She wouldn’t let her revolving bedroom door neighbor make her feel badly about herself. After all, what did he do?
He never seemed to do anything.
Except beautiful women.
On that, the man was an over-achiever.
A neighbor from the floor below said she thought he came from old money. Either Sarah was onto something with her paid male escort theory, or he was nothing more than a carefree, lecherous playboy using his family to fund his depraved lifestyle.
Maybe she would get lucky and he’d move.
* * *
Adrenaline drove firefighter Jude Davenport as he pushed his way through the flame-filled building. Or maybe it was the heat that kept him moving. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck and his ears burned beneath his Nomex hood.
First checking temperature with his thermal imaging camera, Jude opened a door and thick black smoke billowed out, banking low.
“Engine Seven to command. We are entering structure and making a left-hand search.”
“Command copies Engine Seven is entering structure, making a left-hand search.”
As lead man, Jude crawled to the left-hand wall and, staying in contact with him, his partner made his way around the room, using his axe to search. Visibility was next to nil thanks to the rolling black smoke.
They had to find her.
A four-year-old little girl was trapped in this hellish inferno.
Somewhere.
Along with more than a dozen tenants, they’d already rescued her mother and sister. Jude did not want to have to look that woman in the eyes and say he’d not been able to find her daughter.
He knew first-hand the pain of losing someone you loved and that drove him as he crawled toward a closed door he could barely make out.
A child was in there, was alive. Every instinct said she was.
He just had to get there, get to her, and pray that when he did find her, that she was still alive and he’d be able to get himself and her out of the fire.
Finally, he reached the door.
Then what he’d been dreading happened, what he’d known was coming because of how long they’d been searching in the burning building.
The air horn on the truck blew.
Once. Twice. Three long times.
“Command to all units. Evacuate the building. Repeat, evacuate the building.”
He hadn’t needed the sound of the horn or command coming over the radio speakers in his air pack to know things were bad and the building was lost.
Things were bad.
Somewhere in this hellhole was a terrified four-year-old.
“Command says part of the stairs has collapsed,” his partner, Roger Woods, yelled. “We gotta go.”
Jude had to check the room. They were too close to turn back without doing so.
“Seriously, Davenport,” his partner called from behind Jude. “Don’t make me drag your butt out.”
“As if you could.”
Roger was one of his best friends and Jude trusted the man implicitly. There was a reason Roger was his partner. Because they had similar life philosophies. They valued others’ lives much more than their own. Roger wouldn’t turn back any more than Jude would. Not when they were so close to where the girl was supposed to be.
Finally Jude got to the door. Using the back of his wrist and his thermal imaging camera, he checked the door for heat.
Hot, but not unbearable.
He reached up, grabbed the handle with his gloved hand, and opened the door.
The room wasn’t quite as smoke-filled as the one he was leaving, but visibility was still barely above zero.
Reaching again for the camera hooked to the strap of his breathing apparatus, Jude scanned the room. The left and right walls glowed white, indicating that there was fire on both sides of the room. Jude was pretty sure the wall not lighting up, the opposite wall from him, was an exterior wall, which was good, because he was also pretty sure they weren’t going out the way they’d come in.
Then, with the aid of the TIC cutting through the smoke and steam, the image of a little body not moving made his heart pound.
“Davenport? Do you hear me? Get out now,” Command screamed in his ear.
It wasn’t the first time Command had screamed at him.
He prayed it wasn’t the last.
He didn’t answer his boss. What was the point? He wasn’t going anywhere. Not without the girl. He wouldn’t leave her. He couldn’t walk out of a burning building when the child’s thermal image was in his sight. Reality was that Command wouldn’t want him to. None of their crew would exit when a fire victim was within sight.
“There she is.”
“Thank God,” Roger called from behind him.
“Engine Seven to Command—we need a ladder to fourth division A-side window for rescue.” God, he hoped there was a window on the exterior wall because he couldn’t see a thing. “We have one victim.”
Command acknowledged, repeating the call.
“Keeley?” Jude yelled, hoping the girl could hear him above the fire’s loud roar. Hoping that she’d answer, that she’d move.
She didn’t.
Please, don’t let us be too late.
He couldn’t see her with his bare eyes, but used the camera to guide himself toward her. The room was a sweltering hot box.
Then the thermal image on his TIC moved and Jude wanted to cry out in relief. She was alive. Who knew how much smoke she’d inhaled, what kind of burns she might have endured, but she’d moved so there was hope.
“Keeley,” he called again, crawling toward her. “We’re here to get you out of this place.”
He had no idea if she could hear him over the deafening sound of the fire destroying the building. If she could, he wanted her to know he was on his way.
Finally, he reached the far corner of the room where she was huddled beneath her mother’s bed.
Coughing, the little girl stared at him with watery eyes, but didn’t make any move toward him or respond to his motioning for her to come to him. Was she asphyxiated?
In his gear, he couldn’t fit under the huge low-rise bed she was hidden beneath and wasn’t quite sure how he’d move the massive bed with her beneath it without risking hurting her, but he had to get to her fast. They had to get out of the building pronto.
“Keeley, we have to go.” He tried again, tugging on the corner post of the solid wood monstrosity without any success. Was the thing nailed down? “Come to me, honey. Let me carry you out of this place.”
“Don’t leave me.”
He could barely make out her words. Maybe he even lip-read them more than heard them, but they rang loudly through his very soul.
As did the terror in her big puffy eyes as she coughed again.
“I won’t leave you, Keeley. I promise. Crawl to me, Keeley.” He purposely said her name over and over, hoping to get through to her, to let her know to come to him. He stretched his arms as far beneath the bed as he could. “Just move close enough that I can pull you to safety, Keeley, so we can get out of this building.”
He heard a crash and knew another section of the structure had given way.