Oxygen Deprived (Kilgore Fire Book 3) (5 page)

“What?” I snapped.

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“I need your help,” he said.

“With what?” I asked.

“I was called into a SWAT call, and I need you to watch my kids,” he explained.

“I can’t,” I told him. “I have no power.”

“They like playing with flashlights,” he shrugged.

“It’s too cold,” I reiterated. “It’s already forty-nine degrees in here. There’s no way I’ll be able to get your kids to stay under blankets.”

“Then start a fire,” he tried.

“I don’t have any wood,” I continued, a little peeved now.

He growled in frustration.

“It’s for ten minutes, at most,” he threw up his hands. “Just wrap them up, and they’ll be fine.”

Four hours later and he still wasn’t back.

I looked over at my brother’s babies.

They sure were adorable.

Sighing, I reached over and turned on the music, smiling when my favorite song came on.

I sang along quietly with Garth Brooks, trying hard not to wake the kids.

The low gas indicator dinged, and I winced.

I’d been in my car for a good three hours now, scared as hell that if I left them inside they’d freeze and get hypothermia.

I was using the car as a charger anyway.

All of my tablets that I read on for work, as well as my phone and computer, were currently plugged into every electrical outlet or cigarette lighter in the car.

The gas indicator dinged again, and I bit my lip.

I sure wished I could actually drive my car. I’d take the kids over to my mom’s place.

Not that I had any car seats, but the neighbor next door let me use her spares when I needed to go pick the kids up from daycare on the rare occasion that Downy let me have them.

Not that I knew her number, and I wasn’t allowed to go into her yard anymore, so it was all a moot point.

I closed my eyes, ignoring the way the gas indicator dinged again, and fell into a light sleep.

And woke up what felt like seconds later, but was probably more like an hour or more.

The car was cold again, and the kids were still bundled up sleeping in the backseat.

I turned my head, smiling at not just my brother’s wife, Memphis, but Drew as well.

Instead of losing what heat was left in the car and rolling the window down, I pushed the door open and quickly closed it.

“Hey,” I said breathlessly.

“I’m so sorry,” Memphis, apologized, throwing her arms around me. “I couldn’t get off, and Downy’s at a stupid SWAT call still.”

“Gonna be a couple of hours or more,” Drew offered his thoughts.

I furrowed my brows.

“How do you know?” I asked.

He held up his handheld radio to me.

“I’m listening to it,” he wiggled the radio. “They’ve got a man that refuses to come out of his house, and he’s holding his family hostage.”

It was then I took in his attire.

“Why are you dressed in SWAT clothes?” I asked in alarm.

He was a firefighter, wasn’t he?

I wasn’t lusting after some cop, was I?

I couldn’t do another cop. Not after what Danny had done to me. So all the time I’d been having certain thoughts about a certain firefighter had been a lie! He
was
a cop. Well, sort of. SWAT team meant cop, didn’t it?

A chill swept over me.

“I’m a medic on the SWAT team,” he explained. “I wasn’t needed yet, since they weren’t going in, and Memphis couldn’t find you and called Downy. I was sent.”

I blinked.

“I have an ankle monitor,” I pointed to the offending thing that made all my clothes look funny at that ankle. “Why would you think I was anywhere else but home? There would be cop cars here by now if that was the case.”

Memphis looked sheepish.

“I’m afraid that was my fault,” she explained. “I couldn’t get into your house because it’s locked, and you weren’t answering the door. I forgot my phone, but I had the radio in my car, and I called into dispatch.”

My mouth dropped open.

“You’re allowed to do that?” I asked.

She nodded…then shrugged.

“Maybe not,” she said with a smile. “Probably gonna hear about it tonight, but there was no way I was going to leave and then come back. Not with how bad these roads are.”

She indicated to the road behind her, showing me the snow-covered roads.

“Oh, okay.” I nodded. “Well, they’re in my car.”

Memphis nodded, opening the backdoor.

