I swore it got hotter and wondered if that was because he’d just provided additional fuel.
You really should’ve told him.
“I know, Inner Bitch. I know.”
I stood there for what felt like a hundred and ten minutes but in truth was really only two. Fire trucks came screaming up. I ran over to the first one that stopped, jumped up on the running board and yanked the door open, startling the firefighters inside. “Hurry. My detective is in there!”
“Your—”
“Someone said there were kids inside. Detective Mason Brown went charging in to save them. Go get them out. Now.”
“We’ve got a cop inside!” the driver shouted to his fellows as he jumped out. By then more men were jumping out of the other trucks. Hoses had been unrolled and water was cranked on. They all started beating the hell out of the flames with their hoses. A couple of them, wearing so much gear I didn’t know how they could walk upright, ran inside.
I’d never seen anything like this fire. No matter how much water they put onto it, it kept burning, kept coming back to life, like one of those trick birthday candles you can’t blow out. The crowd had backed up into the street now. Neighbors in their bathrobes and slippers, some of them even barefoot, shaking their heads and muttering to each other, and hugging their kids close to them. I glimpsed them in my peripheral vision but couldn’t take my eyes off the front door. Flames were shooting from the roof and licking out from every window. I was way too close. My face felt like it was getting an extreme sunburn. Someone grabbed my arm and said I should move back, but I just jerked away from his touch and stared at that door.
“Universe, if you take him from me, I swear I’ll never write another word. Don’t you dare even think about—”
Then I saw him. Mason came stumbling out the front door with a limp, unmoving child in each arm, their heads bouncing against his shoulders. They were both bundled in blankets. He wasn’t. His whole face was black with soot and he dropped to his knees before he even got clear of the flaming wreck of a house, just at the bottom of the front steps. Firefighters surged around him. The first two took the kids, unmoving in their blankets, and the next two picked Mason up by either arm and carried him across the lawn. Someone shoved a gurney under him, and his bearers dropped him onto it as it trundled toward a waiting ambulance.
The crowd closed between us, but I fought my way through it to get to his side, elbowed myself up close, grabbed hold of his hand, and saw that the skin was peeling off it and sticking to mine. I sort of yelped and yanked my hand away, and swore and cried all at once. The EMTs were working quickly, putting an oxygen mask on him and then cutting away his shirt to reveal that his left arm was badly burned, and the flesh underneath was trying to come away with the ravaged fabric.
Oh, God, it looked awful! They draped a clean white cloth over his arm and started soaking it in bottles of sterile water. I’d lost track of the kids. I think they’d been put into the back of another ambulance, and I knew they were as surrounded by EMTs as Mason was. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.
When one of the guys adjusted the oxygen mask, he smeared the black away from Mason’s cheek, and I realized it was soot, not charred skin, and almost sank to the ground in relief.
Someone grabbed me by the shoulders. “Easy, ma’am. Easy. Are you family?”
“Yeah.” I blinked. “No. Is he... God, is he...?”
“He’s alive. His vitals are good. Not great, but good. We’ve gotta get him into a burn unit. We’re gonna airlift him to Saint Joe’s. It’s the closest one. All right?”
“Airlift him?” Oh, God, it was bad. It was bad.
“Can you let his family know?”
Oh, God, the boys! And his mother. I nodded, mutely. “But I have to go with him.”
“You can’t, ma’am. We need room to work on him. If he has family, they’re gonna need your help more than he does. I promise, he’s in good hands.”
Already they were moving the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. I jerked free of the EMT and lunged toward Mason and leaned in close to his face, “I love you, too, Mason. I love you, too.”
But he couldn’t hear me. I’d waited too long. Dammit, I’d waited too long!
Then they peeled me off him and put him into the ambulance. It sped away screaming. I turned in a slow circle, not knowing what the hell to do next. I saw the ambulance with the children inside just as they closed the doors, but I had time enough to see them working on the kids. They must be alive, too, then.
Not so the body on the front lawn. The firemen who’d gone inside must have brought it out after Mason had emerged. It had a blanket over it. Too big to be a child. I hoped.
They were finally making progress beating down the flames. One of the firemen said something about gas, but I didn’t have time to listen. I had to go. I had to get to the boys, Mason’s nephews, who were at my place with Myrtle and my nieces.
Oh, Lord, how was I going to handle this?
I got into Mason’s oversize black Monte Carlo, his pride and joy. I had tears streaming from my eyes. I couldn’t let the kids see me like this. I didn’t know what to do. So I pulled my phone out of my pocket, stared at it for a long moment, and then I did the best thing I could think of.
I called my sister.
* * *
“Snap the fuck out of it!”
I’d been in midrant, complete with hiccuping sobs, when my big sister, who never even said damn, brought my runaway emotions to a sudden halt.
“Do I have your attention?” Sandra asked.
“You do.”
“Okay, first. Set the phone on your lap and put me on speaker so you don’t get killed, okay?”
Apparently she’d discerned from my initial projectile word vomit that I was driving while having a complete breakdown and talking on the phone. I did what she said and paid attention to the road. If I wrecked Mason’s ride he’d never forgive me. If he lived.
God, let him live.
“I’m going to meet you at your place, Rachel. But before you get there, I want you to pull yourself together. Right now.”
“But I don’t know how bad it is. I don’t even know if he’s going to—”
“Yeah, and you know what? Neither do those boys.”
Cold water in the face might have been as effective. But I doubted it.
“They’re kids. Their father is dead, and their mother is in a maximum-security nuthatch. At this moment, you are all they have, Rachel. You need to step up for this. It’s important.”
That brought me to full attention. I sat up straighter, and my tears dried up like they’d never been there. “I don’t know what to do for them, sis.”
“You go in there and you tell them the truth in the most positive manner possible. Live your books for once. Tell them you’ve got no reason to think he won’t be just fine, and make sure you sound confident when you do. If you look scared or uncertain, they’re gonna be terrified. They need a mother figure. So talk to them. Reassure them, and most of all, make sure they know that you’re there for them, no matter what happens to their uncle.”
I blinked hard, because those words hit me deep. I did not want to be a mother figure to those kids. I’d said it over and over.
“You would, wouldn’t you, Rache?”
“What?”
“Be there