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“Thank you. You too.”
I let him hang up on my call, taking a deep breath.
The rest of the day was a whirl because business picked up quickly around one. Thankfully, I’d been able to put out some new stock, eat my sandwich, and take a few minutes to take a deep breath before the next customers came in. It would have been a thousand times easier if Maria had been able to make it, but I understood that it didn’t always happen the way we wanted it to.
At five p.m., I shut the front door and flipped the sign to read ‘closed.’ It’d take me a half hour or so to get everything all figured out as far as the cleaning went, but that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
“Well, one day down. A million more to go, hopefully,” I said as I went to the back for a broom.
The cleaning went well enough. I turned on some music on my phone so that it didn’t feel like I was alone in the store. That was a creepy feeling that I didn’t want to worry about.
By the time I was done, I was ready to go. My stomach was growling, and for a good day’s work, I had decided to pick up a pizza on the way home. I locked the front door so that I could go out the back, and then, headed towards the back door.
And it was then that I smelled it.
Something burning. I hurried to grab the fire extinguisher and then found myself in the back room, where a fire had broken out among the purses. I tried to put it out, but the fire was too strong. Unnaturally strong. As if someone had used an accelerant to make sure the fire would spread faster than I could put it out.
How did this start?
I began coughing as the smoke started getting thicker in the air. I tried to get to the back door. I reached it only to find that it had been blocked by something. It opened outward, but I couldn’t push it open for the life of me. By now, the fire had spread to cut me off from the front of the store.
With a pounding heart, I realized I was trapped.
I checked my pocket and found my phone.
My fingers fumbled a little as panic set in, but I was able to dial 911.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“Fire… send firefighters…” I managed to cough this out, and started to say the address as I lowered myself to my knees. “I’m stuck. The door is blocked”
“We’ll have EMS and fire there right away. What’s your name?”
“Jade. Jade Santana.”
“All right, Miss Santana. Can you get to a window?”
I attempted to respond, but the panic, the smoke, and the adrenaline conspired against me. There weren’t any windows in the back room, and the lack of ventilation was concentrating the smoke. My eyes started to feel heavier, and the phone fell out of my hands. All I could do was protect my head as I fell all the way to the ground, hoping that this would not be the end.
Chapter twenty-three
Twenty-Three: Jesse
The first day of a shift was usually uneventful. Today, that was incredibly not the case. As we were winding down for the evening, a call came in for EMS and fire. As we hurried to the trucks, the dispatcher read out the address. I realized I recognized it.
Jade’s shop. That was Jade’s shop. I sprinted to the fire truck and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I know how to get there. I’ll drive,” I called to the rest of the men. “EMS has been called to the scene. Someone’s inside that building. Let’s go!”
I flipped the sirens on, and the men ran through their prep. As soon as the men on my truck were ready, I was racing through the streets. All I could hear were the sirens and the screeching of my tires as I made tight turns, thanks to some people who didn’t want to clear the way.
Eventually, we were able to make it through the traffic jam and get to the store. From the front of the building, it didn’t look so bad which made me think it might have been a small fire, but when we got close, you could see black smoke billowing out from the back room. But I couldn’t see Jade.
On the way, we’d gotten briefed on the 911 call. They said a woman had called the fire in, but hadn’t been able to finish the call. Was it Jade? Had she made it out?
The first responder on the phone line couldn’t get anything out of her but could hear her wheezing. I started gearing up and went around to the back. My heart plummeted when I saw Jade’s car, but what I saw next was worse.
Someone had dragged a full wooden dresser up to the back of the building and jammed it into the back door. And there were no other outlets from the back room except through the front.
