Burning Both Ends

by Sinclaire Jayne

  “If that’s his preference.” Dare groused, earning a quick grin from Reese.

  “This is a ride along.”

  “I’m suited up,” she objected. “Let me play.”

  “Not a game, sweetheart.” Reese growled, the first sign of seriousness she’d seen. “You haven’t trained with us so one week of observation with training exercises minimum before you can take off your training wheels, but better count on two weeks. Lock is nothing if not safety first.” He pulled away from her, then swung back. “You got any medical training? Lately Melbourne’s been short of medical first responders?”

  “Four years combat medic and all my training’s advanced and current.”

  Reese nodded and Dare bounced on her toes ready for action. “Stay here.”

  Dare swore, but it was at Reese’s back. She wanted something to do, but not even she was going to wish for a medical emergency. And she didn’t even have any equipment for that.

  She walked into the knot of people staring in awe at the building. She knew Reese was right and following orders. She understood that, but she didn’t like it.

  “Excuse me.” A thin, older woman plucked at Dare’s arm. “My granddaughter should be home from school, but I don’t see her. I walked to the market.”

  Dare’s heart thudded and she scanned the crowd looking for a school-age girl who looked old enough to be somewhat on her own coming home from school.

  “Which apartment?” She turned back to the woman.

  The building wasn’t huge. It was three stories and had the façade of a historical building. It looked like it had nine units total. The woman pointed towards the second story.

  “That window is her bedroom. She likes to watch the birds play and scold each other in the trees,” her voice was choked with sobs.

  “Age?” Although Dare didn’t think that was relevant. By the amount of smoke now billowing out of one section of the roof, no one would be able to see shit. “Did you try her cell, ahhhh mobile?”

  The woman answered, becoming more agitated. Dare didn’t have a radio and no way of communicating with the team so she told the woman to stay put. She jogged up to the front door, but the glass was already warping. She heard shouting and realized the woman was trying to follow her, but one of the cops stopped her.

  Of course, she got through because she had the bunker gear, but not the essential part of it. Stupid rules. Reese hadn’t issued her an oxygen tank so the mask that dangled around her neck was mostly useless. That would be irony, she thought as she ran around the back of the building hoping to find Mim, Daniel, or Jess, if she got injured because Reese hadn’t given her full protective gear in order to keep her safe. Lock’s rules.

  Everyone was already in the building. Reese was on the ladder hosing down the roof. She could enter. The adrenalin screaming through her body messed with her brain, making her think she could make it. But the roar of the fire somewhere in the building sounded like a giant asthmatic beast. She could hear a cacophony of noises, many of them not that familiar since she’d been battling forest fires. Organic matter sounded different when it burned and vaporized. Dare ran around the other side of the building hoping against hope she could get a message to Reese or see someone. Maybe the cops had the same radio frequency. She wasn’t even sure the girl was in there, and having to trust Lock’s team would find her if she were, was agonizing. Dare didn’t know any of them. Hadn’t seen them work. And she’d not likely be able to make it inside and up the stairs without a tank of O2.

  She skidded around the side and saw the older woman still standing there, trying to push past the cop. Heart slamming painfully against Dare’s chest, smoke tingling her lungs, her limbs shaking from all the unused adrenalin, Dare looked up at the window. Duh. She grabbed a low branch of the tree and pulled herself up. She would just break the window of the girl’s bedroom. Maybe she could see her or call out. The windows on this side of the building were all intact so the heat hadn’t warped or burst them yet so the fire hadn’t reached this side, but smoke was tendrilling out of the attic on the sides of the building Dare could see. She hoped they taught kids fire safety in Australia—lay down, wet clothes, crawl out, feel the doors. Her anxiety ratcheted up.

  Even as her mind spun out scenarios, Dare remained in motion, easily climbing up the tree and scooting herself quickly out on one limb that took her weight. She focused on the window, and that was when she saw it. Movement. Her heart leapt. The curtain had definitely moved. It could be from the faster hotter air, or it could be from someone trying to open it. She looked at the smoke again. Not from this side yet. Worth the risk.

