Flash Fire Read Online Free Page B

live in Laguna Beach.
    “Altadena’s even worse,” said somebody, bragging because she did live in Altadena, but in a paved citified area where it was unlikely the fire would reach.
    June had been on the handy-talkie. Matt loved those; he loved all the equipment that went with firefighting. “Which houses you assigning us?” asked Matt.
    She shook her head, meaning it was up to her crew. “Choose winners,” said June. “Get houses you can defend and set up on ’em.”
    Choose winners.
    Matt Marsh’s parents certainly did not think they had raised a winner. They had brought him up to be a winner, all right: a corporate leader or a fine attorney who also played tennis and sailed. What was this firefighter crap? It made them crazy. They’d given him a Maserati for his birthday, to entice him back into the world of large incomes. As a firefighter, however, Matt couldn’t afford the kind of neighborhood where people drove hundred-thousand-dollar cars. He was in the kind of neighborhood where people ripped them off, and took the wallets and possibly the lives of their drivers. So the Maserati sat, a glittering high velocity reproach, in his parents’ garage on Pinch Canyon.
    Matt Marsh wanted to win. He wanted to make saves — a house or a garage, but preferably a life. He wanted to show his mother and father that he had worth. There was no greater act than to rescue another human being.
    Because of the hundred-and-fifty- to two-hundred-foot-high flames along some parts of this fire, Command expected significant civilian and firefighter injury. Nice word, “significant.” It meant “lots and lots.”
    A medical branch had been established: five paramedic units and ten ambulances. Available hospital beds had been inventoried.
    Matt thought of the danger, and hoped and hoped and hoped that he would be right there when it came.
The Press House
3:30 P.M.
    D ANNA WAS THINKING ABOUT when she babysat for Geoffrey. She didn’t like it. He didn’t sit in your lap when you read a picture book to him, he wouldn’t answer when you chatted, and he didn’t kiss back when you kissed him good night.
    What sitting for Geoffrey really was, was heartbreaking. You kept thinking that this hug would change him. This tickle would make him giggle and this kiss would make him beam at you. But affection didn’t make a dent in Geoffrey.
    You couldn’t even accuse Mr. and Mrs. Aszling of neglecting him, although they did. Geoffrey neglected right back. He didn’t have a personality, and after a while you didn’t think of him as a little boy, just a breathing thing up there in the house.
    She glanced at her watch, and sure enough, the 3:30 where-are-the-children-and-are-they-using-their-time-well phone call came through.
    “Hey, sweetie,” said Daddy. “How was school? You have a good day? Started your homework yet?”
    “It was okay. We had fire drills. Boring. I’m hanging around doing vocabulary. Don’t you think there should be legislation against vocabulary?”
    Her father laughed. “What’s Hall doing?”
    “I think he’s swimming laps.”
    “Tell him to do his chemistry.”
    “Daddy, he knows to do his chemistry. At some point, you have to let us decide when to do what.”
    “Tell your mother,” he said, and they both laughed, and air-kissed and hung up. Danna forgot her father completely and instantly.
    If there’s a fire, thought Danna, Hall would save Geoffrey.
    She loved the image of her older brother saving a life. Hall was a funny combination of jock (hill climbing, off road biking) and dreamer. It was nice to have a brother only a year older, to pave the way and make clear what mistakes, teachers, and people to avoid.
    Hall saves Geoffrey, she decided, and I save the kittens and I’d better also save Egypt and Spice.
    Egypt and Spice were the Luus’ horses. Every day Danna saved her school cafeteria apple, walking on up to the paddock to give Egypt one half and Spice the other.
    She got an apple ready, and