Fully Engulfed: BBW Paranormal Romance (Scruples Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Fully Engulfed

  Warning

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  ~The End~

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Titles by Ditter Kellen

  Scruples Series

  Secret Series

  Time Travel Series

  Enigma Series

  Eyes Without a Face

  The Billionaire’s Baby

  Ditter Kellen

  Follow Ditter on Social Media

  Fully Engulfed

  By Ditter Kellen

  www.ditterkellen.com

  Copyright © by Ditter Kellen

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Ditter Kellen. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  Published in the United States of America

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. This e-book is for sale to adults ONLY as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to a good friend and former colleague, Michelle Gatlin. I’ll never forget our nights in dispatch, laughing, crying, and cheering for our medics, firefighters, and local police department. Life wasn’t always easy in our line of work, but it was fulfilling, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

  I love you, Michelle…meow and forever.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my beta readers, admin, and dearest friends, Cathe Green and Amy Bingham for riding this ride with me, cheering me on, and taking the burden off me whenever possible. You both are amazing ladies, and I honestly don’t know how I would do this without you.

  I love you from my heart…

  And to my Tribe. Ladies, you are absolutely wonderful. All of you. I’m so happy and proud to call you friends. You have been a huge help to me this past year, and I adore each and every one of you.

  To my editor – Kirsten Cherry. You have been an absolute joy to work with. You’re fast, efficient, and you always seem to make time for me no matter what you have going on. I couldn’t imagine working with anyone else. Thank you for being you, and making my books the best they can be! I adore you. *Cheers* Here’s to many more years to come.

  Chapter One

  Michelle Collins keyed in her four-digit code on the security pad outside dispatch and waited for the familiar click before rushing inside. “I heard about Chief Anderson’s chest pain call on the scanner. Is he going to be okay?”

  “No news yet,” Kristin responded, snatching up a phone without looking away from her computer screen. “Will you call animal control about the kittens behind Murphy’s gas station? The caller stated that two of them have wandered out near the road and were almost hit by a car. I have to call Okaloosa County for a standby.”

  Michelle picked up her headset. “Of course. Why the standby?”

  “Two houses, fully engulfed inside Westwind subdivision,” Lisa Nelson, another coworker, answered for Kris.

  “Damn. We’ll be lucky if the entire subdivision doesn’t burn to the ground.” Donning her headset, Michelle called animal control and filled them in on the kitten situation while logging on to the 911 system.

  The emergency line lit up seconds later, and Michelle took a deep breath in anticipation of what was to come. “Walton County 911. Do you need police, fire, or ambulance?”

  “Hello?”

  “Yes? What’s your emergency?”

  “You can hear me?” a distant voice asked in obvious surprise.

  “Barely. Can you speak up?”

  There was a long pause. “A small child is trapped in one of the burning houses at Westwind.”

  Michelle’s heart squeezed with anxiety. “I’m sorry, sir. I can hardly hear you. Did you say a small child is trapped in one of the houses that is on fire?”

  The masculine voice began to fade, sounding as if he stood a great distance from his phone. “Tell them to hurry.”

  “Can I get your name?” Michelle asked as she continued typing instructions for the other dispatchers to pass on to the firefighters on scene. “Hello? Sir?”

  Silence.

  Michelle glanced over at Kristin, noticing her face had turned white. Michelle watched with bated breath as the other dispatcher conversed with the chief on duty about the possible child in danger.

  “He didn’t say, sir. All we managed to get from the caller was a trapped child in one of the burning houses in the subdivision, and then his phone disconnected. I don’t know, sir. Stand by and I’ll find out.” Kristin looked back at Michelle. “Did you try calling him back?”

  Michelle was currently doing that very thing. “I’m trying, but there is no log of his call.”

  “There has to be,” Kristin cried. “Check again.”

  “I am checking again, but it’s not there, I tell you. I’ve gone back into the log thirty minutes just in case there was a glitch or something, but it’s not there.”

  Kristin brought the receiver back to her mouth. “I’m sorry, sir. Yes, we’ll keep looking, and I’ll also have Marsha pull the tapes.”

  “I don’t understand how it could have just disappeared like that,” Michelle whispered, scrolling through the calls once again. “I just talked to him, Kris.”

  The red emergency light lit up once again, and Michelle quickly pressed the call button. “Walton County—”

  “I got her out. She’s lying in the backyard under a copse of trees. Hurry, she’s barely alive.”

