“She’s gonna fucking die anyway!” he screams. “The smokeinhalation will kill her after the fucking fact! She won’t be saved!”
That’s my trigger. With my blood pumping and the adrenaline rocking, a wish of death for the woman I love is the one thing I can’t hear. It’s not a conscious decision at that point. It just is, and it’s like looking down at myself from some other place as I rear up, arm back, and use every ounce of strength I possess to clock the guy.
Except I never hit my target. Two sets of arms grab me, hauling me up and away while I struggle against them with a deafening cry of outrage. Red is the only color I see as I fight against them, slipping from one of their grips, but then someone else is in my face, slamming their hands against my chest, forcing me back.
“Enough,” Nate commands in a tone soaked in authority I’ve never heard him use. Not even with Brody. “Enough.”
“I did everything right!” The guy screams at us from the ground. “That was my best fucking fire, you useless, no-good fucking water fairy. You don’t know anything! I’ll fucking show you!”
Nate grabs my jacket when I struggle again, hauling me backward a few more feet. “I get you’re angry—you should be—but this isn’t the way. Take a walk. Go decon so you can get to the hospital. That’s a goddamn order.”
Meeting Nate’s eyes, we stare at each other for a long moment, me challenging him, and him meeting me dead on without backing down. I’m the first to break, tugging out of the grip of whoever has hold of me from behind, casting my eyes down. He’s right. Beating the guy to nothing but bone isn’t the way, but I know how good it would feel right now with the fury flowing through my veins.
“Make sure that piece of shit walks away in handcuffs.”
I don’t add the threat. I don’t need to. Nate hears it loud andclear, giving me a solemn nod. Glancing over Nate’s shoulder at the man now being picked up by two officers, I spit at his feet. It’s all I’ve got as he continues to scream about the fire and how it was his best work, and none of us have any idea what we’re doing.
Not worth it. Beating him won’t change anything.
Bryn’s safe. She’s alive. She’s going to stay alive. And that fuck face is going to go away for a long fucking time.
With Luke there, tapping his helmet and giving me a nod, I’ve made sure of it.
Chapter 52
Wyatt
Decontaminatedandinmystreet clothes, I rush through the emergency room doors at the perfect moment. Jordan is standing behind the triage desk, talking to a nurse at a computer that has no one in front of it. They both look up when they notice me coming, and Jordan points me towards the door leading back into the patient area.
When we meet near the doors, she grabs my arm, halting me rather than feeding into the urgency in my steps.
“I need to see her,” I ground out, trying my best to keep any irritation down. As the adrenaline from the fire and the arsonist started to wear off, the worry set in.
Jordan nods patiently. “You will, but I want to warn you first.”
My stomach knots.
“We had to sedate her,” she continues, like the whole world didn’t drop out from under me by fifty feet. “It’s mild, but we didn’t have a choice.”
It’s a damn good thing I’m in an emergency department because my heart stops, and I bring my hands to my face, scrubbing them roughly over my eyes, down my cheeks, until they stop at my jaw. “The smoke? Fuck. She was in there too long. I was too slow. I didn’t get her out in time.”
“No, Wyatt, you did good.” She nods reassuringly, touching my forearm again. She looks around, lowering her voice. “A lot ofit was anxiety once she started coming down from the situation, and she was definitely in some pain. There’s some swelling in her airway, but we didn’t have to intubate. Ruby’s in there now with her, and I’ll have the doctor come see you both to explain and answer any questions you might have.”
Moisture gathers in the corner of my eyes, worry and relief colliding into one. “Is she going to be okay?”
“She’s tough,” Jordan says, flipping her braid over her shoulder as her hand comes to my shoulder blade to guide me towards the door. She taps her security card against a little black box on the side, and the doors start to open. “She’ll get through this.”
It’s not lost on me that Jordan doesn’t fully answer the question. Being okay and getting through something are two very different things.
Jordan leads me to the shoe—what most of us first responders and ER staff call the emergency room because of its horseshoe layout—and back to a room near the nurse’s station. Bryn isn’t in a curtained section; instead, they’ve got her in her own room. A window next to the door has me peering inside to find Ruby sitting at Bryn’s bedside. As we reach the door, my eyes land on Bryn in the hospital bed, arms outside of the bedsheet, chest covered by the white and blue of a hospital gown.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was just taking a nap. No lines of worry are etched in the smooth skin of her face, though she’s red from the fire and heat. The soot and ash have been washed away, but an oxygen mask covers her mouth and nose.
My gaze drifts down her body, landing on her arms. Angry red marks cover her skin where the cable wires dug into her, one side worse than the other from how she was suspended.
“Wyatt,” Ruby says, drawing my attention to her in the chair. Her eyes are rimmed red from crying, and the smile she tries tooffer is wobbly at best.
“I’ll give you guys a minute,” Jordan says, patting me on the shoulder before leaving.
