LITMIR.BIZ

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have to get away from this smoke right now. Since you’ve got the back for the job, you’re the man.”

      Luke shook his head. “Can’t leave my partner—”

      “This isn’t a discussion. Get going. I’ll stay here with Vance.”

      Lucia looked over her shoulder at O’Brien, who stood there with his radio to his mouth as he talked to one of the lieutenants on an engine that had just arrived. Since he had been gunning for her for months, she thought it odd that he had dismissed her partner. It would have made more sense if he’d had three other people around to do the job of putting out this confined fire.

      “Be safe,” Donovan said as he headed back in the direction they had come.

      “Get going, Vance,” O’Brien ordered.

      Refocusing her thoughts on the task at hand, she found the valve halfway toward the end of the hall. She hooked up the hose and switched on the valve. As she aimed the nozzle toward the open door, she thought she smelled the distinct aroma of lacquer vapors. One more odd thing, almost as odd as O’Brien sending her partner away.

      In the next instant, an explosion knocked her off her feet, the force of the blast throwing her against the opposite wall.

      A monstrous blossom of fire unfurled through the space where the closet door had been, pinning her in place and reaching for her.

      TWO

      Giving the firefighters a backward glance, Rafe headed for the stairwell. All around him, there was a buzz of controlled activity, the kind that came when a crew had trained for this kind of disaster and knew exactly what to do. It was clear that an evacuation was being prepared for.

      He looked back at the firefighters one last time, wondering if there was something more to the fire that he hadn’t noticed. Figuring he was an extra set of hands for whatever might be needed, he headed toward the nurse’s station.

      Within a few steps, his heart lurched when he remembered the kids in the chapel. Surely they were gone already. But what if they were still there? Since they weren’t patients, they might have been overlooked. He reversed his direction and headed for the chapel across the hall from the janitor’s closet. How could he have forgotten about them while he was searching for the extinguisher? Rescue was always the first order of the day with fire—a fact as basic as breathing.

      “Get out of here,” one of the firefighters said, a stocky man, the insignia on his helmet identifying him as a battalion chief.

      The man rushed past him, speaking into his radio before Rafe could answer.

      Relieved to see another firefighter hooking a hose up to the valve, Rafe opened the chapel door.

      He stepped inside, the door automatically closing behind him. The two kids were nowhere to be seen, the beanbag where they had been sitting empty. Since kids often hid from fire, he couldn’t assume they were gone simply because he didn’t see them.

      “Anyone here?” he called. Through the big window, Pikes Peak was beautifully framed, just as advertised in the news article that had made him look for the chapel in the first place. Snow gleamed on the mountain, pristine and surreal compared to the smoke-filled hallway. Whispering a quick prayer for the safety of everyone around him, Rafe looked around for the kids once more.

      Just then an explosion in the hallway rattled the windows, the concussion of it dropping Rafe to his knees. A brilliant flash of orange flared through the hallway window.

      Behind him, a child cried out.

      He whirled around and found the two children huddled behind the heavy drape that framed the window. Relieved they were safe, at least for the moment, he went to the door to check on what had happened.

      “It’ll be okay,” he said reassuringly to the kids as he peered through the window. The smoke was thicker, obscuring the view of anything in the hallway, then shifting and revealing a reflective stripe on a bundle on the floor next to the door. Not a bundle. A person. The firefighter he had last seen hooking up the hose to the valve.

      Without a second thought, Rafe knelt, flung open the door, grabbed on to the coat and pulled. The firefighter moaned.

      “I’ve got you.” Through the smoke, Rafe could see the closet was fully engulfed, and, oddly, there was a wall of flames between them and their route to safety. There shouldn’t be that much fire. Once again he wondered why the sprinklers weren’t coming on.

      The instant he had the two of them back inside the chapel, he closed the door. During those scant seconds, the small room had filled with smoke, which rose to the ceiling.

      Next to the window, the two children watched him with wide eyes, neither of them speaking.

      “Why don’t you two sit down on the floor there next to the window? Breathing will be easier,” Rafe said, eyeing the smoke that was seeping beneath the doorway. He went to the window and pulled down the drape. Rolling up the fabric, he laid it on the floor next to the door, covering the crack as best he could.

      Rafe pulled the helmet and mask off the firefighter, doing his best not to jar him—her! he realized as a long, black braid tumbled out of the hat. Her eyelashes were as dark as her hair, making her skin look all the more pale.

      “¿Está muerta?” one of the children asked, a little boy who looked as though he could be no more than four or five.

      “No,” Rafe answered, reassured by the pulse beating strongly beneath his fingertips. She wasn’t dead. “La señorita no está muerta. ¿Hablas inglés?”

      The boy shook his head.

      To the woman, he said, “Can you hear me?”

      She moaned again.

      Rafe took off his jacket, folded it, and slipped it beneath her head as she lay on her side, her canister of air still strapped to her back.

      “Are you visiting a brother or sister?” he asked the children in Spanish.

      “Mi hermana,” the other child said, creeping closer to hold the boy’s hand. “Ana.”

      “Ah. This is your brother—tu hermano?”

      She nodded. “Ramón.”

      “And what’s your name?” Rafe asked, continuing to speak in Spanish while keeping a close eye on the firefighter. Thankfully, color was beginning to seep back into her cheeks. She didn’t seem to be unconscious, but she wasn’t with it, either.

      “Teresa.”

      Pulling his cell phone from his jeans pocket, Rafe dialed 9–1-1, reminded of when he had done so a little earlier. This time the line was busy, and it remained that way for the next several times he dialed the number.

      Next to him on the floor, the woman opened her eyes. When her gaze lit on him, she immediately struggled to sit up.

      Rafe pressed a hand against her shoulder. “Just take a breath first.”

      Her eyes were huge in her face, her skin too pale. “I’m okay,” she said around a cough. “The explosion just knocked me down.”

      “All the more reason to take a minute.” Rafe figured she was lucky. Her lungs could have been seared by the heat from the explosion.

      “I’ve got to get back—”

      “There’s fire clear across the hall.”

      “We’re trapped?”

      There was still a way out of the chapel, though not his first choice. Rafe glanced toward the big, west-facing window, and her gaze followed his.

      “That’s a last resort,” she said, evidently coming to the same conclusion he had. Sitting up, she put the small radio strapped to the outside of her turnout coat to her mouth. “Donovan, are you there?”

      There was a moment of static, then a voice

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