Authors: Casey Griffin
Stumbling into the reception area was like falling into the pits of Hell. During her reprieve in the back, she’d forgotten about the heat, the unbearable, stifling heat. She half-expected to hear the devil himself fiddling away in the corner.
The layer of smoke building near the ceiling had shrunk, so she didn’t have to duck. She glanced at the entrance. Aiden must have propped open the door on the way in. She could feel the exchange of air as the smoke filtered out into the cool night, bringing in fresh, sweet oxygen.
But the smoke had turned to a thick haze settling over the room like a fog. It illuminated red, blue, red, blue, flashing with the emergency vehicles’ approach, until it was all she could see before her eyes. It was like some crappy rave that went fog-machine happy.
Red, blue, red, blue.
Lugging the fresh canister toward the general direction of the kitchen, Piper searched for a sign of Aiden, coughing, sputtering, groping her way through the haze and the water sprinkling down. Everything she touched was hot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the fish tank. The ladies hadn’t made it.
In the brief microseconds between each strobe light flash, she could make out a silhouette against the front windows. Aiden. Dropping the canister, she went to him.
White chemical retardant and grey ash streaked his wet, sandy blond hair like he suddenly aged ten years in the last five minutes. By the exhausted expression on his face, it looked like he felt it too.
He never looked more un–put together. More un-Aiden. Suddenly, he wasn’t the CEO, a privileged rich boy, or the usual tabloid suspect. He was just a man. A man she’d never wanted to kiss more than she did right then.
“It’s pretty much out,” he rasped, coughing from the effort.
He never got another word out, because Piper’s mouth found his, in the dark and the fog, over and over again. And he seemed just as relieved to see her, because his arms automatically wrapped around her waist and pulled her close like he’d never let her go again.
Despite the emergency of the situation, the sirens, the lights, the firemen rushing in, nothing seemed as urgent in that moment as that kiss.
Firefighters barreled through the smoke and into the reception area. Piper and Aiden were rushed out of the building. The moment they were outside it was like a veil had been lifted. The cool air and spattering rain smacked Piper’s wet, half-naked body like a sack of ice cubes and she began to shiver.
With the clarity of the fresh San Francisco air came the blinding red and blue strobe lights, an overwhelming discord of noises, and the chaos spilling out into the street. Orders were shouted, sirens wailed, onlookers cried out, and over it all the dogs were barking wildly in the rear courtyard.
It was bewildering. An entirely different kind of fright than the one Piper just went through. She reached for Aiden’s hand, but they were steered in opposite directions, toward different ambulances. He was sucked into the crowd of firemen, police, ambulance attendants, and lookee loos.
Strong hands reached out to Piper. They helped her onto a stretcher, but it didn’t feel like help. She pushed them away, struggling against their firm grips.
“I’m fine,” she kept saying. “I’m fine.”
Which was true—at least, she thought so—but she didn’t sound like it. Her voice had the refinement and lilt of gravel under a boot. And as the adrenaline faded, new aches and pains began to introduce themselves in an all too intimate way.
For all she knew, she could have been missing both eyebrows, looked like Batman’s Two-Face, and still had the arsonist’s shoe implanted in the center of her chest. If the way she felt was any indication, it was a definite possibility.
Piper’s body didn’t yet understand that it was time to relax. That the fighting, the danger, was over. And all she could think about was getting to Aiden, to see that he, his eyebrows, and every bit of him was okay.
She glanced up. A female attendant hovered at the head of her stretcher. She helped slide Piper into the back of the ambulance. The embroidered badge on her uniform said:
Mollim
.
“Look,” Piper said. “I’m fine. Really.”
“We’re just going to check you over to make sure,” Mollim said. “Just relax. Everything is going to be okay.”
A second attendant hoisted himself into the back and shoved a mask onto Piper’s face. Oxygen hissed at her. Various other attachments followed, monitoring things like blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation.
The rapid treatment made her anxious, like maybe there was more wrong with her than she knew. Out of frightened instinct, she batted away their nursing, but a hand appeared and held hers down.
