It's a Wonderful Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novella (The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel) Read online

  Once they left the garage, Fred hit the sirens and lights, and they rumbled through the streets, morning traffic parting before the mighty rigs of Task Force 1. Mulligan distracted himself from his nerves by waving to a kid in an SUV that had pulled over. The boy was halfway out the car window, waving madly. His golden retriever was trying to climb over his back until finally the boy’s mother pulled them both back in the vehicle, and then the SUV was ancient history, three blocks back.

  A boy, a dog, a mother . . . the dog reminded him of Bruiser, the stray golden he’d taken in and who’d followed him around the minor leagues until he got too old.

  The far backseat of the SUV had been loaded with boxes, and a spruce tree had been lashed to the roof. A boy, a dog, a mother, Christmas . . . damn.

  He hated this time of year.

  “Mulligan, are you listening?”

  “Huh?” Mulligan swiveled to see Fred glaring at him. He was fiddling with his breathing apparatus.

  “I said, don’t mess with my sister. If you do, things are going to get ugly.”

  Fred might look young, but he was actually a badass with multiple black belts in various martial arts Mulligan had never heard of. Mulligan was a fist-to-the-jaw sort of guy himself. “I’m not messing with her.”

  “She likes you.”

  “I’m sure you can talk her out of it.”

  “If you believe that, you don’t know Lizzie. Trent once tried to talk her out of trying to parachute off the porch roof with her Halloween butterfly wings. He had to pin her down, but even that didn’t work. We had to set up a trampoline. No one can talk her out of anything.”

  Mulligan’s heart sank. That meant he couldn’t talk her out of moving to Canada. Which would be tough to do anyway, since he couldn’t give her a good reason to stay. “Lizzie and I are friends.”

  “So are we. For now.” With one last menacing hairy eyeball, Fred retreated behind his face mask.

  Great. Just what he needed—to piss off a martial arts master whose future father-in-law was a tech billionaire. If he got on Fred and Rachel’s bad side, he might get his ass kicked and his Internet erased.

  Like a roiling tornado, black smoke churned over the tiled rooftops up ahead. “Whoa,” said someone before they all went quiet and listened to the initial size-up on the dispatch channel. As the first on scene, the Battalion 6 chief took charge as incident commander.

  “Engine 6 is on the scene of a one-story, L-shaped strip mall; give me two additional task forces. Companies responding to the Sierra Vista incident, be advised there are no known current occupants on the premises. Heavy black smoke showing through the roof. No exposure problem. All companies be advised, Sierra Vista is blocked, enter from First Street. Engine 6, you are fire attack in division Alpha.”

  No occupants and no exposure problem—or risk of spreading to nearby buildings. That was a relief.

  “Truck 1, vent the roof. You will be known as Roof Division,” continued the IC as they reached the scene. “Heavy smoke is building up inside the Christmas store, Under the Mistletoe.”

  Truck 1 had their mission: they’d be going up on that hot, smoking roof.

  Fred pulled up close to the middle of the strip mall, where a storefront decorated like Santa’s workshop was declared, by an ornate, gold-and-scarlet sign, to be Under the Mistletoe. Smoke puffed through the doorjambs and various cracks in the façade. As soon as the truck came to a stop, everyone got busy. Mulligan jumped out of the rig, then stashed his breathing apparatus on the ground while he set chock blocks behind the tires and lowered the ground jacks that would stabilize the aerial ladder. While Fred got the aerial into position, Mulligan grabbed a chainsaw from inside the rig. He donned his breathing apparatus, set his face mask into place, then swung himself onto the roof of the truck.

  He squinted through smoke-laden air at the aerial, which made a bridge from Truck 1 to the roof of the strip mall. Inside the building, the fire howled like an injured creature, like a wild, mocking witch ready to wreak fury on the world. Mulligan was not a religious man, but he muttered “Lord, help us” under his breath. Throngs of civilians clustered around the edges of the parking lot, gawking and taking photos or videos. Fire was photogenic, no doubt about it.

