The Drowning Man (21 page)

He cleared his throat and answered. “Yeah.”

“Where the hell are you?” his brother asked.

Trent jerked upright. “At work. What's wrong?”

“Nothing, except that Amy's lasagna is getting cold waiting on your ass to get over here.”

Shit. It was Sunday. He'd been working overtime all week and had forgotten what day it was. “I'm sorry, Nate.” He looked at the clock, rubbed his eyes again. “I've got about five hours left on my shift.”

Nate sighed. “You okay?”

“Fine. Tired. Look, I need to get some sleep. Tell Amy I'm sorry I missed dinner.”

“Are you and Lora fighting?”

“No. She's avoiding me.”

“She's probably just busy.”

Trent closed his eyes and bit back a sigh. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Got it. Just … take it easy, okay.”

“Sure. Later.” Trent snapped his phone closed and threw his arm over his eyes, knowing he wouldn't get back to sleep, but too tired to get up. It took every ounce of energy he had to force Lora's image to the back of his mind. He was already exhausted and the last thing he needed was an additional distraction if he had to go out on another call.

Lora closed her eyes and leaned her head back while Woods drove them to the station. She knew she could have handled the interview better. She just had a hard time concentrating on a bullshit case when Simon Hewett was still at large and her boss, damn him, didn't consider it a priority case at this time. As for her partner, he seemed resigned to putting finding Simon on the backburner.

So she'd spent every second of her spare time working on finding out where Simon was and what he was up to. Not that she'd found a hell of a lot. Yet.

She hadn't told anyone what she was doing, but she was sure Woods had his suspicions. It was too much of a risk keeping Trent involved. Simon was still around, biding his time, until whatever sick twisted plan he had was played out. She had no proof of her theory. She just
knew
.

A radio call broke the silence in the car. Fire, firefighters injured, multiple fatalities, request for more police and ambulances on the scene. The words had her sitting up straight in her seat.

She tensed when she heard the address. It was in Trent's district. Her mind raced as she looked at the dashboard clock. It wasn't his normal shift, but if he was on duty, she knew he'd push himself and take risks no one else would.

Without a word, Woods glanced over at her, then made a quick u-turn and steered towards the scene. “We've got it,” he said into the radio.

She sat up straighter, seeing the black smoke billowing high above the buildings even from blocks away. It was bad, one of the worst she'd ever seen. Woods braked to a stop a block down from the row of blazing townhouses. The winter sky was lit with the flashing lights of ambulances, police cruisers, and fire trucks. Everywhere, people were running, professionals doing their jobs and civilians running in fear. The injured were being attended to, stretchers filled with the still living and the dead lined the sidewalk. Smoke darkened the sky, nearly blotting out the sun, lending an ominous air to the scene. The smells of smoke and death hung heavy in the air, the stench growing stronger as they made their way closer.

Woods found the officer in charge of the scene. Lora hung back as they conferred, watching for anything or anyone suspicious. She saw a firefighter emerge from the building, covered in soot. He stumbled out, an oxygen tank on his back and a mask covering his face, yellow helmet on his head, a screaming woman in his arms. Trent. She knew it was him. She could tell by the way he moved. He was safe. He was alive.

She had to fight the urge to push her way through the crowd and take him in her arms. She was on the job. And so was he. She could do this. Just focus. Just breathe.
No
. He was going back into the building. She wanted to run after him, pull him back to safety. She looked helplessly at Woods.

Trent tried to see through the smoke filled room. He ignored the pop and hiss and roar of the yellow orange flames all around him. He ignored the sweat running down his back. He ignored the voice of his chief in his ear telling him to pull back. He closed his eyes and listened for anything that wasn't part of the dark symphony of the fire's destruction.

At first, there was nothing. Then, a high-pitched cry. Eyes still closed, he turned his head towards the sound. There it was again. He opened his eyes and raced down the smoke filled hallway, leaping over the debris in his path, ignoring the firefighters headed in the opposite direction.

