Chapter 29
Severide was running late...and he walked quickly from his car to the firehouse.
He pulled open the door to the common room to shave a few steps from his journey to the locker room...where he found most of Black Watch and all the guys from Red Watch huddled around the television.
He peered between the bodies and what he saw on the screen took his breath away.
It was a firefighters' worst nightmare.
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The massive building was burning out of control. Flames shot through bales of thick, choking black smoke that rolled out of every window he could see.
"Where's this?" he asked.
"St. Louis..." Boden answered.
Kelly looked up and his eyes met Chief's for just a second before he focused back on the screen. Whatever hard feelings he still had towards Boden since the Baby-gate fiasco...it didn't matter. All that mattered right at the moment was he could see a lot of firefighters in serious trouble...and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
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The blonde reporter stepped in front of the camera and everyone held their breath.
"The first alarm came in at 5:49 am..." she began. "and right now we estimate there to be between two hundred and two hundred-fifty firefighters on the scene."
"That's a helluva lot 'a man power." Hermann muttered under his breath.
"SHHHH!" about half a dozen people hissed at him.
The screen showed a picture of a luxurious building...minus smoke and flames.
"The twenty story hotel located in the historic downtown district was booked nearly to capacity." the reporter droned.
The graphic switched to a cutaway drawing.
"The fire was reported to have started in the laundry, but a malfunctioning sprinkler system allowed it to continue burning unchecked...devouring everything in its path. The fire apparently blazed up a laundry chute that was opened on the fifth floor by an unsuspecting member of the housekeeping staff."
"Jesus...what a mess..." Casey said.
No kidding...
The reporter continued her horrific tale...
"There have been reports of six fatalities so far...including the housekeeper who opened the laundry chute." she said. "But this disaster is far from over and the death count is expected to rise as first responders battle to get the fire under control.
The camera pulled back, giving the men and women of Station 51 a full view of the horror.
"I'd hate to be the guy who signed off on the last fire inspection..." Otis said.
"Yeah..." Shay agreed. "It looks like everything that could possibly go wrong did."
Before anyone could say another word, the bells went off.
"Engine 51...Truck 81...Ambulance 61...Squad 3...structure fire..."
Everyone ran for the apparatus room and their gear. It didn't matter that half of them hadn't even changed out yet. They had their own fire to fight...and hopefully they'd fare better than their brethren in St. Louis.
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"Why'd you have to leave the car in front of Kelly's house?" Dorrie asked.
She was huffing and puffing from their long walk when she finally hauled herself onto the second bus that would take them back to Jax's house.
"Cause I didn't like it..." he said as he flopped into a seat.
Dorrie dropped into the seat across the aisle with a loud 'plop'...and some people got up and moved away from the strange looking pair.
"I didn't like it either." she said loudly. "It was dirty an' it had all that junk in the back. Why would the President give you such a crappy car to drive when you're on a investigation?"
"SSSSHHHH!" Jax hissed at her. "Will you keep your voice down!"
He looked around to make sure no one had overheard the retard.
"What part of 'secret agent' and 'classified op' don't you understand?"
Dorrie clamped her lips shut.
She didn't like it when he yelled at her.
"Are you goin' out?" she asked. "After we get home, I mean?"
She was still hoping she could go back to her apartment...even if she had to take four different busses to do it.
"We gotta get somewhere with Wi-Fi..." he said. "Gotta download the pictures...an' figure out the players..."
He settled back in his seat and closed his eyes.
"Wake me up when our stop comes..."
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Kelly came in the next morning.
What a shift.
The structure fire they had gotten called to at the start of shift turned out to be a pretty big deal. It was an apartment building...and the owner used the basement as a storage facility. It was like a maze...everything in piles up to the ceiling and narrow aisles. They'd barely begun to search when one of the piles caught fire and spread to the next one.
The horror of the fire on TV still fresh in his mind, Kelly instinctively pulled Squad 3 back. He wasn't about to send his men into the maze and have a wall of flames collapse on them.
"No go, Chief!" he'd yelled. "We can't make it!"
"Pull back!" Boden ordered. "Pull back!"
Severide backed his squad out the way they came and said a prayer that there was nobody down there as Engine came in with a line.
They managed to get everybody out of the three apartments...an old lady who reminded Kelly of that busybody Mrs. Nugent who lived in Alyssa's building over on Ashland. He remembered her with the pink housecoat and her pinched little face peering through crack in the door when he went up and down the stairs.
The second floor was a woman with seven kids...and the firefighters had passed them out the window one after another. And on the top floor was an old man who looked like one of those shrunken heads Andy had been so fascinated by at the Ripley's museum the last time the family had gone to Wisconsin Dells.
But after the fire had been knocked down one of the little boys from the second floor came running up to him.
"Dat was so cool, Mister Firefighter!" he chattered excitedly. "I wanna be a firefighter when I grow up! I wanna ride in a big red truck an' climb on ladders an' play wif' da big hose..."
Despite himself, Severide had smiled.
