Part 35 (1/2)
”I won't go, Deo,” Nita said just as Deo started to turn away. Deo looked back, the questions still in her eyes. ”I'll be here waiting for you.”
”Then like I said before, I'll be back.”
Nita watched her until she disappeared with another group of excited men and women. She recalled the suffocating loneliness she used to feel watching Sylvia drive away. She didn't feel that way now.
She missed Deo immediately, but unlike with Sylvia, the ache came from something she had found, instead of lost.
* 246 *
Winds of Fortune
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.
Pull up onto the sidewalk over there,” Deo told Joey, pointing to a ring of emergency vehicles parked haphazardly around the mouth of a wide access alley that led to one of the huge wooden piers in the far West End. A commercial fi s.h.i.+ng building on the end of the pier was burning, and the fl ames and the refl ections from the light bars on top of the police cruisers, rescue rigs, and fi re engines s.h.i.+mmered eerily through the inky rain.
”They've got a lot of boats up in dry dock,” Joey yelled, yanking on the emergency brake. ”If the pier collapses and takes them too, it'll be a h.e.l.l of a loss.”
”Raise the other guys on the walkie-talkie,” Deo said, already out of the truck, hard hat in hand and a Maglite under her arm. Frigid rain lashed the back of her neck. ”Tell them to get out here with hydraulic winches and joists. We'll sh.o.r.e it up if we have to.”
”I'm on it.”
Deo ran down the pathway, struggling for balance as her boots sank into the saturated sand. Closing in on the confl agration, she skirted thick coils of fi re hose and mounds of equipment that suddenly loomed up out of the darkness like predatory beasts. Even fi fty yards away, the heat from the burning building caused sweat to stream down her face.
Squinting through the billowing smoke, she spied Reese.
”Reese!” she shouted above the roar of the inferno. ”How bad is it?”
”Might save the building,” Reese yelled back. ”If the pier doesn't collapse. Incident Commander's down there now checking it out.”
”Let me go see what he needs.”
Reese lifted the restraining tape that Bri and Allie had used to cordon off the area, although there were no gawkers to discourage.
”Got a radio?”
* 247 *
RADCLY fFE ”Yeah.”
Deo didn't see anything at fi rst except the burning building, and then she caught the wink of a fl ashlight under the pier and followed the blinking pinpoint of light. Soon she came upon three men standing ankle deep in water underneath the 200-year-old pier. The tide was out or they would have been up to their thighs in sea water. The creosote soaked pilings supporting the pier would not burn easily, but they would burn. Unfortunately, time and weather and ocean salt had weakened some of them already. Above their heads, the fi re raged.
Recognizing Alan Peterson, the fi re marshal, Deo sloshed over to him. ”How does it look?”
Peterson spared her a glance as he hammered a metal temperature probe into one of the horizontal joists. ”We're okay for now, but if we don't contain the spread mighty fast, we're going to lose this pier. Some of these beams are going to go up like kindling.”
”We can probably jack it up in enough places to buy you some time,” Deo said. She'd only worked this close to a fi re once before, and that had been nothing near the scale of this one. The sound of air being sucked into the building to feed the fi ery furnace was like an enormous dragon breathing in huge rasping gusts.
”If we don't do something fast, it won't make any difference,”
Peterson yelled back. ”I'll have to pull my team out of there and let it burn.”
”I've got a crew on the way. Five minutes.”
”Okay, you've got fi fteen.”
”I hear you!”
Deo ran toward the street and met Joey coming down.
”They're here!” Joey exclaimed breathlessly. ”They're offl oading gear onto the Jeep and will have it down here in just a couple minutes.”
”Let me show you what we've got,” Deo said, grabbing his arm.
She guided him back down the circuitous path, tugging him along when he slowed to gape at the fi re.
”Holy cripes,” Joey shouted. ”They'll never save that building.”
”Let's worry about the pier.” Deo shone her light over the ancient timbers. The sky overhead was now a rosy grey. The fi re above them was closer. ”We need to get supports under here to sh.o.r.e up the joists, every twenty feet or so.”
* 248 *
Winds of Fortune ”Man,” Joey said, gazing upward. ”It's almost right on top of us.”
”We've got a little time,” Deo a.s.sured him. ”Come on, let's get our crew down here.”
Deo turned and sprinted, slowing when she realized Joey wasn't with her. She looked over her shoulder and saw that he had stopped to stare at the burning building again. ”Joey, move it!”
He turned, his back to the pier and the pyre above, a look of innocent amazement on his face. He didn't see the section of roof above him break free and start to fall. Deo didn't even have time to scream.
She launched herself at him and struck his chest with her shoulder middive just as the world erupted in fl ame and fury.
y ”Tory,” Chief Nelson Parker said in a low urgent voice. ”I just got a call from Bri. She says casualties from a fi re on one of the piers are coming our way. ETA two minutes.”
”Did she give you anything else?” Tory swallowed back a wave of fear. Why had Bri called? Why not Reese? ”G.o.d, Nelson, we're not set up for major trauma here.”
”At least one serious. The others didn't sound too bad-a few burns, couple lacerations.”
”All right.” Tory motioned to KT and Nita to join them as she continued thinking aloud. ”We'll stabilize here and transport anyone who needs it. Nelson, I need a vehicle standing by that's capable of getting out of here, no matter what the roads look like.”
Nelson grimaced. ”I'm not sure we can do that. Route 6 is pretty much underwater.”
Tory shook her head. ”I don't care if you have to pull a boat out of the harbor. If I have injured that need transport, I want them transported.”
”Trouble?” KT asked, her demeanor nonchalant but her eyes sharp and intent.
”What's going on?” Nita looked from Tory to KT, her expression turning to alarm.