The hot firefighter, p.69
The Hot Firefighter, page 69
“They haven’t found anything yet, and the trial is in three weeks.”
“You still can’t give up, though.”
“It’s hard not to.”
“You have to stay positive, Breanne, for Aaron.”
“If I do manage to beat this, I’m going to be reconsidering a lot about my life. It’s time I reset my priorities and make some much needed changes. I’ve always been a goal-oriented person, even when I had Aaron, but now that I’ve been to jail and could lose my freedom for even longer, I see the light. There’s more to life than hitting your goals. There’s a whole life I haven’t lived, and I want that life. I want my life with Jordan and Aaron.”
Several days after my conversation in the office with Lisa, I got off work and drove to Jordan’s mom’s house to see Aaron. Earlier in the day, Jordan had texted me and even though his text was two words, I was still thrilled to hear from him.
Let’s meet.
Tonight?
Can’t, I’m working. Tomorrow?
I can come to your place in the morning if you feel up to it.
Yeah, that sounds good.
Okay, tomorrow morning then.
Talk to you then.
It wasn’t much, but it did give me hope. I was counting down the hours until I saw him face-to-face, hoping we could put the past behind us and keep moving forward together. When I reached his mom’s place, I parked and rang the doorbell, and while I waited for her to answer, stepped back to contemplate my circumstances.
“Breanne,” she answered the door warmly, “come in.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Smith.”
“It’s Joanne, dear.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m just finishing getting dinner ready. Aaron’s in the living room if you want to check in on him.”
I nodded and headed off to see my son. “Hey, baby,” I said, leaning over the couch to kiss the top of his head.
He looked up at me with a smile. “Hi, Mommy!”
I would never get over how excited he was every time he saw me. “Did you have a good day at school?”
“Uh-huh.”
I moved around the couch and sat down beside him. “Did you learn anything fun?”
“We learned about how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.”
“Really?”
Yep. First, they are caterpillars, then they get in this cocoon, and then the fly out of that as a butterfly!”
“Wow.”
“And then we colored pictures of butterflies. I made you one. It's in my backpack.”
“You’ll have to show me after dinner. Why don’t you go wash your hands? Miss Joanne said she was almost done when I got here.”
“Okay, Mommy.” He tore out of the room, and I walked to the kitchen to check in with Joanne.
“Do you need any help?”
“Would you mind setting the table?”
“No problem.” I gathered plates and silverware and began setting the dining room table. When Aaron joined us, I helped him get a glass of milk for himself and then water for Joanne and me. As I finished, she brought a pot of chicken and dumplings over to the table, and we all sat down to eat.
After dinner, I helped Aaron with his bath and then helped Joanne finish cleaning the kitchen. I read to Aaron when it was bedtime and put him to bed before joining Joanne again in the living room. She passed me a glass of wine.
“How are you doing, sweetie?” she asked me.
I sighed. “I just wish this was a nightmare I could wake up from and not my real life.”
“I know, hun. I’m sure this will all get sorted out soon enough.”
“I hope so. So, um...Jordan texted me earlier.”
“Oh?”
I nodded. “He wants to talk.”
“Good. It’s high time you two talk.”
“I don’t know if it's a good talk or a bad talk, though. What if it’s bad?”
“I don’t claim to know my son’s thoughts, but he is my son, and I like to think he is smarter than that. I’m sure everything will work out exactly how it’s supposed to, Breanne.”
“I wish I had your optimism, but I’m still nervous.”
“You were brought back into each other's lives for a reason and that was to be a family.”
I left Joanne’s later that night with her words rolling around in my head. I hoped she was right because being a family with Jordan was everything I wanted and didn't know I needed so very desperately.
32
Jordan
It had been three days since my conversation with my mom and while I wanted to make some grand gesture to Breanne to show her that I forgave her, I was at the point where I just needed to say it. I missed her presence in my life, my house, and my bed.
The fact of the matter was that it didn’t matter what she had done five years ago. We couldn’t go back and change it now, and I didn’t want for things to be over between us. That only left moving on from it together. I wanted together. I wanted me and her and our son, the white picket fence, the dog, and the minivan. I wanted my family.
It was an otherwise uneventful day at the firehouse. We hadn’t had many calls and had checked off the equipment on the trucks hours ago. We had scrubbed down the bay floors just to have something to do at one point. It was a little after four when the alarms went off.
““Engine eight, ladder eight, engine twenty, engine forty-one, respond to a fire alarm at 4816 Tenth Street Southwest.”
Mikey and I shared a look. “That’s in the industrial part of town,” I said.
“I really hope this is another false alarm,” he replied. “Those warehouses are absolute mazes.”
Everyone ran out and pulled on their gear before piling into the trucks. We were screaming down the road less than two minutes after the initial call came in and could tell straight away that we were headed to something serious as a thick plume of black smoke billowed up to the sky ahead of us. I said a silent prayer in my head for everyone’s safety and finished getting ready as we roared up to the scene.