Now she knew what one of her own furry patients went through when she poked and prodded them during practicum. Scared, helpless, anxious. Any more and she thought she might start biting.
A warm cotton blanket was pulled from a toasty oven somewhere and laid on top of her. It didn’t take long for the oxygen to clear her head a little, and she regained enough sense to relax and let the EMTs do their job.
Mollim, or Willow, as it turned out in the right-side-up, oxygen-rich world, leaned over Piper with a stethoscope. “This might be a bit chilly.” She reached under the blanket and stuck the ice-cold instrument against Piper’s chest. “Take a deep breath.” She moved it to another spot. “And again. Good.”
Piper kept breathing until Willow pulled away. “Clear to bases bilaterally, air entry adequate,” she told her partner, who jotted it down on a clipboard.
After a million questions like “Do you feel short of breath?” and “Any difficulty breathing?” Willow finally backed off.
A police officer lingered off to the side. At a brisk nod from the attendant, she moved in with a whole new set of questions. She wanted to know about the arsonist, if Piper saw what he looked like, where he went once he left, if it was on foot or by car, approximately how long had it been?
Piper could tell her very little about what he looked like, but once the officer was satisfied with the answers she tilted her head to the radio clipped to her shoulder and called for the “canine unit.”
“Someone will come find you shortly to ask more questions,” the cop told her. “Don’t go too far.”
“Thank you.” It wasn’t like Piper had any plans. She turned back to Willow. “So, what’s the prognosis? Am I going to live?”
“You seem to be in good shape, considering,” she told Piper.
“I told you.” She yanked off the oxygen mask.
“You’re very lucky.”
“My boyfriend fought the fire for longer than I did. He probably inhaled more smoke.” She was vaguely aware the
B
word had slipped out, but she blamed it on the oxygen deprivation.
“It’s not smoke inhalation that’s the worst of it,” Willow said. “It’s heat inhalation.”
“Uh-huh.” Piper was only half-listening. She craned her neck, trying to see out of the open ambulance doors and past the shifting bodies on the street. “Is he all right?”
“We can find out about your boyfriend in a second. It’s you I’m worried about right now.”
“But you said I’m fine. Am I free to go?”
“I didn’t say you were fine. I said you were in pretty good shape,
considering
. It’s always a good idea to get checked out at a hospital.”
Piper thought about Colin and the distressed dogs cooped up in the tiny courtyard and what they must be going through at that moment. The sooner she could get to them, the better. These dogs came from troubled pasts to begin with; they had a hard enough time trusting and feeling safe. An event like this could lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Not to mention, she had some apologizing to do for yelling at Colin.
Besides, she thought about the treatment in the emergency room, the diagnostics they would run. Each one meant more dollar signs, more decimal points. She knew firsthand how expensive medical care was, and she didn’t want to watch her tuition money go down the drain just so a doctor could tell her she was just fine.
Nope. She’d had enough of hospitals for a lifetime.
“No. I’m fine, really. I feel great. Nothing a strong cup of coffee won’t cure.” She chuckled, but it only brought on a coughing fit that shook her body until her face turned a bright magenta. “And maybe a lozenge.”
Willow frowned. “Well, you know my opinion, but I can’t force you to come with us.”
Relieved, Piper began unhooking herself from the monitoring equipment. “I’m fine, really. You were awesome. Thank you.”
Sitting up, she swung her legs over the side of the stretcher. Her head spun with the motion. She thought it prudent not to mention that, or that her thoughts were still disorganized like she had just woken up after a graduation day bender.
Willow passed her a clipboard and pen. She pointed to an
X
marked at the bottom of a page that was too blurry and scratchy to read. Or maybe that was just Piper’s eyeballs.
“You need to sign here. This is a release form to indicate that you’re refusing further medical care.”
Piper signed in the general area of the
X
and passed it back.
Willow riffled through some drawers and produced a package of lemon lozenges. “Watch for shortness of breath, dizziness, and labored breathing,” she told Piper. “You’ll cough. A lot. But if you start coughing up anything strange, get it checked out. If you have any doubt at all, please get yourself to an ER.”
