Ignite On Contact (Brotherhood by Fire #2) -Jaci Burton
CHAPTER 1
FLAMES LICKED ALL AROUND RAFE DONOVAN, THE HEAT from the house fire causing sweat to drip down his face and inside of his SCBA mask. Since he couldn’t wipe his face, he blinked instead, clearing the perspiration from his eyes.
Rafe firmly gripped the lead hose to douse the blaze threatening to drop a fiery ceiling on their heads. Tommy Rodriguez had his back, feeding him more line. They soaked the flames in the living room, pushing through the dining room and into the kitchen, driving the beast back.
“It’s wearing down,” Rafe said, watching as the inferno tried to roar, then inched back into the walls as he blasted it with water. “You don’t win today, you bastard.”
“You tell that fucker, Rafe,” Rodriguez said.
Fire was his nemesis, the thing that had almost killed him back when he was a kid. It had also saved his life, turned it around and given him a new beginning. But it still had to die. Every day he faced it, it had to die.
When the blaze was finally extinguished, he exhaled. The Engine 6 team did a walk around, pulling down walls to make sure fire didn’t lurk in the Sheetrock, waiting to reignite. He made his way outside and pulled off his mask, sucking in a deep breath of Ft. Lauderdale’s hot summer air.
It might be humid as hell, and he might be drenched under his turnout gear, but he’d survived. No one was inside the house when the fire broke out, so he’d call this one a success.
He looked at the one-story ranch, charred but still standing. It looked a little beaten down, but the old house would come back.
“Nice job in there.” Jackson Donovan, his brother and his lieutenant, patted him on the back.
“Thanks.”
He grinned and headed back to the truck, elation blasting through him as it always did when they were successful.
He loved his job. If he could do it every day, he would.
They began to wrap up. They were folding the hoses and packing up equipment when smoke started pouring from the roof.
“Dammit,” Rafe said. How had they missed that? He heard Jackson’s voice ordering them to get back into the house. Rafe loaded a fresh tank of oxygen on his back and put his mask on, then waited for his backup.
Rodriguez was right behind him as they returned inside.
“Be careful in there, all of you,” Jackson said. “I don’t like the looks of that smoke.”
“Yeah, got it,” Rafe said. He didn’t like the skittering feeling crawling down his back. He had a sixth sense about fire, and which scenes posed a danger. This one didn’t feel right to him. Something was off.
Inside looked clear, which meant the smoke was hiding in the walls somewhere. Hendricks and Richards were inside, too, helping them inspect. They’d broken off, going in the opposite direction.
“There’s no heat, no smoke,” Rafe said as they made their way around the house, testing more walls for fire. “So where’s the smoke coming from?”
“Attic, maybe,” Rodriguez said.
“Already up in the attic and cleared it,” Hendricks said into his radio. “So whatever we saw, it isn’t up here.”
Damn. It wasn’t unusual for a fire to snake along the walls, lurking, moving from one location to another. Which meant they’d have to check behind the drywall in every room until they found it and extinguished it. Rafe used his drywall hook to cut open a section of wall, checking for smoke in one of the smaller back bedrooms.
“I don’t like this,” Jackson said. “Keep a sharp eye.”
Rafe was already doing that. The whole team was in here now, cutting through and dragging down sections of walls to search for smoke, looking for hot spots.
When Rafe got to the closet in the hallway, he felt the door. It was hot, and the paint on the outside of the door was bubbling.
“There you are,” he whispered, then turned to Rodriguez. “We need to vent this through the roof.”
He was about to notify Jackson that they were exiting when he was knocked back off his feet by an explosion.
And then everything went dark.
BUSY SHIFTS IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM AT FT. LAUDERDALE Medical Center were Carmen Lewis’s jam. It was a big-city emergency room, serving a large population that made for demanding days. Carmen’s shifts went fast because she rarely stopped moving. She relished the fast pace, but even more, she loved helping the sick and injured.