His eyes watered under the mask and he could feel the heat of the flames through his suit. He thought of Lora, knew it wasn't safe for him to still be inside the building. But he could not leave anyone in there alone to die. Especially not a helpless child. He broke down the door, saw nothing but tongues of fire and dark choking smoke in the room. Then, movement in the corner, near the window. He made his way closer. The crying started again, loud high-pitched shrieks over the deep roar of the beast.

Through the waves of smoke and fire, he saw the child, no more than two years old, standing in the corner sobbing, screaming, a tattered teddy bear clutched in his hands. One of the bear's arms was blackened and smoking. He scooped the child in his arms and used his elbow to knock out the glass of the nearest window.

Lora turned her face up, seeing the glimmer of shattered glass falling and dark grey smoke pouring out from the window far above them.

“He's going to be fine,” Woods said, next to her.

They stood in silence, watching the ladder truck extend to the broken fourth floor window. She could just make out Trent in the window as he handed a small child clutching a stuffed animal to the firefighter on the top of the ladder. Then the building shook and flames shot out the window. The firefighter holding the child turned, shielding the small body with his own much larger one. The teddy bear tumbled towards the ground as Trent disappeared back inside. Lora stopped breathing as the ladder truck was forced to move away from the building.

Trent shook his head as the shock wave from the explosion subsided. His ears rang, the sounds around him fading in and out. He stood, a hand over his eyes, and looked outside. He lifted the mask from his face. “The kid okay?” he shouted through the window.

Ted turned and nodded, then yelled at the driver to move the truck back into position. He listened for a second, then yelled into the radio. “I don’t care how close the damned flames are to the truck … I understand the risks … understood, just get the goddamned hose crew on it.”

“Just hang on,” he shouted to Trent.

Trent felt the flames licking at his back. No time to wait. Too far to jump. “Go. I'll find another way out.”

He put his mask back in place and ran through the fire, stumbling through the apartment as the ceiling began to collapse around him. When he got to where the door to the hall should have been he found only lapping tongues of fire and falling burning wood. He backtracked, finding a wall that ran parallel to the hallway. Luckily, it was cheap drywall and it only took a few strong swings of his axe to punch through. He fell into the hall, rolled to his feet, and looked around. Flames surrounded him.

Always a way out.

Damn, he was tired.

He forced his legs to keep moving. This was why they trained so hard. He would have to call on his years of training and all the stamina he had left, but he would find a way out and back to Lora. Picturing her face gave him strength. He had a reason to make it out.

Walls collapsed in front of him leaving only a small opening ahead. A loud creak was all the warning he had before more debris from the ceiling rained down on him. He ran for the stairs, one step ahead of the falling beams. Until he reached the second floor landing. Something hard slammed into him from behind, sending him tumbling down the remaining stairs.

He opened his eyes, winced at the pain in his back, and shoved the debris off his body. He was lying at the base of the stairs on the first floor, but the hallway in front of him was blocked. He was trapped. Pushing the panic down, he radioed his location to his men. The smoke was so thick he could barely see in front of him. No time for them to get to him.

He crawled towards a small opening. He could get through on his belly, but the metal oxygen tank on his back kept getting caught up. He stripped it and his mask off then crawled through, staying low to the ground where there was some good air left.

Dirty rivers of sweat poured into his eyes. He kept going, feeling and sensing his way to clearer air. He felt like a blind rat in a maze. He concentrated hard, picturing the layout of the building in his mind. His lungs burned as he struggled to draw a breath, wheezing with the effort. The lack of oxygen made it difficult to think. He was exhausted, his muscles failing. It would be so easy to stop and lay down on the floor. To just rest for a few minutes.

He made it another few feet before he collapsed onto his belly in a coughing fit. He struggled to catch his breath. No air. No strength to keep going. Then he heard Lora's voice, urging him on, telling him to get his ass up off the floor. He raised his head and blinked. Light. There was light up ahead. It was close. He crawled towards it.

