Dallas Fire & Rescue: Undamaged (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Paige Tyler. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Dallas Fire & Rescue remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Paige Tyler, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  UNDAMAGED

  A Dallas Fire & Rescue Kindle World Novella

  by

  Regina Kammer

  Part of the Stories from the San Juan Islands collection

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Carolyn Hudson, fire prevention educator and former firefighter, for generously taking time out of her work day to give me a tour of the San Juan Island Fire Department. Thank you to volunteer firefighter Nick for all his interesting stories. Thank you to the entire staff of the San Juan Island Fire Department for doing what you do every single day.

  Thank you to my helpful beta readers Jason and Patricia.

  Thank you Paige Tyler for inviting me into your world.

  Cover design by Dar Albert of Wicked Smart Designs. Cover photographic elements of San Juan Island by Regina Kammer.

  Undamaged is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences only. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To all who have been damaged and still seek refuge.

  Undamaged

  by Regina Kammer

  Working wildlands fires is what Royce Donovan was born to do. But he’s been living in Dallas for the last year and fighting urban fires is fraying his nerves. When tragedy strikes, Royce finds solace in alcohol, and ends up in rehab on rural and remote San Juan Island.

  Samantha Vickers swears she’s happy. She has the perfect job as Historian at San Juan Island’s National Park. Leaving the excitement and stress of the big city for the bucolic life of an island was a huge change—and a risk she had to take for peace of mind.

  A firefighter coping with tragedy. A historian escaping traumatic shock. An island brings together two damaged souls seeking respite and recovery. Will they discover love as well?

  Table of Contents

  UNDAMAGED

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine: Epilogue

  Author’s Note to the Reader

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Royce Donovan began to sweat the moment his lips met the spoon heaped with chili. Around him, the crew of Dallas Fire and Rescue Station 58 stared, faces twisted in suppressed grins and smirks. He chewed tentatively, the stinging heat of peppers impossible to squelch. Mouth ablaze, he forced himself to swallow.

  Tears flooded his eyes, then streamed down his cheeks, mingling with droplets of sweat.

  Archer Blake peeled the foil back from a cup of yogurt and passed it to Royce. “You might need this to smother the flames.”

  Hearty laughter filled the firehouse dining commons.

  Royce coughed as the fire slid down his throat. “Now that’s five-alarm chili.”

  “They don’t feed you like that out in the hills of California, do they?” remarked Dane Chandler, exaggerating a Texas twang.

  “Nah, usually just basic mac-and-cheese.” Tears still weighed heavy on Royce’s lashes.

  “Is that Captain Stewart’s infamous firehouse chili I smell?”

  All heads turned at the sound of the female voice laced with chastisement. Royce’s sister Ginny stood in the doorway to the dining commons, her arms crossed over her chest, tapping the toe of her high-heeled shoe, one brow raised as her blue eyes glared at the squad.

  “He’s been on the crew almost six months, Mrs. Davis, ma’am,” Tory Wilcox said apologetically. “We figured it was time.”

  Ginny’s scowl eased into a smile. “And how did it go?” She flashed a quick look over Archer’s way.

  “I survived,” Royce said with a grin.

  A blond blur flashed by Ginny’s side and came toward him.

  “Uncle Royce!”

  Charlee’s exuberant exclamation tripped the joy switch in Royce’s heart. She ran to him like any normal, healthy eight-year-old dressed in a soccer uniform. He lifted her handily onto his lap.

  “And what did you learn in school today?”

  Charlee puckered her lips. “Dónde está el perro?” she announced with pride.

  “Hmm.” One corner of Royce’s mouth ticked upward uncontrollably. “Maybe one day the answer to that question will be ‘the dog is waiting for me to come home from school so I can play with it’.”

  Charlee bit her lip as she grinned. Ginny had resisted getting a dog, but Royce and Charlee were working on wearing her down.

  The grin faded as Charlee’s icy-blue eyes searched his face. “Are you sad again?”

  He swallowed emotion. “Nah, just a wimp when it comes to the captain’s chili.”

  “Good.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. “I don’t want you to be sad again.”

  She pulled back and smiled, stretching her whole face when she did so. That look melted his heart every damn time. They had both shed too many tears when she was sick. Her anguish would punch him in the gut making him practically catatonic, but that smile left him malleable to her wishes. Which usually involved hot fudge sundaes.

  “I’m taking Charlee to practice,” Ginny said to Royce loud enough for all to hear. “I forgot your schedule, Royce. Can you come to Charlee’s game on Saturday?”

  What a ruse. Even if Royce had been scheduled at the station, the wishes of his drop-dead gorgeous sister and her ridiculously cute daughter would sway the heart and mind of any red-blooded male within earshot to volunteer to take his shift.

  Royce lifted a brow and the corners of his mouth as he took in Charlee’s pleading gaze. “Yep. I’m off Saturday, Chuck.”

