Page 44 of Striking the Match (Redwood Bay Fire #3)

Teddy

It all happens so fast.

One second I’m basking in the glorious feeling of hanging with my friends as they rib on Cassius, his arm wrapped deliciously around me.

Then people are screaming. Windows are shattering. Dirty, freezing water is gushing inside the house, knocking us off our feet as the power goes out. Instinctively I grab onto Cassius, trying to keep him with me as chaos unfurls.

As quickly as I go under, slamming on my ass, I’m resurfacing, gasping and wiping my eyes so I can do my best to look around in the gloom. “Guys?” I yell.

“One-Thirteen, sound out!” Lieutenant Flores shouts. I can just about see him as he struggles to his feet. The brown water is swirling around us, like it’s circling a drain.

I suppose it is. Cassius’s house is on a steep slope, and the water has to go somewhere. It wasn’t meant to be in a flood zone, though. That was something he mentioned he’d specifically checked with the contractors before they even broke ground.

Fucking global warming.

“Foster, here!” I reply to Flores before turning to Cassius. “Are you okay?”

“My house,” he utters, sounding completely dazed. “All these people. Teddy, we have to?—”

“We’re going to get everybody to safety, I promise.” I might not have been prepared to go to work tonight, but this is what me and my friends do.

As we heave ourselves back up to standing, fighting the water to keep our balance, I see my team doing the same as they all shout their names at the lieutenant.

Earlier, I was worried Gene was missing out.

Now, I’m extremely glad our oldest squad member hasn’t been thrown into the thick of it with the rest of us.

Everyone appears to be okay, so now it’s up to us to manage the situation. Even without our gear, these people are lucky to have a whole squad of firefighters at their party.

Anton and Sawyer have been able to switch on their phone flashlights, and I hurry to copy them. All around us people are shouting and crying and splashing through the rapidly moving flood water, shocked and disoriented.

“Flores!” Captain Valentine’s voice booms through the cacophony. “Call Dispatch and alert them to the situation, let them know we’re on scene. The rest of you, we need to evacuate the building immediately!”

“Mom!” Cassius yells, but everyone’s yelling. Everyone’s trying to get out even if they can’t tell which way to go. I think of Mrs. Bloom and Miss Margot, and my heart wants to shatter. But I can’t lose my head. I have to do the opposite.

“We should split into groups to clear the house,” I shout at my colleagues, most of whom have also been able to switch their flashlights on. Thank goodness for modern day waterproofing.

“I can help!” Captain Padilla cries, wading her way toward us. Her hair is bedraggled, and her sequin dress is ripped, but she has a grim look of determination on her face. “I hope you don’t mind, Garda, but I already got your Seahawk buddies in a line, helping people get out around that Camaro.”

“Good thinking, Captain,” Valentine says. “And Foster is right. We need to divide into teams and?—”

The floor gives a horrifying lurch underneath us.

“OUT!” Valentine bellows to the crowd. “Everybody out RIGHT NOW!” He whips back around to address us.

“Bell, haul ass to the biggest exit point at the front and direct people toward you. Kwon, you follow him and help anyone you can along the way. Nelson and Quick, you go right with Captain Padilla. Ortiz and Hendrix, you stick with me, and we’ll go left.

Lieutenant Flores, you work with Foster to clear the room behind us.

Mr. Garda, I need you to evacuate as quickly as possible. ”

“No, this is my house,” Cassius tells the captain defiantly. “I know it better than anyone. It makes sense for me to stick with Teddy. Please, get everyone else out.” He looks at Padilla. “Make sure Bryan is okay, will you? And my parents, he’ll know what they look like.”

“Consider it done,” the police captain tells him firmly.

Cassius squeezes my hand as he looks around distraught, and I can imagine what he’s going through. Seeing people regularly come to terms with losing all their possessions in house fires is heartbreaking, but all that really matters is that everyone gets out alive.

The other levels of the house were off limits, so I really hope nobody snuck downstairs to look at Cassius’s car collection or upstairs to…

Upstairs.

I grab Cassius’s shirt.

“Kiki,” I rasp. “She was in your bedroom.”

His eyes go wide. “Fuck!” he cries as he pulls away from me, trying to head for the stairs.

“Wait!” I shout, pulling him back.

I won’t lie. My first instinct was also to run off with a half-cocked plan. But I can’t do that anymore. Not when I have an amazing team right here beside me and I need to start relying on them more. I don’t have to rescue everyone all on my own.

