Susan Wiggs - The Firebrand

People jostled one another in a mad dash for the river or the lakefront. Family groups moved in tight clusters—men with their arms around their wives, women carrying babies or clutching toddlers by the hand. The sight of the children tore at him. He heard Christine’s name in the hiss of the wind.

He thought about how casually he’d left her tonight, how casually he always left her, certain that he would return. Now, as he fought and jostled his way through the packed street, he was haunted by images of his daughter.

On the day she was born, his heart had soared. At last he had what he’d always dreamed of—a family. He’d created something enduring and true. That very day he’d bought two cases of rare champagne, packing them away to bring out on the occasion of her wedding. It was a sentimental gesture, though he was not a sentimental man. But Christine had found a place in his heart where softness dwelled, and he cherished her for finding that part of him.

Tightening his grip on Diana’s hand, he felt his wife’s mounting fear, heard it in the little gulping breaths she took. As he forged ahead, Rand bargained with fate: He would devote more time to Christine. He’d work harder to please Diana, quit flirting with women no matter how provocative he found them and find a way to make Diana more content in her role as wife and mother. If only he could save his child.

Everything came to a standstill at a jammed intersection near Courthouse Square. Too many streets converged here, and chaos ruled. Disoriented, Rand wasn’t sure of the way north.

“Which way to Water Street?” he bellowed at a passing drayman with a lurching, overloaded cart. The man didn’t look at him but pointed. “You’ve got three blocks to cover and it’ll be hard going. There’s a bad flare-up ahead.” A gap opened up and he drove his cart through it.

Rand pressed on. He noticed that Diana had fallen silent again, and he slipped his arm around her waist. “We’ll get there,” he promised, but a sudden explosion drowned his words.

“Look at the sky.” She pointed at the wavering, burnished horizon ahead. “The whole city is on fire.”

He led the way up a side street. In the middle of the roadway, a police paddy wagon had broken its axle. Swearing, the driver opened the wagon and fled while the conveyance disgorged a dozen convicts in striped shirts and trousers. Some of the prisoners swarmed into burning shops, but one of them advanced on Rand and Diana. Firelight flashed in his flat, dangerous eyes as his gaze traveled over Diana’s gown and jewels.

He raised a rocklike fist. “Give me all your valuables. Now.”

Diana gave a squeal of alarm and buried her face in Rand’s shoulder.

Rand pulled away from her. In an instant, his fear for Christine and frustration with the crowds crystallized into a pure and lethal rage. He didn’t will himself to act, but the next thing he knew, he had the convict shoved up against a concrete wall, his hand clamped over the man’s windpipe.

“Get the hell away from us,” Rand said, his voice harsh with a deadly purpose.

The looter gagged, clawing at the hand on his neck. Rand let him go and backed off, sick at the thought of what he’d nearly done. The convict staggered away and disappeared into the crowd.

“Heavens, Randolph, I’ve never seen you like that,” Diana said.

The breathless admiration in her voice did not please him. He took her hand again. “We’re almost there. Hurry.”

“I can’t see a thing through this smoke.”

Rand pulled her along as fast as he could. Buildings burned from the roof down and others from the ground up. People dropped bundles from windows and exterior staircases. A ladder crew helped women trapped in a tall building, and the rescued ladies scattered like ants when they reached the street.

“Surely Sterling House has already been evacuated. Becky Damson would have fled to safety.” Diana’s eyes streamed as she spoke between panting breaths. “Yes, Becky’s got a good head on her shoulders. She is probably already at the lakeshore with Christine, waiting for us to find them. That is where we must go—to the lake.”

Rand could think of no reply and she didn’t seem to expect one. He prayed Diana was right about the nursemaid. Miss Damson had been recommended by the concierge of the hotel. But Rand had assumed she would be an adjunct to Diana, not a substitute.

He ground his teeth together, for he knew if he spoke they would be words of recrimination. And what was the point of that, especially here and now?

The wind picked up, and there was no way to stay ahead of the flames. He could hardly see his own wife in the thick curtain of smoke. For a few detached moments he felt adrift, his sense of direction unseated by a force too huge to control.

Rand didn’t like things he couldn’t control.

He drove himself harder, pulling insistently at Diana, who by now was so exhausted that she lacked the energy to complain. He focused on one thing and one thing only—getting to Christine.

They passed Ficelle’s Paint and Varnish Factory, a long, low building that covered half a block. Firebrands rained down on the roof of the factory, and an ominous glow throbbed behind its small, square windows.

“I think we’re almost there,” Rand told his wife. “Only a block to go.”

Diana coughed. “I can’t see anything.”

“It’s just there, see?” His heart lifted as he spotted the distinctive dome of Sterling House.

Then a roaring gust of wind cleared the smoke like the parting of a curtain. It gave Rand a glimpse of hell. Sterling House, where he’d left his baby daughter, was engulfed in flames.

“No!” he bellowed, and for the first time, he let go of Diana’s hand.

As he started to run, an unnatural and toxic burst of white heat flared inside the varnish factory. A flash, followed by an earsplitting explosion, shattered the night. The detonation sucked the oxygen from the air, from his lungs, even.

The force of it picked him up off his feet and blasted him backward. The landing broke his arm; he could feel the dull snap of the bone, the stunning pain. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself up and dove for Diana, who lay slumped on the pavement.

As he covered her body with his own, chunks of brick from the collapsing building rained over him. With his good arm, he tried to hold on to his wife and pull them both away, but the shower of bricks turned to a deluge. Rand could feel the breaking of his ribs, and then his shoulder was struck numb. The falling rubble kept coming in a thick, deadly avalanche, burying him and Diana.

No oh no oh please… The disjointed plea was drowned by the lethal crash of the building. Diana made a sound—his name, perhaps—and her hands clutched at him. Something hard and sharp struck his skull.

He had the sensation of floating, though he could not have moved amid all the falling bricks. There was no pain anymore. Only light. A hole in the sky, its edges burning, a white glow in the center.

And then there was nothing.

“Look at that,” Phoebe said, indicating a building by the river. “The hose crew has simply abandoned Sterling House.”

The fashionable hotel’s distinctive glass dome glowed bright yellow as flames licked up its walls. In the smoke-filled street in front of the residence, a cart was reeling in its hoses and moving on.

“I imagine they realized they could never control the fire,” Lucy said. They’d seen so much destruction on the slow journey to the bridge that she began to feel as beaten down as the crew. “Let’s pray the building was evacuated,” she added. Most of the hotel’s windows disgorged mouthfuls of flame. But on the second story, a single window stared at her like a blank, dark eye.