Everyone climbed from their trucks and Drew called back to central, requesting additional trucks and manpower, giving a scene size up of what we were seeing. A raging fire was burning from the brick warehouse, and there was a crowd of people gathered outside. Some of the people seemed to be doing a headcount, and I saw the panic-stricken look cross their faces right before they came running toward us.
“There’s someone still inside!” the man shouted. “Oh my God, Marcia.”
“How many people are still inside?” Drew asked him calmly.
“One, Marcia, she works in the office. It's in that door and down the hall to the right,” he pointed.
Drew nodded and turned to the rest of us. “Mikey, Smitty, you guys handle the search. King, Scott, prepare a tactical line.” We nodded and sprinted off as Drew barked orders to the other firefighters while they prepared to battle the flames.
Just outside the door to the warehouse, Mikey and I paused, pulling face protection over our heads, oxygen masks, and then our helmets. “You ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” I told him.
With a nod, Mikey burst into the building with me right behind him. The heat of the flames hit us immediately. The fire was burning hot, and the building creaked all around us. We did not have a lot of time, and immediately, my mind flashed back to the fire at Breanne’s house. I pushed it aside, needing to focus on the task at hand.
Our visibility was extremely limited, and we slowly made our way down the hall. We would call out, listening for anyone to answer to ensure we were going the right way, but heard nothing in reply. We pressed on and found the office the man outside had indicated, pushing in the door.
“Fire department, call out!” Mikey yelled. We started moving around the room, following the wall. The smoke was thick, and the flames were intensifying.
“Fire department, call out!” I shouted. My eyes scanned the room, looking for any sign of the woman.
“There!” Mikey exclaimed, pointing off to the left. I looked and saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a desk. We rushed over and found the woman unconscious. Immediately, I began to share my oxygen with her as he radioed to command.
“Engine eight portable two to command. We have one victim, female unconscious. We’re gonna need paramedics standing by.”
“Mikey, Smitty, you need to get out of there now!” Cash’s voice came back. “This place is going to go any minute.”
The two of us exchanged a look, and Mikey grabbed the woman and we started back the way we had come in. We were halfway back to the entrance we came in when we heard a crack, and a section of the ceiling collapsed between us.
“Get her out of here, Mikey!” I hollered at him.
“‘I’m not leaving you behind, man!”
“I’ll find another way. Go! Save her!”
“No!”
“Mikey, you gotta go NOW. It’s our duty.”
A look flitted behind his stare. “Stay safe, get out alive. You have a family to get back to.”
“I know,” I smiled. “And, I will.” I nodded and quickly started to retreat as another part of the ceiling collapsed. I looked around frantically for another way out, but the flames and the smoke made it nearly impossible. It was clear to me that the structural integrity of the building was rapidly deteriorating, and I was worried about getting out.
I tried to remember what we had passed on our way in, trying to recall another door or even a window I could bail out of. I had to get out. I had to get back to my mom. I had to get back to Breanne and Aaron.
33
Breanne
I was too anxious about meeting Jordan the next morning to sleep after leaving Joanne’s house, so I sat down with my laptop, going through my work emails. After answering several emails that came through after I left work, I set my laptop aside to review some financial documents. The numbers were in reference to our possible expansion to other markets.
The expansion of Luxe 21st had been a high priority for me before the fire. I knew we did great things, and I knew we could grow into a nationwide company through expansion. It had been my baby for a long time, so the prospectus before me was something I knew backward and forward.
Except that some of the figures didn’t seem quite right. I thought they were something that had been discussed via email, so I pulled my laptop back out and started looking through my sent messages.
As I started to dig around in my email, I was distracted re-reading some of the email chain my lawyer had asked me to forward him in recent days. I grabbed my phone to double check the list of items he had asked for to make sure I had sent everything he requested and as I scrolled through my sent messages, I saw it.
At first, I skipped by it, but on a second pass through, it caught my attention. Derrick had asked me once about some irregularities on an expense report, but hadn’t asked again and told me that we had resolved it. I assumed he meant we as in the accounting department, but now I saw that he meant me and him.
Except I couldn’t remember sending him the email was staring at. The email was clearly sent from my email address to the CFO. It was signed with my signature. But I was positive I had not written or sent it.
I started scrolling through my other sent messages and several others jumped out at me. Again, they were from me, but I could not recall writing any of them. Several of them were sent around the same time, overlapping each other to boot.
I sat back and stared at the screen dumbfounded. Had no one else noticed this? Then it dawned on me; why would they? Every email was sent by me from my email. Why would anyone think they weren’t from me?
Frantically, I began to search deeper into my sent messages only to find several more that I couldn't remember writing. Every message that was unfamiliar to me dated back to the two weeks before Christmas until just before I was arrested.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. Was it possible I had worked myself so hard that I couldn’t remember sending a dozen or so emails? I didn’t think it was possible. Sure, I was a workaholic, but I never worked myself to a point where I didn’t remember the things I worked on. Did I?
