The box was gone. And Tommy felt as if he’d just lost a part of himself.
As the two firemen pulled him outside onto the lawn, fresh air greeted his starving lungs. He inhaled a greedy breath, which had him rolling onto his side, coughing.
“Is anyone else in the house?” a fireman yelled at him.
Finding he couldn’t speak, Tommy shook his head between hacking coughs.
When a couple of paramedics tried to put him on a gurney, he sat up and waved them away, rasping, “I’m fine.”
The female EMT wrapped a blanket around him. “I have to check how much carbon monoxide you’ve inhaled. You’ll need to come with me.”
Considering his lungs felt really heavy, he probably shouldn’t argue. As he sat down in the back of the ambulance, Tommy glared at his house. Former house. And once again he felt his world close in on him.
When it fucking rained, it poured.
He stared at the flames licking over his front porch and engulfing the entire front of his house and garage. Fire poured out the side windows, out the back of the house, out the roof.
Everywhere.
He’d gone for a run. A goddamn run.
Yanking off his beanie, he knotted his fingers in his dark blond hair and stared at the fiery mass that had been his home. He’d only been gone for a little more than an hour.
Hell, why was he thinking about time? Shit happened. Hadn’t he been riding the shit-happened roller coaster for months now?
A bubble of laughter threatened to explode out of him. After everything that had come down on him over the last four months, of course this would happen. It had to. It was the next logical sequence of events. He’d fucked up. Lost his title. Got his ass ousted from MMA. So, to make money he’d essentially sold himself to the highest bidder.
Of course his house would burn to the fucking ground.
The EMT placed something against his lips. “Breathe into this until I tell you to stop.”
After he did, his lungs rebelled and he coughed hard.
“CO detected, but low.” She held up a clear plastic mask. “Sir, I need you to put this on. It’s oxygen. It will help get the carbon monoxide out of your body.”
He pressed the mask over his nose and mouth and inhaled the crisp, pure oxygen. Another cough erupted out of him, but he continued to inhale deeply as he watched his life go up in smoke for the second time this year.
“Sir, does anything hurt?”
Years gone in fucking seconds.
“Sir? Are you hurt?”
Annoyed, he shook his head, said, “No,” and tore his attention away from the house, the lost memories, to survey the chaotic scene around him.
By now fire trucks and police cars littered the road, lights flashing. Two firefighters manned a hose, shooting a powerful jet of water at the front, while two others concentrated on the side. He didn’t know what was being done about the back. If anything. The fire looked out of control.
He watched another flame erupt from a different portion of the roof. Still, when it came right down to it, nothing in that house mattered except that damn box.
Hell, he’d had no idea how important it was until he’d realized he was about to lose it. And now it was too late.
Fuck!
A whine came from beside him and he scratched the top of Warrior’s head. The chocolate Labradoodle looked up at him, tongue hanging out.
“It’ll be all right, buddy.”
At least he always took his dog with him on his runs.
“Are you the owner?” a firefighter asked as he walked up.
“No. The renter.”
“Does anyone else live here?”
“No, just me and my dog.”
“I need to ask you a few questions.” When Tommy nodded, the man flipped open a notebook and asked, “Name?”
“Tommy Sparks.”
The man, who had been concentrating on writing, glanced up sharply. “Tommy ‘Lightning’
Sparks?”
Fucking great. An MMA fan. “The former Tommy ‘Lightning” Sparks.” Just like his house, his career had gone up in flames four months ago. “It’s just Tommy Sparks now.”
He hoped there was enough edge in his voice to get across he was in no mood to take a trip down memory lane.
Apparently there was, and the dude went back to his twenty questions. “When did you leave?”
“A little more than an hour ago.”
“And you went where?”
“For a run.”
“Do you smoke?”
Hadn’t he just said he was a runner? He squinted at the man, trying not to lose his patience, when he knew the man was just doing his job. “No.”
After a series of more questions that all ended with the answer no, the firefighter asked, “Have you been noticing any electrical problems?”
Now they were getting somewhere. “A light switch has been on the fritz. I reported it to my landlord about six weeks ago, but he hadn’t fixed it yet. I don’t use it, though.”
“Where was the switch?”
“In the kitchen.”
The firefighter closed the notebook. “I hate to say this, but the house is going to be inhabitable.”
You think?