  Mulligan tightened his grip on his chainsaw and swung one-handed up the aerial. It took a lot of muscle power to hump ninety pounds of gear up a ladder using only one hand. Thank you, free weights. Fred, Skeet, and One followed him up the aerial, while Ace grabbed a rotary saw and crowbar and headed to the front door to provide forcible entry for the engine company.

  The ferocious heat of the flames cooked the air, sending it in weird little currents and swirls. Mulligan had obsessively studied the science of fire because he’d grown up with no education, and a burning curiosity about anything and everything consumed him. He’d spent hours and days and weeks learning how to read smoke. He’d practiced with old video footage from Channel Six News. Pop in a tape, watch the smoke. How much, how thick, how fast, what color? He’d picked the brains of veteran firefighters who’d been on thousands of firegrounds. No one, no one at Station 1 could read smoke as well as he could.

  As he climbed the ladder, he automatically analyzed the information he gleaned from the storefront window and smoking cracks in the building. The black, turbulent smoke moving at such high velocity meant the fire was very hot and very close—a heavy fire load. It would be impossible to tell more about the materials being burned by the fire because a strip mall like this would contain a huge variety of substances. The large quantity of heavy black smoke, its velocity, and its thinness told him that if they didn’t ventilate this thing soon, it would flash. It hadn’t quite reached the “black fire” stage he’d seen only a few times, in which black snakes of smoke curled back toward the fire. But if he didn’t release some of the superheated air inside Under the Mistletoe, the heat would radiate back on the fire and the entire “box” would become so hot that every surface would combust.

  No firefighter could survive a flashover, not even in full bunker gear. The truck company’s job was to make a heat hole to keep that from happening.

  Mulligan reached the edge of the roof and stepped onto the blistering asphalt tile surface. His blood pounded in his ears, telling him to hurry, but not make any mistakes. They needed to get this done, then get the hell off the roof. Sounding with his roof kit and stepping gingerly along the main beam line, he found his spot between the rafters. With his chainsaw, he made a head cut—the first cut—then turned the corner and made another, longer line, so he had two sides of a rectangle. Fred worked from the other side until they’d chainsawed out a rectangle of plywood. One and Skeet used their rubbish hooks to pop the boards, stepping nimbly back when black smoke attacked the open air in tumultuous billows.

  They all watched for a brief second, then headed back to the ladder. Mulligan gestured for the others to go first. That was how he liked it; he’d claimed that role when he first joined the truck company. Skeet went down first, then One, then Fred, the crew stepping quickly from rung to rung down the steel lifeline that led from the hot roof to Truck 1. Then, quick as a spark, everything changed.

  The IC crackled over dispatch. “Engine company, pull out. Pull out now.” Fred, still on the aerial, looked back at Mulligan and waved him urgently toward the ladder. A rumble from underneath shook the building. Get to the ladder, get to the ladder. Someone shouted on the tactical channel, something about the façade. Mulligan looked down as a crack appeared beneath him. Ladder, ladder. But no, he couldn’t make it to the ladder, not without jumping over that gap ripping across the roof. The façade. Oh my God. The façade was falling away, the entire front of the building sinking backward like an exhausted person collapsing onto a bed.

  He stepped backward, away from the gulf opening beneath his feet, and then he was falling, down, down, down a rabbit hole of smoke and blackness. Something came out of his mouth—a shout? A laugh?—but the constant roar of flames drowned it out and there w
as no one to hear anyway.

  “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” he heard on his radio. “Firefighter Mulligan through the roof on the Delta side.” Then silence, as all talk on the tactical channel stopped, and all sound disappeared.

  A last thought flashed through his mind—he was going to die inside a Christmas store. How absurd was that?

  Worse, he was going to die without ever seeing Lizzie again.

  Chapter Two

  AT THE CHILDREN’S Wing of the San Gabriel Good Samaritan Hospital, Lizzie Breen helped six-year-old Miles Stark unfold the piece of construction paper he was turning into a snowflake. His eyes lit up as the intricate pattern was revealed.

  “Nice one, dude!” She held up her hand to give him a high five, which he enthusiastically returned, even though his leukemia had sapped much of his strength. “I think that’s the best one yet. No two snowflakes are alike, you know.”

