Page 129 of Never Forget
"Jamie. Turn on the news."
"What? Why?"
"Just turn it on."
I grabbed the remote and flipped to the local channel.
The Carolina Furniture Depot.
The building was engulfed in flames. Fire trucks everywhere. Firefighters swarming. Smoke billowing into the evening sky.
My blood went cold.
I knew that building. Sam and I bought our couch there.
"Megan," I whispered. "Is Sam?—"
"His station responded. He's there."
The phone slipped from my hand.
On the screen, the fire raged. The building groaned. And somewhere inside that building—or outside, or already gone, I had no way of knowing which—was the man I'd watched pull out of my driveway that morning.
CHAPTER 32
Sam
The tones dropped at 19:07 p.m.
Structure fire. Commercial. All hands.
I was already moving before the address came over the box. Boots on. Turnout coat over my shoulders. Cap was three steps ahead of me down the stairs and Sean was two behind. Tyler was right on my heel and we were in the rig and rolling before the dispatcher finished the second transmission.
Savannah Highway.
I knew the address before Cap said it out loud.
Carolina Furniture Depot.
Something in my chest shifted a half-inch sideways and didn't come back.
I'd been in that building. I'd walked Jamie and Rosie through the maze of showroom additions a few months back looking for a couch. I'd clocked the construction on the way in because I couldn't help myself—no sprinklers, a loading dock out back stacked to the rafters with foam, a roof that sat heavy on walls that weren't designed to hold what the owner had tacked onto them.
I held the grab handle and watched Havensworth slide past the window.
We could see the smoke from three blocks out.
Dense. Black. Pouring out of the loading dock at the back of the building and rising in a column the color of wet tar. It wasn't the smoke of a kitchen fire or an electrical fire. This was upholstery smoke. Foam smoke. The smoke of a building with forty-two thousand square feet of polyurethane inside it and a fire that had found the fuel it wanted.
Sean saidJesusunder his breath.
Cap didn't say anything.
We pulled up in a line of engines. Ladder 5 was already on scene. Engine 10 was rolling in behind us. A captain I didn't recognize was shouting at someone in a volunteer jacket about where to stage, and someone else was shouting at the same man to move his truck, and somewhere over the din a radio voice was calling for another alarm.
I got off the rig.
The heat hit me before I cleared the door. Ninety-something degrees of June humidity and a wall of radiant heat coming off the back of the building that made the air ripple. I pulled my hood up. Checked my pack. Seated the mask.
