Chapter One
Grant Cutter had figured this was about as bad as a scene could get. The temperature with windchill well below zero. Their gear and lines freezing up. Stalactites of ice hanging from his helmet blocking his vision until he took the time to break them off with a swipe of his stiff glove. And the water was a hell of a lot more effective at turning the house and street into an ice sculpture than putting out the flames.
But he was wrong. It could always be worse.
The fire had not only jumped, but it jumped to an apartment building they couldn’t confirm had been fully evacuated, so the incident commander was sending them in.
Canvassing a residential building that probably should have been condemned by the city before he was even born wasn’t exactly the reprieve from the cold he’d been looking for but, after checking their gear, he and the other guys from Engine 59 and another crew went inside.
“Fast but thorough,” Danny Walsh said. The LT led the way up the stairs since they’d start at the top and work their way down. The other crew would pound on doors at ground level and if all went well, they’d meet in the middle and get the hell out before it got bad.
The smoke thickened as they reached the top floor. A bare-chested, barefoot guy in undone jeans passed them on the stairs. He was coughing, but waved off their attempts to assist him.
“Is there anybody else up there?” Danny yelled.
“Dunno.” The guy didn’t even pause.
“Asshole,” Scott Kincaid muttered into the radio, but Grant wasn’t surprised. They’d responded to these buildings before and they didn’t seem to attract the kind of residents who gave a shit about their neighbors.
They started pounding on doors, which was all they could do, but they didn’t get any response until they’d worked their way down to the next floor.
“I hear something,” Aidan Hunt yelled, pounding a third time on a door. “Something banged. Maybe coughing.”
Grant was closest to him, so he used the Halligan bar to pop the door. Smoke billowed out, so dense they could barely see, and he followed Aidan in. The apartment was small—one room and probably barely legal—so it only took a few seconds to follow the coughing to the person on the floor near the window. While Aidan did a quick check of the bathroom and under the bed to make sure there was nobody else, Grant crouched down next to the person he was pretty sure was a woman, despite having a throw blanket over her head.
“Fire department,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Her cough was so weak and ineffectual, he didn’t bother asking if she could get up and walk. Instead he rolled her, intending to lift her and carry her out.
Then the throw blanket slipped away from a sleep-tangled mess of blonde curls, revealing dark blue eyes he saw in his dreams, and Grant’s world stopped.
“Wren.”
He hadn’t seen her in five months, since she’d told him on the phone she didn’t want to see him anymore and then ghosted. No explanation. No compromise. Nothing but five months of a broken heart that hadn’t even begun to heal yet.
What the hell was she doing in this place?
Grant. Her mouth formed his name, though no sound got through her constricted throat. The grayish cast of her skin and lips terrified him, and he started to hoist her up.
Aidan was at his side. “I’ll carry her out.”
“I’ve got her.” Despite the shock and pain from seeing her again, Grant wanted to hold her. He wanted to cradle her in his arms and feel that sense of contentment holding her had always brought him in the past.
There was no time for that. After draping her over his shoulder, he stood and headed for the door. It wouldn’t be a comfortable ride for her, but the only thing that mattered right now was getting her out of the building and to an ambulance, where they could give her oxygen. Her body had gone totally limp by the time he reached the stairs, but he refused to consider the possibility she’d need medical care beyond that.
They’d gotten there in time, and that’s all there was to it.
He heard voices in his radio and was aware Aidan stayed right behind him, but Grant didn’t stop moving until he hit the clear, frigid air.
He paused to get his bearings and then headed for the ambulances on standby. Some of those voices in his radio must have warned them he was coming, because Cait opened the back of her truck and waved at him.
Cait Tasker was not only an EMT, but she was engaged to Gavin Boudreau, who was Grant’s best friend and with the Ladder 37 crew. E-59 and L-37 were parked side-by-side in the firehouse and always rolled out together, so Gavin was on scene, too. And Cait knew Wren. The four of them had spent a lot of time together before Wren walked away from him and didn’t look back.
By the time he reached the ambulance doors, he could feel her stirring. Not a lot, but she had to be breathing in order to regain consciousness and that was enough for now.
Because it was so damn cold and she was small, they didn’t bother with the stretcher. He handed Wren up to Cait’s partner, Tony, who turned away with her.
“Oh my God, Grant.” Cait looked at him, her expression mirroring his thoughts. “What the hell was Wren doing living here?”
