Part 30 (2/2)

”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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+rts 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-s.h.i.+rt. 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 s.h.i.+eld 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-s.h.i.+rt 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.

<script>