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Into the Furnace
Into the Furnace
Into the Furnace
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Into the Furnace

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Kelly Lake comes from a family of firefighters, but she still had to prove herself to her brothers and her father before they accepted her as one of their own. On her days off she tends bar at the firehouse hangout across the street and spends time trying to breathe life into a relationship she knows is doomed. Her life is cruising along just fine until the day her squad responds to a horrific arson that will cause her carefully orchestrated balancing act to come falling down around her. The blaze claims the lives of eleven people, half of them children, and the fire department takes the blame.
Kelly soon finds herself at the center of a media firestorm when she inadvertently becomes the poster girl for the incident. The trauma of the fire is compounded by her personal house of cards collapsing. Her relationship begins showing its cracks at the same time long-buried family secrets rear their ugly heads. Attacked from all angles, Kelly starts thinking the only place she'll be safe is running headlong into the furnace.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 1, 2015
ISBN9781938108792
Into the Furnace
Author

Geonn Cannon

Geonn Cannon was born in a barn and raised to know better than that. He was born and raised in Oklahoma where he’s been enslaved by a series of cats, dogs, two birds and one unexpected turtle. He’s spent his entire life creating stories but only became serious about it when he realized it was a talent that could impress girls. Learning to write well was easier than learning to juggle, so a career was underway. His high school years were spent writing stories among a small group of friends and reading whatever books he could get his hands on.Geonn was inspired to create the fictional Squire’s Isle after a 2004 trip to San Juan Island in Washington State. His first novel set on the island, On the Air, was written almost as a side project to another story he wanted to tell. Reception to the story was so strong that the original story was put on the back burner to deal with the world created in On the Air. His second novel set in the same universe, Gemini, was also very well received and went on to win the Golden Crown Literary Society Award for Best Novel, Dramatic/General Fiction. Geonn was the first male author to receive the honor.While some of his novels haven’t focused as heavily on Squire’s Isle, the vast majority of Geonn’s works take place in the same universe and have connections back to the island and its cast of characters (the exception being the Riley Parra series). In addition to writing more novels based on the inhabitants of Squire’s Isle, Geonn hopes to one day move to the real-life equivalent to inspire further stories.Geonn is currently working on a tie-in novel to the television series Stargate SG-1, and a script for a webseries version of Riley Parra.

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    Into the Furnace - Geonn Cannon

    Into the Furnace

    Geonn Cannon

    Smashwords Edition

    Supposed Crimes LLC, Matthews, NC

    All Rights Reserved

    Copyright 2015 Geonn Cannon

    Published in the United States

    ISBN: 978-1-938108-79-2

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    Prologue

    Kelly Lake came into the world on a wave of water. She and her twin brother Kevin were delivered during one of the most ferocious storms of recent memory. Their entire lives were spent listening to stories of how the lights flickered overhead, the storm sirens wailing outside, and the jovial doctor chuckling as he came into the room. Looks like your little angels are trying to bring the rest of Heaven down with them! he said. It was such a familiar joke that Kelly and Kevin were both able to repeat it in tone and inflection whenever the story came up. Kelly could almost picture the delivery room, even though it would be impossible for her to actually remember the moment of her birth.

    When Kelly applied to the fire academy, her mother accused her of trying to leave the world in fire to make up for the way she’d been born. That was in no way Kelly’s intention but she found that she sort of admired the symmetry of the idea. She chose to join the fire department because it was the family tradition. Fathers, uncles, brothers, practically every male member of the Lake family was simply understood to be following in their family footsteps. Those who didn’t had to make a big announcement and explain what was more important than continuing the legacy. Kelly heard the hubbub around her two older brothers joining the department, as well as the talk about her twin, so she simply assumed everyone expected the same from her.

    On Thanksgiving the year she was twelve, an uncle patted her knee and smiled down at her. So, what are you going to be when you grow up?

    She stared at him as if he’d asked how many eyes she had. I’m going to be a firefighter.

    The uncle had laughed and squeezed her shoulder, motioning his brothers over with a catcher’s-mitt hand. Tell ‘em what you told me, Kelly. Go on. What are you going to be when you grow up?