A tall rectangular shape appeared in front of him and he forced himself to his feet. Back door. Alley. Trent stumbled through it. His legs promptly gave out and he collapsed onto the rough broken concrete of the sidewalk, coughing and gasping in air. Hands grasped at him. His vision darkened and he couldn't see the two men that helped him to his feet and away from the disintegrating building.

“He’s not coming out, Justice,” Lora said, fighting down panic as the minutes stretched on. Trent had called her last night but she'd been following a lead on Simon and had turned the ringer off.

She'd tried so hard to not get involved. But the thought of something happening to him brought a feeling of terror unlike any she'd ever known as precious seconds continued to tick away.

They watched the firefighters, yelling into radios, scrambling to get more water onto the doorways as they fought a losing battle. Lora's fingers drummed against her thigh.

Woods cast her a sideways glance. “I like him too, you know. You two are good together.” His eyes tracked the movements of the men around the building. Several of them were racing around the far corner.

Woods nodded to the left and Lora saw Trent, his arms wrapped around a firefighter on either side of him as they helped him to one of the waiting ambulances. She moved forward, flashed her badge, pushed her way through the crowd. By the time she and Woods got to him, Trent was sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, jacket off, holding an oxygen mask to his blackened face as a paramedic washed his eyes out with saline solution.

He pushed himself to his feet when he saw her. He handed the oxygen mask to the paramedic and swiped an unsteady hand across his face. Lora didn't even try to stop the tears from falling as she launched herself into his arms. A minute later, she took a shaky step back and ran her hands over his face, his chest, his arms, to make sure he was really okay.

“I'm fine,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

She turned to the nearest paramedic for confirmation.

“We're going to take him in, give him some fluids, some more oxygen, check him out, he should be able to go home tonight,” the man answered.

Lora nodded, unable to speak.

Trent gently touched her cheek before allowing the medics to help him into the back of the ambulance. “I'll see you at the hospital,” he said, stifling a cough.

Lora nodded again as the ambulance doors shut, closing him inside.

“I'll drive you,” Woods said, a hand on her arm, leading her back through the crowd and towards the car.

The ER was full. Some of the patients Trent recognized from the fire. He wondered about the kid with the bear but couldn't bring himself to ask. He'd been down that road. He'd done his job. Whatever happened now was out of his hands. He kept moving forward and went through the now familiar check in procedures then followed a nurse to an exam room.

“Couldn't stay away, could you?” Doctor Hender asked, pulling back the curtain in the exam room.

Trent smiled wearily. “What can I say? It's the food.”

Hender smiled back and handed him a bottled sports drink. “Don't worry, I won't even try to stick an IV in you.”

“Thanks,” Trent answered quietly.

“The kid you got out is going to be fine. So are most of the others.”

Trent closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the doctor was looking at him thoughtfully.

“You have a friend waiting for you,” the doctor said.

Trent read the question in his eyes. “Yes, it's the same detective.”

“And you
want
to see her? I thought …”

“Things change, doc.”

Doctor Hender laughed. “I see.”

And Trent gave the doctor his first real smile in all the days they'd known each other.

Lora had barely said a word since they’d gotten back to Trent's place an hour ago. She sat silently, arms wrapped around her knees, curled up in his recliner.

“You okay?” Trent asked from across his living room, his voice still hoarse from the smoke.

She'd been crazy to think she could ignore the way she felt about this man. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I just want this all to be over. If I'm distant, it's because I don't want to be distracted. I don't want to miss the key piece of the puzzle.”

A brief look of hurt crossed his face, so she forced herself to say the rest of it. “But, today made me realize that I'm more distracted when we're not … together.”

A slow grin spread across his face now. “So, you were worried about me.”

Lora felt irritation rise. “Dammit, Trent, I'm not good at this.”

“And?”

“Fine.” She blew out a breath. “What I saw you do today scared the shit out of me,” she admitted.

“Me too. But don't you think it would be the same for me if I saw you chasing down an armed suspect?”