“Stay put,” Donovan said. “We’ll have water on the fire in the hallway in a minute.”
Her gaze lit on the two children, then came back to Rafe. “You were the one fighting the fire when we got here.” After he nodded, she added, “Your children?”
“No. Just met them.” He motioned toward them. “This is Ramón and Teresa, and they’ve been visiting their sister, Ana. I’m Rafael Wright. Are you okay?”
“Not bad for having the breath knocked out of me.” She pulled off her gloves, then ran a slim hand over her forehead. “I’d just hooked up the hose to the valve. I hadn’t gotten a drop of water on the fire before the explosion.” With an easy motion that came only with practiced repetition, she slipped the air tank off her shoulders and set it with her helmet and mask.
“I didn’t see your partner.”
She looked at Rafe. “Chief O’Brien sent him away. Said he’d stay with me.”
“A heavyset guy?” When she nodded, Rafe added, “He was headed back toward the stairwell right before the explosion.”
“Well, that figures.” The inflection in her voice gave Rafe the idea that she didn’t like or respect O’Brien. Still, she spoke into the radio once more. “Vance reporting in.”
“Are you hurt?” came a gruff voice, clearly not Donovan’s, over the speaker.
“Your chief?” Rafe asked.
She nodded, and into the radio said, “I’m okay, sir.”
“Donovan said you’re trapped in the chapel. When we get this baby put out, you’ve got some explaining to do.”
Rafe bristled at the man’s tone. As a hotshot superintendent who had often been the commander on a fire, he knew there was a time to hold your people accountable and a time to put their well-being and safety first. A fleeting look of irritation chased across her face, confirming to Rafe that he hadn’t imagined the man’s imperious tone.
“Strange the sprinklers in this brand-new building haven’t come on,” Rafe said.
She nodded. “As strange as all the false alarms we’ve had the last few days. We expected this to be another one.”
The smoke at the ceiling grew thicker, and Rafe motioned to the kids. “Ven acá,” Rafe said, motioning for them to come sit beside him and the firefighter. “Sentémonos aquí.”
“They don’t speak English?” Lucia asked as the kids approached.
Rafe shook his head, and again spoke to the children, repeating the same words, then adding in English, “Come sit next to me.”
She held her arms out to the little girl, who somehow recognized the gesture of comfort and came toward her. Settling the child in her lap, the woman touched the child’s chest. “Teresa.” Then she repeated the gesture against her own chest. “Lucia.”
Lucia, Rafe mentally echoed. The name fit her. As exotic as her dark brown eyes and her creamy complexion.
“My partner is out there,” she said, “and he’s going to have us out of here muy pronto.”
Her fractured Spanish made the kids smile, just as Rafe suspected she had intended. She looked from the child to him and the little boy, who had sat down between them.
“If these kids are like my nieces and nephews, they don’t care what you’re saying—they just need to hear the sound of a calm voice.”
Rafe nodded.
“What brought you to the hospital?” she asked.
“A friend.”
She grinned when he didn’t add anything more, the expression transforming her face from pretty to vibrant. “Ah, the old visiting-a-friend routine. Personally, I thought this was the place to meet strangers.”
Rafe smiled back, recognizing that she was deliberately trying to turn their attention away from the fire on the other side of the door. “So far, that strategy is working.”
She glanced at the children. “Ask them about their sister.”
In Spanish, Rafe asked about Ana’s illness but was only able to find out that she was a couple of years older—seven to their three and four—and that she was very sick.
“I know what that’s like,” Lucia said, her gaze going from one child to the other. “My father is in this very hospital in intensive care.” Rafe watched her as she looked around the small chapel. “As soon as we get out of here, I’ll need to go see my mother and call my brothers. They’ll all be worried.” She glanced at Rafe. “Do your parents worry?”
“About what?” He was still caught on the part of her statement that her father was in the hospital.
“You.”
He shrugged. “Some, I suppose. More about my sisters.”
She smiled down at the little girl in her lap, who automatically smiled back. “See? A man can go off to be a policeman or a spy or a mountain climber and that’s okay. But a girl is supposed to play it safe—”
“Don’t be including me in your generalities. I never said that.” Some of the best firefighters on his hotshot crew were women. “I don’t believe that.”
“Do you worry about your sisters?”
“Of course. One is a homemaker and has a little girl. My other sister teaches school.” He gave Lucia a grin. “Now there’s a dangerous occupation.”
Lucia gazed down at the two children. “That wasn’t a very nice thing for him to say, especially since he doesn’t think you can understand him.” She brushed a hand over Teresa’s hair. “Children are gifts from God—everyone knows that. I wish that I could make you understand that I’ll be praying for your sister.”
The gesture was so nurturing that Rafe was entranced. Movies painted the heroic picture of a big firefighter tenderly caring for those smaller, weaker. This more feminine version of that same image made Lucia more appealing than she could know—especially since the gesture was not even a conscious one on her part.
Teresa leaned her head against the sleeve of Lucia’s turnout coat.
“Rezebo mi oraciónes por vuestra hermana,” Rafe said. When Lucia looked at him, he repeated in English, “I’ll say prayers for your sister.”
She smiled and looked from one child to the other, repeating the words, words that made both of the children smile.
Rafe knew too well what it was like to have a parent in intensive care. Even though that had been a whole lifetime ago, the feelings suddenly at the surface were as sharp as they had been when he was no older than Ramón. He hadn’t understood the significance of his mother being moved from intensive care into hospice. For a while, he had even hoped the change meant she was getting better. Since he was again allowed to sit next to her on her bed and put his arms around her, that had to have meant she was getting better—or, at least, so he had reasoned as a four-year-old boy.
Too vivid was the memory of that last day when she had taken him to the chapel and cradled him in her lap. He had sensed something was terribly wrong, and the ache in his chest that day had been suffocating.
“God is always with you,” his mother had whispered, her hand warm against his chest. “Always. No matter where you are or what you are doing, just look inside. God is right there.” She’d had tears in her eyes when he had looked up at her. “He loves you, just as I love you.” She gathered him closer, and to this day, he could still feel her cheek against the top of his head. “All you have to do is close your eyes and pray. You’ll feel God, and you’ll feel me. Both of us loving you.”
He had hung on to the promise his entire life, and he had always found it to be true. Especially