    A part of her knew that she could shrink away, change her mind, and avoid the humiliation. Instead she stuck her chin out and braced herself for the ridicule. I’m going to be a firefighter.

    More laughter. Another uncle - or maybe it was a cousin - said, Well, just be sure you have a fallback position in mind, huh?

    She left the party and stomped outside, and that was where her oldest brother Casey found her. He sat on the step next to her and nudged her shoulder with his elbow.

    You’re going to have to work twice as hard as any of us if you want to make it, you know.

    She crossed her arms over her knees and stared straight ahead, too angry to talk.

    It’s going to be hard to forget all of them laughing at you. So you know what you do? Hold onto it. Remember how loud it was, and what it sounded like, and you’re going to use that when it’s too hard to keep going. When your legs are burning or your arms are like rubber, you take those baboons in there and use it for a little extra push. You’ll get there. Then you can come back and laugh in their monkey faces.

    She looked at him, and he stuck his jaw out, crossing his eyes and reaching up to scratch his hair. Despite herself she laughed, and he put an arm around her.

    I don’t like the idea of you running into fires, he said, but I don’t like my chances if I stood in your way, either. So I’m going with the safer option and supporting you. At the very least I’ll give you a shot to prove yourself.

    Thanks, Casey.

    No problem, squirt. Now get in there before Uncle Leo snakes all the pumpkin pie.

    She took Casey’s words to heart. She didn’t know if her other brothers were automatically supportive or if Casey had sat them down to discuss it, but either way she had a troupe of cheerleaders whenever she wanted to hit the gym or go for a run. She joined the softball team, lifted weights, and soon was able to best her younger brothers at whatever challenge they threw down. Casey was still able to take her down, but even he admitted that she was a worthy opponent.

    By the time she was old enough to apply to take the firefighter’s exam, she had no qualms about whether she was ready. Of all the hoops she had to jump through to be accepted, the one she thought less about was the one everyone else in her class dreaded: the physical assessment test. There were practice sessions, boot camps to ensure everyone knew what they were getting into before the disqualifying moment, but Kelly breezed through the trials.

    Only once did an instructor mention her family. He caught sight of her name on a form, noted her blonde hair and thick eyebrows, and said, You any relation to Patrick Lake?

    He’s my father, she admitted.

    The teacher had nodded and moved on without further comment. As far as she could tell he never showed her preferential treatment one way or the other, and none of the others in her class took the information of her lineage as an excuse to pick on her.

    Her twin, Kevin, helped temper the family’s reaction to her signing up. The same time she was going through the assessment, Kevin chose to reveal he didn’t plan to become a firefighter after all. He wanted to stay in college and get a degree in architecture. In a way, they protected each other. Their father’s disappointment at having a son deny his legacy was tempered by the fact a Lake would still be joining the ranks; his frustration with Kelly being the one to join had to be ignored.

    The first Thanksgiving after she was admitted to the fire department, she let Casey be the one to talk her up. She saw uncles and cousins casting furtive glances her way and tried not to look overly smug. After dinner, Casey found her on the front stoop again. He sat next to her, nudged her with his arm, and they shared a smile.

    Now what? he said.

    What do you mean?

    You proved them wrong. Now comes the hard part.

    Kelly frowned and shook her head. Fuck them. This was about me getting where I needed to be. I wasn’t out to prove a damn thing to those morons. I just used them as fuel to get me to the top. She rubbed her hands together. Now I get the reward.

    Casey chuckled and held up his fist. Kelly knocked her knuckles against his.

    You show ‘em, little sis.

    She linked an arm around Casey’s shoulder and sagged against him, smiling at the possibilities.

    Chapter One

    Casey was at the front of her mind every time they went out on a call, lingering at the edge of her consciousness like a song lyric she couldn’t get out of her head. Kelly’s engine served the East and West Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle, a high-income area split between DINKs - Double Income, No Kids - and businesses. That morning’s call had been an automatic fire alarm at a middle school. The building was already evacuated when they arrived and they quickly determined the cause of the alarm was a chemistry experiment gone awry.

