Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (6 page)

* * * *

Max saw the plume of black smoke, smelled the tinge of chemicals mixing with the scent of burning wood, and knew even before he reached the fire scene B-shift was in for a hell of a morning. As bad as it was for the business owner and anyone who might be trapped inside the burning structure, he couldn’t help but think it was good for him. He needed the adrenaline rush he felt already kicking through his veins. He needed the distraction after a sleepless night of tossing and turning and thinking about Regina Zimmer’s beautiful ivory face, dazzling light-blue eyes, and curvy body that sent his cock into throbbing hysterics.

The woman had been like a burning furnace in his arms last night. He could still feel the intense heat of her body against his. He knew her chemical fortification had been the catalyst in which she’d let go last night. It was the reason he hadn’t pushed her and the only reason he’d walked away. But, damn, he’d wanted her to explode in his arms. He wanted to feel her body shake, feel her come apart as he made her come again and again and again.

Instead, he’d lain in his bed, staring at the ceiling for much of the night as he imagined what it would have been like to do just that. He’d tortured himself, his body longing for her touch and mouth watering for her taste.

And you’re still torturing yourself.

He ruthlessly pushed all thought of her aside. He couldn’t let her occupy his mind now. He had to get his head in the game. He had a job to do. Lives were at stake. Even if they arrived on scene to discover the building was empty of victims, he still had the lives of his fellow firefighters to protect. Putting himself and any of them at risk because he was too busy thinking about a woman was a dire mistake he wouldn’t allow himself to make.

He took the hazmat truck to the turning lane, breezing past the long line of cars at practically a standstill. Despite the efforts of the SSPD officers already on scene directing the traffic out of harm’s way, rubbernecking created a jam in the early-morning rush hour. People were headed to work at the casinos across the bridge in Billings, a city that never slept. They were taking kids to school, dropping them off at daycares, and then heading to whatever job would occupy their day. Yet, they were taking precious minutes out of their morning routine to gawk at the burning building on their route.

Leading the parade of fire trucks, the captain pulled the incident command SUV to a stop near the scene, leaving room for the engine, ladder truck, and Max to take point closer to the structure. Max noted the rescue easing in to the front of the SUV and hoped like hell they wouldn’t need the skill of the EMTs today.

Ahead of him, the engine crew hopped out of the truck. Thaddeus Carter headed straight for the panel of controls, while Ryan Magee and Bailey Barrett made quick work of unfolding the five-inch hose and connecting the one-hundred-foot sections. Jason Graham snagged hold of the end of the line, stretching it across the parking lot to the street to hook it to the nearest hydrant.

Max cut the engine to the hazmat truck, slamming the door behind him as his feet hit the pavement. He took a quick study of the scene. In his opinion, Mr. G’s Automotive Service was one of the best in town. He’d brought his truck here several times for routine maintenance and once when he’d been having trouble with the transmission.

You won’t be bringing it back here for a while.

No. It would take months for the automotive shop to recover from this one. Already, flames were eating through the roof on the west end, licking the sky in hunger for escape. Smoke billowed from the first garage bay, turning the atmosphere a thick grayish-black, and, through the murk, he could see more flames. The call had come in less than ten minutes ago. It shouldn’t have been this badly out of control, but it damn sure was.

Max slid his Nomex hood over his head, connected his self-contained breathing apparatus, leaving the facemask around his neck, and slapped his helmet over it all as he double-timed it toward the captain.

Dean Wolcott glanced at him as the captain started dishing orders to the crew. “Ladder Company, head for the roof. Engine Company, face off with her on the east.” He turned his attention on Max. “She’s already headed into the garages.”

Max scanned the structure. The automotive shop was a mini-strip mall of its own, stretching a good half a block with a large customer area on the west end and five complete garages taking up the east. From this vantage point, he could see the fire had already consumed the back of the customer area, along with the office and restrooms he knew were behind that, and it appeared it had painted a trail along a good portion of the back of the first garage.

Movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention. He recognized Reuben Gadsby on sight. “Did you open that garage bay?” The door to the first garage was open, offering them a darkened, smoky view of the fire inside.

