Tasting Fire

by Kelsey Browning

  And although that was just the way small towns worked, the bullshit gossip was filtering into the fire station, and if that was the case, it was all over the ER, too. He’d promised Emmy that he would back her up, which meant a good team member would clue her in on what was going on behind the scenes.

  So here he was, outside her apartment about to knock when the door opened. Emmy stood there in running clothes and shoes.

  “Oh, hey,” she said. “Did you need something?”

  Yeah, he needed a lot of things, but the biggest thing right now was for her to stop avoiding him. “We need to talk.”

  “Maybe later. I was just heading out to take a run—”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re in jeans.”

  “I haul ass in pants pretty much every day.”

  “Keep up, or prepare to eat my dust.” She locked the door and headed down the stairs. Cash stayed on her heels and gave his cousin Grif a quick wave as they exited, passing through his work space. When they were out the front door, Emmy immediately set a fast speed, and Cash modified his longer stride to keep pace beside her.

  Her form was excellent, just what he’d expect based on her training and how seriously she treated her jobs. It took massive control for him not to drop back half a stride and watch the flex of her ass as her shoes ate up the length of Main Street. Hell, everyone they passed was checking out Emmy’s toned legs, arms, and butt.

  Before long, Cash’s muscles warmed up and he jerked his T-shirt over his head to catch some cool air. He stuffed it into his back pocket and kept running.

  Emmy veered off toward Barron’s Park and the trails around it. Since it was daytime, that was fine, but Maggie had seen an increase in dubious goings-on out here after dark. “You shouldn’t run alone here after sunset.”

  “The park’s closed after dark.”

  He glanced her way. “So you haven’t run here at night?”

  She grunted noncommittally.

  “I know you think this is Mayberry compared to Baltimore, but Steele Ridge has crime, too.” As evidenced by the brick through the Murchison building’s window.

  They did three full loops around the park before Emmy throttled down her pace. Back when they were teenagers, he’d been the athlete, but damn she’d come into her own. She would make sure any members of the tac team stayed on their toes.

  When they slowed to a walk, Cash pulled his shirt from his pocket and used it to wipe away the sweat on his chest and neck.

  Emmy glanced over and checked him out. And if he puffed his chest out a little in response, hell, he was only a man. Having her head resting on it after she’d shown him her fun list had been the highlight of his recent sex life. Which was either pitiful or enlightened.

  “Do you know if Maggie dug up anything else about the brick?” he asked.

  “Only what we already knew. Stan Jackson denying it, and no other real evidence. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I care about your safety and you’re making a habit of not telling me things. Like what happened with Amory the other night.”

  “It wasn’t a big deal, but the two of you standing in the hospital hallway having a pissing match would’ve made it a big deal. He had a hard time believing that I came back to Steele Ridge because I wanted to. In his mind, he fired me to force me to think it over.”

  “The job or the proposal?”

  “Both. I gently but firmly explained that I was happy here and…”

  “And what?”

  “That I planned to stay happy here.”

  Which only made Cash hate even more that he had to tell her what else was going on behind her back. “Want to walk around the duck pond?”

  “You didn’t show up at my place for a social visit, did you?”

  “Do you want me to make social visits?” Because as much as he wanted to deny it, he wanted to get way more than social with her. And based on their kiss the other night, she wanted the same thing.

  “I…It could be seen as a conflict of interest.”

  “Only if you give me some type of special treatment on the team. Which you definitely haven’t done.”

  “It could complicate things.”

  Hell, things were already complicated for him.

  “Don’t you need someone to work that strategic fun plan with you?”

  “And who better than Cash Kingston?”

  “Hey, you said it. Not me.” As much as he appreciated seeing her smile, he was about to destroy her good mood. “But there is something you should know.”

  She stopped immediately and her expression sobered. “What?”

  Cash’s cell dinged, and he was reaching for it when a buzzing sound came from the vicinity of Emmy’s chest. He didn’t look away as she reached inside the neck of her tank top to fish for her phone.

  She took a quick glance at the screen and immediately turned back toward downtown. “Don’t bother to read yours. We have to go. The sheriff’s department was serving a supposedly routine warrant, but they need SWAT backup. The suspect is threatening to shoot everyone in the house, including himself.” She gave him the incident and staging addresses.

  “Is this a training exercise?” he asked.

  “If it is, it isn’t one I scheduled or one the captain let me know about.”

  They ran like hell back to Main Street. Emmy jumped into a Mercedes SUV parked out front, and Cash dove into his truck because they each needed their own gear.

  They made good time, and the rest of the tac team was still assembling when he and Emmy arrived across the street from a shotgun-style house.

  Within a few minutes, everyone was on-site and the captain began briefing the group. But before she could provide the full picture, a sound of gunshot split through the air and a high-pitched scream came from inside the house.

  “We need to get in there now,” Emmy said.

  “You two wait outside until we have the scene secure and then—”

  “That scream was the sound of someone being shot, and that person could be bleeding out right now,” Cash said. “We have to get inside the house.”

  “Get in the stack,” the captain instructed.

  He and Emmy queued up behind the other SWAT team members and carefully made their way toward the side of the house at an angle. The point SWAT operator called out, “Police. Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up.”

