“We’ll tell him we saw blood on the front steps and anyone who’s lost that much blood won’t be able to live long without intervention.”
I can hear her take a few deep breaths. “I guess that could work. But what if it doesn’t?”
“It will. You’ve got this, Emma.”
“All right, here I go.”
I hear the phone being put down and then the knock on the door. She has to knock several times before she gets a response.
While I’m waiting to see what happens, I tell the guys to get some O-negative blood and a transfusion kit in case the gunman won’t let Carter go and I have to go inside.
“What the fuck is it now, teacher?” an angry voice in the background shouts.
“Mr. … uh, listen, Carter is going to die,” Emma tells him. “Look at him. He’s pale. He’s lost too much blood. His pulse is racing, and he’s going into shock.”
“How do you know this shit? You a teacher, right?”
“I am, but I’ve gone through special training in case a student gets injured. Please believe me when I tell you he’ll die if you don’t let him out of here.”
“Hell no. I ain’t lettin’ nobody outta here until I figure out what to do. My homie Jeremy’s working on the outside. He’ll come up with something. He always do.”
“You won’t let him out?” she asks. “Then he’ll die.”
“No he won’t. You bullshittin’ me, teacher.”
“Look at me,” she says. “I’m not lying. He will die, and you’ll be charged with murder. You don’t want that. I can tell you don’t want that. If you won’t let him out, will you at least let in a paramedic? Someone who can bring in blood and help Carter stay alive?”
“You want me to let someone else inside?” the gunman says. “Are you crazy, bitch? That’s just a way for the pigs to get in and take me down. No way I’m fallin’ for that shit.”
“That’s not what will happen. Please put the phone back on the hook, and when it rings, I’ll answer it. I’ll talk to them if you don’t want to. But please help Carter. It will help your case when this whole thing gets resolved. I’m sure they will do whatever you ask to make this happen.”
There is a long pause and I wonder if he’s looking at Carter to see if she’s being truthful.
“Do it,” he says. “But put the speaker on. I ain’t talkin’, but I don’t want nobody pulling no shit.”
“Thank you,” Emma says.
They must walk away, because their voices recede. I nod to the police behind me. “Try to call now. And get me that kit and the blood. I’m going in.”
The officer in charge shakes his head. “You can’t do that. One of us will go in and pretend to be you, then we’ll disarm the perp, and this will all be over.”
“Carter is going to die if he doesn’t get blood in the next few minutes. We need to deal with that first and then work on a plan. Remember, the gunman doesn’t know there’s a phone in the storeroom. I’ll call you as soon as he’s stable.”
“We have a live line!” someone shouts.
As the police call and then negotiate the terms of my entrance, I work with the other paramedics on scene to gather what I need.
An officer shows me a zip tie. “The woman said he insists you go in with your hands tied.”
The woman. So Emma did end up speaking to the police on his behalf.
“How in the hell am I supposed to carry everything?”
“She said to put everything in a bag and wear it around your neck. No knives, just the needles to do the infusion. She said—” He stops talking and a look of grave concern comes over his face.
“She said what?”
“She said he’ll hurt her if we don’t follow his exact instructions.”
I nod, terrified that if I screw this up, Emma will pay the ultimate price. “Let’s do this. Carter doesn’t have much time.” I remove my FDNY shirt. “Someone get me a different T-shirt. I don’t want to intimidate him with this one.”
After I put on a plain nondescript shirt, someone hangs a bag of supplies around my neck and then zip-ties my hands together in front of me. I walk around the trucks with my hands in the air and approach the school. Debbe or Ryan or J.D. could have done this. We’re all trained paramedics. But I could hardly ask one of them to go. We all have families to think about, not just me, and I already know what’s going on with Carter. I can treat him more quickly than the others. It has to be me.
There is movement by the front door. Things are being cleared away to allow access. A woman steps out, a gun to the back of her head. She’s young, maybe mid-twenties, with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looks oddly familiar.
Before I climb the steps, the gunman yells, “Turn around!”
I turn slowly, keeping my arms above my head and showing him I don’t have any tricks up my sleeve. In fact, I don’t even have sleeves. He wanted me only in a T-shirt and pants. Not even a belt. He’s worried I might attack him. Then again, he’s the one with the gun. He holds all the power right now. It’s my job to keep him thinking that.
“Walk up slowly,” he says.
I climb the steps in a non-aggressive manner. When I get close to the door, he tells me to stop and directs the woman to take the bag from around my neck.
They back up, and he aims his gun at me as I come through the doors. A slender man moves the barricades back into place behind me. He marches us into what I assume is the administrative office.
“Over there,” he says to me, gesturing to the back corner. “You a big fucking dude. But you ain’t bigger than my piece so you best not try nothin’. Got it?”
I nod.
“Goldilocks, lift up his shirt to see if he’s packing.”
A different woman stands and does what he asks.
“Now let me see his ankles,” the guy says.
She lifts each of my pant legs.
“Now drop his pants.”
She looks at him in horror. “You want me to remove his pants?”
“Do it, bitch,” he says, holding the gun to the brunette’s temple.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers to me as she unbuttons and then unzips my pants, letting them fall to my ankles.
