Beth Cornelison - Duty To Protect

“Not yet.” Riley grabbed the thermal imaging camera Cal shoved toward him and scanned the unburned corner of the room. Designed to detect a person’s body heat when smoke was too thick for firefighters to see, the apparatus was often the only way to find persons trapped in a fire.

Riley studied the screen as he aimed the camera in methodical sweeps over the floor.

“Ginny West!” he shouted again. “Ginny, can you hear me?”

A blob of yellow and orange appeared on the screen. His adrenaline spiked. “I’ve got something!”

Cal crawled up beside him. “Is that a foot?”

Heart pumping, Riley nodded toward the downed file cabinet. “Someone’s behind there.”

Across the room a support beam collapsed from the ceiling amid a shower of sparks and flying embers.

“It’s getting hot in here.” Cal snatched the camera back. “Haul ass, partner.”

As Cal shouted for more water support to cover them, Riley scrambled ahead. He plowed his way over the crumbled debris toward the file cabinet where the camera had detected a source of heat. Body heat.

A shower of sooty water sprayed down around him, partially clearing the smoke, clearing his vision.

He circled the fallen cabinet, his heart in his throat.

Please God, don’t let me be too late .

Not again .

His young sister’s ashen face flashed in his mind, and bile surged up his throat. More snapshot memories followed, clicking in his brain like a slideshow. Children he’d been too late to help, old men who’d suffocated in their beds…and Erin, who’d survived, but not thanks to him.

Shoving the haunting images out of his mind, he felt along the floor to the edge of the cabinet.

And found a woman.

Chapter 2

Another curtain of water doused Riley. For a few seconds, the smoke cleared enough for him to assess the situation.

The woman’s arm was pinned by the file cabinet. And she wasn’t moving.

His gut tightened.

“Ginny? Ginny West?”

No response.

He pressed his hand to her throat, feeling her carotid artery for a pulse. A gentle throbbing met his fingers, and relief swelled in his chest.

“Cal, she’s alive, but she’s pinned down!” He shoved his shoulder into the file cabinet. It rocked—but not enough.

“Walters!”

Cal appeared through the smoke. “Right here.”

Another fire-weakened beam collapsed near them. Riley averted his face from the blast of heat and sparks. Glancing up, he found the beams overhead equally eaten by the fire. They could come down any second. He and Cal were working on borrowed time.

“She’s under here!” Riley plowed his shoulder into the cabinet again, and Cal pulled from the other side. This time the heavy unit toppled aside.

The woman’s arm, free now of the cabinet, was bent at an unnatural angle. Riley’s gut pitched.

“Help me get her up. Watch that arm!”

He climbed over her still form while Cal positioned himself to help lift her carefully over Riley’s shoulder.

After draping her limp form into place, being as gentle with the woman’s injured arm as time would allow, Riley headed out. “Let’s go!”

As they picked their way through the rubble, a loud creak rent the air above them.

“It’s coming down! Go! Go! Go!” Cal shouted.

Riley staggered out of the building, the woman over his shoulder and his partner on his heels, just before the roof collapsed. Flames ravaged the corner by the fallen cabinet.

Captain Shaw rushed toward them. “That was a little too close for comfort, Sinclair.”

Riley didn’t spare him so much as a glance. “But we got her out.”

Now a safe distance from the fire, he eased the woman onto the grassy lawn, protecting her head as he laid her down.

Dusk cast the outdoors in long purple shadows, and billowing smoke contributed to the dark haze.

Kneeling beside the woman, Riley ripped off his oxygen mask and helmet.

“I need help over here!” He waved toward the EMTs hovering by a waiting ambulance.

He confirmed she still had a thready pulse, then gently brushed the tangle of pale blond hair from her cheeks. Riley’s heart lurched.

He knew this pretty face.

The woman he’d just pulled from the fire was 3C.

And she wasn’t breathing.

Riley’s chest seized.

He battled down haunting images of his sister’s lifeless body, her bloodless lips and pale face. His nightmare had started with Jodi.

You failed her .

Grief and guilt tangled with an iron determination not to let 3C die on his watch. He’d been too late for so many others, but he’d be damned if he’d give up on 3C….

Tipping her head back, he pinched her nose closed and sealed his mouth over hers. He blew his breath into her lungs, willing her to take in air on her own.

Nothing.

Another puff of air.

He tasted the smoke that seeped up from her throat. And strawberry. She wore strawberry lip balm. The sweet fruity flavor stood in stark contrast to the dark, life-stealing smoke and the bitter taste of desperation that rose in his throat. A fresh twist of pain wrenched his chest.

He remembered her lips curved in an enticing smile as she flirted with him in the apartment lobby. Vibrant, alluring, alive .

He forcefully swallowed the bile, the fear rising inside him as he leaned his ear near her mouth, listening, feeling, watching for signs of life.

“C’mon, 3C. C’mon! Breathe, damn it!” he muttered through clenched teeth.

An EMT arrived and tried to shoulder him out of the way. “I’ll take over.”

Riley refused to budge. Instead, he bent to give her another puff of air. And another. He counted the interval between breaths with his heartbeat thudding in his ears. In his head, Riley knew only a few seconds had passed without 3C breathing on her own, but those seconds felt more like hours, years…sixteen years.

Sixteen years had passed since Jodi died.

Finally, 3C coughed, wheezed. Black smoke curled from her mouth before she dragged in a ragged breath on her own.

The relief that spun through Riley brought moisture to his eyes and left his hands shaking.

3C’s blue eyes fluttered open as she gasped for more air. Her gaze darted from one face hovering over her to another. Until it landed on Riley’s.

Her eyes zeroed in on his. Widened. Brightened.

Across from him, an EMT had an oxygen mask ready and slipped it into place over her nose and mouth.

But her gaze clung to Riley’s, recognition softening the panic and pain in her expression as she fought for each breath.

Again an EMT tried to shoulder Riley out of the way. He moved, letting the medic work, but he didn’t leave 3C’s side. He couldn’t. Something in her steady blue eyes reached out to him and held him fast.

When he stroked her sooty cheek, she lifted her uninjured arm and linked her trembling fingers with his. As with her gaze, he sensed in her touch a connection that went beyond the mere joining of hands.

Tears puddled in her eyes, kicking him in the gut and yanking a tighter knot in his chest.

He may have failed Jodi, failed Erin, failed nameless others, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t let this woman down.

Leaning closer, he whispered, “You’re going to be okay now, 3C. I’m gonna take care of you.”

The EMTs finished their preliminary exam, scooted a backboard under her and loaded her onto a stretcher. Through it all, Riley stayed beside her, squeezing her hand gently and giving her encouraging smiles.

As they rolled her toward the waiting ambulance, he trotted beside the gurney. He released her hand only when the medics slid her into the ambulance and her fingers slipped out of reach.

An EMT climbed inside and closed the back of the ambulance with a thud that reverberated in Riley’s heart, in his memory.