  The immediate response was another gunshot. Another scream.

  Cash’s heart was thumping like the beat to a rap song. He needed to slow his breathing. He knew that. But it didn’t keep his body from reacting naturally to the imminent threat of danger. To himself. To others. To Emmy.

  One of the SWAT team members duckwalked around to the corner and was out of sight for what seemed like a flash. Then a boom sounded from the front of the house, and the stack was on the move. Smoke was still pouring from the explosive breach, but the point tossed a flash bang inside as well.

  “Police,” the operator yelled. “Everyone on the ground!”

  Although the smoke was still clearing, from the doorway, Cash could see two people on the floor. They’d been shot. This call-out was way too much like the training scenario with Shep and the others. Except these were real injuries with real blood.

  No corn syrup here.

  “Fuck,” Cash breathed. He broke left and Emmy went right.

  Cash’s patient was a white female about twenty years old. She’d taken what looked like a graze shot to the calf, and she was trying like hell to get to her feet. “He’ll come back!”

  She was talking, so that meant her airway and breathing were okay.

  “Ma’am, just lay back.” Cash put his hand on her shoulder and tried to soothe her. “Let me help you and then we’ll get you out of here as soon as we can. Are you hurt anywhere besides your leg?”

  Her eyes widened and she suddenly went limp. A pulse check told him she’d simply passed out, which wasn’t a bad thing. He checked for both an entry a
nd exit point, but she’d been lucky not to take an actual bullet. Still, he used a pressure dressing to cover the flesh wound. He spoke into his radio mic as he checked for other injuries, mindful of the mistake Jackson had made in the training exercise. “One to transport. Is the ambulance here?”

  “Two minutes out.”

  So Cash placed his Sked litter beside the woman and maneuvered her onto it so she could be pulled out quickly when the other medics arrived on scene. “How’s your patient—”

  A boom went off, and one of the operators stumbled back into the room. He weaved and crashed down face-first, his helmet making a sickening thud on the discolored linoleum.

  “I’ve got him,” Cash told Emmy, then called out, “Officer down!”

  He’d barely had time to check the operator’s ABCs when a tall, skinny guy carrying a .357 Mag darted through the same door. His eyes held a wild glint, and judging by the sores all over his face, he was a monster meth head. “My kid. Where’s my kid?”

  His frantic gaze landed directly on Emmy, who was kneeling over a preteen whose dirty Pumas were splayed in opposite directions.

  The guy pointed his gun toward Emmy, and as tweaked out as he was, his aim didn’t waver. If he pulled the trigger at this close range, he wouldn’t miss.

  Oh, fuck no, dude.

  “What are you doing to my kid?” he yelled at Emmy.

  “Sir, he’s hurt, and I’m trying to help him.”

  “Give me my kid.” The meth monster didn’t seem to pick up what Emmy was putting down because he grabbed the boy under the arm and tried to haul him up, but he was like a limp fifty-pound sack of rice.

  In the struggle to pick up his kid, the guy’s hand lowered. Cash grabbed the SWAT operator’s beanbag shotgun.

  “What did you do to him?” the meth monster screamed at her as his gun started to come back up. “Bitch, I’m gonna—”

  BOOM. The bean bag hit meth monster in the wrist, drilling his arm against the wall, and his gun thunked to the floor. Emmy swooped it up and efficiently unloaded it.

  When the other SWAT operators swarmed into the room, Cash still had the shotgun trained on meth monster, who’d was now sitting on his ass and wailing as if he’d been peppered full of holes instead of hit with a pouch filled with lead pellets.

  As soon as it was apparent the team had him under control, Cash handed over the shotgun and Emmy did the same with meth monster’s revolver. He glanced toward Emmy. “You okay?”

  “Just concentrate on your patient.”

  Now that the scene was secure, the other medics poured in, and within minutes, the two victims and the operator were loaded up.

  Meth monster would get transported to the hospital in the back of a cop car. Before they hauled him out, Emmy hunkered down and palpated the wrist joint, and the guy—already yammering nonstop—howled.

  “Ninety to one it’s broken.” She cut a quick look at Cash, and he couldn’t tell if this might mean he’d just eighty-sixed his spot on the team.

  By picking up the operator’s shotgun, he’d broken normal protocol. But he’d do it a hundred times over if it meant keeping Emmy safe. Fuck the job. Fuck the team.

  Just fuck it.

  The adrenaline drained from Cash, and he suddenly felt as if he’d been on a physical and emotional obstacle course for hours. Once the entire team had gathered back outside the house, the captain announced they would be debriefing in the sheriff department’s conference room in half an hour.

  When they were dismissed, Cash tried to catch Emmy’s attention, but she was all eyes front and serious face as she marched toward her SUV.

  When he arrived at the debriefing, she was already there, sitting at the other end of the room. If he wove his way toward her, it would be obvious.

  The captain quieted everyone and began talking through the call-out. Any time things didn’t go as planned, which was in the vicinity of 99.98 percent of the time, they walked through the entire call-out and asked the hard questions about why and how they’d fucked up.