  “Can you yell out to one of the firefighters there, sir?” She was met with silence once again.

  Jumping to her feet, Michelle recited the caller’s words verbatim, ending with, “He said she’s barely alive.”

  Kristin passed on the information to Chief Colbert before turning back to Michelle. “How did he know
she was in there? Better yet, how did he get to her without being seen by any of our guys? Why not just tell one of the firefighters which house she was in?”

  “I have no idea.” Michelle pinched the bridge of her nose and picked up a landline. “Marsha? Can you come in here, please?”

  “Let me guess,” Kristin added. “His number didn’t show once again?”

  Michelle only shook her head. She’d checked the second the call came in. “Not even an unknown caller showed up on the log. It was just blank, as if it never happened.”

  Marsha barreled through her office door and into dispatch. “What’s going on?”

  “I received two separate calls from the same man about a small child in a structure fire in Freeport,” Michelle rushed out. “I’ve gone back and looked several times, and there is no number associated with that call.”

  “Not even an unknown number notification shows up on the caller ID,” Kristin finished for her.

  “So you didn’t get a name?” Marsha glanced at all the faces in the room before stopping her gaze on Michelle.

  “He didn’t give a name. He said—”

  “Medic Five to Walton Control,” the radio interrupted.

  Michelle leaned forward and pressed the green key. “Go ahead, Medic Five.”

  “Launch Careflight. I repeat, launch Careflight. The landing zone will be set up in the parking lot of the elementary school.” He rattled off the coordinates. “We have a six-year-old female suffering from smoke inhalation and third degree burns on both legs. Copy?”

  “Control copies.” Michelle repeated back the landing zone coordinates as well as the patient information.

  Kristin moved to the console reserved for the air ambulance and sent out the tones for the flight crew. After logging their takeoff time, she remained in her seat to follow the flight coordinates until they could arrive safely on the ground. “How did your caller get inside that house and rescue the child without being noticed? Better yet, why would he rush in there with all the firefighters on scene?”

  Michelle turned toward Kris, understanding completely where her coworker’s thoughts were. “I wish I knew. The same thing happened with the Shueller fire a few months back. You heard the call come in, right?”

  Kris just stared at her before dropping her gaze and turning back to her console to answer the radio traffic.

  Marsha spun toward her office. “Give me half an hour, and I’ll have the tapes pulled. I’m sure S.O. will be requesting them shortly anyhow.”

  “What makes you think the sheriff’s office would want a copy of the call?” Michelle called out to Marsha’s retreating back.

  The supervisor stopped inside her door and glanced back over her shoulder. “Like the rest of us, they will want to know why the caller would disappear after moving the child to safety and why his call didn’t show up in our CAD either time.”

  Michelle could understand why the sheriff’s office would want a copy of the call. A computer-aided dispatch, or CAD for short, recorded every incoming and outgoing call on their server. Yet it had failed not once but twice now.

  “Do you think he may have been the one who called in the Shueller fire a few months ago as well?” Michelle couldn’t wrap her mind around something so heinous.

  “Who knows?” Marsha responded. “Anything is possible. All I can tell you is that I think it’s awfully suspicious that he knew she was in there but didn’t approach any of the crew on scene. Instead he calls 911 and runs inside the house himself, then saves the little girl before dumping her body in the backyard and not in an ambulance. Sure sounds strange to me.” She softly closed the door behind her.

  As much as Michelle hated to admit it, she knew Marsha spoke the truth. Everything the man had done thus far had been weird. And the fact that his number had mysteriously vanished exactly like the man who’d called in the Shueller fire was even more perplexing.

  * * * *

  Utah Baines gritted his teeth as the world around him spun out of control. He braced himself against the side of a building, waiting for the agony to recede and the screams to stop.

  He had been experiencing the unnatural wailing almost daily for the past three years. Saving a life seemed to be his one reprieve from the nightmare… The only time the cries stopped haunting him.

  The pain gradually faded along with the screams, allowing him to breathe again. His legs buckled beneath him, and he slid to the ground in relief.

  She could hear him. The woman who’d answered his 911 call had heard his voice. But how was that possible? He’d been dead for three years now, and other than the strange connection when he’d reached out about a house fire a few months ago, no one had ever responded to him. Until her…

  He honestly hadn’t thought it would be possible to connect with a person’s mind from such a distance, especially since rescuing the victims always drained him of precious energy. But he’d connected with her.