    Even though the call was mundane and without danger, the stress was real. They didn’t have the luxury of reacting as if it was a false alarm even if nine out of ten automatic alarms ended up being just that. It had been overcast when they arrived so Kelly wasn’t surprised when she walked out of the building to find it had finally started raining. Otto Meoli, their driver, fell into step beside her as she walked to the truck.

    Hey, Lake. Don’t look. But I think you have some admirers.

    She ignored his advice and turned in the direction he’d indicated. A group of students who had been evacuated were leaning against the building to keep out of the rain as much as possible. Two of them had cell phones trained on her, although one put the phone away when he saw her looking. She wasn’t surprised by the reaction. People who were quick to accept the fact they carried a supercomputer in their pants pocket were still startled by the presence of a girl firefighter.

    Let them look, she said, resisting the urge to flip off a group of tenth-graders. They weren’t doing any harm. Their teacher, though... she gave him another look. A bit preppie, a bit too spit-and-polish, but they could be surprisingly fun when the lights went out. They exchanged a smile before she turned away. She was soaked to the skin, her strawberry blonde hair pulled back in an unflattering twist, and she knew that her bunker jacket made her head look too small for her body. Hell, her face made her head look too small for her body. She had a wide mouth, big eyes, and thick dark eyebrows that combined to make her look like a patchwork doll with the wrong parts.

    Still, she knew how all those awkward pieces combined into an attractive whole, so she looked back at the teacher and saw that he was corralling the phone kids. Another time, another place, she thought as she climbed back into the truck. She wasn’t going to stand in the rain and flirt with some guy in front of his students. She had some restraint. The all-clear had been given and the kids were lined up to go back to class.

    The last member of the team climbed into the truck, slammed the door, and the big truck growled as its engine was keyed to life. Kelly reached back and let loose her hair. Scott Shelley reached out and bumped her foot with his.

    I saw you eye-fucking that teacher. What, you looking for some extra credit?

    Kelly grinned. If he could’ve read my mind, he might’ve given me detention.

    From the front of the truck, Trevor McNevin said, Are teachers still allowed to spank?

    Oh, if I’m in his class, he’s definitely gonna start.

    The guys laughed and the subject was dropped. Kelly stretched in her seat and looked out the window. The rain streaking down the glass turned every streetlight, traffic signal, and headlight into prisms of yellow, red, green, and white. Her body swayed with the movement of the truck as if she was a part of the machine.

    As drama-free as the call had been, it still triggered memories of the day four years earlier. That call had been worth all the stress and adrenaline that flooded her system as soon as the alarm sounded. It was an out-of-control four-alarm fire, all hands on deck, so Kelly wasn’t surprised when she stepped off the truck to see Casey’s engine was already there.

    She never saw him at the scene, never crossed paths with him, but it wouldn’t have mattered. At that moment they were not family members; they were firefighters with a task to complete. She was assigned to cover the roof and she climbed the ladder behind Michael Fox (Not the actor, not named after the actor, as he always said upon introducing himself) and spent an hour ventilating the roof as needed. Smoke billowed freely from the holes she and Fox cut with their axes.

    Ninety minutes after she arrived, there was a call for everyone to fall back. She and Fox hauled ass to the ladder and descended as quickly and safely as possible. Moments after they reached the ground, great fists of flame pushed out through every window on the top floor. There was an exhalation of thick smoke as the building seemed to contract in on itself just the slightest bit, the corners sagging toward its center as if bracing for a blow.

    Holy shit, Fox gasped. Did everyone get out?

    Four years later, she still remembered hearing her Captain say, Not all of us. We’re waiting to hear who’s left inside.

    Casey was still inside. He’d been on the stairwell heading down after hearing the fallback order but he’d been too deep. Someone on Casey’s engine realized who she was and made sure she wasn’t allowed inside until his body had been recovered. She remembered feeling numb, like it was a training exercise in the worst-case scenario, and Casey would come strolling up to make fun of her for how poorly she’d done. So she did her best, performed like a pro, only allowing herself to be as shaken as the others around her were. It didn’t matter if Casey had the same parents; every firefighter in the building was her brother. It got her through the hard hours that followed when they knocked down the fire and made sure it didn’t pop back up after they were gone.

