by Susan Stoker
“Koren?”
“Here!”
That time, he definitely heard her voice. Heaving out a sigh of relief, he hurried to her bedroom. When he felt the doorway, he called her name one more time. “Koren!”
“Bathroom!”
Taco quickly found the door and entered. He slammed it behind him, and flipped the switch for the light and turned on the fan for good measure. It wouldn’t clear the air, but he hoped reducing the amount of smoke in the room even a little bit would help her.
The light didn’t do anything to break the darkness the smoke had caused though.
“Taco?” she called, then coughed so hard he winced.
Using his hands to follow the counter, he swore when something bit into his hand. “Fuck!”
“Be careful!” she exclaimed. “Nadine broke a bottle and there’s a used syringe in the sink.”
Hoping like hell he hadn’t just pricked himself with her fucking dirty needle, Taco shuffled his feet until he brushed up against Koren. He fell to his knees and hauled her into his embrace.
The second he felt her hand clench his T-shirt, Taco felt better. She was alive. He wasn’t too late. He grabbed her face, and even though the light was dim and the air thick with black smoke, he could make out her outline. “Are you hurt? What’d that bitch do to you?”
“I’m okay,” she said, her voice wobbling. “I fell on my face when she Tased me. I was trying to run, but she got me. I cut my chin.”
“Tased?”
Koren nodded.
“Fuck,” Taco said under his breath. He wondered now if the pistol she was holding was simply a Taser. “I can’t see you well enough to look at your chin,” he told her.
“I think I’m okay. It bled for a while but it stopped.”
Taco tilted his head and tried to figure out what seemed off, why her voice sounded off.
Then it hit him. “Do I smell alcohol?”
He felt more than heard Koren let out a sob before she controlled it. “She made me drink! Wanted me to be wasted like her son was.”
Yeah, it was safe to say any sympathy Taco had felt for Nadine while out on the porch was officially gone.
“It’s okay, Kor.” He grabbed her hand in his and went to stand up. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She pulled back. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Come on. I’m sure the cops will have Nadine under control by now.”
“No, I mean, I literally can’t.” She coughed again, and Taco waited impatiently for her to explain. Instead, she took his hand in hers and brought it across her chest to the other side of her body.
Wrinkling his brow in confusion, Taco didn’t know what she was trying to say…
Then he felt it.
“Do you have a key?” she asked tentatively between coughs.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
Taco reached down and grabbed the chain that connected the cuffs and tugged. Koren cried out in pain, and he immediately stopped.
“Sorry. I’m okay. Keep trying,” she urged.
Taco felt her wrist, and he winced when his fingers slipped in what he had to assume was blood. The cuff was way too tight on her hand, so she also had to be losing circulation. He realized that Nadine had attached the handcuff to the pipe leading to the toilet.
If he had his bunker gear on, he would’ve had a small pair of bolt cutters. He always kept them on him, just in case. But at the moment, he was completely helpless.
He could feel her eyes on him, and he was thankful for the first time that the smoke made seeing each other difficult. He didn’t want her to be able to read the despair in his gaze. “I don’t have anything on me that can get these off,” he told her.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Koren was pushing him away. She was shoving at his chest and his legs with her free hand. “Go!” she exclaimed. “Get out!”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Yes, you have to! I don’t want you here!”
“Koren—” Taco began, trying to soothe her.
“No! There’s no point in both of us dying. Just go!”
She was crying openly now, her sobs interspersed with coughs, and it was as painful a thing as Taco had ever witnessed in his life. “No. I’m not fucking leaving you. No way in hell. I love you.”
The hand pushing him away switched to grabbing him instead. “Oh, God…”
Knowing the situation was dire, and that there was a very good chance neither of them would come out of this alive, Taco sat on the floor as close to Koren as he could get. He wrapped his arms around her and put one hand on the back of her head, settling it into the space between his head and shoulder.
She latched on to him and shook.
“I’ve got you,” Taco murmured helplessly.
