One last foot in front of the other, one last drag of my knee across the floor, three quick breaths through my mask to prepare my racing heart, and I round the corner of the doorway.
Fuck.
Chapter 50
Wyatt
“Bryn!”Iyellather unmoving body.
It takes my brain a moment to analyze everything in front of me as I race inside the room I stood in with her weeks ago. It’s rippling with smoke, angry and punishing overhead, dark gray, churning to a charcoal. Visibility is shit up high, but clearer lower where she is on the massage table.
Or rather, attached to it.
It’s lying on its side, Bryn suspended between it and some kind of rope. A chain runs from the steel table leg that crosses beneath the table to her wrist at her side, her head flopped towards the floor.
She doesn’t look good, beads of sweat dripping from flushed skin, bits of soot and ash marking her body. There’s no reaction when I yell her name again, reaching the foot of the bed to look at her restraints. The firefighter in me knows I need to go after all this rope and the chain around her wrist, but the man inside of me wants to overrule my training to grasp her face and ensure she wakes up.
I push it back. There’s no time. Taking it could mean life or death.
Looking at the rope, I curse when I realize it isn’t rope at all. Its wire cable.
Jumping to the underside of the table, I look to see how it’sattached, tracing it to where it starts. My stomach drops when it leads me to the side of the table with her on it, a heavier chain like the one at her wrist locking everything together with a heavy-duty lock. Right near her ankle.
“Fuck,” I roar, my voice filling the entire room, drowning out the rumble of fire overhead.
If it had been on the underside, I could have popped it with my irons, but it’s so fucking close to her like this. I risk seriously hurting her if I try. If it comes down to it, though, her life over injury wins every time.
“Victim found restrained. Require immediate bolt cutters,” I shout into my radio, and even I can hear the panic in my voice. The fear. “Division two, far delta side. Bolt cutters required. I repeat, bolt cutters required.”
There’s been constant chatter coming over the radio, my name being said more than once, but I’m locked in on Bryn. Now that I’ve said something, Nate answers in a clipped tone.
“Roger. CAN report.”
“Heavy smoke coming in from the ceiling,” I tell him, glancing up. The conditions are shit, the smoke growing worse than when I walked in thirty seconds ago. We need to get her the hell out of here before this whole damn room flashes over. “Growing black, starting to really churn. Need immediate help.”
There’s a muffled sound on the other side of the bed that has my heart leaping. Staying as low as I can, I scramble back around the table, dropping to my knees beside Bryn as her head barely manages to lift.
Tears leak from eyes that are only slits, and she groans behind a piece of tape. A piece of fucking tape I didn’t realize was over her mouth.
“Fuck. Baby, I’m here. I got you,” I tell her, cupping her headin my gloved hand. I try to grab an edge to pull the tape off, but with my gloves it’s no use. “I’m getting you out of here, okay? Stay with me.”
The faintest acknowledgment has my chest constricting. She’s sweating bullets, her face lined with little black particles of ash, moisture beading down the tape from her nose. I can’t imagine how raw her throat must be, or how her airway must feel like it’s on fire from all the smoke.
I need to get her out. Now.
Getting up to my knees, I assess the bed. On its side, with the legs extended and her attached to it, I won’t get it through the door. If I right its position, she’ll be consumed by the smoke and out-of-control heat that comes with being higher off the ground. Even if I got the table upright, getting it through the door by myself with the angles would take time I don’t have.
A helpless feeling churns in my gut, and I grab my radio. “I need the bolt cuttersnow.”
There’s a whimper beside me, the sound like a knife straight to my heart. Bryn’s eyes are wider, but I can tell she’s struggling to keep them that way, moisture leaking over the bridge of her nose into the other eye.
My heart is being ripped out of my chest at the sight of her, knowing the only thing I might be able to do to get her out of here will hurt her in the process. Her skin is so flushed, clothes sticking to her the way mine are inside my gear, but that’s just another beating my heart is taking. I’m in far better shape in my gear than she is with nothing.
I could take my jacket off to give to her. Give her my mask to breathe. But I’d be useless in helping her then, and it breaks every piece of me knowing that I’m doing the shittiest job at protecting her.
That I wasn’t able to protect her from this.
She whimpers again, the middle of the piece of tape pushing outward like she’s trying to move it. She wants it off, and though I know I shouldn’t, I peel my glove off so I can remove the tape.