“I’ll bring the blankets back to you, if you don’t mind,” she said.

I was about to tell her that was one of my three blankets—yes, only three to my name—but then I saw the instant she opened the door, and realized it was too cold out there for her kids to go without. Sighing in frustration, I told her to take them.

“You can have them,” I agreed.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll get Downy to drop them back on his way home from work.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then again, it wasn’t like I needed an excuse to get onto Amazon. My finger was already getting itchy.

However, my bank account told me how stupid that’d be.

Luckily, my blog’s royalty check would be coming in soon.

Not to mention my advertising check, so I
should
be fine.

But until I could get paid, I’d be down a blanket that I couldn’t replace until at least two weeks from now.

“I’ll take him,” Drew offered.

Memphis smiled, handing Lock over, thankfully.

Lock was three, but he was a hefty forty-something pounds. I’d noticed when I’d taken him to the car from the house.

Their baby, Ares, who wasn’t so much a baby anymore at a year and a half, was about half the size of her brother. She also had her daddy’s red hair, which made me smile when the only thing you could see poking out of the blanket were her fiery red curls.

“Thanks again, Aspen,” she thanked me softly.

My heart smiled at how much I liked my sister-in-law.

It wasn’t her fault she was married to an ogre.

An ogre that I loved with all my heart.

“Be careful,” I ordered her.

She smiled, kissed my cheek, and was gone a few moments later.

Drew waved at me from the driveway where he’d put Lock into Memphis’ car, and I waved back.

Then I went back inside, grateful I had a gas oven I could turn on, and sat in front of it, leaning against my kitchen island, with my lone blanket.

I was also cursing myself for not getting the rest of my stuff out of storage.

I’d moved into this new house about three months ago, and I had plenty of time to get it done, yet I hadn’t gotten around to doing it.

“Damn,” I said, shivering slightly as the warm started to fill the room. “I forgot my computer.”

Heaving a sigh, I got up once again, grabbed my laptop and the other electronics I’d spent the time charging, and then got to work on typing up tomorrow’s blog post.

This one was titled:
The reasons one needs five tablets.

Number one on the list was in case you were reading and the first one ran out of juice in the middle of it.

The second was in case of power failure.

The list went on, and I smiled for the first time since Memphis and Drew had left.

At least I was able to smile, so not everything could be as bad as I thought, right?

Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems. Unless you lost a finger, then it’s pretty bad.

-Drew’s thoughts while working

Drew

“Your sister had to get into her car with our kids, Downy,” I heard Memphis say over the speaker on his phone. “And now I feel like crap because I took two of her blankets. I need you to drop them back off to her for me. You’ll have to come home to get them.”

“Why don’t I just go buy her new ones?” Downy asked distractedly
. “And why was she in the car?”

“You were the one who told me her power was off and she didn’t have any firewood. I would guess it was because she thought they were cold,” Memphis growled at her husband.

I looked at Downy, then back to the camera that was being threaded through the first bedroom’s vent in the house where a father was currently holding his family of five hostage.

He was holding them in the very middle of the house, in a tiny room with no windows or doors other than the one that led into the hallway.

He had enough guns to arm a small militia in there with him, too.

“I want you to bring her some firewood, too,” Memphis continued. “And some food.”

“Memphis…,” Downy started.

“Downy, I’m not kidding here. She’s lost weight in the last week.”

Had she?

I hadn’t noticed.

But then again I’d only met her last week, so I didn’t have much to go by.

“I’ll get it to her tomorrow,” Downy started.

“No,” Memphis snapped. “You’ll do it today, or I’ll go do it myself when you get home.”

Downy growled in frustration, but then leaned forward as the camera finally made it to the room where we thought the family was being held.

The only thing we had to go on was one single phone call to 9-1-1 four hours earlier saying that their ‘father’ was holding them hostage and they couldn’t leave.

“Gotta go,” Downy said. “I’m busy.”

