Protecting What's Mine(119)

Less than a minute later, he aimed Betsy at his backyard fence. He didn’t stop to think. He simply mashed the gas pedal and sent the antique truck smashing through the fence.

He slammed on the brakes as a half dozen firefighters threw themselves over the locked front gate into the side yard. Together, they braced Betsy’s ladder against the side of the house.

His heart was in his fucking throat as he started to climb.

He needed to be careful. To be smart. If the arsonist was in there, if they were still conscious, he’d be a sitting duck. The bedroom window was closed. No ventilation. Trapping all that poison in that tiny room.

It could be a trap, but it didn’t fucking matter. He was going in.

He felt the ladder shake beneath him. One of his crew climbed behind him.

“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.

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.”