Into The Inferno Part 30

"It was as peaceful as I've ever been. Like I was dead."

She'd turned on a lamp, her hair down around her face as she watched me. I had no idea how long we'd been here: one hour, two, a day? While I was rapidly coming to terms with my fate, I could tell by the deep blue dread in Stephanie's eyes, she was not. Wouldn't. Couldn't.

Making love with Stephanie had been penny fun and pound foolish. Worse, it had been diabolic. After I joined her sister in the mental ether, the pain of Stephanie's consanguine betrayal would only be that much greater for her.

Ironic. Just as I was recognizing my own unhealthy need to inflict suffering on the women around me, I went out and did it again. The fact that it had been her idea didn't make it any easier to stomach.

We dressed in silence, kissed briefly at the door, and stepped out onto the walkway. It was almost eleven-thirty. Two doors down, a man and a woman, half-crocked from the sounds of their movement and slurred voices, quarreled over which of them had the room key. A moment later I realized we were listening to Wes and Lillian Tindale.

Our meeting surprised me, but it shocked shocked them. Mouths agape, they both turned and stared. them. Mouths agape, they both turned and stared.

For a few moments the four of us looked at one another and then, without a word, Stephanie pivoted around and began walking away. I followed. Downstairs, we climbed into the Lexus, while a dumbfounded Wesley and Lillian gawped down at us.

As we headed out of the lot, two men in a rental car headed in. "Stop," I said. The two men parked next to us and headed toward a room on the ground floor. "I thought you two were leaving town," I said, rolling the car window down.

The two balding men looked startled. Hillburn and Dobson from Jane's California Propulsion, Inc. I'd been suspicious of them for pulling out of town after our chat, but now I was even more suspicious because they hadn't pulled out of town at all.

"What are you two doing?" I asked, getting out of the Lexus.

They looked at each other and headed for their room without answering. I ran over to them and grabbed Dobson by the arm. "No. I want to know what you two are doing. I thought you said your company couldn't possibly have had anything to do with our syndrome. If that's so, why are you hanging around?"

"Doesn't have anything to do with you," said Hillburn, who had the key in the door.

"You two are up to something." They just stared at me. Before I could say anything else, they opened the door, went in, and slammed it in my face.

"Did you see those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?" I said, getting back into the car.

"I don't like them, either, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Achara was going to look into rocket fuel products. Maybe she's found something."

"I'm surprised we haven't heard from her. The library closed hours ago."

We stopped at the fire station, where Stephanie retrieved some personal items out of Holly's Pontiac, which was still parked there.

It was hard for me to look at our fire station, a place I'd loved for so many years, a home away from home, a place I was destined never to inhabit again.

Just as we were about to leave, a black Suburban pulled around the corner, Scott Donovan at the wheel.

"I've been looking for you two," Donovan said. He had a strange look on his face, as if surprised to see us.

"Here we are," Stephanie said.

"Do you have some news for us?" I asked.

"You guys . . . I just want to meet with you in the morning. Before the news conference. That all right?"

Stephanie turned to me. "Sure."

"I just . . . I've been looking all over for you. Where were you?"

"Out and about," Stephanie said cheerily.

"We ran into Hillburn and Dobson. From JCP? They're still in town. Doesn't that seem odd to you?"

Donovan rubbed his chin. "It seems very odd. Where'd you see them?"

"The Sunset Motel."

Donovan gave us a look. "I'll go check it out. And don't look so glum. We're going to lick this."

"I'm not glum," I said.

"No? Is there a reason you have a room reserved over at Alpine Estates?"

It took a moment to realize what he was talking about. He seemed disappointed when Stephanie explained the room was my father's.

After we left, I said, "He look like he's been drinking?"

"Maybe."

"That newspaper guy in Tennessee hinted that he was quite a drinker."

The street lamps on Ballarat complemented a gigantic moon dangling over the south corner of Mount Si.

My girls would be wondering where I was. Once again I'd fobbed them off onto a baby-sitter and was ashamed of myself. Tomorrow was little enough to give, but tomorrow was theirs. We were getting nowhere with this quest, and I wasn't going to waste my remaining hours struggling like a wild horse in quicksand. It seemed the more I fought, the more hopeless things looked. Tomorrow I would hold the news conference, gather my family around, and wait for somebody to throw a rope over my neck and save me.

