“You okay, Edie?”
“Fine.” She grabbed the water bottle off her pack and chugged it, then tore open an IV kit. Reaching to hang the bag of Ringer’s Lactate on a wall hook, she missed the hook the first time.
Fine, his ass.
“He’s fighting me,” Edie snapped. “Oxygen saturation is 87, BP 152 by palp. Can you push this bird any faster?”
“A bit.” He adjusted the controls to gain airspeed as he relayed the info she’d given him to the ER in Wayfarer.
The brief adrenaline rush had banished Josh’s fatigue, but as the minutes ticked by, it crept up on him again. He opened his senses, reaching for the sunlight streaming in through the windshield. The power flowing in strengthened him.
A few seconds later, it faded.
Damn, what was this? He glanced back at Edie. Judging by her slumped shoulders and pale lips, she was feeling the same weariness. She had the IV going, though.
“Not much farther,” Josh said. “How’s our patient?”
“Hanging in.”
You hang in, too, he thought. And so will I.
* * *
“Where did you go when you left our helitack crew?” Josh’s voice crackled over Edie’s headset. She blinked in surprise and tried to muster enough energy to answer.
“Edie?” Shifting in his seat, he threw her a worried look. “You with me? I asked where—”
“Yeah.” Edie watched Phil’s chest rise and fall as she chugged more water. Drawing power from the woodlands flashing by outside gained her enough strength to talk.
She pumped air into the blood pressure cuff on Phil’s arm, feeling for the radial pulse again and waiting for the needle’s waver at the top of the systole. “I joined Three Pines IHC, out of Fort Collins.”
“Helitack wasn’t good enough? You had to go be a hotshot?” The multiskilled crews ranked among the elite of wildland firefighters.
“I want to be a smokejumper. I figure hotshot experience is a step in the right direction.”
“A smokejumper,” he repeated, his voice flat. Dismay vibrated in the magic between them.
Edie shrugged. If he’d bothered to ask three years ago, she would’ve told him. He probably didn’t think women were any better suited to that than they were to digging line. Jumping out of airplanes to fight wildfires that were otherwise inaccessible likely fell under his heading of men’s work.
His opinion shouldn’t matter, but it stung.
She focused on Phil, whose shallow gasps didn’t seem to improve but also didn’t worsen. A collapsed lung would make the poor guy feel as though he were suffocating. His brown eyes opened, anxious and dark with pain, and flicked to her.
Her depleted power made such simple tasks as easing his pain and minimizing the bleeding difficult. At least she’d been able to dull the pain when she’d drained the excess air from his chest cavity. Too bad that was only a temporary fix. A mage doctor could’ve repaired the lung.
Leaning in so he could see her, Edie patted his shoulder. “Not much farther, Phil.”
Finally, Josh asked, “Why smokejumping?”
“Why not?” she snapped.
He said nothing, but the silence between them carried a hint of reproof. Edie sighed. After all, she’d been the one who wanted to talk earlier.
“It’s a challenge,” she said. “I like challenges.”
That was probably why she couldn’t forget Mr. Hot-and-Sexy-Almost-One-Night-Stand. The emotions between them had been intense, urgent. Until he’d been called away. Morning had brought the disappointment of waking up alone and then meeting his cool stare in the breakfast line. “The work matters, too, protecting forests there’s no other way to save.”
“Sure.” He hesitated. “It’s rough on a family, though, you being in danger.”
“My parents are okay with it, and there’s no one else affected.” Was that why he seemed so disapproving of the women firefighters, some kind of ideal wife image he wanted women to meet?
Edie glanced at Phil. His eyes were closed. Was he asleep? Even in shock, he might overhear, so she chose her words carefully. “Besides, that’s an odd sentiment from a former combat pilot who doesn’t have the calmest life now.”
Ferrying mages into battle against their deadly ghoul enemies was by no means a safe or uneventful job.
“Somebody’s gotta do it.” Josh’s brusque tone implied she’d nettled him.
“Rough on a family, though,” she quoted, and earned his scowl as a reward.
* * *
Josh’s vision slowly went wonkier. He hadn’t been so happy to see a helipad ahead since his Blackhawk had been shot up in Afghanistan, leaving him with a dead copilot in a bird that needed two to fly it and a twelve-man Spec Ops team to bring home safely.
Drawing on his reserves of power, recharging from the trees and sunlight again, he forced the weariness away and concentrated on bringing the bird down softly.
Not a perfect landing but good enough. He cut the engines. Edie was already untying the litter as the medical personnel moved in from the nearby ER entrance.