  “If we put two pieces of paper together when we cut them, those snowflakes would be.”

  She tilted her head, pondering that. “Your logic is impeccable. I stand corrected.”

  He grinned, so his pale face didn’t look quite as drawn. “Can we put this one on the window?”

  “Absolutely.” She picked up the purple snowflake and crossed to the wall of windows that let light into the recreation room of the Children’s Wing. Outside, the December sky looked washed-out and dismally overcast. Thanks for reflecting my mood perfectly. She taped one side of the snowflake to the window, then paused to peer more closely at the cityscape of office buildings that surrounded the hospital. Was that smoke behind the Hanover Insurance building?

  Her stomach tightened as she thought of the San Gabriel crew battling a fire on the eve of Christmas Eve. Any fire made her nervous, but ever since she and Mulligan had . . . well, whatever they had . . . her fear had gotten even more personal.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Stacy Fisher, a pediatric intern and her good friend, joined her at the window.

  “Looks like a fire. I can call my mom. She always has the scanner on.”

  “Is your brother on shift?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means . . .” Stacy trailed off since everyone knew Mulligan was a sensitive topic for Lizzie.

  “Yes, Mulligan’s on shift too. No, he doesn’t want to come for Christmas. Or Christmas Eve. Oh, and he thinks I shouldn’t move to Canada because it’s a foreign country.”

  Stacy shook her untidy mop of curls, which were the color of milk chocolate. Once Lizzie had offered to set her up with a haircut by Cherie, Vader’s wife, but the doctor refused, saying her unruly frizz made her young patients more comfortable. “If he said that, it’s because he doesn’t want you to move.”

  “No,” Lizzie answered gloomily. “Mulligan pretty much says exactly what he means. If he didn’t want me to go, he’d tell me. He’s not the shy type.”

  “But he is a man. And you know what that means.”

  A thousand images fluttered through Lizzie’s brain. All of them involved a naked Mulligan, muscled, scarred, and aroused. Nothing in her life had ever turned her on like the sight of Mulligan’s unclothed body. “Yes, I know what that means,” she managed to squeak, heat pumping into her face.

  “Girl, you have got it bad, don’t you? I’m not talking about that.”

  “Well, say what you mean, then,” Lizzie said irritably. She ripped off a piece of Scotch tape as if it were a personal enemy, and stuck it on the snowflake.

  “I mean he’s confused. Men don’t know what they feel until you hit them over the head with a club and tell them. Or unless a building drops on them.”

  “Don’t say that.” Lizzie shivered superstitiously. “He’s a fireman.”

  “Sorry,” Stacy murmured. “Why do you want a fireman, anyway? There are about twenty doctors here who would ask you out in a red-hot second. You don’t have to worry about doctors when they go to work.”

  “Except for infectious diseases and mentally disturbed patients and—”

  “Do you mind?”

  Stacy looked so indignant that Lizzie laughed, putting an arm around her for a quick squeeze. “I had to get you back. Sorry. Anyway, it’s not like I chose to fall for Mulligan. Like I woke up and said, I want to find the toughest, most cynical and sarcastic fireman around, and if he likes putting himself in danger, bonus for me. I grew up with that. Why would I want that?”

  “Got me. I’ll take a nice peaceful man, thank you very much. An accountant or a dentist.”

  Lizzie ignored that since Stacy never dated anyway. She put up too many walls, and so far not even an accountant had slipped through. “Besides, I’m in the same boat myself. I want to be a flight paramedic. Whoever I end up with will have to get used to worrying about me.”

  “That’s true.” Stacy took the tape and ripped off another piece for her. “Well, it seems to me there’s a way out of everything. If you fell in love with Mulligan, you can fall out of love with him too.”

  Lizzie plucked the tape from her finger and finished taping up the snowflake. “Yeah, well, I’ve tried.” She turned away from the window and surveyed the kids, who were all happily coloring more snowflakes. “Turns out, it’s not so easy. What are you doing here, anyway? Is your shift over?”

  “Yes.” Stacy still wore her white doctor’s coat over her slim brown pants and top. “But I thought the kids might need some extra cheering up.”