“It was like that when I pulled up. No one is inside. I rushed in to check for myself.” Sweat streamed down the man’s face in rivulets. “There shouldn’t have been anyway. It was supposed to be locked up tight. I went in through the garage, but I couldn’t make it any further than that. I’d left my cell in the truck. I rushed back out here to dial 9-1-1, and that’s when I heard the sirens. I guess someone had already called it in.”

“Are there any cars inside those other garages?”

“The two on the far end.” Reuben raked a hand through his already-mussed ebony hair. “There’s a few oil drums, boxes of tranny fluid, brake fluid, a couple of gas cans on that end, too. Jesus, how did someone get in that garage? That’s got to be how they got in. And why the fuck didn’t it set off the alarm?”

“We’ll let the fire investigator figure out all that,” Wolcott told the man. “Our concern right now is getting that fire under control before it spreads to all those chemicals you just listed off.”

“The oil drums won’t ignite unless they reach four hundred and five degrees. The gas in those cans and the cars on the end are a whole different ball game.” Max tipped his chin up, sniffing the air. “We’re burning gas already and that’s not all we’ve got.” He couldn’t get a fix on the other odors through the scents of burning wood and debris. He glanced around, seeing crowds of people gathered on the other side of the tape the police had already set up to cordon off the area. His gaze fixed on the business on either side of the automotive shop. He jutted his chin toward those. “Has everyone been evacuated?”

Wolcott nodded. “It’s too early for them to be open, but the boys in blue made sure the buildings were unoccupied.”

“Good enough.” Max secured his mask over his mouth and nose, breathing in crisp, cool oxygen as he spun on his heel and raced to the preconnect line on the back of Engine 1. A sharp sound of shattering glass had him shooting a glance toward the blaze as he hefted the hose onto his shoulder and stretched it toward the open garage. Jason Graham and Zack Houston had taken possession of additional preconnect lines, broke their way through the double glass doors of the customer area, and opened the streams on the fire inside.

Magee and Barrett were already battling the blaze in the garage, tackling it from east. He saw Magee glance his way and heard the man’s voice through the two-way mic inside his SCBA. “You want point on this one, LT?”

Max half chuckled. “Hell, no. You and Barrett have that covered. I’m sticking closer to the door. If this baby gets away from us, we might need more than water to take her out.”

“Are you thinking we’re going to need the foam?” Bailey Barrett’s much softer timbre was harder to hear over the howling of the flames, even through the mic.

“Dunno yet. From what I can tell, it looks like the water is doing the trick. I’m betting we’ll find out if I’m wrong any minute.” Max opened the nozzle on the preconnect line and angled the stream at the base of the flames.

Pure adrenaline surged through his veins, speeding his heart and hardening his cock, as water blasted from the nozzle at one hundred and fifty psi of pressure, and he couldn’t help but grin. Geezus, he loved his job. He fell into a trance as he watched the flames dance in front of him. He’d be able to tell by their movement, by the way they spread or retreated, by the colors they took on if the flames were feeding off anything that would warrant a change of attack.

It was beautiful, absolutely fucking spectacular the way the colors merged, the way flames held strong for as long as they could, and the way the fire took on a life all its own. He’d learned early in his career fighting fire meant he had to love it, respect it, understand it, and think like it. A fire like this had only one thing on its mind, hunger. It would eat anything and roar like the glorious beast it was in its struggle to stay alive.

“Jasper, what’s in that drum?” Magee bellowed. “Can you tell?”

Max glanced at the firefighter, followed the man’s gaze, and squinted, his vision clearing through the smoke until he saw a drum barely ten feet from the fire along the wall that separated the garages from the office area. It took him a second to focus on the labels, to make out the words through the orange glow cast from the fire.

“Motor oil.” Shit. Reuben Gadsby had assured him and the captain that all the oil drums were on the other end of the garages. “It looks like it’s closed.” He shifted his stance, guiding his stream over until it landed between the drum and the flames. “Keep up what you’re doing. I’ll beat the fire back from it. We keep the flames from getting to it and we’ll be all right.”