    The numbness finally left when Captain Flint took her aside and asked if she was willing to give her parents the notification of death.

    The cameras are all over this shit. His mouth was obscured by a thick walrus mustache, the hairs moving over unseen lips. I figure Patty is going to be watching, and he’s going to know you and Casey were here, and he’s going to know we lost guys. And even though it went bad, he should know straight away it’s not as bad as it could’ve been.

    She nodded and let the reality of the moment settle over her like a shroud. She had just started to wonder how she would get to their parents’ house before the news broke when Flint found her again. He hooked his hand around her elbow and kept going, forcing her to fall into step or get knocked down.

    Your father is one stubborn son of a bitch, he growled.

    Yes, sir, Kelly said without understanding the context. It was a true statement, though, and she understood what he meant when she saw her father standing at the sawhorses that blocked the scene. He had been staring at the building but his eyes dropped and focused on her as she approached. She was still wearing her bunkers and her coat, her face dark with soot and her hair rising in wild tendrils from her braids. She was wet from castoff from the hoses, and she took off her gloves as she approached her father.

    He kept his eyes locked on her from the moment he realized she was his daughter and not just a random firefighter. She saw him swallow a lump in his throat, watched as he ran a hand down the front of his face, and she felt something inside her crack as her tough-as-nails father, as Chief Lake, the strongest man she had ever known, fought back his tears.

    When she was close enough, he reached out and put his hands on either side of her head, squishing her cheeks the way he had when she was a little girl. You good? he asked.

    She managed to nod, her lips tightening as her eyes felt wider than they’d ever been. Yes, sir. She started to say her brother’s name, but her voice broke on the first syllable. C--

    Patrick pulled her to his chest and squeezed. She felt angry, as if he was somehow saying her survival was more important than Casey’s, but she knew he would have reacted the same way if it had been Casey breaking the bad news about her. She put her arms around him, smearing soot on his nice polo shirt, and rested her cheek against his chest as if she was a child.

    Now she could still feel his arms around her, could still remember what it was like telling her mother and brothers that Casey wasn’t coming home. She and her brothers were pallbearers at the funeral, but she’d never seen his body. She had no doubt that was why part of her still hadn’t let go of him, and why even at minor calls like this one she could still feel him just over her shoulder, cheering her on.

    Station 12 was a red-brick building that hung to a sloping street on Queen Anne Hill. Every time they turned into the wide driveway Kelly felt the straps holding her into her seat tighten against her chest in a mimicry of her father’s long-ago hug. She hardly noticed the steep streets anymore; after a life lived in Seattle the idea of suddenly riding vertically was a common occurrence. But every time they pulled up to the building known affectionately as the Stables, she felt that tug.

    Once the engine was tucked safely back in its bay, she stripped off her gear and helped Otto scrub everything down for the next call. There was no smoke damage or soot to wash away this time, but it gave them something to do with their excess energy. The job was meditative and soothing, so when she was done she took that calmness upstairs to relax in her bunk until she was called upon for the next task.

    The bunk room took up all of the second floor. Three arched windows looked out over the slope of the land toward Puget Sound. They couldn’t actually see the water, but the view was still spectacular. The room had twelve beds, scattered throughout the room wherever they would fit. Four along one wall, three along another, one flanking each window, and two more in the center of the room. Each one was surrounded by a moat of clothes, bags, shoes, and spilled blankets, sheets, and pillows.

    As the only girl in a family of boys, making beds was second nature to her. She hardly noticed that she stopped at the first bed to snap the sheet and tuck the blanket under the mattress. She moved to the next one, then the next, smoothing her hand over each one before she declared it ready for the shift to use that night. She wasn’t obsessive about neatness. She didn’t mind a little mess here or there. But the bed-making was a chore that she didn’t mind doing and she was good at. Once another female firefighter had chided her for doing housework.

    "The

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