Noah's Boy-eARC by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

with fire engines, he had trouble pulling in behind the restaurant. Tom wedged the car on the side of the building, where no official parking place existed, and jumped out, ready to ask the nearest firefighter if anyone had died, when he realized that the smoke came from behind him, and that the only thing wrong with the back door to the diner was that two employees and a lot of customers were pressed against it, gawking out, and would see him as well.
    At his glare, Anthony, the day manager, looked like he’d suddenly remembered something important and ran in, and Tom, a bit calmer, turned around to look at the fire.
    The back parking lot of The George—it didn’t really have a front parking lot, except for a couple of spots on the street, reserved for take-out customers to dart in and out—was a square of asphalt bordered on the west by Pride Street, on the east by a narrow, dark alley that looked onto the backside of a bunch of warehouses and apartment houses. On the north side, there was a huge building. Tom gathered it had once been a rooming house of early twentieth-century vintage.
    Though Tom had only had occasion to use the bed-and-breakfast for a stretch of a few days, and the owner, of course, rarely came to The George, the two establishments maintained the sort of friendly interaction of good neighbors, sharing snow removal expenses and parking lot lighting and a few other expenses that benefitted both of them.
    The woman who owned the bed-and-breakfast, a motherly middle-aged woman, stood between two fire engines, wringing her hands. Not far away, a group of firemen were gathered near the tower, one man talking on a cell phone.
    Tom frowned at the towering structure. There was fire halfway up it, but the top seemed to be untouched, and on a dormer window at the very top, there was a shadow that looked like someone looking out. “Is there someone up there?” he asked Louise Carlson, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast.
    Louise turned around and said, “Oh, it’s you, Tom. Yes, a nice Asian girl. Ms. Ryu. Checked in this morning. I— Oh, damn it, I’m sure Elmer set this fire. He keeps saying people confuse us with his hotel, which is nonsense, but…damn it.” She ran her hand back through her greying hair. “This is going to take forever to rebuild.”
    Tom ran his eyes over the body of the building, where the fire was almost completely out, extinguished by high pressure water. The tower was proving more difficult. He wondered where the fire had started, but the alley was too narrow to admit the fire trucks parking there, and the water jet was hitting only the brick wall. Considering this, he said, “You have insurance.” It wasn’t a question.
    “Of course. Whether it covers acts of dragons—”
    “Dragons?”
    “Nonsense, isn’t it? But whoever called in this fire said they saw two dragons flying away north and flaming the tower.” Louise gave a nervous giggle. “At least they were right about the fire, even if they were completely drunk.” She twisted her hands together. “The problem is the time it will take to rebuild will wipe me out financially anyway.”
    But Tom was thinking of that girl in the tower. “Why don’t the firefighters climb up and get her out?” he asked.
    “The ladder won’t reach, and she won’t jump. Not that I blame her.”
    Tom didn’t either. The tower was six stories high, sticking up above the neighborhood. The rooms there were more expensive because of the view.
    A group of firefighters came back, stained with soot and looking like they were ready to drop. “We can’t go around,” they said. “Some of the floor on the way to the tower is unstable, and it looks like the tower stairs are gone anyway.”
    Tom started edging away. The thing was that he could save the woman. He didn’t want to do what he would have to to get her, but on the other hand he couldn’t stand the thought of her burning up in there. He edged behind the group of firefighters