The orderlies had the patient strapped on a gurney in moments. Edie grabbed her gear and ran beside it, relaying information.
Josh watched her. He had no clearance to go into the working area of the ER, but Edie still didn’t look good. Better to follow her unnecessarily than to be sitting out here if she needed his help. Besides, he could use a break.
When he jumped out of the chopper, black polka-dotted his sight. He ignored it and ran after Edie. Blinking, he stared at the tall, dark-haired doctor hurrying beside the gurney. Stefan Harper? What was the Collegium’s top doctor doing here?
Whatever the reason, Josh and Edie could speak frankly to him about a magical problem like recharge difficulties. Maybe the fire had somehow caused their symptoms.
Josh squeezed between the ER doors as they closed. Edie gave him a puzzled look.
“I need to grab a soda,” he explained, and she shrugged.
They hurried past a crowded waiting room and into the treatment area. No one questioned Josh, maybe because they were all so busy and he was with a doctor.
Harper nodded a greeting, his lean face intent as he and Edie helped a nurse cut Phil’s shirt and undershirt off. “I knew he was in good hands with you flying, Josh.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“You two know each other?” Edie’s voice sounded rough. Tired. And her pallor was worse. Damn.
“I’m on the medical staff where Josh works, at the Georgia Institute for Paranormal Research,” Harper said.
“He’s the chief physician,” Josh added.
The lightbulb went on in Edie’s eyes, and he knew she’d realized Harper was a mage. But why hadn’t she sensed his power?
Watching her, Josh finished, “Stefan Harper, Edie Lang.”
They nodded at each other across the gurney. Harper’s gaze sharpened, running over Edie in keen, professional assessment.
“We’ll check you out, too, Ms. Lang, as soon as I have our patient stabilized.”
Recharging when surrounded by sick or injured people was dangerous. Neither Josh nor Edie would risk that, and he felt her fatigue in the magic. If he did, Harper also must.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
The doctor directed a stern glance her way. “White lips tend to get my attention. Wait here.”
Harper followed Phil’s gurney into an ER booth and pulled the curtains.
A chair stood between two of the curtained booths. Josh steered Edie to it, and she plopped down. Her failure to argue over which of them should sit was a bad sign.
A few minutes later, Harper reappeared, ordered stat x-rays, and started the process to send Phil into emergency surgery.
The spots in front of Josh’s eyes returned. Again, shaking his head cleared his vision, but more slowly.
Harper raised an eyebrow. “Hard day, Josh?”
“I could use a short break.”
He couldn’t fly
like this, but maybe he’d be okay if he sat down and recharged properly. If not, the Collegium could send another pilot to take the Huey home, and there was an excellent mage doctor handy.
But no one else in the Collegium could fly helitack.
Harried staffers in scrubs came to wheel Phil away. Harper nodded to a petite, strawberry-blond nurse and then at Edie. “Take her to triage, Ms. Casey.”
The nurse nodded. “Come with me, miss.”
“Well, maybe.” Edie cast a doubtful look at the exit.
Josh stepped close. Lowering his voice, he said, “The recharge isn’t working. Harper knows what he’s doing, Edie. He’s the best.”
She looked up at him. The trust in her shadowed, exhausted blue eyes brought memories crashing back. With them came desire and a fierce, possessive protectiveness that momentarily cut through Josh’s weariness.
“Edie…”
Her eyes rolled back in her head. Josh whipped an arm around her waist, but the effort to hold her upright brought blackness crashing across his sight.
Don’t miss the other books in Nancy Northcott’s Protectors’ Series!
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As the Collegium council's top sheriff of the southeastern United States, Valeria Banning doesn't just take her job seriously, she takes it personally. So when a notorious traitor wanted by the authorities suddenly risks his life to save hers, she has to wonder why. As a mage, Griffin is sworn to protect innocents from dark magic, which is how he finds himself fighting side by side with the beautiful Valeria Banning. But when the council finds out the two have been working together, they're both left running for their lives-from the law, the threat of a ghoul takeover, and a possible Collegium mole. (90,000 words)
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Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Nancy Northcott
A Preview of Renegade
A Preview of Protector
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Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Nancy Northcott
Excerpt from Renegade copyright © 2012 by Nancy Northcott
Excerpt from Protector copyright © 2013 by Nancy Northcott
Cover design by Christine Foltzer. Cover art by Craig White. Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group. Swamp and Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge sign photos by Nancy Northcott. Map used with permission by Gavin West.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-1-4555-2666-6
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