Page 2 of Protecting What's Mine

“Oh my God. Oh my God. He just slammed into us.” The girl in the Jeep, she couldn’t have been more than twenty, crawled out of the back, shaking so hard her teeth chattered.

“Anyone else with you?” Linc asked.

“N-n-n-no. I couldn’t stop. It happened so fast. I didn’t mean to hit that car.”

“Honey, I need you to get to the side of the road,” he insisted.

“I should see if they’re okay,” she said, pointing a trembling finger at the sedan. “N-n-no one got out.”

Skyler jogged up, breathless with excitement.

“Take her,” Linc said. “Shock. Start triaging the others. Keep them out of the hot zone.”

“On it,” she said calmly. She was shaking too, but it was a different kind of physiological reaction. Adrenaline meeting preparation. “Come with me, miss.”

He debated his approach to the sedan. The cab of the tractor-trailer was smashed into the barrier, blocking the access from the front. The fire made rear entry impossible.

“Only one way in,” he muttered, stripping off his air tank and helmet and dragging on his gloves. He slid under the belly of the low trailer. Fluids bled over the asphalt, puddling and pooling, slipping over his gear. It was a good goddamn mess.

The heat was getting worse by the second, and he paused for a second to adjust his hood.

His heart beat steadily in his ears as he crawled out from the undercarriage.

“Someone help us!”

Linc wedged himself into the space between the sedan’s rear door and the trailer. The driver was awake and panicking behind the wheel as the flames from the Jeep were licking at the trunk of the car.

There were two bystanders leaning over the concrete barrier, yanking in vain at the driver’s side door. But there wasn’t enough clearance.

“Fuck me,” Linc muttered. Nothing was ever easy when it came to life and death.

“Help us!” The woman, tall and dark, was hanging over the barrier, a half dozen expensive bracelets shimmering on her wrists as she pulled on the bent frame of the door. She reminded him of Wonder Woman. The man helping her was five-foot-nothing and couldn’t have weighed more than a buck twenty-five. He had a Tweety Bird tie on. Linc would put five bucks on it being a clip-on.

“You okay, buddy?” Linc asked the driver, ducking his head into the open window of the back seat. The guy had been enjoying the same windows-down drive only moments before it all went to hell.

“My leg hurts like hell, and I’m stuck, man.”

He was a big man whose bushy white mustache was turning pink thanks to a bloody nose from the airbag. Sweat matted his hair.

“We’re gonna get you out of here, okay? Just hang in there,” Linc promised.

There was a loud pop, and a metal projectile exploded from where the trunk had been.

“Holy shit! What was that?” Tweety Bird yelped. Wonder Woman cringed but never slowed her fruitless pulls on the door.

“Trunk hydraulic bursting,” Linc said, shimmying through the back passenger-side window into the back seat. The heat was a hell-like inferno.

“Mister, I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” the driver said, his voice shaking. “I might not make it outta here, and I’d sure feel bad if you went tryin’ to save me. I’m seventy-two. You’ve got more ahead of you than I do.”

Linc gripped the man’s shoulder. Sometimes firm physical contact was the quickest reassurance. “It’s gonna be fine. Just do what I say, and we’ll both be having cold beers tonight.”

The heat in the car was unbearable. But Linc ignored it. He aligned his body to create a barrier between the encroaching fire and the driver’s seat. His turnout gear would protect him and the driver, for the next few minutes at least.

“What’s the game plan, fire guy?” Wonder Woman demanded as he stripped off his gloves and dug through his pockets.

“Can’t take him out through the door. I need you to find fire extinguishers and someone who’ll use this glass breaker,” he said, pulling the tool free of his pocket. “We gotta move fast.” The windshield was the worst possible egress. The glass was stronger than the windows and shatter-resistant. It would take more than a miracle to get the driver out that way.

She grabbed the glass breaker, looked at the driver, and bit her lip.