1
Sophie Alexander was going to die alone.
While she had long ago made the choice to live by herself, to be independent and self-sufficient in every way, dying alone was different. Creepy. Unnerving.
Okay, terrifying.
She was in her office — she knew that much. But everything else was confusing, including the layout, which she’d thought she knew back and forth and upside down. She should, as much time as she spent here. But the heat and the thick, lung-scorching smoke had sent her internal GPS powers to hell. Plus, the throbbing, swelling knot on the side of her head hurt so badly she couldn’t think straight.
Ironic that her life’s mission was to make the world greener, safer, and she was going to be asphyxiated by vile, poisonous gases in a fire.
Irony could suck it.
Her mind was scrambled like an egg, like the frog her satan-spawn brother had run through their mother’s good blender when he was thirteen. No. She was not going to waste a single thought on him, especially if these were among her last.
And she was definitely not going to just lie here and give up. Giving up went against everything inside of her. She’d never been a quitter, and lying in a stifling, smoke-filled sweatbox, coughing her brains out, was not going to change that.
She didn’t want to die. She had too much to live for. She had a company to run, buildings to improve, personal goals to kick ass at, literally and figuratively. Lying here and giving up was not an option.
Sophie pulled her smoke-saturated shirt over her mouth and nose, as if that would help much, and fought hard to stop coughing with every inhale. She hoisted her concrete-heavy body up on all fours as best she could and crawled a few feet, unsure of the direction she moved in but thinking if she kept going, she’d eventually run in to something. Preferably an exit.
Heavy, blinding smoke was a bitch. One of the worst parts of being a firefighter, in Nate Rottinghaus’s opinion. Masks were a pain in the ass, but he couldn’t imagine doing the job without one, the way they had just a couple decades ago. He adjusted his again, praying his supply would last.
He was deep inside the second level of the two-story office building, crawling as low to the floor as he could get. Visibility: zero. Status quo. He continued to navigate by touch, blindly searching every inch in front of him with his gloved hands. Hoping.
One of the tenants from the first floor of the building, who hadn’t been present when the fire had broken out, reported that the tenant in the upstairs office on the north end — this one — might be inside. A thirty-something female who practically lived in her office. Her Lexus SUV was in the lot, and the downstairs tenant had heard her footsteps above his office just a couple of hours ago. No one had seen her leave.
Nate was all business when he was working a fire. Couldn’t afford not to be. Two years ago, he’d learned the up-close-and-personal way that lives could be altered in a millisecond in the heart of a blaze. Thank God for Faith Mendoza, his former colleague and now the chief’s wife, who’d saved his sorry ass.
Nate was still waiting for his opportunity to pay it forward.
As the minutes ticked by, his adrenaline pumped even harder. She had to be in here somewhere. His optimism had soared when he’d located a couch, thinking maybe she’d fallen asleep there, but there was no one on it or near it, and now time was running out. His air supply must be close to empty — he expected to get the five-minute warning vibration any second. But he couldn’t quit until he ran into Evan Drake, his colleague who’d gone left when Nate had gone right, in the middle. Until they found the woman or verified there was nobody inside.
Keep it together, he told himself. Gotta be getting close.
A few seconds later, his left hand ran into something soft, pliable. A foot?
Pulling himself along by the elbows, he scooted closer and took his left glove off with his teeth. A leg, he verified as he groped his way over a muscled calf, a knee, a thigh. A short leg. Feminine. He thought he heard a moan, but it was hard to tell, between all his gear and the sounds of the others actively fighting the blaze about twenty feet to the south. Too damn close.
He eased himself alongside her and fumbled around for his flashlight, breaking out in a sudden sweat that had nothing to do with the hundred-plus-degree heat in here.
People depended on him to be a professional and to keep his shit together, in every way, when he was inside a burning building. Doubly so when there was a life at stake. Normally, he was cool under pressure. Able to think straight about whatever situation was at hand. Systematic. Practical. Experienced.
So when he shined his light into this woman’s face, it defied all logic and acceptability that the first thing that went through his mind was that she had the most compelling brown eyes he’d ever seen.
The second was that those eyes were staring back at him with a certain measure of awareness. Relief. She was conscious, if disoriented. Scared as hell, understandably. The urge erupted in him to assuage that fear, to put his arms around her and reassure her — on a personal level. And that was messed up.
Those were some powerful eyes.
Nate grabbed his radio and reported in: “Female victim located. Conscious. Bringing her out.”
He propelled himself the last few inches until he was even with her head, taking a final deep pull on his air supply. “Everything’s gonna be okay,” he told the woman as he pulled his mask from his face and opened himself up to the chemical-laden smoky air. She responded only with a wicked cough. She’d no doubt taken in a shit-ton of the potentially deadly air. Nate eased the mask over her nose and mouth, standard operating procedures be damned, coaching her to get some of the purified air into her system, which he knew was easier said than done in her apparent condition. Time to get her the hell out of here stat.
“Can you walk with me?” he asked next to her ear.
The woman coughed repeatedly as she tried to inhale from the mask … but she nodded.
He frowned, not convinced. “Let’s give it a try. Stay low.”
