Page 5 of Rescued Dreams
And he’d shut it off, from the look of this. “Let’s go find out what happened.” Ridge swung around in time to see both Eddie and Bryce snap a salute.
“Yes, Lieutenant.” Both of them spoke at the same time.
Ridge rolled his eyes, but it was pretty funny. They were proud of him. His boys, his team. Zack was over with the others, crouched by Della Nixon. Ridge tried not to look at Amelia, but he scanned all of them. She looked tired—and frustrated.Join the club, honey.
Probably not frustrated about the same things he was though.
He hung back and let Bryce take the lead. The rescue squad lieutenant held out his hand and helped Amelia to her feet. Bryce said, “You guys shut the gas off?”
“I did.” Izan got to his feet, holding his hand out for Zoe. Della sat on the grass, sipping from a water bottle. The EMT was packing up his gear.
Ridge caught Amelia’s gaze. “You good?”
“Just got the wind knocked out of me when that guy ran out of the apartment.” Amelia looked around, and he followed her gaze, seeing a black-and-white police car pull onto the street.
Ridge saw her swallow, an indication she was nervous. Interesting. “Izan, did you see anyone in there?”
“The gas was off when I went in.” Izan rubbed a hand through his thick black hair. “I was about to start with the foam when someone knocked me out. They came from the hallway. Maybe they ran out in time to slam into you?”
Amelia shrugged. “I didn’t get a good look at his face.”
“The door was cracked,” Ridge said. “I figured it was you guys that opened it.”
Amelia’s dark-blonde brows drew together. “Someone deliberately targeted us. Or the apartment.”
“I’ll go fill in the cops. Get them to talk to witnesses and see if anyone saw anything.” Bryce wandered off toward the officers on crowd control.
Ridge said, “I’m going to walk through the apartment.”
“I’ll go with you.” Amelia peeled off her gloves and left them with her helmet and SCBA on the grass. That left her in turnout pants and a T-shirt, suspenders over her shoulders. Hair pulled back in a low bun so it didn’t get caught in anything. Wisps of blonde that had come free hung on the sides of her face.
She was gorgeous, and half the men in the fire department had been in love with her at one point or another. Too bad she was so determined to succeed in Last Chance County that she didn’t notice the attention. But her determination made her an incredible officer. He wanted to be as good a lieutenant as she was. It was a large part of what had driven him in his training and studying to pass the test.
Not only that, but his life had changed in the last year, and he needed a greater income now that he had two mouths to feed at home.
Ridge went into the apartment first, then stepped aside and let her pass so she could go into the kitchen. She hit the living room instead.
Amelia stood in the middle of the room, now a bunch of black, scorched furniture surrounded by black walls. She stared at the fireplace, her hands on her hips. “The gas must’ve built up and then blown.”
“The pilot light probably caught with the fire.” He went over and crouched in front of the fireplace unit. “There isn’t much that comes out to make the flames in a fake-wood unit like this, but if the gas built up behind the face plate…” He looked at the switch on the wall—where it was supposed to be, anyway. “I wonder if whoever shoved Izan turned the fire on and opened the valve. These things have safety features. They’re not supposed to just blow.”
“Gas doesn’t turn itself back on, and there’s no question Izan turned it off if he says he did.”
“So our conclusion is that whoever was in here messed with it and deliberately caused the accident.” He blew out a breath. The same person had knocked her down. “Thank God no one was badly hurt.”
His faith was new, or old, depending on how he looked at it. But all his conversations with Kane the past couple of months had led him to dig his Bible out of the back of a cupboard in his town house and even darken the doors of a church a few times.
Amelia said, “Mmm.”
Whatever that meant. Ridge wandered to the kitchen to look around.
“Hey, listen. I didn’t really come with you so we could look at the scene. I need to talk to you.”
He turned. “What about?”
She stood in the kitchen doorway—what was left of it. Amelia lifted a hand and brushed hair back from her face, tucking the errant strands behind one ear. “I got a call. From the Benson Fire Department. A guy I used to work with—Julio Espinoza-Vasquez—called me.”
“Coda.” Ridge nodded. “We met him when we went to Benson last year to help them out after that huge fire downtown.” They’d been scheduled to go there for training as a collaboration between the two departments, but given what had been going on, they’d quickly switched to pitching in.