Koren continued to cough, and unfortunately, the smoke in the room wasn’t dissipating whatsoever. Taco knew it wasn’t safe to stay where they were, but since he couldn’t get her free, he wasn’t leaving.
“It wasn’t me texting,” Koren said between coughs. Her voice was low and rough.
Taco’s stomach fell, but he shook his head. “I don’t care. I love you, Koren.”
“That’s what I was going to say. It wasn’t me, but I do love you, Taco. I was waiting for the perfect time to tell you, but it never seemed right. I thought it was crazy to have fallen in love so fast, but I did. I do.”
“Shhhh,” he murmured, because her coughing was getting worse. “Don’t talk.” His voice wasn’t much better, but he’d been in the smoke for a hell of a lot less time than she had. “The others will be here in a minute, just hang on.”
Her hand clenched his T-shirt, and he wished Moose and the others would hurry up. He needed to get Koren to a hospital.
“I just—” Her words were cut off with an especially harsh bout of coughing. But this time she wasn’t stopping. She coughed so hard, she started to gag.
“Easy, Kor,” he told her, rubbing her back.
“Can’t…breathe…!” she gasped as she kept coughing.
Swearing, Taco got her up on her knees, supporting her from behind. He grabbed the towel she’d been holding and held it up to her face. “Hang on, Koren. Breathe through the towel.”
She pushed the material away as she desperately tried to get air into her lungs.
Taco knew their time was up. He stood and headed for the door when it suddenly came crashing open. Taco literally dove backward to protect Koren from whoever had opened the door. He checked himself quickly, and instead of tackling Koren to the floor, he ended up kneeling in front of her once more.
Then he recognized the beautiful sound of someone breathing through a self-contained breathing apparatus. His friends had finally made it to them.
Moose didn’t say a word, just came toward them quickly and put Taco’s discarded bottle of air on the floor and handed him the mask.
Without hesitation, Taco turned on the air and felt for Koren. He put the mask over her face.
She tried to push it away, confused and disoriented from lack of oxygen.
“It’s fresh air, Koren,” he soothed. “Leave it on your face, you need it.”
But instead of his words calming her down, they seemed to agitate her more.
“You,” she managed to get out between coughs.
Taco understood. “We’ll share. Okay?”
She nodded.
Taco didn’t want to share. He wanted her to put the fucking mask on her face and breathe. She’d been in the condo a lot longer than he had, and she needed the oxygen more. But he didn’t argue with her. Waiting until she took a few lungsful of air between coughing, he then brought the mask up to his own face and took a few deep inhalations. God, the air was heaven. He’d never take his SCBA for granted again.
When he had the mask over Koren’s face once more, he looked up at Moose and yelled between coughs, “She’s cuffed to the pipe behind the toilet. We need a key or bolt cutters to get her loose.”
Moose nodded. Taco knew he was most likely relaying the information to the others. They all had radios in their helmets, and he’d never been more thankful. Moose stepped out of the way, and Taco saw another shape behind him. Chief had arrived.
He didn’t speak, just bent over with a flashlight to peer behind the toilet.
Taco realized that Koren hadn’t attempted to push the mask away like she had before. He turned his attention back to her…and saw why.
She’d passed out. Her eyes were closed and she was limp in front of him.
“Koren?” he called, not taking the mask off her face.
Nothing.
“Koren!” he yelled, this time shaking her at the same time.
Again, she didn’t move at all.
“Hurry!” he told Chief.
The firefighter nodded. His voice was distorted when he spoke, but Taco could still hear and understand him. “There’s no time to get one of the officers’ keys. Moose called for Crash, he’s got his bolt cutters on him.”
Taco nodded and hauled Koren’s unconscious body onto his lap. He supported her head with one arm and held on to the mask with the other. He could just barely make out her free hand. She’d grabbed hold of his shirt when she’d had her last bout of coughing, and the material was still trapped in her fingers.
But she wasn’t holding on. He couldn’t feel the familiar clutch of her fingers curling into him.
