“Shit,” I yelled into my communication device that rested on a strap on my shoulder. “I’ve got them all. They’re passed out, possibly from the smoke.” I crouched down to retrieve the smaller body in my arms just as Eric made his way into the bedroom.
“The mother’s passed out, too,” I tell Eric.
“Shit!” he cursed, looking upwards at the cracking of the roof, under the pressure of the fire. “We gotta get outta here.”
At that moment, Don burst into the room. I handed him the child I’d held in my arms, while Eric did his best to manage with the woman who was presumably their mother. I reached for the second smaller body, that I reasoned was the second child the officer had told me about initially. We moved quickly, following behind Don to retrace our steps back down the hallway and down the stairs. The child in my arms didn’t stir, and that caused me to pick up the pace even more. I shielded the lifeless body in my arms, doing my best to protect it from the scorching heat of the house fire and to cover his mouth from the harsh smoke. I was barely able to see anything, instead using my sense of direction to make it back to the back door.
Once outside, I realized the body in my arms was that of a young boy. Eric, Don, and I carried the victims around the house and to the paramedics who were waiting to tend to them. I stood back and observed the three people?two children and a mother?laid out on separate gurneys, medics trying to assess their injuries, while a distraught father yelled and screamed in the background, needing to be held back by police officers.
“Sir, sir, let the medics do their job.”
It was a familiar sight, but one that never failed to twist my insides. Instead of watching, I turned to go back and help with the hose to put the fire out.
It took another twenty minutes to completely extinguish the flames. By the time we’d finished the house was a shell of what it’d once been, although it was still standing.
I followed Captain Waverly inside, Eric and Don right behind me. The other guys were busy putting up the hose and other equipment back into the rig outside.
“Fireplace,” Don grunted.
I looked over at him. We were standing in the middle of the burned out living room. The smoke was still clearing from the house, but we were doing our initial fire investigation. The investigators from the department would be down soon enough, but Don said he’d had a feeling about this fire and wanted to do some digging.
“Looks like it started in the fireplace?” I questioned.
Don nodded; his dark hair was plastered to his head from sweat due to his helmet. I was sure mine looked the same way.
“Yeah, no screen,” he answered, crouching low. Gone was the jokester Don from the night before, replaced by the serious fire investigator.
“Probably started here from the fireplace being left on. There are newspaper ashes around.” He pointed and I, too, observed the small pieces of newspaper that were scattered here and there, throughout the living room. No screen to cover the fireplace and using newspaper to help keep the fire going were a terrible combination that could make for a deadly fire. I could easily see how this could’ve happened. But something still nagged at me. It just didn’t add up. When I peered over at Don, his right eyebrow was raised as he looked at the char marks on the floor around us. I knew he sensed it, too.
He followed me up the stairs, having pulled out his phone to snap pictures of the scene. We moved up the stairs where Eric and the captain were searching around, taking note of the situation. I stopped right before getting to the room in which we’d found the mother and her children. I crouched down, eyeing the charred piece of newspaper at my foot.
“Don,” I called, “you should get a picture of this.”
He came around me to see what I was looking at. “Shit!” A frown formed on his face and he took the photo. Once he did, I lifted the paper with my hand, holding it up in front of my face.
“I don’t care how powerful a fire is, it’s not going to carry shreds of newspaper up a staircase and deposit it at the very door where we found our victims.”
“No.” Don shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
I looked around, noticing another small piece of newspaper, again burnt around the edges. “This was set intentionally.”
Don looked me dead in the eye but remained silent. I’d just read his conclusions out loud.
“We’ll need to pass this along to the fire investigators.”
I nodded, too angry to speak. The thought of someone doing something like this on purpose sent a cold chill through my veins. I knew the type of person it took to plan out killing someone. Hell, Iwasthe type of person who’d done it in my former career. But even I’d never harm a woman and her sleeping children.
“You think it was the father?” Don questioned.
That pissed me off even more. I kept quiet. The memory of the screaming father as he watched his wife and children being treated by the medics ran across my mind. I doubted it was him. Of course, he could’ve been putting on a show.
“Anything’s possible.” I stood and continued to walk with Don around the house as he snapped photo after photo for what he thought might be important. At this point, I was just contented knowing that the sick bastard who’d attempted to kill this family hadn’t succeeded. Rescue Four had done its job, and for that I was grateful.
~ Chapter Ten ~
Michelle
I tucked one of my wand curls behind my right ear and stared into the mirror. I wore a floral print dress which shifted around my knees every time I moved. It was five of six and I was just about ready for my date with Carter. My mother and Diego had left earlier; my baby boy was excited to see a new animated film that his grandmother was taking him to see. That just left me alone to get ready for my date. I was grateful for the quiet, but the butterflies in my stomach began to make themselves known. This wasn’t my first date with the man, so why was I feeling so nervous?