  Dare didn’t bother to think. She just acted. She launched herself off the branch and through the window feet first, arms tight to her body forearms over her face. She hit the ground and rolled in case the extra oxygen fueled any uptake in flames, but so far so good. Sight was useless, and with the roar of the fire that sounded like it was likely above her—meaning she had to get out fast—auditory was useless. All she could hear was the fire devouring the building and the hiss of steam from the hoses when the water hit the fire.

  Still holding her breath, Dare commando crawled across the floor sweeping her arm out and immediately hit something soft and moving. She moved her gloved hand down the shape. Definitely human. Dare grabbed the person and swung her over her shoulder. She also felt something rush past her and the girl started kicking. Instinctively Dare grabbed the shape, which thrashed and clawed, which she could feel even through the thick gloves. Cat or dog. Dare clung tightly grateful for the gloves. She felt her way back toward the window. Once she could see the block of light, hazy through the churning black and grey smoke, she stood in a crouch and charged back toward the broken opening, waiting to gasp in a breath until she was at the window. She gave silent thanks to all her swim coaches who’d drilled breath control, willpower, and had even had T-shirts made one year for a state meet that proclaimed—I swim the fifty free and never need to breathe.

  The girl’s weight was slight as it dangled down her back, and she was no longer struggling so it was easier to balance her. Dare wasn’t sure if that was because she was controlling herself or unconscious, but she had to get them both out of there. She had the cat by the scruff and she tossed it toward the branch where it took off climbing higher.

  Brilliant.

  Glass poked her glove so she swished her hand around the frame hoping she could climb out without getting the girl cut. Holding the girl around her upper thighs, Dare grabbed a slightly high branch and swung out, dropping down to straddle the branch below, using her free hand for balance.

  Elation. They were out. She scooted toward the trunk where it would be easier to scale down to the ground. Now that they were outside, she could see again, and she had an audience. Two of them, she noted in relief, were from the medical fire brigade. They waited with a stretcher and oxygen. She also saw a lot of cell phones being held up by the crowd.

  Lock was going to love that.

  More firefighters had arrived and were moving in, and one of the police officers was at the bottom of the tree to grab the girl and carry her to the stretcher.

  “Is she okay?” Dare demanded, jumping down, she was surprised her legs wobbled and she found herself sitting on the ground under the tree.

  “Breathe.” A young woman with MFB on her jacket slapped a mask over her face.

  Dare batted the mask away.

  “I’m fine,” Dare said.

  “We need to get you further away to safety. The scene’s too active,” she said, sticking the mask back on Dare’s face. “Can you walk or shall I bring another stretcher?”

  Dare popped to her feet and tried to hand the oxygen mask back. The MFR pushed it back at her as Dare bent over, coughing and trying to suck in a breath. The impatient look on the MFR’s face had her straightening again.

  “I’m fine.” Dare wiped the sweat out of her eyes, her glove game away red. Great. Blood. One more thing for Lock to bitch about if
anyone told him and, judging by the manpower now officiously working the scene, he’d hear about her heroics. Sooner or later.

  It was sooner. Dare barely had time to check on the girl, Laney, and get a teary hug from her terrified but grateful grandmother before Lock was in her face.

  “What was that stunt?” His blue eyes blazed with an intensity that actually seemed to heat her skin more than the fire in the apartment building. “What about ‘stay put’ didn’t translate into English for ‘keep your ass at the station until I got you sorted’?”

  “I was observing.”

  Trying to.

  Dare walked away from Laney and her grandmother, mask dangling from her hand, not wanting to get into it with Lock, no, her supervisor, in front of an audience. Yeah, she was wrong, but what had she been supposed to do, really? Stand around and hope?

  Lock jammed the mask back on her face and held it there as if he had a lot to say and wouldn’t tolerate any interruptions. Dare leaned against the fire truck and glared right back at him.