Swallowing hard and coughing violently himself, and doing his best not to lose it, Taco couldn’t take his eyes off the dim outline of her fingers.
“Here!” Moose said, shoving his face mask at Taco.
They both knew that Moose was breaking protocol. No firefighter was supposed to give up their mask to someone else. Period. It could leave both persons weak and vulnerable. But his friend obviously knew that Taco had no intention of removing the mask from Koren’s face.
Taco took a few deep breaths, then pushed it back toward his friend.
They buddy breathed like that for the precious minute it took for Crash to appear. The bathroom was getting crowded now, but Taco had never been more glad to see his friends in all his life.
Crash handed the bolt cutters—Taco recognized them from his own bunker pants—to Chief. Within seconds, Koren was free. Her arm fell limply to the tile floor.
Chief reached over and took one of Taco’s arms, while Moose grabbed the other and also picked up Taco’s air pack. They helped him stand and, as a unit, shuffled out of the bathroom. Koren was dead weight in Taco’s arms, but he didn’t even feel the strain.
With Crash in front leading the way, Moose right at his back, and Chief bringing up the rear, the four firefighters made their way out of the bedroom, down the hall, and started down the stairs.
The smoke was so thick now, Taco couldn’t see Crash, who was right in front of him. At one point, the other firefighter reached back and grabbed hold of Taco’s arm to help lead him. The sound of the flames consuming everything in their path was frighteningly loud. Without his helmet and mask to muffle the sound, every crash, every crackle, every whoosh of something falling over seared into his brain.
If they’d been even one minute later, Taco wasn’t sure they would’ve been able to exit the condo through the front door. The fire had reached Koren’s living room, and in just seconds more would’ve made it to the stairway.
Crash was the hero in this situation. It wasn’t smart of him to have entered the building, not when it was as unstable as it was, but Taco was more thankful than he’d ever be able to say.
One second they were in hell, and the next they were standing outside on Koren’s porch. Taco took a deep breath and promptly coughed as if his lungs were trying to turn themselves inside out.
Ignoring his own discomfort, he rushed down the stairs, his buddies at his sides and back the whole way. Ignoring everyone standing around, Taco carried a limp Koren to the nearest ambulance. Again, Moose, Crash, and Chief helped him step up into the back of the vehicle. He placed the woman he loved more than life down on the gurney and moved around so he was out of the way of the paramedics.
“Here,” one said, shoving a mask at him.
Taco immediately removed his firefighter’s mask from Koren’s face and replaced it with the oxygen mask.
“That was for you,” the paramedic said dryly.
Taco ignored him. His throat hurt, he felt a little dizzy, but no way in hell was he going to see to himself until he knew Koren was all right. Taco felt the vehicle start moving, and he was relieved. The sooner they could get to the hospital, the sooner Koren would get the advanced care she needed.
He kept out of the way as much as possible, but didn’t take his eyes off Koren’s face as the paramedics began to work on her. He needed to see her eyes open. Needed to see the beautiful blue eyes he’d fallen in love with.
Her blonde hair was in disarray and streaked with soot. She had a nasty gash on her chin and blood had oozed from the cut all the way down the front of her shirt. Her hand was blue from the constriction of the cuff.
But all of those things were the least of Taco’s worries. He knew what smoke could do to a human body. Smoke killed faster than flames. And obviously, Nadine had also known.
Not sparing any more than that brief thought for the bitch who’d tried to take away the most important person in Taco’s life, he gently stroked Koren’s hair away from her forehead. Between coughs, he murmured into her ear. Telling her that she was safe. That they were both safe. That they were out and all she had to do was wake up and look at him.
But she didn’t open her eyes.
She didn’t wake up.
The paramedic had to intubate her, to make sure air was getting into her lungs.
At one point, the paramedic picked up a phone and spoke with the doctors at the hospital, telling them the patient was unresponsive and he suspected acute carbon monoxide poisoning.