He hung up on Memphis’ growl of frustration.

“You know you’re going to have to do that, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he sighed. “You live across the street from her, you should do it.”

My eyebrows rose.

“She’s right, you know,” I said. “You owe it to her.”

“How do you figure?” He asked, leaning forward at the same time I did.

“She watched your kids for four hours and used the last of the gas in her car to keep them warm. And your wife took her blankets when she has no heat.
How do you not see that you owe her?” I asked somewhat irritated in his flippant behavior.

“Four hostages,” Luke, the SWAT leader on scene, and all around good guy, said. “He doesn’t have any guns on him.”

“I don’t even see any in the room,” Nico, another member of the SWAT team, offered.

“Let’s do this.”

Then we went to rescue the hostages, who were being held at dick point. And by dick point, I meant his dick was out, and he was refusing to let them go without a fight.

I was just getting home, having being held over due to a report I had to write and fax in, since I wouldn’t be working for the next few days.

I’d requested the days off so I could spend some time with my daughter before she went back to school after Christmas break, but it was very clear by the end of the day when Attie still hadn’t answered my messages or returned my phone calls that I wouldn’t be getting any father/daughter time for the next few days like I’d planned.

I slipped and slid my way home, annoyed that I hadn’t gotten around to putting new tires on my truck like I’d intended to this week.

Now I could barely get any purchase, and my four-wheel drive was practically useless seeing as the treads on my tires were nearly nonexistent.

I felt the first smile I’d cracked in over six hours moving across my face when I pulled into my driveway and saw Downy pulling to the curb.

His truck was loaded down with wood, nearly a whole cord would be my guess.

He dropped out of his truck gingerly, and then a dark missile of fur darted out right behind him.

“I told you to stay in the truck!” Downy boomed as he yelled at his dog, Mocha.

Mocha didn’t spare him a glance as she ran to the front steps, then barked loudly at the door until Aspen finally opened it for her.

Mocha darted in, and Aspen immediately closed the door behind her.

“Your sister likes your dog more than she likes you,” I observed dryly as I came around the back of my truck.

Downy flipped me off.

“Come help me with this shit,” he ordered. “My power just went out, and I don’t want to leave them there by themselves for long.”

I didn’t mention the fact that he’d had no problem leaving the kids with his sister in exactly the same conditions, but I had a feeling it had more to do with his wife being cold that was the reason for his urgency.

We worked for nearly twenty minutes in silence to get the wood to the side of the house, and the last fifty pieces or so went right outside Aspen’s backdoor.

Then, without another word, he walked up the front walk, and straight inside her house, leaving the door open as he went.

“Aspen!” Downy called from inside the house.

I followed, almost out of curiosity rather than need.

I followed the sound of growling to the kitchen where I saw Downy facing off with his dog.

“Sit,” Downy ordered.

The dog backed up, protecting the muffin in her mouth.

“Drop it,” he said fiercely.

Mocha stared at him, then promptly tossed it up in the air, caught it, and swallowed it nearly whole.

“You shithead,” Downy said. “How’d she even get that?”

“She brought it in with her. I tried to get her to let me have it, but as soon as I got the packaging off it she ate it,” Aspen said.

I couldn’t listen to them bitching anymore, though. Not with Aspen’s legs only inches away from the open oven door.

“Can you please close that,” I said. “You’re going to burn yourself.”

Then, almost as if in a movie, she whipped around.

The bottom of her sweater whirled out behind her, and I swear I watched as the damn thing caught fire as the end of it grazed over the burners on top of the stove.

Her sweater went up so fast that the only thing I could do was tackle her to the ground.

I hit her hard, and her body slammed to the floor under mine.

Almost instantly, I was up and off her, rolling her around, back-to-front, again and again.

“Shit!” Downy said, dropping down to his knees beside us.

I moved completely off of Aspen, rolling her over so I could see her face.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She nodded, dazed, her head the only thing that moved.

“You’re sure?” I asked.