“Turn around, Ace,” he says to me.
I’m momentarily relieved that I chose to wear boxer briefs today. It’ll be clear that I don’t have any weapons. I’m almost positive the guy would have made me strip naked if I were wearing regular boxers.
Once he’s convinced I don’t have a weapon, he allows me to pull up my pants with the woman’s help.
“Teacher,” he says to the woman still holding my bag. “Show me everything he brought.”
She carefully unpacks the bag, showing him three units of blood, a bag of saline, the tubing, a needle, bandages, and a few other supplies. She picks up a box of candy I didn’t know was in the bag. He must have asked for it as part of the deal.
“Here you go,” she says and hands it to him.
My eyes snap to hers. That’s her voice. I’d know it anywhere. That’s Emma. But she looks younger than I thought she was.
“You take a bite,” he says to her. “Make sure they ain’t tryin’ to poison me.”
She hesitantly opens the package of candy bars and takes one out, eyeing me the entire time. I wonder if she knows it’s me. I haven’t spoken yet. Maybe she thinks I’m a cop posing as a paramedic. I honestly have no idea if they are trying to poison him, so I can’t even nod encouragement.
She bites off the end of the candy bar and chews it. Once the gunman is satisfied she’s not going to die, he pushes her away. “Take the shit, and you and Ace make sure he don’t die. Got it?” He threatens me with the gun. “Don’t try anything, Ace.”
I hold up my hands. “I won’t. I’m only here to help.”
Emma gives me a sharp look after hearing my voice. She knows it’s me. And for some reason she looks incredibly relieved. Maybe she thought I was here to jump the gunman.
“I’ll need my hands to administer the blood,” I say. “Can someone cut the ties off me?”
“Do it, Goldilocks,” he says, holding out a pocketknife. “Any funny stuff, and the teacher gets it.”
My eyes are glued to the gun pointed at Emma’s head as the blonde woman cuts the zip ties and then hands the pocketknife back to the gunman.
He gestures to the door. “What the fuck you waitin’ for? Go.”
We walk into the storage room, and he shuts the door behind us. I hear something heavy being moved in front of it.
“Emma,” I say.
“Brett?” she asks, even though I’m sure she knows the answer.
I nod, and she falls into my arms.
Chapter Six
Emma
I quickly remove myself from his arms, remembering why he’s here. “Can you help him?”
“Let’s take a look.”
Brett goes into action, taking Carter’s blood pressure and pulse before swiftly laying out all the supplies and then hooking Carter up to the blood. He hands me the bag. “Hook this over that shelf please.”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait and hope we did this in time.”
I look at the other bags of blood. “How many will he need?”
“We’ll take it one at a time and see how he does.” He nods to the unit of blood I hung up. “Squeeze that gently for me. We need it to infuse quickly. I’ll watch him closely for the first fifteen minutes or so to make sure he doesn’t have an allergic reaction.”
“As in, he could be allergic to the blood?”
“It’s possible,” Brett says. “We’re giving him O-neg. It’s the universal blood type. He shouldn’t have a reaction, but you never know.”
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
He looks at Carter’s leg and all the blood staining the floor. “I hope so.”
Brett gives nothing away as he assesses our situation. He seems calm and collected—two things that are barely in my vocabulary at this point. I’m trying to read his face, but I can’t tell if he thinks Carter will live or die.
“What are we going to do? I mean, assuming he gets better and that maniac doesn’t kill us, what are we going to do?”
“As soon as he’s stable, I’ll get on the phone with the police, and we’ll come up with something. But for now, let’s concentrate on what we can control, which is helping Carter.”
I pull a chair over and sit down while I continue to squeeze the bag of blood.
Brett keeps his fingers on Carter’s wrist. He looks at me. “Have we met before? You look familiar.”
“I don’t think so.”
“How is it you have a twelve-year-old?” he asks. “You barely look twenty-five.”
“I’m twenty-seven. And it’s a long story. But it starts with a slutty fifteen-year-old and a foreign exchange student.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “That sounds interesting. And we’ve got nothing but time right now, Emma.”
We may be hostages in a robbery gone bad, but oh, how I like the way he says my name. “You really want to hear about it?”
“If you’re willing to tell me.”
“Okay, well, as you know, I lost my dad. I was eight when he died. The therapist my mom took me to when I got pregnant would tell you that because I lacked a father figure in my formative years, I craved attention from boys and used any means to get it.”
“I think I would have liked you when I was in high school,” he jokes with a wink.
I snicker. “Yeah, but nobody seemed to like me for very long. As soon as they got what they wanted, they moved on to the ones who were girlfriend material.”
“You didn’t fit in that category?” he asks.
“I wanted to, but I went about it the wrong way. When I was a sophomore, I met Stefan in my pre-calculus class. He was from Germany. He was a year older than me. Like most girls, I was enamored with his accent. He was the first boy who wanted to keep me around longer than a week or two. But then I got careless and ended up pregnant. He bolted soon after I told him. He went home to Germany for Christmas and never came back, even though he was supposed to go to school here for the entire year.”