I wasn’t sure about a lot of things anymore, but a feeling nagged at me that something wasn’t right. I clicked on the screen to start a new email to the IT department and started composing a message. I was two sentences in when I stopped, deleted the words, and closed the message.
Instead, I picked up the phone and called the guy myself. I knew that it was late, but there was always one guy monitoring the servers and that’s the guy I needed.
“Luxe 21st, this is Daniel speaking; how may I help you?”
“Daniel, this is Breanne Thompson.”
“Oh, shit!” I heard him exclaim. There was a clatter and another string of expletives and some rustling before his voice came over the line again. “Sorry, Miss Thompson, I dropped the phone. And um, sorry for cursing, too. This is just such a surprise.”
“It's fine, Daniel.”
“You’re the CEO.”
“Yes, I am, and I need your help.”
“Oh sure, of course. What can I do? Did you spill something on your laptop? It happens a lot, you’d be surprised.”
“My laptop is good. No, this is about my email.”
“No problem. Did it go offline? We’ve been having that happen lately. I thought we patched it, though...”
“No, this is about emails I sent.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Can you trace where an e-mail came from?”
“Do you mean like what computer it was sent from?”
“You can do that?”
“Oh yeah, I can absolutely do that. What emails?”
“Actually, it’s my email.”
“Your email?” I could hear him clicking away at a keyboard. “But you sent them.”
“That’s the thing, Daniel. I cannot for the life of me remembering sending these emails.”
“I can check the access logs,” he said excitedly. “That’ll tell us when the connection to the server was made, under whose login, and from what computer. Oh man, Miss Thompson, this is awesome! I was the one who suggested some of these backdoor system administrator access points, and everyone said it would be overkill, but I knew it was smart.”
“Now hopefully, you’ll get a chance to prove why you were right.”
“I can definitely figure this out, Miss Thompson. Just tell me exactly which emails you want me to look at. I’ll need a little time, but I’ve got this.”
“Fantastic. And Daniel?”
“Yes, Miss Thompson?”
“Can you please keep this all to yourself?”
“Of course. My lips are sealed. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
After hanging up with Daniel, I slid my laptop onto the table and laid my head back on the couch. I felt lighter somehow and just knew I had stumbled on something that was either going to make or break my case.
34
Jordan
I couldn’t breathe.
I had to find a way out of the building.
I had to find a way back to Breanne. I needed to tell her that I didn’t care about the lie, I just wanted her.
I had to find a way back to Aaron. I had missed out on five years with my son — I wasn’t going to miss a minute more.
I rushed forward, looking for a way out that I couldn’t see. I was trapped.
“Fuck!” I shouted out. I let out a growl of frustration as my mind flashed back on the last several months with Breanne and Aaron, of all the time we’ve spent together, all the fun we’ve had. Even though she was keeping a secret from me, she still let me in. That meant something.
I was regretting letting my anger get the better of me because I knew she only did what she thought was best. Did I wish she had made other choices? Hell yes! But she had her reasons and I got that. I just needed her to know that I understood.
I loved Breanne. I had never stopped loving her, if I was being honest with myself. She had stayed in the back if my mind long after we broke up. And, I’d felt a connection to Aaron as soon as I met him. It was hard not to love the little guy.
I have to get out of this warehouse and back to them, I told myself.
I knelt down on one knee to assess my surroundings. There had to be a way out I was missing, and I had to find it. I was running out of oxygen and more of the building was falling down around me. The heat was intense and there was no way anyone else was coming back in for me.
I had two choices: stay put and die or find my way out.
I was not going to die.
Sacrifice is a part of what I signed up for when I became a firefighter, and if I had to sacrifice myself to save someone else I could live with that. But there was no one to save now but myself. And, I was not going down without a fight.
With my ax in hand, I started barreling my way through the flames back toward the offices where we had found the unconscious woman. I was charging through doors, smashing them down with the ax, flames be damned. I had no idea if I was going toward an exit, but if I could, I would make one — somewhere, somehow.
I ran for what felt like an eternity, but was really only a couple minutes. Then I saw it. Like a beacon, an exit sign. I made a beeline for it, crashing out the door and rolling across the ground, ripping my mask from my face.
A commotion of voices ran toward me and pulled me away from the warehouse and to an ambulance.
“Smitty! Smitty!” It took a moment, but Mikey’s face came into view. “Jordan, stay with us man.”
I tried to speak, but nothing came out as a loud boom cracked through the air. Everyone stopped and turned toward the building as an explosion rattled the ground and blew a wall out of the building.
I blinked, staring at the inferno raging in front of me — the one I had just been trapped in. A minute longer, and I would have been a goner, for sure. I was thanking my lucky stars just as I started to see stars.
“Mikey,” I croaked out.
“Don’t talk, man. They’re gonna take you to the hospital.”
