Lucy And The Loner. Elizabeth Bevarly

see that she was barely hanging on.

      “Morgan!” he called into the radio he carried to alert the firefighters outside of the progress inside. “I got a woman just inside the front door—foot of the steps!”

      “No other victims found,” a voice crackled over the radio in response. “No one’s been able to get into the basement—that’s the source of the fire. But the neighbors said she lives by herself. Shouldn’t be anyone else in there.”

      “Well, that’s something, anyway,” he said to himself, relieved that this rescue, at least, would be uneventful. The woman on the floor was small and slender, seemingly without weight, so he easily scooped her up into his arms.

      He exited through the front door, and carried the semiconscious woman across the front lawn toward the street, then lay her effortlessly on the grass. When she groaned again, a sputtering cough erupted, and she flailed one hand in front of herself as if she were trying to physically grab hold of the fresh air. To help her out, Boone went back to the ladder truck to retrieve the oxygen they carried on all the rigs, returned to the woman and cupped the clear mask over her mouth.

      As he monitored her breathing and waited for the ambulance, he noted the brown-and-black teddy bear she held clenched in one hand. It was threadbare in spots, ragged in others, and a fierce, hot fury gripped him at what her possession of the toy might mean. She coughed and sputtered some more, tears spilling freely from her eyes, but unable to wait any longer, Boone snatched the mask off her face and pulled her to a sitting position.

      “Lady,” he said, giving her a quick shake to help rouse her. “You’re okay. But I need to know if there’s anyone else inside the house.”

      A new series of rough, ragged coughs rocked her for a minute, and more tears rolled down her cheeks, leaving stark, clean streaks in the soot that smudged her face. Then she looked up and gazed at him with wide, panicked eyes, eyes that were so big and so blue, he nearly forgot for a moment where he was. Hastily, he brushed the odd sensation off and reminded himself that he had a job to do.

      “Mack,” the woman whispered hoarsely, the single word barely audible. She stared vacantly at the burning building for a moment, then riveted her gaze to Boone’s with an intensity that shook him to his core. “Mack is still inside the house.”

      Great, Boone thought. Why was he not surprised? Her rescue had been too easy, too neat. Evidently she didn’t live alone after all. Obviously her neighbors didn’t know her as well as they thought they did. Or maybe she just had a boyfriend they didn’t know about.

      “Is Mack your husband?” he barked out, the roar of the flames behind them growing louder, threatening to drown out their voices. “Your boyfriend?”

      She started coughing again, then stared at him, obviously still confused and uncertain. “My husband?” she finally repeated, her expression bewildered, those blue, blue eyes gradually sharpening their focus a bit. “No, I—I’m divorced. And I don’t have a...a boyfriend. Mack is my—” She seemed to recall the gravity of the situation then, because she grabbed his coat savagely and cried, “Mack! My God, he’s still in there!”

      With one strong hand, she jerked Boone down until his face was within inches of hers, and her eyes filled with tears again. “You’ve got to get him out of there. Mack is all I have left. He’s...he’s...” She began to cry in earnest then. “God, he’s only three years old! Please...you have to help him!”

      Boone’s entire body went rigid. “Where was he the last time you saw him?”

      “Asleep on the couch in the living room,” she said, crying freely now, her sobs blurring her words. “He was sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake him when I went to bed, so I Just left him alone. I...I... Oh, no...”

      Something hot and coarse knotted in Boone’s belly. Once more, he noted the teddy bear the woman clenched in the hand that wasn’t gripping his coat. He hadn’t seen a child’s bedroom, nor any other indication of a child’s occupancy, save the teddy bear in the woman’s death grip.

      But they hadn’t made it down to the basement, he reminded himself, a sick feeling gnawing at his belly when he remembered the radio announcement that the other firefighters hadn’t been able to make it down there. That’s where her child’s room must be. Good thing she’d left him sleeping on the couch, Boone thought. Otherwise the kid would have been a goner.

      Man, a kid, he thought wildly. There was still a kid in there.

      “Where’s your living room?” he demanded. “Where’s the couch he was sleeping on?”

      The woman seemed to snap out of her stupor some, because her next directions were offered with some degree of coherency and a great deal of demand. “Turn left when you go through the front door. The couch is on the far side of the room.”

      Boone nodded. “Okay, we’ll get him out. You stay put. Thompson!” he shouted out to one of the other firefighters nearest the front door. He heaved himself away from the woman, shoved his helmet visor back down over his face and began to race toward the burning house. “There’s a kid inside! We’re going back in for a kid!”

      

      Boone had fought enough fires that watching his back was second nature. What other people might consider a terrifying situation was just another job for him to do. Usually. But when there was a kid involved, something inside him got anxious. Something inside him got scared. Something inside him got wary.

      This time when he entered the house, it was with a single-minded intent to locate a three-year-old boy.

      The general rule of thumb in his line of work was that where victims of fires were concerned, adults acted like dogs, and children acted like cats. While the former tended to run, the latter would normally hide. Boone hoped like hell this kid wasn’t an expert at hide-and-seek. Otherwise, they were both going to wind up toast.

      Left, he reminded himself as he passed over the threshold and into an incinerator. She told you to turn left.

      When he’d entered the house the first time, the flames had been confined pretty much to the back of the house. Now, suddenly, there was fire everywhere. The smoke, too, impeded his progress, blinding him at times. Without wasting a moment, he motioned Thompson toward one side of the room, and Boone moved to the other, looking for a couch against the opposite wall, finding it exactly where she had said it would be.

      But there was no child sleeping on it.

      Terrific, he thought morosely. Who knew where the kid could have taken off to?

      “Check across the hall,” he told his partner. “But don’t go far.”

      As Boone moved quickly forward to search the room, he caught a quick movement from the corner of his eye, and, spinning quickly back around, saw that there was someone on the couch, after all. But it wasn’t a child. Instead, a huge, black, malevolent-looking beast reared back on its hind legs, clearly terrified and slashing at the air with its claws.

      Helplessly, Boone groaned aloud. A cat. He’d come back into a raging inferno to save a child, only to be obstructed now with the rescue of a cat. He hated cats. He really did. For good reason, too. And this one looked to be a real bruiser. Or flesh-eater, as the case may be.

      An ominous creak sang out above him, a sound with which Boone was all too familiar. The upper floor was about to come down on top of him. He had maybe thirty seconds to get out before it did. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he completed his rushed search of the room and, satisfied the boy was elsewhere in the house, crossed to snag the cat, collect Thompson, and head for the front door. They’d have to come back for the boy through another entrance. They had no other choice.

      When he was within inches of grabbing the big animal, it backed against the sofa cushion, flattened its ears angrily, and batted wildly at him with claws roughly the size of scimitars. Even with his hands well protected with heavy gloves, Boone halted before seizing the cat.

      “You gonna give me a hard time,