  “You mean you need some extra cheering up.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t you?”

  They looked at each other and laughed. Maybe it was ironic that working with the kids in the Children’s Wing made them happy, when their purpose was to make the kids happy. But that’s the way it was.

  Lizzie clapped her hands. “Okay, kids, who wants to make a paper chain? We can string it all across the room like a giant spider web.”

  Several hands shot in the air. Eight-year-old Angelina yelled, “I can use scissors! My mama said so!”

  “Okay then, we have someone on scissors. Who’s going to tape up the loops?” More kids waved their hands. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. When she spent time in the Children’s Wing, she never let her phone interrupt her. These kids needed to feel important, and they needed fun. She remembered exactly how it felt to have everyone around you whispering and keeping secrets that involved you. During her time in the Children’s Wing, she’d hated the moments when her mother’s phone would ring and she’d hurry off to get test results or harangue the insurance company.

  So she ignored the phone and began distributing tape dispensers and scissors to the kids who were old enough to use them.

  Her phone buzzed again, and again. Stacy, who was helping Angelina cut a strip of construction paper, shot her an irritated look.

  “Is that your boyfriend calling?” one of the new girls asked.

  Lizzie smiled down at her. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Oh. That’s okay.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s just fine. But I should probably find out who’s trying to get a hold of me. I’ll be right back.” She went into the corridor, where she wouldn’t disturb anyone. The calls were from her mother. Immediately her heart started pounding and her hands shook. Trent was in Afghanistan, Jake was in Pakistan, and Zee . . . well, no one was entirely sure.

  Calm down, she told herself. Her mother had probably just forgotten to get ingredients for the plum pudding or something. Clicking the Call Back button, she held her breath for what seemed like an eternity. Trent . . . Jake . . . Zee . . . plum pudding? Her mother never made plum pudding, and what was in it besides plums, anyway? Trent . . . Jake . . . Zee . . .

  Finally her mother answered, her voice urgent but not hysterical. Lizzie’s fear receded. If any of her brothers were hurt, her mother would be freaking out. “Sweetie, there’s been an accident at the scene of a fire.”

  “Oh my God. Fred.”

  “No, no. Fred’s fine. It’s Mulligan.”

  “Mulligan?” The phone slipped right out of
her hands and bounced on the linoleum floor. She dropped to her knees and crawled after it. Her mother was still talking. She stayed there, crouched on the hospital floor, the phone smashed against her head so she didn’t drop it again.

  “He was venting the roof when the façade gave way. He fell inside the building. Right now he’s trapped, but they think he’s still alive.”

  “They think? What do you mean, they think? How do they know?”

  “They don’t know. But they’re going on the assumption that he is until they learn otherwise.”

  Bullshit. Bullshit! She wanted to scream at her mother. That didn’t mean anything. Until someone got him out of there and felt a pulse . . . no, until she saw for herself that he was alive, nothing meant anything.

  “Where?” she managed.

  “It’s that strip mall over on Sierra Vista. He’s inside Under the Mistletoe.”

  Lizzie started laughing. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t. But she couldn’t stop laughing, even when her stomach clenched and her ribs ached and she got dizzy and nearly threw up. Mulligan, in a store full of Christmas decorations. It was terrible. Surreal. Not funny. Not funny at all. And yet she couldn’t seem to stop laughing. Then someone was pulling her to her feet.

  “Lizzie. Lizzie. Snap out of it.” Stacy brandished a glass of water in a somewhat threatening way, as if she might toss it in Lizzie’s face.

  She gulped in air, trying to make the spasms of laughter stop. “Mulligan,” she gasped. “Fire. Christmas.”

  Stacy snatched her phone out of her boneless fingers and spoke a few words to Lizzie’s mother. Then she took her elbow and tugged her toward the stairwell. “No time to wait for the elevators.”

  “What are you doing? I have to get to Mulligan.”

  “I’m going to take you. You can’t drive in this condition. The smart thing would be to stay here because if they get him out, he’ll end up here anyway. But you want to go to the fire, right?” She pushed open the heavy door to the stairwell.