  Charlee giggled at their private nickname. His heart hitched at the happy sound. He smoothed back her blond curls. Thank God she resembled her mother and not her deadbeat asshole of a father, a guy who’d decided he didn’t want to stick around after witnessing a diaper change. Charlee’s resembling Ginny dredged up every protective big brother instinct imaginable.

  He leaned in to place his lips to her ear. “Be careful on the field, Chuck. Don’t make me sad again.”

  She pouted briefly, pecked the tip of his nose, then climbed off his lap. Cool air teased his wet nose in the wake of her departure to her mother’s side.

  Ginny grasped Charlee’s hand. “See you tomorrow, Royce?”

  “Yeah. After my shift.”

  Ginny left with a smile. Royce chuckled to himself when all eyes focused on Ginny’s backside as she sashayed from the room.

  Tory Wilcox sucked a breath through his teeth. “Woo wee. Right there’s a five-alarm woman.”

  Royce turned to the young offender. “Hands off.”

  Kole Brandt chuckled. “Soccer mom’s too hot for you to handle anyway, Tory.”

  Royce glanced Archer’s way. His fellow firefighter was suspiciously silent but a smile quivered on his lips.

  As the chatter in
the dining commons devolved into braggadocio over the heat levels of women and chili, Archer turned to Royce. “You got a special bond with Charlee.”

  “Yeah. She’s the kid I never had.” Fighting brush fires in California for almost twenty years made life too chaotic to settle down.

  “She looks at you like you’re her hero.”

  A flush crept up Royce’s neck. “Thanks,” he muttered. “I’m just glad I could be there for her this last year, you know?” He had moved to Dallas in a heartbeat after Charlee had slammed into a goalpost leaving her with a broken leg and a concussion—with complications. He worked on-call dispatch at Dallas Fire nights while acting as nurse and tutor during the day. Only when Charlee was able to go back to school—and return to being an active member of the Dust Devils soccer team—did Royce decide to go back to being a firefighter.

  “She’s a sweet kid,” Archer said. “And pretty like her mom. She’s gonna need someone big and strong like her uncle to fend off all the boys who’ll come calling.”

  Royce grunted a chuckle. “Yeah, that’s me. Six feet of uncle ready to whoop some teenaged boy’s ass.” Unless, of course, Ginny started dating seriously real soon.

  The ear-piercing eee-ooo-eee of the alarm shook all in the dining commons to instant action.

  Sixty seconds to scramble to the garage and suit up. No seconds to lose as Royce and Archer jumped into the back of the engine.

  Royce grabbed a hanging strap as they lurched through the opened roll-up doors and swung around, tearing down the street following the ladder truck, a second engine at their backs. Dispatch repeated the address. A four-story apartment building. Royce tried to calm his nerves as adrenaline surged through his body. Structure fires were still disconcerting. Terrified residents tripping over horrified onlookers while the ever-present media interfered in their quest for the best camera angle.

  “Holy sh—” Dispatch buzzed with sporadic snippets of conversation. “Explosion… We’re getting multiple calls of an explosion. We’ve ramped up to three alarm.”

  Sweat broke on Royce’s brow. Ruptured gas lines were another way urban fires differed from the wildfires of California.

  Minutes later they were there, billows of dark gray smoke obscuring orange flames eating away the top floor of an otherwise characterless concrete and steel loft development.

  The ladder rose to action, carrying two firefighters at the ready to blast the upper floors. Across the street, residents milled about, their tear-stained faces frozen in shock. A college-age woman hugged a cat to her bosom.

  In the middle of the action Captain Earl Stewart barked orders to teams from Station 58 and beyond. He nodded as soon as he spotted Royce and Archer.

  An elegant dark-haired woman in a tailored suit ran up, her face creased and twisted in worry. “My daughter and mother. I can’t find them.”

  “Which apartment?” Captain Stewart asked gently.

  She pointed a shaking finger to the corner of the building. “Number four-twelve. Fourth floor. At the end of the hall.”

  “Donovan, Blake, inside.”

  Fire had not completely reached that part of the complex, but was quickly spreading across the whole building along the fourth floor.

  Royce slid off his helmet and strapped on his face mask. Helmet re-secured, he checked the regulator on his Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus, then sucked in his trepidation.

  Archer grabbed his arm. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  In a brush fire instinct provoked birds, snakes, rodents, and deer to flee their burrows and nests. In the city, people were sometimes frozen in fear while their homes fractured and crumbled around them.

  Royce and Archer dashed up the interior stairwell as quickly as men wearing sixty pounds of gear and thick suits could. The haze of smoke on the first floor had turned murkier by the time they reached the second floor.

  By the third floor sweltering temperatures signaled the fire had begun its move downward to the lower floors. There was no time to lose. The fourth floor would be a memory in minutes.

  They trudged up the final flight of stairs, shoved open the door to the fourth floor corridor, and entered the final circle of hell. An inferno roared at them from the right. They tore down the corridor to the left dodging chunks of burning wall board and exploding fluorescent ceiling lights.

