up speed until they knew they were heading in the right direction.
‘Crighton Terrace.’ The dispatch officer’s tone was perfectly calm. ‘No number given.’
Tim’s gaze was still on Laura and his eyes widened to reflect her own alarm. He hit the siren and pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator.
Crighton Terrace.
Jason’s street. Had Shelley decided to make even more of a point than simply breaking into Jason’s house? Was it burning to the ground right now?
And where in God’s name was Megan?
CHAPTER TEN
JASON’S house was not on fire.
Laura let out a sigh of relief as they turned into Crighton Terrace. The two fire appliances, beacons lighting up the overcast grey of the dawn sky, were parked at the end of the street beside the old deserted house.
‘Probably arson,’ she decided aloud. ‘No one’s lived in that place for months, which would make it a tempting target.’
‘Can’t see any flames.’ Tim sounded vaguely disappointed as he parked well clear of the activity surrounding the fire trucks. ‘Bit of smoke, though.’
They skirted a pair of firemen from another station who were unrolling and coupling long lengths of hose. Bruce was standing beside the control panel of the Inglewood appliance. Laura couldn’t see Jason anywhere and assumed he must be on the other end of the hose leading through the open front door of the house.
‘Anyone injured?’ Tim queried.
‘Not yet.’ Bruce waved towards where their ambulance was parked, its back doors open and the empty stretchers visible. ‘Take a pew and put your feet up for a while.’
‘Anyone inside the house?’
‘Not that we know of. Jase tells us it’s been empty for a while. Early morning jogger saw the smoke coming out from under the eaves as he ran past.’
‘Can we get a bit closer?’ Tim enjoyed watching a different service at work.
‘Sure. Just watch you don’t trip over any hoses. Or firemen.’
Laura was staring at the house that had become a familiar landmark during her walks with Jason and Megan. She could see fingers of flame reaching out through the smoke billowing out from under the eaves. Only one corner of the house seemed to be involved at present, on both storeys. Her gaze tracked along the side of the house as she wondered where Jason might be.
‘Who’s upstairs?’
‘What?’ Bruce had to shout over the sounds of the pump and other fire officers being deployed nearby from the second appliance.
‘I saw someone.’ Laura pointed. ‘At that window.’
‘Yes. Look!’ The shape appeared again, a shadowy outline due to the drifts of smoke.
‘We haven’t got anyone upstairs. The staircase is dodgy.’ Bruce was reaching for his radio. ‘Jase? Can you hear me?’
A crackling sound came back. ‘Affirmative.’
‘Looks like there’s someone upstairs.’
A swear word came back this time. ‘Roger. Send in a ladder. We’ll get in at-’
But Laura didn’t wait to hear what was planned for the ladder. She had been focussing on another window at the far corner of the house from the flames. She had seen the person again and this time a puff of wind had cleared the drift of smoke for a fraction of a second. Just long enough to recognise the face of the woman. A face framed by long, blonde hair.
‘Oh my God!’ Laura started running.
The shout from one of the firemen she raced past as they came out of the house sounded like Jason’s voice. A heavily gloved hand caught briefly at her arm but Laura was going fast enough to pull away easily.
‘Shelley’s in there,’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘Megan must be here as well.’
The heat inside the house hit her solidly as she ran through the front door but, surprisingly, the smoke didn’t seem too bad. Enough to make her eyes sting and force her to hunch her shoulders and keep her head lowered, but she couldn’t see any flames and she knew that the area of the house she had seen Shelley in was as far as it could be from the worst of the fire. If she could just get up the stairs she would be able to find them faster than anybody else because she knew where they were.
She also knew she shouldn’t be doing this. She could hear the shouts of the firemen trying to catch up with her. They would pull her clear if they succeeded. Number-one rule for rescuers-do not put yourself in danger. A rule for anyone at a house fire was to get out and stay out. But there was no time to think about anything other than a gut reaction. Laura was running purely on instinct and adrenalin.
This was
Laura took the stairs two at a time, her eyes now streaming and a painful cough grabbing at her lungs. She heard even louder shouts from the firemen behind her and then she heard something far worse. The crack and rumble of timbers falling as the staircase she had just climbed collapsed.
There was no turning back now and Laura knew she only had a matter of seconds to find what she was looking for. The smoke upstairs was thick. And black. She dropped to her knees to find the only clear patch of air and crawled in a frantic rush towards what she desperately hoped was the room in which she had seen Shelley. God help her if she’d got it wrong!
Everything became a blur. She found the room. Shelley pushed past her at a one-legged crawl, her other leg trailing uselessly behind her. She shouted something at Laura but the words were made incomprehensible by racking coughs. And Laura wasn’t listening anyway because it was too hard to think of more than one thing at a time and she could see the small, still shape on the floor beside the window.
It had to be Megan.
The shattering of the window glass was followed by a more ominous sound of something exploding into flames nearby. Laura couldn’t breathe any more. Couldn’t think. But she didn’t need to. Rough, gloved hands were pulling at her, picking her up with Megan still clutched to her. And then she was in Jason’s arms.
‘Put one arm around my neck. Wrap your legs around my waist and hold on tight!’
If Laura hadn’t been so close to losing consciousness or so afraid of whether Megan was still alive or not, she might have been terrified of being carried down the long extension ladder, clinging to the front of Jason’s body like a monkey, with Megan wedged securely between them.
Tim came into focus a short time later.
‘You bloody idiot,’ he told Laura.
She pulled the oxygen mask from her face. ‘Wh-where’s Megan?’ she croaked.
‘Right here.’
Laura struggled to sit up. Tim was bent over the second stretcher, with his stethoscope on a tiny chest. Megan’s face was covered by the paediatric oxygen mask that was miles too big for her.
‘Is…is she…?’
Tim glanced at Laura, then smiled as he lifted the mask from the baby’s face for a second. The sound of her crying became separated from the cacophony of shouting, sirens and equipment running outside the ambulance, and Laura laughed and sobbed and coughed all at the same time until Tim gently pushed her back down and firmly tightened the elastic string on her oxygen mask. Laura closed her eyes but not before she caught a glimpse of more ambulance officers rushing past the back doors with another figure on a stretcher.
And then Jason was there. Still in his full protective uniform, he seemed far too large to be standing in the back of an ambulance. His breathing apparatus tank was still on his back, the mask dangling beneath his chin. He
