Page 176 of Protecting What's Mine

“Please,” Linc whispered. There was a tug on his pant leg.

He stopped, ready to kick whoever the fuck it was in the face.

“Chief, you don’t have your mask,” Skyler said, holding out her own. “Take it. Go.”

He slipped it over his head, took her helmet, too, and then took the last two rungs and shattered the fucking glass.

“Mackenzie!” he roared.

But the gunshot was louder.

He threw himself into the room, disoriented, fell to his hands and knees. There was something there. A lump. Jesus Christ. Sunshine. His Sunshine.

“Mackenzie,” he shouted again, his throat burning up.

“I’m here. Get Sunny!”

She was alive. She was alive. She was alive.

He couldn’t see her, but Mackenzie was alive.

“Come towards me if you can,” he yelled. “Follow the sound of my voice.”

He shoved his hands under Sunshine’s limp form and lifted her to the window.

Gloved hands were ready and waiting to take his girl. He waited until they had her and then turned back. It was black as pitch in the room. He hurried forward on his hands and knees, pacing off the room in his mind. The flames were here now, licking under the door, flashes of orange through choking smoke.

“Mackenzie!”

“Here!”

A hand reached out and gripped his coat. He grabbed her and pulled, but she didn’t move.

“Are you stuck?”

There was a steady stream of requests for CAN reports blaring through Linc’s radio.

“I’m trying to drag my sister with me.”

“Your sister?”

“She’s unconscious. I think she hit her head when I hit her!”

“Let go of your sister, Mackenzie.”

“Promise me you’ll get her out.”

“I swear to you, I will personally carry her out of this house, but you need to move now!”

He dragged her forcefully, not even giving her the option to decide.

“Take my girl,” he shouted as he shoved the coughing Mackenzie’s head and shoulders out the window. He waited until she disappeared into the night onto the ladder before crawling back into the room. In such a tiny room, it wasn’t hard to find the sister.

Her form was limp on the floor at the foot of the bed. Something small and metal beside her. The gun. She’d stood between Mackenzie and the door with a gun. He pocketed it, shoving it into one of the exterior pockets on his gear.

He refused to think. Refused to acknowledge the rage that boiled hotter beneath his gear than the flames that were smothering him.

“Chief Reed, exiting the structure with third victim,” he growled into the radio.