Chapter Three
The restaurant wasalready half gone by the time Austin and his team reached it.He and West exchanged a glance.They knew this place.The owner was a shifter.They’d eaten here several times, so they also knew that other shifters frequented the place.They’d always given West and Austin a wide berth, but the owners had never had anything to say about them.They’d been nice and had always served them good food with a smile.
Austin jumped out of the fire engine as soon as it came to a stop.Taylor was already giving orders as he looked for the person in command.It didn’t take him long, and from his expression, Austin could tell it wasn’t good.
“Austin, West, there are two people still inside,” Taylor yelled over the roar of fire and the sound of the water hitting the building.
Austin swore.With a fire like this, there was a good chance those people were dead, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to go in there to find them.
“Do we know where in the building?”West asked as he grabbed his mask from the engine.
“The kitchen, toward the back.”
West nodded.“I know where it is.Austin and I have eaten here a few times before.”
“Good.Get in there, but don’t do anything stupid.”
Luckily for them, even if they did, they’d be fine.They were dragon shifters.The fire wouldn’t hurt them, but Taylor didn’t know that.
Maybe he ought to.
Now wasn’t the time to reconsider telling him and the others, but Austin couldn’t help but think about it.Knowing that they couldn’t get hurt would help Taylor feel better about sending them into the fire, and it would give them more leeway.It would also help them keep their secret from people they didn’t know.They might trust their team with it, but that was it.Austin didn’t want the secret to get out to anyone else.
West knocked their shoulders together and nodded.He moved ahead, and Austin quickly finished getting ready before following him inside.
It was like every other fire they’d worked.The air burned around them, the building was coming down, and they had a job to do.Thankfully, the heat didn’t bother them, but they still had to be careful of everything else.They could survive the fire, but they might not survive a beam falling on their heads or a wall coming down on them.
The restaurant was a maze of smoke and heat, the ceiling already sagging in places where the support beams had been weakened.Austin could hear the sound of materials creaking over the roar of the fire—they’d only have a few minutes before the whole building came down.
“Kitchen’s in the back,” West’s voice came through the radio, muffled but still clear enough.
Austin followed West’s lead, stepping carefully over debris.The flames were close, and while the heat couldn’t hurt them the way it would hurt their human teammates, the smoke and toxic fumes coming from the burning building were still dangerous.
They pushed through a swinging door into what had once been a commercial kitchen.Looked more like the image most people had of Hell, with two figures huddled behind a table that now lay on its side near the far wall.The older man and the young woman were both conscious but clearly suffering from smoke inhalation and panicking.
“Found them!”Austin called into his radio before moving toward the victims.
The woman looked up as Austin approached, her eyes wide.She was in her mid-twenties, with dark hair plastered to her head and soot streaking her face.The man next to her was older, and Austin recognized her father.Melinda and Joseph both worked at the restaurant.In fact, Joseph was the owner.
“Can you walk?”Austin asked Melinda, kneeling beside them and doing a quick assessment for injuries.He didn’t think she recognized him under his mask.
“I think so,” she breathed out.“But Dad isn’t doing well.”
That would explain why she hadn’t left.As a shifter, she probably would’ve been fast enough.Her father, too, but it looked like he hadn’t had the time.
A crack echoed through the building, a sure sign that something major was happening upstairs.West appeared by Austin, his expression grim behind his mask.
“We need to go now,” he said.“The whole second floor is about to come down.”
