Devil in Texass(78)
She was going to have to slide further down the outside of the building than Ginger
had, hopefully making it safely to the top step. He’d have to catch her when she got
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there. Keep them both steady so they didn’t fall over. No easy feat. Not one he was even sure he could accomplish. But he wasn’t going to tell her that.
Liza discarded her shoes as he’d requested, then climbed over the window ledge.
She held herself steady for a moment, her forearms resting on the covered sill as she gripped it tight.
“Slow,” he said. “Easy.”
If she slid too fast, he’d never be able to stop her. They’d both keep going ‘til they hit the ground.
Hoping to calm her nerves, he said, “Worse that’s gonna happen, we both fall and
break some bones.”
That was probably a lie. They could break their necks, for Christ’s sake. But he
wanted her to stay steady and focused. Not paralyzed with fear.
As she started to lower herself, though, everything went awry.
“Oh fuck!” she yelled in terror as the rug began to slip. It slid over the edge of the sill with her weight and Liza went with it, sliding down the side of the building like a kid riding a sled down a slippery ski slope.
“Liza!” his heart leapt into his throat.
She screamed as her body made contact with his. He tried to get a grip on her, but it all happened so quickly and he didn’t have the best stance, wasn’t balanced well
enough. She slipped partially through his grasp and screamed again—this time in raw
agony—as her side connected with the top step. He had a grip on her shirt though and
held it tight as her bare feet searched for a rung, much lower than where he was
positioned. She slipped a little further, finally landing on a solid step, though he could see her ankle was twisted in an unnatural way.
She wrapped her arms around the side of the metal frame and held fast to it. The
ladder swayed from the sudden and unstable weight, but the boys below held it in
place.
Jack was bent over, with one hand holding her shirt, the other holding the top step,
because he was about to topple over.
“Don’t move,” he said between clenched teeth. “Not an inch.” He fought to steady
himself.
Liza stilled and he regained his balance. When the ladder stopped shimmying and
shaking, he said, “Are you holding on tight?”
“Death grip,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good girl.” He let go of the material in his hand and worked his way slowly and
carefully down a few rungs to get to her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and
said, “Can you make it down?”
She nodded. “Having trouble breathing, though.”
“We’ll take it easy.” She could have broken a rib. Punctured a lung. And her ankle
was likely broken.
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They took one rung and she cried out.
“Your ankle?”
She nodded, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Jack!” Eddie called out to him. When Jack looked down, Eddie was pointing up to
the window. The flames had engulfed the attic. The side of the building was starting to burn. He feared it’d be a matter of minutes before the wood gave out and the ladder
went crashing through the side of the shop. With him and Liza attached to it.
“We’ve got to move, sweetheart.”
She had opened her eyes and caught the entire exchange, both verbal and mental.
“I can do this.”
Just then the fire trucks pulled up and the crew went to work on the flames, the
commotion below heightening the intensity of the situation. Jack would have loved to
have waited for them to reach him and Liza with their own ladder, but even the fire
captain knew time was of the essence.
“You’ve got to get down from there, Jack,” he said as he climbed out of the truck,
his voice deceptively calm. “Now.”
“She’s hurt,” Jack said back, but eased her down another rung, trying to hold her
against his body, take as much of her weight as he could so she didn’t have to put it on her ankle.
“We’ll take care of her as soon as she’s down,” said Mitch Rockwell, one of the
EMTs who’d arrived on the scene.
They continued down the ladder, one rung at a time. They’d barely made it
shoulder level to the Mason brothers when Mitch grabbed hold of Liza and took her
from Jack’s arms. Chris and Carl reached for him and the three fell to the ground as a portion of the building gave way and the ladder went crashing inward.
The firefighters had them on their feet in a heartbeat and out of the area. The police had moved the crowd across the street as the fire department battled the flames, which had spread to the stores on either side of Ginger’s.
When Jack was steady on his feet, his head whipped in every direction until he
located Liza. She wrested herself free of Mitch’s hold on her and started to limp toward Jack.
He winced, seeing the pain in her eyes and on her face.
“Don’t walk, darlin’.”
“Okay.” She fell into his arms and he was quick to get a good grip on her.
She held him tight, wheezing and shuddering. Her leg lifted, bent at the knee, to
keep her weight off her bad ankle. He held her to him, trying not to crush her, but
wanting to keep her close to his body. He smoothed a hand down her hair and kissed
her temple.
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“You’re handy to have around,” she said against his shoulder, her voice low and
raspy, her body shaking.
“Let’s try to keep the need for my sloppy rescues to a minimum, huh, darlin’?”
His heart was still beating so hard it was a wonder he didn’t go into cardiac arrest.
He hadn’t allowed himself to think about how badly Liza could have been injured if
he’d botched his rescue attempt. Or if he hadn’t been in the vicinity in the first place. He couldn’t stand the thought of what might have happened to her if she’d remained
trapped in that burning attic.
He held her a little tighter, never wanting to let her go.
“You did great,” she assured him, her grip on him a firm one too. “But, yeah. I’d
like to avoid life-threatening situations in the future.”
“Scared me,” he admitted.
“Me too.”
She stared up at him. No other words seemed to be necessary. She smiled weakly
and he winked back at her.
Several minutes passed before she pulled away slightly and asked, “Where’s
Ginger? Is she okay?”
“I’m over here,” Ginger chimed in. She was sitting on the back step of the