Page 98 of Smoke and Roses

Under all the voices there’s a high, shrill chirping, like a smoke alarm with a dying battery.

“What’s that noise?” I ask.

Alison’s mouth gets tight. “Low-air alarm.”

“Novak’s?”

She nods.

I don’t know much about firefighting, but I know what low air means. I lose my place and start over from where I think I was. Ninety. A hundred.

Then I hear Travis. He’s muffled through his mask, but he sounds calm, the same way he did on the phone when I was in the van.

“Command, Raines. I’ve got him. He’s out of air. I’ve got him on the rescue pack. Bringing him back to the interior ladder.”

Nate lets out a long breath and drops his head for a second.

I’m at a hundred and twenty. A hundred and thirty.

“Rob, he’s coming down to you,” Travis says over the radio. “Pinky, feet on the rungs. I’ve got your strap.”

Then something crashes inside the barn, loud enough that I feel it in my stomach. Sparks burst out the top of the barn door and blow away on the wind, and Travis says one word over the radio.

“Shit.”

I’m on my feet before I know I’ve moved, and the mask drags off my face. Alison catches it.

Alison grabs my arm with both hands. “Lindsey. Sit down.”

“He’s in there.”

“I know he is. You can’t go in after him.” She doesn’t let go. “Sit down, honey. When he comes out that door, the first thing he’s going to do is look for you. Be where he left you.”

I sit down. My knees are shaking so hard they bump together.

Rob comes over the radio. “Command, Wallace. Bale came down out of the loft. We’re okay. We’re coming out.”

A hundred and seventy. A hundred and eighty.

Rob comes out of the smoke first, backing out of the barn door, staying low and pulling the hose with him. Behind him comes Travis, bent almost double and walking backward, with both fists in the strap on Novak’s air pack, dragging him across the floor and out into the daylight.

A hundred and ninety.

Travis pulls him twenty feet out onto the black before he lets go. Then he goes down on one knee. Novak rolls onto his side and rips off his mask, and he coughs and swears and coughs some more. Nate leaves the panel to Weber’s engineer and runs to him.

This time Alison doesn’t stop me. She grabs the oxygen bottle and comes with me.

Travis pulls off his mask, then his hood. The collar of his coat is scorched black on one side, and the skin under his right ear is an angry red.

I drop to my knees in front of him and put my hands on his face.

“Hi,” he says. His voice is hoarse from the smoke.

“Hi? That’s what you’ve got? Travis, your neck.”

“It’s fine.”

Rob is already beside him, pouring water down the back of his neck. Travis hisses through his teeth. When Rob folds back his collar, the burn is the size of my palm and already blistering.