A thick silent layer of white smoke rolling into the main bar area at a rapid speed.
With the woman I love running straight into it.
“Poppy! No!” I bellow after her, but she doesn’t stop, just yells at me to call 911 before she disappears into the danger.
“No, no, no!” I yell as I pull my phone from my pocket and dial.
Not my bar, not the woman I love.
Not again.
“Emergency services, what is your emergency?” I hear the words in my head, and all I can think is why is this happening?
One word jumps into my head.
Dean!
Chapter Twenty-Three
POPPY
It can’t be. The smell of what we call the silent killer is not something I ever get wrong. But as the thick air hits my lungs, I know without a doubt, we’re in trouble.
“Landon!” I scream to alert him. “Smoke, I smell it. Fire!” I’m moving in an instant, down off the bar and then running to where I can see the smoke is coming from.
Landon is shouting behind me, but I can’t stop to calm him down. I need to assess the situation to know what I’m dealing with.
“Call 911!” I yell as loudly as I can.
Grabbing the bottom of my shirt, I pull it up over my mouth and nose to prevent inhaling too much smoke. I can already taste it in my mouth, like charcoal on burnt toast. If this were a normal call-out, I would be completely covered in my protective gear, wearing my breathing apparatus.
As I run down the hallway toward the back door, I’m trying to see if the fire is small enough that we can put it out quickly and stop too much damage happening to the bar. I look for afire extinguisher along the wall but can’t see one. The smoke becomes thicker, my eyes starting to sting, and I feel a strange energy charge in the air around me. The heat is intensifying, and my heart is racing more than it normally would when I’m on a job. I don’t know if it’s because I feel so exposed without all my gear, or if it’s a sign my body is about to start panicking again with the heightened uncertainty and threat now all around me.
But then it occurs to me, the adrenaline racing through my body is also because of Landon. This bar is his baby and a connection to a woman he loved deeply. But more importantly, he’s here and in danger. I don’t want him injured or to see his heart broken over losing Lucinda’s.
Getting closer to the back door, my instincts tell me this is going to be too big a fire for me to do anything to put it out without any of my crew and equipment. With the amount of smoke now filling the hallway, I know one small fire extinguisher is not going to do much.
The noise of the fire suddenly erupts, hissing and crackling as it creeps through the walls and into the roof cavity. And just as I reach the door at the end of the hallway, I hear Landon yelling my name from a distance.
“Poppy!” he screams a second time, and I can tell he’s getting closer.
I reach forward and very softly place my hand on the door to see how close the fire is to breaching the door, barely letting my skin touch it. It’s scorching hot, and before my eyes, I see the paint starting to blister from the heat on the other side.
“Fuck,” I blurt out. The fire is already behind the door, and the way the smoke is now pouring under the door and into the hallway, it’s getting intense. We need to evacuate right now. We’re running out of time! We’re in danger of smoke inhalation, and it’s already getting harder to breathe.
I spin around to get out as Landon reaches me and starts coughing. I grab the bottom of his shirt and start dragging it up his body, when he takes over and pulls it into place quicker.
“Cover your mouth and nose. We need to get out, we can’t do anything, it’s already too big,” I shout at him, taking his other hand and dragging him with me, away from the door and back toward the front door. “Get your head as low as you can, away from the heavy smoke.” Both of us bend at the waist, and we’re moving with speed now. I feel the first spurt of water from above hit my body as the sprinkler system kicks in. The fire either started outside the back door initially and already breached into the building or just inside the back door in the utility room, which is why the sprinkler system in the hallway hasn’t triggered before now.
I can hear the beast of the fire talking to me, the rush of air in the ceiling cavity above my head that tells me something is about to happen, I can feel it. It’s that tingle that runs through my body when the charge in the air around me shifts, meaning that the fire is also about to change in nature some way. My gut instinct is with me and as powerful as ever. I’ve never been so grateful to finally feel it again for the first time since the accident; part of me was worried it had left me that day. I now push Landon in front of me, urgently driving him forward, knowing I need to get him away from the instability above us.
Crack!
“Shit!” I scream as part of the ceiling in the hallway hits the floor behind us. I knew things were about to escalate, but I’m not stopping to check how bad it is. I can hear glass smashing somewhere in front of us which is not a good sign.
“Front door,” Landon yells at me, but the moment we step into the main bar area, I recoil at the sight of flames in front of the door. The noise of the glass breaking must’ve come from the fist-sized object I see lying on the floor. It’s covered in materialand alight with flames, which are quickly growing in size. It looks like the object has smashed a small hole after being thrown through the front door, but the glass isn’t clear, so we can’t see who it was or what’s happening outside. All I know is that if the fire takes hold on the floor where the object landed, then we’re about to be cut off from our only escape route. My stomach also sinks as the realization hits that someone is deliberately trying to burn down Lucinda’s, or worse, hurt or kill us. Shit just got real, and I need to utilize every bit of training embedded in my brain to keep us safe. Because I have no idea where the next hotspot is going to be.
I’m not game to open the front door because I don’t want to create a backdraft in here. The chances are small because the small hole in the front door already has air moving through it, but I won’t risk a major backdraft, causing an explosive fire as it’s drawn up the hallway with speed toward us. I can hear sirens and know the firefighters are close, and with the sprinkler system now activated, I’m sure I’m making the right call not to open it and just deal with what’s in front of me.