Taco finally took an oxygen mask from the other paramedic, but only because he was having trouble talking to Koren through his coughing.
He prayed for a miracle. Prayed that he hadn’t gotten to Koren too late, as Nadine had wanted. Prayed that she’d be the same person she’d been when he’d last seen her. Prayed that they could live the rest of their days drama free. He’d had enough drama to last him an entire lifetime.
“Please,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me. Fight, Kor. Fight for me.”
Chapter Twenty
It took two days, but Koren finally opened her eyes.
Taco hadn’t left her side the entire time, refusing treatment for his own smoke inhalation, only allowing doctors to examine him at her bedside.
Her parents had arrived, along with her brothers and their families, Vicky and Sue and their families, as well as Sophie, Quinn, Adeline, Blythe, and even Beth had come by for a while.
The doctors had induced a coma so her lungs could recover faster. She’d had a few sessions in the hyperbaric oxygenation chamber. Her chin had been sewed up and her wrist cleaned. The nurses gave her a head-to-toe sponge bath to get as much of the smell of smoke off her as possible.
But Taco could still smell it. When he did manage to get a few minutes of sleep, he woke with the scent of the smoke in his nose. He had nightmares that he’d been too late, and he’d found Koren dead on her bathroom floor.
Taco knew he should probably give Koren’s family some alone time with her, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t let go of her hand since she’d been settled in a bed in the ICU, and even though it was silly, he felt as if, should he leave, he’d lose her.
He hated how limp her fingers were. Hated that she wasn’t grasping on to him. How he’d ever thought she was anything like his ex was beyond him.
The doctors had said she’d be in the coma for another day before they’d start bringing her out of it. Chief had tried to get him to go home and get a good night’s rest, but Taco refused. Crash had brought him some puffy tacos from Henry’s, but he’d only been able to eat one before feeling l
ike he was going to throw up. When Sledge and Beth had visited, they’d told him how Nadine had died. The cops had found a four-page suicide note in the rundown trailer she’d been living in that detailed all the shit that had gone on in her life.
Taco didn’t care.
He had no sympathy for Nadine Patterson. None.
Yes, she’d lost her husband. And her son. But neither of those things gave her the right to try to take someone else’s life.
Sue had been horrified to learn that Nadine had gotten to Koren by cloning her cell number. However, she hadn’t been surprised to hear Koren had rushed home to be with her best friend…because that was just the kind of person she was.
Flowers filled the room, their sweet smell mixing with the lingering aroma of smoke, making Taco nauseous. But still he didn’t move.
Moose came by without Penelope, and as much as Taco wondered where she was, he didn’t ask. Koren was his main concern right now.
It was now eleven-thirty at night. The night-shift nurse had been in to check on Koren and had left. The lights in the ICU were so bright, if he wasn’t wearing a watch, Taco would have no idea what time it was. The squeaking of shoes on the linoleum floor was loud as the nurses went from one room to another.
Taco wasn’t supposed to be there. Visiting hours had long since ended. But no one said a word. They all knew who he was and what had happened. The local news had gone crazy with the story, plastering the newspapers, Internet, and TV stations with every gory detail. So they let him stay.
Taco’s voice was still scratchy from inhaling so much smoke and from not taking care of himself, but he didn’t really notice. His thumb brushed back and forth over the back of Koren’s hand as he told her all about who had visited that day. He kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversation. He firmly believed that even when unconscious, people could still hear what was going on around them.
“Everyone was here again today. Sue and her husband. Vicky and hers. She even brought her adorable little boy, but he wasn’t allowed up here in ICU. Your parents were here first thing. They’re really worried about you, but I told them that you’d be up and running around in no time. Gavin’s already talked to your insurance company and said the inspector would be meeting him at your condo tomorrow morning. So don’t worry about that. Carter was still super upset this morning, and even Robin couldn’t calm him down. He’s pissed on your behalf and just wants someone to pay for everything that happened. I guess the fact that Nadine is dead doesn’t make it any better, because he can’t rail at her.