AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But she was breathing. That had to be enough for now—because there were still a whole lot of people in the trailer next door.
Baker set his sights on Fido. Bomb-sniffing dogs took commands, but he didn’t have a clue how to order this one around. He pointed down at the K-9. “Uh, guard?”
Carville’s sidekick licked his lips, cocking his head to one side.
“Stay.” That had to be one. Baker swallowed the charred taste in his throat as he took in the remains of the station. Loss threatened to consume him as the past rushed to meet the present. No. He had to stay focused, get everyone out.
Fire and Rescue rounded the engine in front of what used to be the station as court staff escaped into the parking lot. Baker rushed to the other half of the trailer. A woman doubled over, nearly coughing up a lung.
He ran straight for her. “Is anyone still in there?”
She turned in a wild search. “Jason, our clerk! I don’t see him!”
Baker hauled himself up the stairs, feeling the impact of the explosion with every step. Smoke consumed him once inside. It tendriled in random patterns as he waved one hand in front of his face but refused to disperse. Damn it. He couldn’t see anything in here. “Hello! Jason? Are you still in here?”
Movement registered from his left. He tried to navigate through the cloud, fighting for his next breath, and hit the corner of a desk. The smoke must’ve been feeding in through the HVAC system, and without a giant hole in the ceiling it had nowhere to go. Smoke drove into his lungs. Burned. Baker tried to cough it up, but every breath was like inhaling fire. “Jason, can you hear me?”
He dared another few steps and hit something soft. Not another desk—too low. Sweat beaded down the back of his neck as a tile dropped from the ceiling. It shattered on the corner of another desk a couple feet away.
This place wasn’t going to hold much longer. It was falling apart at the seams.
Reaching down, Baker felt a suit jacket with an arm inside and clamped onto it. “Sorry about the rug burn, man, but we gotta go.”
Morning sunlight streaming through the glass door at the front of the trailer was the only map he had, but as soon as his brain had homed in on that small glimpse of hope, it was gone. The smoke closed in, suffocating him with every gasp for oxygen. Pinpricks started in his fingers and toes. His body was starved for air. Soon he’d pass out altogether.
A flood of dizziness gripped tight, and he sidestepped to keep himself upright. “Not yet, damn it.”
He wasn’t going to pass out. Not now.
Baker forced himself forward. One step. Then another. His lungs spasmed for clean air, but there was no way to see if he was heading in the right direction. He just had to do the one thing that never ended well. He had to trust himself.
Seconds distorted into full minutes...into an hour...as he tried to navigate through the smoke. He was losing his grip on the court clerk. His legs finally gave into the percussion of the explosion. He dropped harder than a bag of rocks. The trailer floor shook beneath him. Black webs encroached on his vision. This was it. This was when the past finally claimed him.
Baker clawed toward where he thought the front door might be. Out of air. Out of fight. Hell, maybe he should’ve had one of those cranberry-lemon cookies as a last meal.
“Jocelyn.”
He had no reason to settle on her name. They weren’t friends. They weren’t even acquaintances. If anything, they were on two separate sides of the war taking over this town. But over the past couple of months, caught in his darkest moments, she’d somehow provided a light when he’d needed it the most. With baked goods and smiles as bright as noon day sun.
The smoke cleared ahead.
A flood of sunlight cut through the blackness swallowing him whole.
“Chief Halsey!” Her voice cut through the haze eating up the cells in his brain, though it was more distorted than he was used to. Her outline solidified in front of him. Soft hands stretched an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. “Don’t worry. We’re going to get you out of here.”
A steady stream of fresh air fought back the sickness in his lungs, and he realized it wasn’t Jocelyn’s voice that time. It was deeper. Distinctly male. Another outline maneuvered past him and took to prying his grip from the court clerk. Baker let them. He clawed up the firefighter’s frame and dragged himself outside with minimal help. It was amazing what oxygen could do to a starving body.
The sun pierced his vision and laid out a group of onlookers behind the century-old wood fence blocking off the station from the parking lot. A series of growls triggered his flight instinct, but Baker pushed away from the firefighter, keeping him on his feet. The dog. He’d ordered him to guard his handler.
Baker caught sight of the German shepherd from the back of Alpine Valley’s only Animal Control truck. Fido was trying to chew his way through the thin grate keeping him from his partner. Baker’s instincts shot into high alert as he homed in on the unconscious woman on the ground, surrounded on either side by two EMS techs. He took a step forward. “Jocelyn?”
They’d stripped her free of her Kevlar vest to administer chest compressions—and exposed a bloodred stain spreading right in front of his eyes. He didn’t understand. She’d been breathing when he’d left her.
Baker took a step forward. “What’s happening? What’s wrong with her?”
“Chief, we need you to keep your distance,” one of the techs said. Though he couldn’t be sure which one. “She’s not responding. We need to get her in the bus. Now.”
Strong hands forced him out of the way, but all he had attention for was Jocelyn, a mercenary he hadn’t wanted anything to do with but who had insisted on sabotaging his life. Baker tried to follow, but the firefighter at his back was strong-arming him to stay at the scene. Helplessness surged as potent as that day he’d watched everything he’d built burn to the ground, and he wanted to fix it. To fixthis. “Tell me what’s happening.”