Little Guy couldn't have been more than four or five...he patted him on the head before he scooped the boy up and delivered him back to his mama.
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He came in his back door and followed the smell of fresh cinnamon bread..."silly-man bread" as Lexi called it...into the kitchen where he stopped in his tracks.
There were too many people...specifically too many little people.
He crossed the room to the table where he messed up Andy's hair...then Jesse's. Then he kissed Maggie on top of her strawberry blonde curls...and Lexi's straight-as-a-board brown hair. Finally he came to a little head of platinum blonde.
"Wait a minute..." he said. "This isn't ours."
Laura Jeanne Weathers-Craddock looked up at him with big blue eyes.
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"Ten-ten!" she cried happily.
'Ten-ten' was her special name for Kelly...she couldn't say 'Lieutenant'.
"Where'd you come from?" he asked.
"Baby Yo-ya sweeped ober!" Lexi told him, clapping her hands. "She sweeped on da' secret bed un-ner Maggie's bed!"
Maggie had a trundle bed...
But then Lexi's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
"But she came in da pink fi-tuck bed wif me!"
Kelly looked at his wife for clarification.
"Marianne was sick last night..." she explained. "And Jeanne was going to take her to the doctor."
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Marianne was Hollywood's grandmother...and she was in her nineties. Lately her health had taken a turn for the worse and the old woman had been in and out of the hospital three or four times in the past six months.
"And both Morgan and Shaina had early calls this morning...so they called me to come get Laura."
Morgan and Shaina were both actors on the show Chicago Fire...now in its fifth season. Or was it six? Severide lost track sometimes.
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Before Kelly could answer.
"Yo-ya no bee-bee!" Laura told Lexi. "Yo-ya big girl!"
Lexi looked contrite.
"I sow-wy...I forgetted."
Laura nodded with satisfaction as she took a big bite of "silly-man" bread.
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"Jax. I gotta take a shower." Dorrie complained. "I can' stand it anymore. It's been about five days! I feel so gross!"
Jax looked her over.
Yeah...she was pretty nasty...her hair a stringy, greasy mess...her clothes stank of sweat.
"Okay...we'll go someplace an' take care of it." he said.
Besides, he was pretty ripe himself.
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They got off the bus in the vicinity of Kedzie and Devon. Then Jax led her down a residential street to a place he'd been casing for the past few days.
The pair cut through an alley and he pulled back a section of chain link fence and motioned for Dorrie to crawl through the hole. He checked to make sure no one was looking...and then ducked through himself.
He took the back stairs two at a time and came to the back door of a second floor apartment.
Jax pulled some thin black rods out of the pocket of his jeans and inserted them into the top lock on the door. A little jimmying...and it turned. Then he did the same with the one on the doorknob.
He took a deep breath and turned the knob. The door opened without so much as a creak...and Jax allowed himself to exhale.
"C'mon." he said. "Get inside before somebody sees you!"
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Dorrie followed him into a long, narrow kitchen. Once she'd crossed the threshold Jax quickly shut the door and flipped the lock...then he closed the blinds.
"What is this place?" she asked.
It was certainly an improvement from their current home. This apartment was simple, but it was clean. It didn't smell...and she was pretty sure the lights and the water worked.
"It's another one of the CIA's safe houses. Nobody's usin' it this week...so we can get cleaned up and change clothes..."
"But I don't got no clean clothes!" Dorrie whined. "All my stuff's still at my 'partment..."
"Relax, will ya? There's a washing machine here...you can do our laundry...an' there's stuff here we can take."
Dorrie wasn't sure about that...there were some things you just didn't borrow. Just like you should never buy underwear at a yard sale. And how did Jax know if the stuff was gonna fit her?
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"You go first." Jax said. "Take as much time as you want."
"Okay..." she said.
She walked through the kitchen to the front of the apartment, looking at everything.
She stepped into another room with a rectangular table and six chairs. This must be the dining room...she thought. Turning around she spied a photo in a frame sitting atop a simple wood cabinet. It was a family...a mom, a dad, a teenage boy and two young girls. They had dark skin...but they weren't black...they were more brown...like Indian.
They were standing in front of tree, maybe in a park...and they were smiling for the camera.
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Jax came into the dining room.
"I thought you were gonna shower." he said.
She held out the picture.
"Who are these people?" she asked.
He glanced at them and shrugged.
"Hell if I know. Prob'ly just some random people. The Company makes these houses look more homey...cause this is where they stash witnesses or people in danger they have to protect."
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People they have to protect?
"Can't we bring Kelly here?" she said. "So the Mafia people can't hurt him an' he doesn't get hurt when Alyssa's brothers have their war at the fire station? Please? Can we get him?"
But Jax shook his head.
"No...the Company's got a different plan to get him away when the time's right. Don't worry...it'll be soon." Jax told her. "Now will you go take a shower? You smell like old shit."
"That's mean!"
He shrugged again.
"It's true."
"Well...you gots BO!" Dorrie fired back.
"And as soon as you shower, I'll take one." he said, an exasperated edge in his voice. "So get goin' will ya?"