  They broke down the door to 412. Inside chaos reigned. Framed pictures smashed to the floor as intense heat weakened cheap metal hooks. Swirling ash mingled with thick smoke to obscure the scene. The pop of flames meant the fire was inside the apartment with them.

  “I’ll take the right. You take the left,” Archer said through his com unit.

  “Roger that.”

  Royce dropped to the ground to crawl under the smoke, the acrid smell of his own sweat a pungent reminder of his fear. Beneath him carpet smoldered and melted as he scrambled on hands and knees, instinct his guide as to what rooms and spaces the apartment contained. He pushed open a door. Brightly colored carpet squares indicated a child’s bedroom.

  He breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

  His com crackled. “Royce,” Archer’s voice held urgency. “I found the grandmother. Kitchen fl—”

  The crash of dishes cut him off.

  “She’s alive. Unconscious but alive.”

  Royce sucked in a breath. “I think I’ve found the daughter’s room.”

  A blast of white-tipped flames and a deafening roar sounded to his left. Amid the clamor rose a high-pitched wail.

  She was alive and in the room. And behind the newly ignited wall of flames.

  Royce corded his courage and dived through.

  She crouched in the corner, long blond hair curling at her shoulders, clutching a rag doll, surrounded by licking flames. She saw him, her icy blue eyes wide in terror.

  Charlee. Shit. She looked like Charlee.

  She couldn’t possibly be Charlee.

  Charlee was safe.

  An explosion rained embers between them. The building was collapsing.

  Royce lunged forward to grab her.

  His arms grasped air.

  Shit. He didn’t make it.

  The girl plummeted through the floor in a cacophony of screams and squealing steel.

  He stared in horror until the floor creaked underneath threatening to take him as well. He frantically rolled backwards.

  “Royce!”

  Archer’s cry knocked sense into him.

  “Yeah,” he grunted as he retraced his steps to the front door.

  “Ladder’s here for the rescue.”

  “Third floor. She fell through the floor.”

  Archer grabbed his arm through the smoke, dragging him to a window.

  He searched Royce’s face. “You okay?”

  “Fine…fine. I’m fine.”

  At least that’s what he told himself.

  * * * * *

  Royce sat in his SUV outside the station and took another swig of whiskey. Hair of the dog to ward off the hangover pounding in his brain. A ten-day hangover.

  The ladder team had retrieved the girl—Mattie—from the third floor, barely alive and horribly burned. She didn’t make it through the night.

  His delay had cost Mattie her life.

  She was dead and what was he? A miserable drunk and a worthless firefighter. Emotion and age had slowed his normally quick instincts.

  He popped two mints in his mouth and chewed. Archer had had his back during the last shift, letting others take calls while he and Royce cleaned hoses and equipment. They had scarcely said a word to each other the whole twenty-four hours.

  Royce dragged in a breath readying himself for his third shift after the incident.

  It was seven-ten a.m. when he walked through the door. Captain Stewart was waiting for him in the lobby.

  He looked Royce over, a crease deepening between his brows. “In my office, Donovan.”

  Crap. Ten minutes late and he’s getting a talking to?

&n
bsp; Royce sat in the chair across the desk from Captain Stewart, trying to focus on the #1 Fire Chief mug as his pupils wandered in his teetering head.

  Captain Stewart sat down. “I’ll cut to the chase. I can’t have my firefighters showing up to the station drunk.”

  Royce closed his dizzying eyes. “Yes, sir.” What else could he say?

  “We fight a battle with death every single day, son. Sometimes we lose.”

  Tears smarted in Royce’s eyes blurring his already bleary vision.

  “You’ve fought fires for how many years?”

  “Twenty, sir.”

  “And you’ve never lost anyone?”

  Royce cleared his throat. “Well, yeah, people died. It’s just that…” Regret churned his gut.

  “Just what, son?”

  Royce met Captain Stewart’s intense gaze. “I’ve never watched someone die. I was always working the lines. I never…I just never…saw it happen.” Much less to a little girl.

  “Your supervisor at Cal Fire said you were a topnotch firefighter. She used the word ‘heroic’, in fact.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Look, son, I know this is difficult to hear, but you need to reconsider if fighting city fires is where you want to be.”

  Royce’s gaze involuntarily darted about the room at the plaques and commendations for Station 58. He had earned awards as well in his twenty years. He was a damn good firefighter.

  A firefighter who let children die. Shit.

  “This is not the first time I’ve seen a reaction such as yours. But left untreated, it can get worse. I want you to take some time to reflect.”

  “Yes, sir.” Royce kept his reservations to himself. Taking time off during the last year was probably what slowed down his abilities in the first place.

  “Royce,” Captain Stewart’s tone was subdued. “Your sister came to me. Mrs. Davis is worried about you. She said she just got a raise and was looking to hire a part-time nanny.”