They worked together as the Ladder Company battled it through the roof on the west end. Jason Graham and Zack Houston tackled it from the front, adding additional streams to the mix to beat it back and prevent it from taking over the rest of the customer area. They fought it for more than an hour, water streams pounding at angry flames, until the beauty died a slow and thorough death.

Max stepped back, releasing the nozzle on the preconnect line, and scanned the now charred area. Years of experience, a quick mind, and an even keener instinct kicked in. Given the way the fire had taken over the west end of the building before they’d even arrived, he had figured it a safe bet the office was the likely point of origin. Looking around now, even through the smoke and darkness, he wasn’t so sure.

He pulled off his SCBA mask and choked on the thick odor of smoke still blanketing the inside of the garage. Tuning in his God-given heightened sense of smell, he sniffed shallowly, separating the scents and latching onto what his nose hadn’t been able to fully catch outside.

He thumbed the mic on his shoulder and radioed the captain. “You might want to go ahead and call Regi—”
Shit.
Max stopped himself. Regina might be the lead investigator in the arson unit these days, but she wasn’t the only one working this district. Not to mention, he never,
ever
called her by name over the radio frequency. He knew the guys and gals on B-shift. They would pick up on that in an instant.

What a way to raise suspicions there, dumb ass.

“You might want to go ahead and call in the fire investigator, Cap,” Max started again. “Unless my nose is off today, this one definitely wasn’t an accident.”

“I’ve already made the call,” Wolcott’s voice came back. “Zimmer is pulling up as we speak.”

Well, now. At least Max knew she was on her game this morning. He couldn’t help but wonder how much of last night she remembered.

“There’s not much she’ll be able to do until this place cools down,” he radioed back. “But I’ve got an inkling I know what that heavy tinge is mixing with the gasoline stench, and it’s not something you’d normally find even in a place like this. I’m no fire investigator, but it’d be my guess whoever set this fire used their own little homemade accelerant to give it some fuel.”

* * * *

The Flame Jumper blended into the crowd of bystanders admiring her latest masterpiece. It hadn’t been a large work of art, though it could have been if the SSFD hadn’t been so quick to respond. She’d barely made it out of the building and back around to join the rapidly gathering gawkers before she’d heard the wail of their approaching sirens.

The Flame Jumper didn’t care. What mattered was the red-headed bitch, Regina Zimmer, hopping out of the car barely twenty feet away. It was about damn time they called her in on one of the Flame Jumper’s works. She had expected it to happen the last time, but a different investigator had taken the case, a total imbecile who had written up his findings on the fire as an electrical accident.

Electrical accident! The mere thought of it still made the Flame Jumper’s blood boil. Her masterpieces were not fucking accidents. They were true brilliance. They were redemption for the chain of events that had destroyed her life so very long ago. Yet, that stupid-ass investigator had dismissed it as a mishap, just like the red-headed bitch’s father had done with the very first fire the Flame Jumper had set.

Ethan Zimmer was an even bigger stupid ass than the shitty, obviously brain-dead investigator who’d had the nerve to pass her last fire off as an accident. She’d given Ethan Zimmer everything, put all the evidence at his fingertips, and he’d never figured it out. She’d waited years for him to put all the pieces together, and then the fucker retired. He wasn’t even old enough to fucking retire. So what if the man had been diagnosed with acute arthritis. Apparently, these days, the poor sap couldn’t get around any better than he could think.

The Flame Jumper could only hope the redhead had a better brain in her skull than her father. After all, the Flame Jumper’d had to move her work and create her art in a different freaking state just to bring it to his daughter’s attention. The Flame Jumper’d had to start over, too. Engineering the first wreck and following it up with the first fire hadn’t even lifted a brow on Regina Zimmer’s face. The Flame Jumper couldn’t go on until the connection was made. Each part of the chain had to be reorchestrated in the exact sequence for it all to be clear.

Provided that bitch can see what’s right in front of her face.