  The last time he’d attempted to reach out to 911, he’d burned all his energy racing into a house fire in DeFuniak Springs. Yet, when he’d attempted to connect with someone who could help, he couldn’t remember anything past the sound of an angel’s voice. Her voice.

  Utah had always been taught that upon dying, a soul left the body to travel to its forever home. So why hadn’t his? He seemed to be trapped inside his skin, wearing the same clothes and reeking of the same smoke he’d inhaled on the day he’d died.

  And why couldn’t he see other dead people? Was he destined to remain in his current form, lost and alone for eternity?

  A vision of his younger sister suddenly took shape behind his eyes. She’d been gone for eight years, and the pain of her disappearance haunted him still.

  Leanne Baines had been listed as a runaway for months before FBI agent Nolan Delaney discovered evidence that tied Leanne’s case to several other missing girls in the area.

  After years of investigating the disappearances of more than twenty-three women, the FBI had found only one body. Until an unidentified female washed ashore on the Choctawhatchee Bay only weeks before the fire that had claimed Utah’s life.

  Extensive DNA testing had identified Jane Doe as Cara Perez, Leanne’s best friend and the girl she happened to be with the day she’d vanished all those years ago.

  Utah abruptly stood. He couldn’t allow his mind to linger on his sister, not in his weakened state.

  He slowly pushed off from the wall and staggered toward the one place he could find solitude—the shipyard. Something about the water felt serene and harmonic. Perhaps the murky shoreline would be the only place he would ever find peace in his nightmare of an afterlife.

  He threw his head back and cried, “Why have you forsaken me?” The silence that followed was deafening. As with all the times before, he wasn’t really expecting an answer.

  Utah had been taught from an early age that when a person died, their soul either went to heaven or hell. Not someplace in between where you wandered the earth aimlessly, cold and alone.

  His body shivered in response to his thoughts. No matter how many fires he continued to run into or how many bodies he saved, he could never seem to feel warm.

  It stopped the screams though, he numbly admitted to himself. He’d take the cold any day over the endless screams, the soul-wrenching cries for help.

  Chapter Two

  Michelle stood and meandered over to the far wall to clock out for the night. She loved evening shift. It gave her the freedom to sleep in, clean her house, and run errands before heading into work for the day.

  Kristin got to her feet also. “A few of us are going to Scruples tomorrow for lunch. Care to join us?”

  “Thanks, Kris. I may just do that. It really depends on how late I sleep.” Michelle sent her friend and coworker a wink before opening the door to step out into the well-lit parking lot.

  Kristin followed close behind. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Michelle unlocked her car door and slid behind the wheel. “I kno
w what I heard, Kris. How else would I have known where to look for the little girl?”

  “I have no idea, but you have to admit it’s a bit spooky. Especially after the strange call you took about the Shueller fire a few months ago.”

  “It’s a lot spooky. And I’d rather forget it ever happened, if you don’t mind.” Michelle pulled the door shut, cranked the car, and rolled the window down. “I’ll try to make lunch tomorrow. Thanks again for the invite.”

  “No problem. See you then.” With a quick smile, Kristin ambled over to her four-wheel drive and climbed inside.

  The drive home passed without mishap for Michelle. She managed to catch every green light on the brief trip, and traffic was nearly nonexistent.

  She pulled into the familiar driveway of home and stared at the yellow glow of her porch light before grabbing her purse and going inside.

  Michelle couldn’t get the mysterious caller out of her head. Even with the static and poor reception of his phone, his deep voice had bled through her headset to penetrate her brain.

  Maybe she was going crazy and had imagined the call, but she didn’t think so. The six-year-old girl found in the copse of trees was evidence enough that the call had been real. As was the Shueller fire a few months back. The call hadn’t shown up in the CAD at that time either.

  Michelle had no doubt the fire marshal would launch an official investigation. Someone would want answers as to how a local dispatcher knew of the child’s sudden rescue, along with the disappearance of the mysterious recording that tipped her off to the little girl’s whereabouts.

  None of it made any sense, she thought while pouring a glass of wine.

  The trill of a phone startled her, bringing her out of her musing. She fished her cell out of the bottom of her purse. “Hello?”

  “Hi, honey. I heard about what happened. Are you all right?”

  The sound of her stepfather’s voice soothed her somehow. “Hi, Dad. Yes, I’m fine. It was just all so weird. What are you doing up this late?”