveling her gaze over the chaos of the scraggly yard. But before the worry in the woman’s dark blue stare could form an answer, Slater’s voice tore over the radio.

  “McCullough! Shae. Help!”

  Her breath slammed to a stop at the same time her pulse rattled at her throat. “Slater, what’s your status? Are you hurt?”

  “Negative. I’m not injured or trapped,” came the immediate reply over the line. “But I…I can’t fall out…you need to see this.”

  Shae turned toward the actively burning house behind her, and something snapped, hard and definite in her gut. “Dempsey and Hawk are clear, right?” she asked, reaching for the mask propped high over her forehead.

  “Yes, but…” Parker frowned in confusion, transferring his stare to hers as Quinn slid monitor leads into place over their patient’s chest. “McCullough, Cap ordered everybody to fall out. You can’t—”

  She was geared up and halfway back to the threshold before Parker could even finish.

  “McCullough to Command. I’m going back in for Slater.” The call-in would earn her an epic ass-chewing, Shae knew. But if she wanted to have Slater’s back like she’d promised, she needed someone else to have hers.

  “McCullough, this is Command,” Bridges bit out, and yyyyep. He was pissed. “Stand down immediately while I assess the scene. Do you copy?”

  “Sorry, sir. Too late,” she clipped into her radio as she shouldered her way back through the door and into the hazy space of the foyer. “Slater, what’s your location?”

  “Here! I’m here.” Thankfully, the rookie stood a handful of paces inside the doorway, upright and unhurt. But Shae’s sharp blast of relief at the sight of him screeched to an end at the fear in his voice as he added, “Come quick.”

  He led her through the smoke-filled space to the right of the foyer, which was a near-identical layout to the side of the house she’d already cleared. Two long tables stood end to end in the middle of the first room, both filled to the gills with enough chemicals to make Shae’s throat go tight beneath her hood.

  “Slater,” she started, but still, he pressed farther past the smoke and spreading flames, coming to a sloppy stop just inside the second room.

  “I saw him just after Cap gave the order to fall out. I rolled him to check for spinal injuries, just like we’re supposed to before we move anyone, but—”

  Shae’s stomach twisted, a shiver running the length of her spine despite the hell-hot conditions surrounding her on every side. The man on the ground was slumped over and lifeless, much as her victim had been. The giant pool of blood spreading out beneath him from the gaping, ear-to-ear slash wound on his neck?

  That was definitely different.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe…breathe right. Fucking. Now.

  “Okay, Slater.” Shae forced the words from her throat, marshalling every ounce of calm that she owned past her gag reflex and the reckless slamming of her heart. “We need to get this guy out of here.”

  Still, Slater didn’t budge. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “We need to get him out of here,” she repeated, hoping like hell he wouldn’t notice her definite dodge of the question. “Are you good to take point?”

  As wide as the rookie’s eyes were behind his mask, Shae couldn’t risk letting him lag behind her, and they had to fall out, fast. Shae maneuvered the victim closer for extraction, her boots slipping in the pool of blood beneath her feet, and Slater stood frozen to the floorboards, his stare unmoving.

  Dammit. Dammit. “Slater, look at me. Look!” The scalpel-sharp edge in her demand grabbed his attention—thank fuck—and he lifted his stare from the blood now soaking through her turnout gear to meet her gaze. “I’ve got you, and you’ve got point. We’re getting this guy out of here, nice and easy, but I need you to lead the way. Do you copy?”

  “Okay, yeah. Yeah.” Slater’s nod was still a little wobbly, but Shae would have to take it.

  “Good.” She took one last look at the man on the floor, her gut pitching as she reached for her radio. “Command, this is McCullough. We’re going to need another ambo. And, Cap?”

  She hooked her arms beneath the victim’s, the unnatural loll of his head on what little was left of his neck sending a fresh twist of dread from her helmet to her heels.

  “Call the cops and tell them to get out here as quickly as they can. This place is a murder scene.”