  “The only thing you were observing was potential disaster and a risky flirtation with death if you’d passed out. I don’t think any of the team even knew you were in there until I arrived and saw your aerial half pike. You had no respirator. No radio. No properly fitted bunker gear. No backup. No orders. No experience with the team.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” She yanked his hand away so she could talk. “To get experience. Not play around with some cartoony medicine ball suggesting trendy weight-bearing exercises that a ten-year-old boy could do.”

  She’d expected him to get in her face, but not so publicly. And she knew she had been in the wrong, but she hadn’t felt capable of waiting when a life could have been at stake. She so didn’t know how to suck it up and be meeker. Backing down and sitting on the sidelines wasn’t in her DNA.

  “Jesus you’re bleeding.” His fingers gently turned her jaw so he could see her temple. The gentleness almost undid her and Dare felt something in her crack a little. His face and words were so fierce, but his hands....

  “I need a sterile,” he said to the paramedic who had arrived and hovered at his elbow.

  “I can do it,” Dare began, but Lock had already snapped on a glove and unwrapped a sterile wipe so he could look at the laceration.

  His eyes narrowed and white lines bracketed his mouth. “Damn, that’s deep.” He gently probed her scalp. “You’ll need stiches,” he said. “From a plastic surgeon.”

  “I’m fine,” Dare rolled her eyes. “A plastic surgeon is way over the top. My mom was the supermodel, not me.”

  “Part of the cut is along your temple. Plastic surgeon.” Lock stared at the paramedic. “I’ll meet you at the hospital. I want her to see a Dr. Special Plastic Surgeon.” He looked back at Dare. “Any other cuts, burns?”

  “I told you I’m fine.”

  Exasperation stamped on his hard features, Lock quickly pulled open her jacket, which was so big it just slid off her shoulders and hit the pavement with a thud. Lock stared at her. All she wore underneath was a sports bra—neon green and strappy, not the white functional thick kind. His mouth opened and then snapped shut. Several of the officers taking statements and a few of the firefighters managing the equipment did a double take and then looked quickly away.

  “And you’re not wearing clothes, why?” He demanded in a low voice.

  “I’m obviously wearing clothes.” Her chin tilted and her gaze challenging him. “I was working out. Doing the plastic ball circuit three times like the captain commanded when the call came in. And it was hot. No air conditioning.” She even saluted as she said captain, and Lock, in the process of retrieving her jacket from the ground paused so he was eye level with her stomach.

  The medic barely restrained her snort of laughter.

  A few more sideways glances and somewhere an idiot whistled.

  Fuck it. She wasn’t shy. Why did Lock have to make a big deal out of this? She wore less at the beach and she had zero hang ups about her body.

  “Seen enough or want more?” She asked Lock sarcastically as he clutched her bunker jacket in his tight fists.

  “No,” he said softly.

  Too late. Her temper got the best of her again and just as he swished the jacket around her shoulders, she opened the waist of the pants, but her hands were shaking so much she lost hold of them so they pooled around her ankles.

  She saw something flash in Lock’s eyes before he grabbed the pants with a curse and smoothed them back over her hips. He held on to them and glared at her. Again, it struck her how handsome he was in a purely rugged, outdoors, masculine, and physical way. He wasn’t even trying. It was his uncompromising bone structure, juxtaposed with the deep blue of his eyes and thick feather of dark lashes that framed them much like petals framed a flower. His mouth was stern, but now that she knew what that mouth could do, it caused a tremor in her core that should not be happening, especially as he was clearly pissed off, and now the side of her face was starting to throb from the cut.

  She resisted the urge to touch it, knowing that this man missed nothing. “You gonna dance with me or what?” she whispered.

  He took one step back. “Later. I’ll meet you at the hospital,” he said again in a hard voice to the paramedic.

  Then Lock strode away, talking in his radio, waving his hand in a semi-circle, clearly ordering the next team to fan out, and he yanked on his mask and disappeared into the gaping dark door, obscured by the billowing grey smoke, indicating that the fire was in its death throes.

