Page 93 of Up In Smoke

What if the smoke has already reached him?

“Lieutenant,” Captain Valentine says in a warning tone. I glance around to see everyone looking my way.

“What are you all waiting for?”I roar. “You’re wasting precious seconds!”

The rest of the squad hop to it, but Julian marches over to me. “Are you sure you should be on this call?”

“Are you going to try and stop me?” I fire back, getting the last of my gear on.

The captain sighs and follows me onto the engine. “Okay, but you listen to my orders, understood? What I say, goes. If you fuck with me, I will physically remove you from the scene myself.”

“Yes, sir,” I say as the rigs tear out onto the street.

I know exactly how long it takes to drive from the station to my apartment, and with the sirens on at this time of night, we should get there a couple of minutes quicker. But it feels like it takes an eternity, and I spend the entire ride with my heart racing and my knee bouncing in agitation.

How can there be a fire at my building? What about the sprinklers? We don’t have those inside our apartments, but they’re in the corridors and I have an extinguisher that I made sure to show Jesse and explain how it works.

What could have started it? A kitchen accident? A candle? The building is supposed to be non-smoking but if someone broke the rules maybe they didn’t put a cigarette out properly?

It’s entirely possibly this is a contained incident, and Jesse and the other tenants are already waiting outside, probably being rounded up by Klaus. But as we finally make it to my block, my stomach plummets.

This isn’t a small fire.

“Holy shit,” Sawyer mutters as we all peer out the windows. My building is only six stories high, but the flames have climbed almost to the roof and are clearly spreading from the main stairwell.

Why aren’t the sprinklers holding it back?

It doesn’t matter what started it or why it’s accelerating like that. We’re here and it’s our job to put it out as fast as possible. According to Dispatch, the One-Two-Two and other stations are coming from San Clemente to assist.

To say I’m grateful would be an understatement.

“Thirty seconds out!” Gene yells from the driver’s seat.

“Okay, One-Thirteen,” the captain calls out over the com system. “We’ve had calls from all six floors. It’s our job to make sure everyone’s made it out okay. Flores, I want you on the ladder with Bell. The rest of you, on the hoses. Delacroix and Ortiz, set up a triage area out front. We’ve got this.”

“One-Thirteen, sound out!” I cry.

“ONE-THIREEN,”everyone shouts.

Then the rigs are screeching to a halt and we’re spilling into the night.

For a second I can’t breathe. Maybe Julian was right and I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t just my home, which is bad enough. Six months ago, I would still have been upset by this call. But I was literally just telling Jesse how he’s my whole fucking world and having a meltdown about the possibility of losing him.

My only consolation is that he and Klaus are together. If Jesse was working, I’d be relieved that he’s safe, but I’d still be fighting tooth and nail to save our dog. At least I know they’ll be looking after each other, just like they’d done since the moment they met.

There’s a crowd of people that rush to meet us as we hurriedly unroll the hoses and start cranking up the ladder. There’s a mixture of what look like residents and people from neighboring buildings. I recognize some of them by sight but none by name.

Jesse and Klaus are not here.

“Captain!” Sawyer yells, running toward us with Lili by his side. “The fires are concentrated in both stairwells—the main one at the front but also the fire escape. The way this thing’s burning, there’s no way it wasn’t set deliberately with an accelerant. We are not getting inside on foot.”

“Jesus Christ,” Valentine mutters, getting on the radio. “Dispatch, we need police assistance for a suspected arson attack.”

“What about the sprinkler system?” I ask, feeling sick. Who the hell would do something like this?

Lili shakes her head. “If I had to guess, it’s been tampered with. But it’s definitely not working.”

“Let’s get those hoses working, people!” Captain Valentine bellows, just as the water starts spurting to life. Lili and Sawyer run to help, and I turn around, looking for Lochlan.