  Chapter 2

  If idle hands were the devil’s workshop, then James Capelli was about to become a master carpenter for the Prince of Darkness. But the intelligence unit at the Thirty-Third hadn’t seen anything more serious than a string of low-level smash and grabs since before Christmas, and as the guy who ran all of their surveillance and tech, if they weren’t busy, he wasn’t busy.

  Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that whole devil’s workshop thing? Freakishly accurate in Capelli’s case.

  “Okay. Time to stay busy,” he murmured, sliding his glasses higher over the bridge of his nose and killing the pang in his rib cage before it had a chance to fully form. Leaning back in his sleek black desk chair, Capelli sent a calculated stare over his work space. Eight years of running IT and surveillance for the Remington Police Department had given him plenty of time to cultivate the perfect technical environment, and he’d done it bit by bit (literally, because geek humor was a beautiful thing.)

  Although he’d personally designed not only the network Sergeant Sam Sinclair and the four detectives in the intelligence unit used on a daily basis, but the state-of-the-art digital display board they used to collect and cross-reference data on any given investigation too, Capelli’s deep-down pride and joy was his own work space. An array made up of six twenty-seven-inch touch screens that could provide individual images or enlarge one across the entire display. Seamless connections to any database a cop could think of—as well as a handful no one other than Capelli could think of but hey, might be useful one day. Enough bandwidth to effectively run a small island nation, and hell if shit like this wasn’t exactly why he shouldn’t have free time on his hands.

  His mind was always on, always alert and processing and moving at warp speed. And if he didn’t use his walnut for good, his past history would rear up in an instant to become an all-too-present reality.

  One that would land him in jail. Or worse.

  “Listen up, people. We have a case.”

  The sandpaper edges of Sinclair’s voice hooked Capelli’s attention, along with everyone else’s from around the large, shared work space of the intelligence office.

  “Okay.” Detective Isabella Moreno looked up from the stack of paperwork on her desk as if she’d just been handed a Presidential pardon, her brown eyes glinting in true let’s do this fashion. “What’re we looking at?”

  Sinclair
didn’t skip a beat. “Captain Bridges over at Seventeen just called in a pretty nasty fire at a residence housing a meth lab in North Point.”

  “Was there a problem with the call?” Alarm streaked over Moreno’s face, but Sinclair canceled it out with a quick, tight shake of his crew cut.

  “All first responders are accounted for and uninjured.”

  “Oh. Good,” she said, although the simplicity of her answer was a poor match for the relief flooding through her stare. Logically, Capelli didn’t find Moreno’s reaction out of the ordinary; after all, she and her boyfriend, firefighter Kellan Walker, had filled their grave-danger quota for at least a year with the DuPree case—or okay, maybe for a decade. Possibly forever.

  Emotionally, though? The response was as foreign to him as if Isabella had started spouting ancient Sanskrit backwards. Investing that much emotion in another person, whose behavior and actions you couldn’t predict or know inside and out one hundred percent of the time, without fail? Christ, it was an engraved invitation for disaster.

  Once bitten, twice no fucking thank you.

  “Alright,” said Moreno’s partner, Liam Hollister, the confusion in his tone depositing Capelli back to the reality of the intelligence office and the potential case in front of them. “So a meth lab in North Point got a little crispy around the edges. I’m not trying to thumb my nose at a case or anything, but isn’t vice going to try to swipe this one since there are drugs involved?”

  “Probably,” Sinclair said, tipping his gray-blond crew cut at Hollister in concession. “But seeing as how there were also two bodies at the scene, that’s a pissing contest they’re not going to win.”

  “Hey now.” Detective Shawn Maxwell propped his elbows over the paper-littered surface of his desk, his black eyebrows sky-high. “Bodies do give us dibs.”

  “That they do,” Sinclair agreed. “So let’s run this. According to the ID in his wallet, the first victim is Lawrence Richardson, also known as the L-Man and a member of the Scarlet Reapers. Died of what looks to be smoke inhalation on the way to Remington Memorial, but docs are still working on an official cause of death. Lawrence has been arrested for a handful of petty misdemeanors and two prior counts of felony drug possession, one six months ago, one a year before that. Both kicked down to misdemeanors, but he did thirty days in lockup for number two.”