But I am going to rescue Miss Tequila Sunrise.

Again.

“Flores!” I shout back at the lieutenant. “We think Cassius’s cat is in the next floor up, but there could be civilians as well. I want to do a sweep.”

The house is groaning all around us, but I can also detect the wail of sirens coming from outside.

Reinforcements, thank god.

Flores looks around the party area, seeing that at least half of the guests have already managed to get outside and hopefully onto higher ground.

Our teammates are directing people and helping some of the walking wounded.

Across the room from us, Lochlan has a very disgruntled looking Mrs. Bloom in a bridal carry and Miss Margot Fonteyn is drenched but safely in Lili’s arms. We’re not out of the woods yet, but the situation seems to be under control.

Flores turns back to me with a nod. “Let’s do it, but make it fast. Mr. Garda?—”

“I ain’t leaving without my damn cat!” he yells, already forging his way toward the stairs through the now waist deep water. It’s brutally cold and the strong current is swirling around us, doing its best to drag us back.

It won’t succeed, though.

Flores gives me a resigned look and then we’re surging forward ourselves, heading after Cassius in the opposite direction to everyone else.

It’s a relief to get out of the water, but as we run up the steps in our sodden clothes, it’s easier to feel the building shifting all around us.

My heart is in my throat as Flores follows me down the hall and into the bedroom.

I don’t want Cassius’s house to collapse.

But I really don’t want to collapse with us still inside it.

“Fire department, call out!” I yell as we pass the other rooms, but no one answers, so Flores and I continue into the bedroom.

“I can’t find her!” Cassius cries as soon as he sees me, clutching either side of his head. “Kiki! Kiki!”

I dash over and grab his shoulders, giving him a firm squeeze.

“We’ll find her,” I promise. “She’s going to be terrified, though.

We need to keep our cool so we don’t scare her any more than she already is.

Take a breath for me, baby. Can you do that?

” He blinks at me and shakily inhales. “Good, that’s good.

Now, we’re going to need something to get her out in. Where’s her carry case?”

He frowns then shakes his head. “Downstairs in the utility room by the garage. If there even is still a utility room. How is this happening? None of this was supposed to happen!”

“I know, I know,” I tell him. “But it is, and we are going to get through it.”

This is why we run our drills so vigorously.

The only reason I’m staying calm right now is thanks to hours and hours of training my muscle memory to just react and my brain not to succumb to panic.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Flores scouring the room for our ginger menace, but I can tell he’s had no luck yet.

“What else could we use to keep Kiki safe?” I ask Cassius.

He bites his lip as he concentrates before his face lights up. “I have a duffle bag in the wardrobe.”

“Perfect,” I say as we run over. “She’ll hate it, but I can strap her across my body in that.” Who knows what I might need my hands for to get us out of here.

It’s a free-standing antique and I wonder if it—like so many of Cassius’s possessions—is going to survive this ordeal. But that’s something to worry about later when we’re in the clear. If anyone can replace a bunch of stuff, it’s Cassius Garda.

Kiki is irreplaceable.

He pulls a navy Seahawks bag from the bottom of the closet, upending it to dump its contents on the floor. Flores jogs over to us, shaking his head.

“Are you sure she was in here?”

My gut wrenches. There’s no way I saved her from that river only to lose her now.

Cassius balls the duffle up in his hand. “I guess she could have run anywhere,” he says, his voice tight. “But this is where she spends most of her time. Under the bed is her favorite hiding spot if she’s scared, but I couldn’t find her.”

I drop onto my belly and shine my flashlight to check for myself, but aside from a few sneaker boxes, I can’t see anything. If she isn’t in here…she could be anywhere in the whole house. She could have gotten outside and been swept away by the flood…

Logically, I know at some point Flores and I are going to have to call it in order to get the human beings to safety. But the idea of leaving without Kiki feels like ripping my heart out of my chest.

I think of Lochlan Bell, defying Captain Valentine’s orders in order to rescue puppy Rocky from the burning warehouse coming down around their heads. I know I’m not supposed to look up to examples like that, but that’s who the One-Thirteen are, it’s what we do.

If I abandon Kiki, I’ll never be able to live with myself. I wouldn’t be able to ever look Cassius in the eye again. They’re now my family, and I have to protect them.

I just don’t have to do it alone.

“Lieutenant, help me sweep the other rooms on this floor,” I tell him despite being the lower ranking firefighter on the scene.