Page 177 of Protecting What's Mine

The angle of the ladder was too steep for a two-man team to take her. He hefted her up and over his shoulder and swung onto Betsy’s ladder.

“Linc, hurry!” he could hear Mackenzie shouting from the ground.

Carefully, he descended, as the world above him wavered in the flames. The ceiling came down halfway between the second and first floor. By the time his feet were on the ground, part of the roof had caved in over the bedroom.

He handed the sister over to a team of EMTs and opened his arms.

Mack fell into them and buried her face in his chest.

“Mackenzie. Baby.” He shoved his mask off, stroked her face. “Open your eyes.”

When she did, when he saw that bottle green and the curve of her lips, his heart started again.

“You came,” she whispered.

“You’re damn right I did. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

“You’re here now.” A coughing fit wracked her body.

Khalil, the paramedic, knelt down. “We’ve got your blonde on oxygen,” he said. “Now let’s take a look at your brunette.”

“I’m fine,” Mack insisted. “Is my sister alive?”

“No breath. No beat,” Khalil said.

Mack dropped to her knees next to the spine board they’d placed Wendy on and waved away the EMT. She listened for breath.

Linc shrugged out of his coat and draped it over her shoulders, then stepped back and watched her begin chest compressions on the woman who tried to end her life.

“You all right, Chief Idiot Who Can’t Follow Protocol?” Ty demanded, approaching.

Linc ran two shaking hands through his hair.

“I may never be all right again for as long as I live,” he predicted, swiping an arm under his nose.

Ty pulled him in for a hard, one-armed hug. “Scared the shit out of us when you fell through the window on that gunshot.”

Linc patted down his body. Nothing felt holey. “She must have hit the wall or the window frame,” he guessed. “You got gloves?”

“I can get a pair.”

“I’ve got a weapon in my pants,” Linc said.

“I’m not falling for that one again,” Ty said.

The laugh felt good and loosened some of the fear that still had his heart in a death grip.

Once Ty fished the gun out of Linc’s pants and into an evidence envelope, Linc went for his first girl.

Sunshine watched him from a blanket where one of his firefighters and an EMT were keeping her company. Her tail thumped, the mask over her nose fogged as his sweet girl breathed.

He lay down on the cold ground next to her. “Hey, pretty girl.”

Her tail thumped a little harder, and she wriggled closer to him. Linc stroked his hand from head to tail. She nudged him

There was a commotion behind him.

Everyone seemed to be talking at once.