If somebody produced information that altered my lot, so be it. If not, my destiny was in the hands of G.o.d.

If there was a G.o.d.

Spooky.

I didn't believe in him, so why was I invoking his will now?

I began deep breathing again.

In my mind there was no longer much hope that I would be cured. It was a weak trail, and we were moving slowly. The fact that I had someone to share this with meant a lot to me. It meant even more that it was a woman who'd once reviled me.

We were on Ballarat, just past the library, when Stephanie pulled to the curb. My ears were ringing, and for a moment I couldn't figure out why she'd stopped. Then a fire engine raced past, siren squalling, red lights whirling. The ground seemed to shake as it pa.s.sed. A moment later Jeb Parker raced past in his Volkswagen. I wasn't wearing my pager, so I had no idea what they were responding to. It must have been a fire call rather than an aid response, because moments later another volunteer sped past at seventy miles an hour. The engine could have handled an aid call by itself.

The moonlit road out of town took us north, then veered east directly toward the base of Mount Si, then north again paralleling Si toward my house, three legs, each about half a mile long. My place was in a small enclave of treed properties next to the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River.

Across the fields a plume of fast-rising black smoke rolled upward. The smoke, highlighted as it was by the moon's light, looked like an act of war.

"Step on it," I said, irritated that I wasn't driving.

Stephanie followed my gaze and accelerated.

"A gra.s.s fire?" There had been two nuisance gra.s.s fires outside of town that afternoon.

"More likely a structure fire. Or a vehicle. Smoke from vegetation is light-colored." Even as I spoke, I caught another glimpse of the column. It was close to my property, too close, and hot, with orange streaks high up in the black smoke.

"Hope it's not one of your neighbors," she said.

"Me, too."

During the minute or two it took to complete the trip, my mind went blank, which was odd, because when I was riding the engine my mind never went blank. I would have been mentally running over the list of things to do when we arrived.

From 428th S.E. you took a dirt and gravel spur road, pa.s.sing Helen Neumann's place, to reach mine. A little farther along was Fred Bagwell's homestead, Fred a confirmed bachelor, an acknowledged alcoholic, and a lifelong misanthrope. The odds were about a hundred to one the fire was Fred's place.

As we approached the long gravel drive that led to my house, I saw the flashing red lights of the engine in front of us, the dust from Jeb Parker's Volkswagen running along the center of the dirt road like a huge gray hedgehog, volumes of thick black smoke rising up off a structure partially hidden behind the trees.

"Oh, G.o.d," I said, the words as dry as day-old toast.

"What?"

"It's my house."

"How could that be?"

"I don't know. Drive in. I need to make sure my girls got out."

47. INTO THE INFERNO.

The confusion at the site could have been worse, but not by much. The engine clogged the one-lane driveway, Parker's vehicle having swung around them. The engine had stopped too far from the fire. There were two trees next to my house and they were both alight now. The roof was burning, smoke pouring through the broken-out living-room window. Caution was one thing, but they were too far back.

I didn't like the speed of the smoke. Or the color. Or the fact that some of the windows were already broken out. I didn't like anything about it.

I motioned for Stephanie to drive around the engine and into the field, which she did, heading for a spot between Helen Neumann's house and mine. It was good to have a partner who didn't panic, a woman used to working in emergency rooms.

Before the car stopped rolling, I opened the door and leaped out, running past Jeb Parker as he donned his bunking clothes next to his Volkswagen. Anonymous volunteer firefighters in bulky yellow turnouts were climbing down off the engine. Helen Neumann stood in front of my burning house, a rumpled sweater thrown over her shoulders, looking small and frail, her thin gray hair in disarray, a woman in her forties who seemed seventy.

What I did not not see was either of my daughters. see was either of my daughters.

Or Morgan Neumann.

Several hours earlier they'd gone to the movie in my truck, but the truck was back now, parked by the side of the house.

I touched Helen Neumann's shoulder. "The girls, Helen? Where are they?"

She gave me a blank look and turned back to the fire building. An hour ago I thought going brain-dead was the worst thing that could happen.

I'd been wrong.

This was the worst thing that could happen.

Watching your family burn in the fires of h.e.l.l.

