Page 50 of Heat Exchange
“It’smybaggage,” she snapped. “And don’t worry about it. I can carry it myself.”
“Stop,” he said when she headed for the door. “Lydia, please. Just wait.”
Something in his voice broke through her anger, and she turned back to face him. “What?”
“I’m not asking you for anything, Lydia. Just a little company for a while.” He held up his hands. “Maybe we could watch a movie or something. I just don’t want to be alone.”
“You really should get some sleep.”
“I will later. But I always come home to an empty apartment and last night sucked, but once you told me you’d be here, that was all I could think about. That you’d be here. And now we’re arguing and I don’t want you to leave like this.” She hesitated, torn by the sincerity in his voice. “For no other reason than I’m a friend who had a shitty night and could use some company.”
“Even shitty company?”
He smiled, and the weariness in his eyes tugged at her. “I don’t care what kind of mood you’re in. I always want your company. And if you get too bitchy, I’ll just turn the TV up to drown out your voice.”
She laughed and sat back down on the couch. “You’re not as funny as you think you are, Aidan Hunt.”
“You still laughed.” His slid his hand across the sofa cushion and laced his fingers through hers before using his other hand to unmute the television. “I’ll even let you pick what we watch.”
Chapter Twelve
TWODAYSLATER, Aidan kept his gaze on the yellow reflective tape on Scotty’s jacket and helped support the line as they tried to beat the flames back. The smoke was thick and the world seemed to be crackling around them, but the woman was still screaming, pleading for somebody to save her.
That was good. As long as she was still screaming, she could be saved. They pushed forward, their world reduced to each other, the fire and the woman’s voice.
They knew she was the only person left in the house and they had an idea of where she was. Her husband thought he might have fallen asleep in his recliner while smoking a cigarette because he woke up with his sweatpants on fire and had to roll on the grass to extinguish the flames after throwing himself out the window. As they’d put him in the ambulance, he’d begged for them to find his wife, who’d been in the master bathroom.
“I see her,” Aidan shouted. He reached over Scotty’s shoulder to point to the doorway, and waited for his nod. As his friend turned the hose to keep the water spraying toward the flames that kept popping out at them, Aidan went by him with Grant Cutter on his heels.
She’d almost made it out. The fire, along with the water they had to throw at it, had weakened the structure and the ceiling had partially collapsed on her, pinning her legs. Her pleas for help were hoarse now—barely audible and broken up by coughing—but she was moving.
Aidan spared a second to grasp her hand and squeeze it while he looked over the situation. It wasn’t too bad, and if she’d been younger and stronger, she might have freed herself.
“Get ready,” he yelled to Grant. Then he wedged the Halligan tool under the beam across her legs, looking for leverage and taking the precious seconds to play out the cause and effect in his head. If he moved that beam, those ceiling panels would fall and another joist might shift, but nothing catastrophic. “On three.”
He counted, and then put his weight on the end of the bar until it lifted the beam. The mask blocked his peripheral vision, so he couldn’t see the woman, but he heard Grant shout that she was clear.
He slowly released the tension on the Halligan and let the beam back down into place. He didn’t see or feel any shifts in the structure, so he pulled it free and turned. Grant had the woman in his arms and they got the hell out of there as quickly as they could. They had to stop a couple of times and turn the hose on hot spots that flamed up, and Aidan could hear Grant yelling to the woman the entire time. He told her over and over she’d be okay, and he tried to keep her face tucked toward his coat.
The woman had stopped coughing and was limp in Grant’s arms when they cleared the building, and the kid ran straight to the ambulance with her. They were ready because of the constant radio contact, and Aidan watched Grant back out of the way, his gaze never leaving the woman.
Stepping forward, he pulled off his helmet and mask before putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. There weren’t really any words that would help. Aidan and most of the others had been there. They’d pulled a lot of people out of harm’s way. They’d been too late more often than he cared to dwell on, retrieving bodies instead of rescuing victims.
The worst, though, was getting to a person on time and racing to the ambulance, only to have EMS sadly shake their heads. It had happened to Aidan only twice, and both times he’d been torn up. Could he have run faster? If he’d gone down one hallway instead of another, would it have made a difference? He’d lain in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to count off the seconds every action and decision had taken him in an effort to convince himself he couldn’t have saved the victim by making a different choice.
Suddenly the woman was coughing and Aidan felt Grant’s shoulder sag as the tension left his body. “Good job, kid.”
Walsh, who’d stood by to kill the water pressure, gave them a nod. “Nice job. I heard the EMS talking about her husband. He’s going to be fine, obviously, but all he could talk about was how his wife had been nagging him to fix the smoke detectors.”
“If they’d been working, she wouldn’t have gotten pinned down,” Aidan said. “That would have been a shitty thing for him to live with the rest of his life.”
“Yeah. I guess one kept going off in the middle of the night and he couldn’t figure out why, so he ripped them all down.” Walsh shook his head. “And then fell asleep smoking a cigarette. Okay, get a drink, you guys, and then we’ll see what’s up.”
Once he’d drained a quarter of a water bottle, Aidan pulled out his phone to text Lydia.
Fire today.I’m not hurt.Just FYI.
He grinned and hit Send. Yesterday, she’d threatened to run his phone over after he sent her constant updates, likehad to help a roofer get off a roof because he sprained his ankle on a loose shingle,but I’m okay.