Piper popped a lozenge out and thanked her. She crawled out of the back, where the other attendant helped her down to the pavement. The night air blew up her short police shorts, and cool drops of rain fell on her shoulders. At least it had slowed to a mere sprinkling.
Piper shivered. She’d forgotten she was still in costume.
Willow leaned out the doors with a freshly warmed blanket. “And you might need this.” Her mouth quirked up, but she made no comment about Piper’s choice of firefighting gear.
Too tired to explain the costume, she took the blanket gratefully and wrapped it around herself. “Thanks, Mollim. I mean, Willow.”
It was chaos outside. Police, firemen, news vans, squad cars, fire trucks. Beyond the police tape, the street spilled over with locals who had nothing better to do at almost ten at night but gawk at someone else’s misfortune. And that was where she spotted Holly Hart and her cameraman, Hey, You, shoving their way to the front of the crowd.
Holly scanned the crime scene and spotted Piper right away. Not that it was hard to spot a drenched, half-naked girl covered in dog hair and soot. Holly waved her over, like Piper was the bouncer of a nightclub—the worst one ever—and Holly desperately wanted to skip the line.
Piper waved but had no intention of doing an interview that night. She would do enough talking to the investigators. Ignoring Holly’s frantic shouts, she carried on, weaving through the officials, over fire hoses, and under police tape.
All around her, people moved with less urgency now. The danger had passed and it was about containment and finding out the who, what, where, when, and, most important why. Why would someone do this?
Was it someone helping Laura? But if that was the case, surely she wouldn’t want to hurt the dogs. Or was it a disgruntled neighbor? Then again, maybe it had something to do with Aiden. The night she was nearly flattened in the alley came rushing back to her. They’d been targeting her, not Aiden. Was Piper to blame somehow?
Her already-spinning head was starting to feel heavy from all these thoughts. She had to squint against the sudden pain in her forehead to see through the flashing lights.
Finally, she spotted another ambulance. The doors were flung open. The EMTs were in the back fetching and organizing supplies. She scanned the area, her eyes darting over the chaos, but she couldn’t see Aiden.
Maybe they’d taken him to the hospital. Maybe his condition was worse since he’d been closer to the fire for longer. Anxious to find him, she half-jogged toward the vehicle. When she rounded another cop car and squeezed between two officers, she finally saw him.
The head of his stretcher was inclined, so he saw her immediately. He sat forward as she approached, pulling the mask away from his face to talk.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine.” He reached out to take her hand. “How are you?”
“Safe and sound, despite sounding like an eighty-year-old that smokes two packs a day.” She tried to laugh it off, but it sounded less cute and more true.
“No. No. It’s sexy.”
“Old bingo lady voices are sexy? I gotta tell you, I don’t think I want to role-play that one.”
He laughed. “You sound like a smoky hotel lounge singer.”
“It could be the start of a whole new career for me. Forget that veterinarian nonsense.”
“That’s the spirit.”
It felt good to be joking with him, acting lighthearted. But they pawed each other, holding hands, gripping arms, like they were each other’s anchors. Like if they let go one of them might fall away.
“What are you even doing here?” she asked.
“I came to see you. To apologize for this afternoon at the office.”
She shook her head. Her silly insecurities all seemed so unimportant now. “It’s fine.”
“I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“We’re okay.”
Piper watched a firefighter roll up a water hose. The metal nozzle smacked the glass door in passing and the pane shattered. She cringed.
“I’ll call the insurance company tonight,” Aiden said. “Get the ball rolling.”
“That would be great, thanks.” Piper shook her head. “There’s so much damage.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve had a lot of dealings with insurance companies through my investment properties. They won’t take long for a case like this.”
“Yeah, sure. So we renovate and repair the damage. Then what? If we don’t find this guy, he’ll just keep coming at us.”
She stared at the building, at the broken glass, at the smoke damage, and had a hard time imagining where they would begin. She wondered how Marilyn would have dealt with everything had she been there. Hell, if Marilyn was still in charge maybe none of it would have happened in the first place.