  What the hell? Was she trying to kill him? First he told her to finish up at the gym. Next thing he knew he saw her riding off on a call, her eyes lit with excitement. He’d radioed Jess to keep her ass in the truck and, because he wasn’t sure what was going to happen when someone tried to lay down the law with Dare, he’d suited up and checked in. He hadn’t even slammed the damn SUV into park when he’d seen Dare pull her monkey up a tree act and dive through a window—a closed window that could have been heating up—like she was a damn movie stunt woman. This was real life. Not Hollywood.

  She’d been in his station less than an hour and she was jumping through windows. He’d almost lost his lunch. And Lock didn’t panic. Ever. What the hell was happening to him? He was always cool under fire.

  And what they hell had she been wearing or, more accurately, not wearing under her incomplete bunker? Had she been strolling around the station in what he thought from his sister’s years of dance were called booty shorts, and an athletic bra? That was not going to fly. No one would get shit done. Did she take off her clothes to put on the gear? In the bay while everyone was loading up?

  His stomach churned at the thought. Christ. He had just turned thirty-two. She was going to give him an ulcer and a stroke and a heart attack in three months.

  And a constant hard-on.

  Damn it!

  Booty shorts, his ass.

  Chapter Seven

  Examined and stitched by, yes, a plastic surgeon, who’d been kind and gentle compared to Lock’s controlled fury, Dare hopped off the exam table and pulled back on her bunker gear. Never again would she not wear a T shirt and at least leggings under her gear but, seriously, she’d been swearing and sweating through a serious workout when the call had come and she’d jumped at the chance to observe. Now she wondered how to get back to the station. She didn’t have her phone or any cash and without her phone she didn’t remember the exact address, only the neighborhood and general area. Someone at the information desk would likely be able to direct her.

  Ignoring the pain meds and the antibiotics—she’d go the natural route if at all possible—Dare strolled out of the exam room, trying to look like she knew where she was going. The left side of her face was still partially numb so she felt like her face was drooping sideways. She didn’t want to think about how much it was going to hurt later after the medicine wore off. Like most unpleasant things, she’d suck it up.

  “Oh, hey.” She walk
ed right into Lock, who was leaning against the wall outside the room, his tall body tense, and his crossed arms revealed really sculpted biceps.

  “Come for another pound of flesh?”

  “You lost enough,” he said drily and read her chart that was still in the slot on the door.

  “Aren’t those supposed to be private?”

  “If you’re going to flash two stations and six cops who haven’t had that much excitement in weeks, then I can look at your chart.”

  “You flashed them not me. I swim in a suit way more skimpy. And that’s what I wear to run and work out in. And medical info is private.” She tried to snatch it from him, but he held it up and away, and no way would she give him the satisfaction of hopping around for it in front of the emergency room. Besides, her face and head really hurt.

  The look he gave her should have curdled her blood but, no, her body had to be perverse and get turned on. Lock nice made her happy and horny. Lock pissed and laying down the law made her crazy hot and intensely alive. The power of Lock, she derided her traitorous body because if it was one place she’d hated since Ryan had suffered and died over two agonizing months, it was hospitals. They were dismal and hopeless. Who thought beige was a good color to have on walls surrounding people who were scared, in pain, and grieving?

  “You’re under my command. I have a right to know if you’re fit. Not going to flip your shit or...”

  The air whooshed out of her lungs and she actually stumbled as if the door to the past, the dark hole where she’d fallen and lay curled up for so many months could fling open and drag her back to the dark, icy pit with no sound, no color, no warmth.

  “Dare,” he said her name, his hands loose on her bare shoulders.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said urgently and pushed at him.

  “What is it? Are you in pain?”

  The concern in her voice had tears, actual tears prick her eyes. And she hadn’t cried since Ryan. And even then she hadn’t cried when he’d actually breathed his last, with only her holding his hand, since his parents couldn’t handle it anymore and had stepped outside for a break, and she hadn’t cried at his funeral because she’d practically been comatose.