Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(4)
Kicking his feet into rapid motion, Kellan moved down the shadow-cloaked passageway. The air down here felt cooler than the main level, which was only to say it wasn’t hell-hot and actively engulfed in flames. At least, not yet. But for now, that made the basement a logical place for someone to hide, especially if they thought they’d get into trouble for squatting in an abandoned house, and damn it, there were just enough signs that someone had been here recently to make the unease in Kellan’s chest go for a double.
He opened his mouth to broadcast another offer for help, but the words jammed in his windpipe when his right palm skimmed the edge of a doorframe. The knob refused to budge despite the firm twist he tried to put to it, and seriously, what was with the Fort Knox treatment in this place?
Screw it. Not having the time for anything other than brute force, Kellan coiled up his energy on a deep inhale, sending all the power he could muster on a direct path to his leg as he unleashed a relentless kick. The door gave way with a crash, relief filling him in a quick burst as he crossed the threshold into the dank, smoke-tinged room.
“Fire department, call out!” The bellow of his own voice reverberated in his ears. The room was as dark as the hallway behind him, the one small rectangular window in the corner by the ceiling blacked out by a heavy layer of curtains. Kellan aimed his flashlight toward the far side of the space, giving the room a quick yet thorough scan from left to right.
Nothing much. Like the living room above, the furniture in here was sparse, just a large desk in the center of the room with empty pizza boxes and crumpled, grease-stained napkins scattered over its surface. Thankfully, no one was huddled up or trying to hide beneath it, and he turned to complete the sweep of the room. The beam of his flashlight landed on a set of bi-fold doors on the opposite wall, and finally, Kellan had found an opening in this place that wasn’t bolted shut.
He yanked the closet doors apart on their track, crouching down low to do a quick search of the crawl space beneath a set of crude wooden shelves. But before he could so much as open his mouth for a call-out, a burst of static sounded off from the two-way on his shoulder.
“Hawkins to Command,” the lieutenant clipped out. “We’re a negative on entrapment on the second floor. The house looks abandoned, but the structure’s fully involved. This fire’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
“Command to Hawkins,” came Captain Bridges’ voice in return. “Fall out immediately, before this thing flashes over. Hawkins, Dempsey, McCullough, Walker, I want all four of you in front of me in sixty seconds. Do you copy?”
Kellan’s rib cage threatened to constrict, but shit, he had no time for body betrayal. He needed to finish clearing this room and find Shae. Now.
“Walker to Command. Copy. Falling out,” he said into the two-way. Steeling his breath, he sent his stare on one last tour of the closet before unfolding himself to standing. The back of his helmet banged against something in a hard thump—ah, fuck, he’d forgotten about the wooden shelves—and Kellan ducked back into the closet out of sheer instinct. His heart slammed in surprise as whatever had been on the now-upended wooden plank tumbled over his shoulder, hitting the concrete subfloor with a metallic crash.
He cursed under his breath, wrangling his pulse back down from its code red. There was no saving the lock box that had burst open at his feet upon impact, so Kellan stepped over the scattered papers and other items spilling over the floor. Racing toward the door, he swung himself back in the direction he’d come, his chest loosening just a fraction at the sight of Shae barreling in from the opposite side.
“I’m clear,” she said, and Kellan jerked his head in a nod, leading the way up the steps.
“Me too. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They retraced their steps back to the main level, and holy shit, the fire up here had doubled in intensity in the sparse minutes he and Shae had been in the basement. Flames had snaked down the living room walls to grab hold of the curtains in their absence, illuminating the room in a rolling orange glow at the same time heavy billows of smoke clogged their path. But they were a dozen steps from daylight, and Kellan wasn’t stopping for love or money.
He charged ahead without pause, sweat stinging his eyes beneath his mask and his chest burning from exertion. Barging back through the front door, his boots punched over the porch boards, the sudden flash of over-bright sunlight leaving him momentarily disoriented. But muscle memory was a powerful thing, and his arms lifted up, his hands tugging off his helmet and mask even though his brain had little to do with the motions.
Breathe. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four, five.
The cool air hit Kellan like a titanium-reinforced wrecking ball. Although he had zero doubt that Captain Bridges had eyes on him, he still reported in over the radio, and by the time he’d heel-toed his way back to Engine Seventeen, he was more than halfway back to all systems go.
“Nice to see you in once piece,” Gamble said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a rare smile. “Heard shit was going a little sideways in there.”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Shae answered from over Kellan’s shoulder, still on his six even though they’d more than cleared the hot zone.
Gamble jutted his chin at the water lines he and Slater had prepped per Captain Bridges’ orders. “Glad to hear it, because Hawk and Dempsey are clear and squad’s got a good vent on the roof. We’re about to get this place wet.”