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CHAPTERONE
Elly Finnegan looked up in awe at the twinkling blue Christmas lights lining the parade route through downtown Milwaukee. This was her favorite time of year, and more so since she had planned a family reunion between her siblings and their Callahan cousins on Christmas Day. She’d found her grandmother’s diary in the attic and couldn’t wait to share what she’d learned with the rest of the family. The Callahans and Finnegans shared the same set of great-grandparents, but their respective grandmother siblings had lost touch with each other.
And now she knew why.
Since she was looking upward, she didn’t notice the guy coming toward her until she’d bumped into him. Flustered, she smiled, and said, “Oh, excuse me.”
His gaze sliced toward her. Her smile faded at the hard coldness reflected in his eyes. Elly genuinely loved people, and animals too, having made a habit of bringing strays home when she was younger, but there was something about this man that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in alarm. He wore a long dark coat that went to his knees, his hands tucked out of sight. Their gazes locked for a long, uncomfortable moment before he turned away and merged into the crowd without saying a word.
Evil.The word flashed in her mind, a weird sense of impending doom washing over her. But then she told herself not to be ridiculous. Tugging on her boxy navy-blue EMT uniform, she quickly made her way toward the ambulance. She and her EMT partner Derek were on duty for the Christmas parade. The assignment was a relief as the parade usually went off every year without a hitch. It wasn’t likely she and Derek would have to deal with any actual injuries.
Okay, maybe she was getting better at dealing with her irrational aversion to blood, but there was still that moment of light-headedness she couldn’t quite shake. Between that and the nausea that rolled through her abdomen, she’d barely managed to hold herself together the handful of times she’d been forced to deal with a bleeding injury.
Normally, she spent her days transferring patients from one location to the next. The ambulance company she worked for had contracts with most of the hospitals and nursing homes in the area. It wasn’t exciting work by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d been deeply grateful for the uneventful transfers.
She really needed to find a way to push through this. The Finnegan family was all about being first responders, and she was determined to do her part. She’d already disappointed her oldest brother, Rhy, after failing first to become a cop, then again when she’d dropped out of the nursing program.
This career she’d chosen would work. It had to. There wasn’t another option.
Crowds of people packed both sides of the street along the parade route. She pushed through the throng, smiling at the memory of how her parents had brought her to the Christmas parade when she was young. Her parents had passed away eleven years ago now, and she still missed them. Although she was also grateful for her two oldest brothers, Rhy and Tarin, who’d stepped in to raise her after their tragic loss. As the youngest of nine siblings, she knew full well she was the main reason Rhy and Tarin had given up having a personal life to move back to the Finnegan homestead. Granted, the twins, Aiden and Alanna, had only been seventeen to her fourteen, but still. She had been the driving force behind their decision.
Thankfully, all her older siblings had found love in the past year. She was thrilled with the expansion of the Finnegan clan, including baby Colleen, the newest member of the family, born five weeks ago to Rhy and Devon. Joy’s baby was due next April, and Kyleigh was pregnant now too. She had a feeling it wouldn’t take long for the rest of the family to add to the Finnegan clan. Aiden and Shelby were getting married mid-January, so they had that momentous occasion to look forward to as well.
Glancing at her watch, she realized the parade was about to start. It would take about fifteen minutes or so for the parade to pass by her current location.
“There you are,” Derek said. He was three years younger than her twenty-four, although her birthday was only a few weeks away. He’d asked her out, but she’d declined, not having any interest in him. Nice enough guy, but she’d been fighting a crush on Joe Kingsley—a cop who worked for her brother Rhy on the tactical team—for months now.
Not that Joe knew she existed. Well, other than being Rhy’s baby sister. He all but patted her head as if she were ten every time they met. She shook off the depressing thought.
“This is going to be awesome,” she said. Their position near the intersection was such that she’d have a great view of the parade.
“If we don’t freeze to death,” Derek muttered, stamping his feet and tucking his hands under his armpits. While she had to fight her aversion to blood while working, Derek had grown up in Arizona and hated, absolutely hated the cold weather.
Why he didn’t just go back to Arizona was a mystery.
She caught a glimpse of a tall cop, and her heart gave a silly thump when she realized Joe was here too. In uniform and obviously working, the way she was. She stepped forward, but then forced herself to stop. She couldn’t just rush over to say hi. Not while they were both on duty.
Especially since Joe had never hinted at having any sort of feelings toward her. She was nothing more than a pesky younger sister to him. Tolerated only because Rhy often put Joe in charge of the tactical unit. The sooner she accepted that fact, the better.
Christmas music rang out, indicating the parade had begun. She couldn’t help grinning like a little kid as the marching band gave a rousing rendition of “Frosty the Snowman.” She sang along, letting out a quick laugh.
The music grew louder as the marching band and the rest of the parade made their way down the street toward them. Elves tossed Christmas candy into the crowd, and a large float on a flatbed trailer had a pair of ice skaters dressed in cheerful red costumes doing twirls on the small patch of ice.
“Oh, that’s so cool!” She was impressed the couple was able to spin and skate on a very small ice pond. When the male skater lifted the female over his head, she gasped and applauded along with the rest of the spectators.
Crack! Crack!It took a moment for her to realize the skaters were lying on the ice, bleeding.
Gunfire? Had that really been gunfire?
Screams reverberated around her. The marching band scattered. More bullets were fired, and people around her fell to the ground, not moving. Dear Lord Jesus, no!
There was an active shooter at the parade!
“Get down!” Derek tugged on her arm, trying to get her closer to the shelter of the ambulance. But when she saw Joe and several other cops rushing into danger, she surprised herself by breaking free of Derek’s grip.
She grabbed the first aid kit and ran out to where she saw a young kid, barely eight years old, lying on the ground. Bile rushed into her throat and her head spun as she saw he’d been shot in the leg.
Don’t faint! Don’t faint!She knelt beside the child, but then as more gunfire rang out, she realized she couldn’t stay there with him. Instead, she scooped him into her arms and ran, stumbling back to the ambulance.