Brett looks upset. “And he hasn’t contacted you since?”
I narrow my eyes. “How did you know?”
“You said on the phone it had always just been you, Evelyn, and your mom.”
“I tried to look him up once the baby came, figuring he’d fall in love with her instantly, as I had. But he had a very common name, and there was just no way to find him.”
“Do you have a picture of your daughter?”
“I have about a thousand.” I gesture to the door. “But they’re all on my phone, and he broke it.”
“He broke your phone? Why’d he do that?”
I sigh. “I tried to text my friends, Becca and Kelly. I knew they were still in the building, and I wanted to warn them. But he saw me and knocked it out of my hand. Then he confiscated everyone’s phone.”
Brett takes my hand in his and examines it. “Did he hurt you?” he asks, concern evident in his expression.
I clear my throat. “I’m okay.” Heat from his hand warms mine. “Everyone says Evelyn looks like me. We’re often mistaken for sisters.”
“She must be beautiful if she takes after you,” he says, tracing the curves of my face with his green eyes.
I feel warmth spread across my face. “Thanks.” I bite my lip and look away wondering what the hell I’m doing blushing. How can I react to him like this when we’re being held hostage by a whacko with a gun?
“Your mom was a nurse?” I ask, changing the subject.
“She was,” he says, looking proud.
“And you said you have a little sister?”
“Bria. That’s short for Brianna. She’s twenty-two. She’s a singer.”
“She is? What kinds of songs does she sing?”
“Pop mainly. She’s never been on the radio, although she’s cut an album. But she can’t get picked up by a label, even though she’s fantastic—and that’s not just her big brother talking, she really is good. She mainly works as a backup singer while she’s trying to get her career off the ground.”
“So she was little when your mom died.”
“Bria was three. I was eleven.”
“That would make you … thirty?”
I have a hard time tearing my eyes away from his face. He’s really attractive. Rugged too, with his hair on the longish side of what would be acceptable for a firefighter. He’s clean shaven, but I can see the hint of a five o’clock shadow even though it’s not nearly five o’clock. And his tattoos. Oh, don’t get me started on those. He has a string of them that go up his left arm and disappear under the sleeve of his shirt. This guy is probably on the cover of FDNY’s firefighter calendar.
“Yup. I’m an old man,” he says, laughing.
He’s laughing. We’re locked in a storage room at gunpoint, and he’s laughing.
And I’m swooning. I roll my eyes at the whole ridiculous situation.
He takes Carter’s blood pressure again.
“How is it?”
“His BP is improving, but he’s not out of the woods. We’ll have to give him more blood when this bag is empty.”
“How long do you think we’ll be here?”
“Hopefully not too long. I have a plan for when Carter is stable.” He sets the BP cuff aside. “I’m going to put those folding tables between the two of you and the door to protect you from, well, whatever. Then I’ll lure the gunman over and rile him up so he doesn’t hear the police break through the front entrance.”
“Rile him up?” I say in horror. “Brett, the man has a gun.”
“Yeah, but there are five—uh, six hostages here, one of them clinging to life. We need to end this.”
“But what about Leo?” I ask. “You can’t risk your life like that.”
“Emma, I’m a firefighter. I became one to help people.”
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Tears well up in my eyes. “So did my dad.”
He exhales a deep breath. “I’m really sorry you lost him.”
I nod and swallow. “Not a day goes by that I don’t remember Mom getting the phone call telling her my dad was inside the south tower when it collapsed.” I press my lips together and look at the ceiling, trying to keep more tears at bay. “I was home sick that day. We watched it on TV, along with other women who were married to firefighters in my dad’s company. For an eight-year-old like me, it was like watching a movie. I didn’t understand that it was real. Not until Mom dropped the phone, and she and some of the others fell to the floor in hysterics.”
He puts a comforting hand on mine.
“Brett,” I say, my tears having won the battle. “You can’t put Leo through that. He’ll never forgive you.”
His hand comes to my face and a finger wipes away my tears. “You never forgave your father?”
“I … I can’t.” I shake my head sadly. “He knew what he was doing when he ran into that tower. He knew what he was doing when he risked his life then and so many other times. He was willing to leave my mother and me. How can I forgive him for that?”
“Emma, it wasn’t his choice to leave you. You must know that.”
I try to control my breathing, but suddenly everything is sinking in. Carter barely hanging on to life. Us trapped here with God knows what happening on the other side of the door. “I’m s-sorry. I guess this is all getting to me.”
He looks at his watch. “I have to release the tourniquet for a few minutes or he could lose the leg.”
“But won’t he start bleeding again?”
“He will, but hopefully the blood he’s getting will keep him from getting worse. I have to try. I’d want someone to do it for me.”
“What can I do?”
“Keep squeezing the bag. I need blood going in as fast as it’s coming out.”
I watch in terror as blood runs out of Carter’s wound. Brett looks more than a little concerned, and after only a minute, he tightens the belt around Carter’s leg. Then he stands and squeezes the bag of blood harder than I could have.
He scrubs a hand across his face. “Damn. I hope I didn’t make it worse.”
Engulfing Emma (The Men on Fire Series) Page 4