Page 13 of Roark
Strong arms wrapped around her in that instant, holding her upright and pulling her back. “Let’s get you someplace safe,” the firefighter said. He was around her height, five feet nine, but his turnouts and boots made him appear larger than life. He wore a helmet and his face was covered with soot, as if he’d been in the house but was now out here with her.
“Why?” she asked, her voice raspy. “Why aren’t you in there helping her?”
He continued pulling her back, stopping when they were at the back of an ambulance, its doors opened wide.
“I want you to take a seat,” he said to her, and then, “Get her some oxygen!” That directive went to one of the paramedics.
When Tamika looked around, she realized there were more people than when she’d first arrived. All of them in uniform, hustling around doing their job to contain the situation. This firefighter was trying to keep her calm. “I don’t need oxygen,” she said, shaking her head as he eased her down so she was sitting in the doorway of the ambulance.
“Ma’am, I need you to put this on your face and take deep breaths,” a paramedic directed her.
“But—”
The firefighter shook his head, and the paramedic clamped the face mask over her nose and mouth. “We know there’re people in there. We got somebody in there looking for them. There’s nothing you can do but sit here and wait.”
Because he wasn’t lying, she didn’t try to get up or swing on the paramedic who pressed the mask into her face with unnecessary force. Instead, she took slow and steady breaths, feeling her lungs silently thank her for the effort.
She hadn’t noticed how much smoky air she’d inhaled while standing there watching her parents’ house burn, hadn’t understood the danger she’d put herself in. Because she didn’t matter right now. She hadn’t mattered for the last year. Nothing but finding out who’d set fire to her father’s office had mattered. That was how she’d ended up losing her job, and that was why she was here in the UK tracking down the only leads she had.
“They’re coming out!” she heard somebody yell and she immediately stood, pushing the face mask and the rude paramedic holding it out of her way as she ran toward the house. Two firefighters came from the side doors of the house, each carrying a body in their arms. As tears sprang to Tamika’s eyes, more paramedics ran past her. Two of them were pushing stretchers, another two carrying large bags over their shoulders.
“This is the last time I’m gonna tell you to stay back, lady!” The firefighter who’d been nice to her a few minutes ago was now pissed. Well, Tamika was okay with that—she was angry as hell too. Her parents’ house was on fire and something, a deep dark something that’d been churning in the pit of her stomach for the last year, was telling her this wasn’t a mistake. It was arson.
“Dammit!” Someone else had been in the house.
He sat in his car across the normally quiet road from the country house and watched.
There was only supposed to be one person inside. He’d watched that housekeeper leave. When had she come back and why, dammit, why?
Gritting his teeth, he kept from cursing out loud, even though nobody would hear him if he did. In the forty-five minutes he’d been sitting here, nobody had glanced his way. The thought infuriated and empowered him. They had no clue he was here or that he’d been inside that house just an hour ago. His gloves still smelled like gasoline.
Lifting one to his face, he inhaled deeply, letting the scent seep into his soul. He’d had to move fast this time, because that housekeeper didn’t take long when she went out to shop for food. He knew her schedule well. He also knew that someone else was now staying in the house.
Tamika.
His gaze narrowed on her now, standing on the sidewalk crying the same way her mother had when she’d watched him lift the can of gasoline and start to pour. He’d wanted to stand there and watch the fear fill her face, to pool into her eyes until they bulged out like a cartoon character. He’d wanted her to know she was going to die because of him. But he’d heard footsteps and he’d had to get out quick. Damn housekeeper! She deserved to die too for interfering.
Rage shot through his body in powerful thrusts just like the water bursting from those hoses. They were too late; the water wouldn’t work. Sandra Rayder was going to die, just as she deserved.
The sight of Tamika climbing her big ass into the ambulance ripped him from the glorious thoughts, and his lips peeled back from his teeth. “No,” he mumbled. “No. No. Fucking no!”
He slammed a fist into the dashboard as the doors of the ambulance were closed, but not before he got a glimpse of a woman on the stretcher inside. It was Sandra, no doubt and she must be alive. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have let Tamika get back there with her.
The next sound that came from him was feral, ragged and animalistic, and more familiar to him than his own name. Sandra had to die. If she didn’t, it would be his first mistake, and he didn’t make mistakes. Not now. Not ever.
The ambulance whizzed by his car, and he switched on the ignition, planning to follow and to make sure this ended the way he wanted it to.
Chapter 6
By six that evening, Roark was hungry and cranky. He wasn’t sure if he should’ve
upgraded that to “crankier,” since he’d been in a foul mood for weeks now, but shrugged the thought away and continued to work on the memo he needed to send with his thoughts on last week’s R&D meeting. His mind had been on other things during that meeting, but he’d managed to jot down notes. For the last few hours, he’d been sitting on the loveseat in his room, attempting to blend the notes into a cohesive summary.
The fact that he was still on the first page of the memo meant he wasn’t doing too well. More often than not, Roark found himself looking away from his laptop, letting his gaze fall on one piece of furniture around the room and then another. His mother had selected every piece. Roark remembered being at the Hyde Park house with her one Saturday afternoon and commenting on all the design books and fabrics she’d spread out in the den. Maxine had loved working in the den at Hyde Park because it had a wall full of windows that faced the garden she’d tended to herself. She’d loved the scent and color of different flowers and had thus brought that love to the manor and the clubhouse, as was visible through the large vases of fresh flowers in every room Roark had been in so far. Just like the warm beige, yellow and cream hues in this room spoke of her calm spirit.
A rush of emotion soared through his body with those thoughts, and Roark closed his eyes to its intensity. With his fingers still resting on the keyboard, he took slow, steadying breaths, hoping the waves of grief wouldn’t overtake him this time.
He could do this. He knew he could.
