Page 161 of The Fire Line

Jay frowned. “What’re you doing?”

“Carrying you.”

“Harris.”

“Ain’t asking.”

Jay looked at Harris’s hand and then at the way he had gone protective over his left side. “You’re hurt.”

“Can you walk?”

Jay tried to straighten. His knees softened almost immediately.

That answered it.

Harris crouched with his back toward him. “Arms around my neck.”

Jay hesitated.

“Now.”

After a moment, he obeyed. Harris caught him beneath the thighs and stood.

Pain tore through his burned hand and into his forearm while his ribs seized around their combined weight. Smoke tightened his chest until the first breath came out as a cough, and for one ugly second his legs threatened to fold beneath them.

They didn’t.

Jay was not a small man. Under any other circumstances Harris might have pointed that out just to hear whatever insult came back, but now Jay’s weight felt wrong in a way that had nothing to do with how heavy he was. He was too loose against Harris’s back, too willing to be carried.

“Stay with me.”

A breath touched Harris’s neck.

He started climbing.

For the first fifty yards, Jay gave him something whenever Harris said his name—a sound, a word, enough to prove he was still there. Then he stopped answering.

Harris took three more steps before he understood that the silence had changed.

“Jay.”

Nothing.

He stopped, his own breathing hard and uneven now, sweat cooling beneath the smoke ground into his clothes. A faint breath still touched his neck, but when Harris said Jay’s name again, there was no answer.

“Open your eyes.”

Jay remained slack.

The mountain disappeared.

A hospital room opened in its place so completely that Harris nearly stumbled: Nell’s hand inside his, cooling while the machines continued making their useless noise, Harris still holding on long after there was anyone left to feel it.

For one disorienting second, he was there again.

Then Jay’s weight shifted against his back.

No.