  Yippee, let’s take a ride on the merry-go-round, why don’t we?

  What had gone right? Not a hell of a lot.

  What hadn’t worked well? Communication equipment failure, trouble restraining the subject, and the fucking unpredictability of meth heads.

  Why had meth monster made it past several officers? See answer above.

  Why had an operator been shot? Because shit ran downhill.

  Why had Cash Kingston been forced to pick up a weapon and take down the subject? Because he hadn’t been interested in any one of his teammates dying today. Especially not Emmy.

  “At current, medics are not authorized to use force—either lethal or nonlethal,” the SWAT captain stated, her tone flat.

  Emmy leaned forward with her hands on the conference table and pushed herself to a standing position. She was lean and fine-boned, but didn’t look the least bit fragile. She was too focused for that. Emmy might have trouble cutting loose, but in her world, she was confident—in her knowledge, in herself—without being conceited.

  Damn, that was the biggest turn-on in the world.

  If more women understood that secret, they’d spray on confidence like department store perfume.

  “That’s understandable under normal circumstances,” Emmy said to the captain. “But based on what happened today, it’s clear this situation was anything but textbook. I take full responsibility for the actions of each medic on my team. No, Kingston’s actions did not strictly adhere to team protocol. However, his instinct was to protect both patients and team members. Our mission as a team is to get as many people out unhurt as possible.”

  “Yet the subject sustained a broken wrist in the altercation because of Kingston’s actions.”

  “At the time Kingston discharged the weapon, the subject had a gun, one with real bullets, aimed at my head.”

  “No, based on my understanding, the subject had momentarily lowered his gun.”

  “For long enough to try to yank up his child. As soon as he realized his son was unconscious, his agitation only increased. Then he started raising his gun again. I maintain that Kingston handled the situation in a way that would result in the least damage to those present.”

  The SWAT captain’s sigh was audible throughout the room. “I want a comprehensive written report from anyone who had contact with the subject and victims no later than ten tomorrow morning. Dismissed.”

  * * *

  Exhausted didn’t begin to describe what Emmy was feeling right now. She needed a shower, sixteen hours of sleep, and possibly a gallon of Stoli. Ever since she’d looked down the barrel of that gun, she’d avoided looking at her own hands because she knew they were still shaking.

  Dangerous, stressful situations were daily occurrences for her. She’d once been cornered in an exam room by a heroin addict demanding OxyContin. She’d been slapped and spit on by drunk college girls. She’d been on SWAT call-outs where bullets were flying and people were dying.

  But this was the first time she’d ever looked at her life through a gun barrel. And she didn’t like what she’d seen.

  A woman who had been involved with the wrong man. Who couldn’t name a single person she missed in Baltimore after living there for five years. Who was scared to take Cash up on the offer of helping her have fun.

  When everyone else began filing out of the room, she remained at the conference table with the portfolio she’d taken notes in. She wanted to get her thoughts together before typing up her part of the report.

  “Hey.” When she looked up, Cash was gesturing toward the chair beside her. “Do you mind?”

  She wasn’t ready to face him yet. “I really need to—”

  “Just for a minute.” He pulled out the chair and sat. But he didn’t do the professionally polite thing and put plenty of space between their seats. Instead he drew close. So close she could smell a hint of dried sweat and whatever greenery-based cologne he wore. “You okay?”

  “
Of course.” She took a breath, trying to filter out today’s nastiness. “I just need to work on the TMT report for the captain.”

  Cash’s hand came up and cradled her jaw, urging her to look up into his face. And although he’d kissed her back the other night, this was the first time Emmy felt as if he’d touched her because he really wanted to. The feel of his callused thumb on the tender skin below her chin made her want to lean in. Lean on.

  “Thank you,” he said simply. “You had every right to throw me under the bus for what I did.”

  “I stand by my team.”

  “I broke the rules, and I figured you would see that as bucking your authority.”

  She’d done nothing but abide by the rules for way too long. Rules didn’t always make something right. She gazed into Cash’s dark eyes, serious with concern. They were nothing like the meth head’s, but they reminded her of what she’d seen there. “When he had that gun on me, I looked into his eyes, and I swear I could see all the way inside his soul. What I saw wasn’t even black. It was an empty pit of nothingness.” And it had reflected back an emptiness inside her own life.

  “Em…”

  “He was the kind of man who doesn’t have anything to lose. I just happened to be a barrier to him. He didn’t care what he had to do to get through that barrier, even if it meant putting a bullet in it. In me. Cash, you saved my life. You put everything on the line to protect the entire team in that house. How could I possibly reprimand you for that? You were clear-thinking, decisive, and damn efficient. This team can’t ask for better leadership than that.”

  His face softened, making her want to reach out and draw it to hers. Making her want to press her lips to his. But she couldn’t, not here.

  “I didn’t trust you,” Cash said finally.

  “Then why would you walk through a door with me? Trust is everything on the tac team. You can’t operate that way and possibly feel safe.”

  “No,” he said. “Today, I trusted you with my life. You’re damn good at your job, Em, and so is everyone else on the team. I can’t tell you what it felt like to think he was about to press that trigger. That I would lose you again.”