Though we were sixty feet from my house, the heat on our faces was enough to make Helen wince. From the blackness and speed of the smoke I knew the interior was boiling over. As if to confirm my judgment, another living-room window cracked open, and sections of plate gla.s.s fell into the flower bed.

Things were moving in slow motion. I felt as if I were trapped in a dream. Maybe it was was a dream. Maybe I was still back at the Sunset Motel and this was a nightmare. a dream. Maybe I was still back at the Sunset Motel and this was a nightmare.

I grabbed Helen's shoulders. "Helen? Where are the girls? Where is your daughter?"

"She's . . . why . . . she's baby-sitting for Mr. Swope." Helen's mind was always slow, but tonight it had stripped all its gears.

"Are they at your house? Have you seen them?"

Two couples from the other end of our small enclave stepped in front of me, the women in nightgowns and tennis shoes, the men with their shirts hurriedly thrown on, one of them barefoot. n.o.body had seen my daughters. A car full of teenage girls was parked to one side, having driven up the lane to gawp at a stranger's tragedy. People needed to see others in pain. It was like a circus act.

I'd wasted half a minute unmasking the obvious.

If my daughters had come out, they would have been next to Helen Neumann. They hadn't and they weren't.

I ran to the Lexus, popped the trunk, kicked off my shoes, pulled my bunking boots-trousers ensemble out, and stepped into the boots, pulling the suspenders up over my jeans and T-shirt. I slipped into the bunking coat and picked up the face piece and helmet as I walked. The helmet slipped out of my fingers. I'd never been this nervous at a fire. Not even my first.

I'd wasted too much precious time.

I ran to the engine, where two firefighters from the Snoqualmie department were dragging hose toward my house. I pulled a spare backpack out of the compartment and onto my shoulders, fastening the waist buckle and shoulder straps as I walked. I tugged my facepiece over my head, put on my helmet, and twisted the main air valve behind me on the bottle, all of this done on automatic pilot.

Two unmasked firefighters from Snoqualmie were in my front yard directing a hose stream through the broken-out front window. They were thirty feet away, but still, the heat was forcing them to duck low. It was pretty obvious everything in my front room was cooked.

Unless they were in one of the back bedrooms, my girls were gone.

"There are kids inside!" I yelled at the firefighters. "Get in there! Move up on it!" One of them glanced over his shoulder at me, but neither budged. I don't think they heard me.

Masked up, flashlight in my gloved hands, I jogged toward the front door. Before I could go in, one of the firefighters on the hose line, a large, pale man with a black mustache and crooked teeth, grabbed my shoulder and held me back. "You'll never make it. Let us knock it down from out here first."

Their line was directed horizontally into the rolling ball of orange but was having almost no effect. Over two hundred gallons a minute making no dent in the heat. Failing to darken the flames.

I stepped close to the house, knelt, opened the front door-it should have been locked-and felt a searing blast of heat on my face.

I crawled into the house on my belly. "Allyson!" I called. "Britney! Where are you guys?"

In my mind they were dead, having hidden under their beds or in a closet, long since having given up on their father. I could think of nothing worse than dying by fire, especially when you thought your hero firefighter father was going to save you.

And didn't.

It became apparent quickly that I wasn't going to bring them out through the front. The heat was so bad my wrists were burning where the gauntlets on my gloves were pushed up into my sleeves, the back of my neck feeling like the worst sunburn of my life. I tried to get lower, slithering along on my stomach for another few feet. I was breathing cool air from the compressed air cylinder on my back, but the room was as hot as anything I'd ever endured.

I backed out just as the hose stream hit the ceiling above me and a great billow of steam descended all around, burning my cheeks around the edges of my face mask, scalding me so badly I wanted to scream.

Just before I cleared the front door, something opaque came down across my vision and slapped my facepiece so I could see only out of my left eye. I wondered for half a second if my face was burned. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my veins, I couldn't tell.

When I got outside, the firefighters in the yard cut down the volume of water from their nozzle and arched a stream of water onto me. We could hear the sizzle of evaporating water on the plastic Cairns helmet, on the metal parts that held the shield up. Steam rose off my coat and backpack.

As they cooled me off, one of the tires on my pickup truck exploded with a dull pop. A male bystander scampered over to it, opened the door with a T-shirt wrapped around his hand, released the brake, and tried to push the vehicle to safety. Two other men ran over to help but found the sheet metal too hot to touch.