Her Billionaires_ Boxed Set(127)

Please.

Multi-unit fire.

“’Lo?” Mike’s voice. Dylan shot through a red light and prayed, making a sudden turn on a one-way street that might buy him an extra minute. Or kill him. Either chance was equally possible.

He put it on speaker. “Laura’s apartment is on fire.” Not the time for preliminaries.

“WHAT!” Mike’s voice went up an octave.

“Sorry to be so blunt. Get over to her apartment. You remember where it is?”

Mike’s voice had a weird quality to it. “Oh, yeah. I do. Just—shit! Just save her, Dylan.” Click.

Multi-unit fire.

Ask for so little, Buddy. He took a right so hard he thought the Audi might flip, but damn if that fine European engineering didn’t come in handy when you’re doing 77 mph on Mass Ave. If a cop saw him, he was toast.

No cops yet.

Two minutes.

Multi-unit fire.

In a multi-unit fire, two minutes could mean death. Block that thought, Dylan, his mind shouted at him.

One minute. He heard sirens, ears perked, discerning the direction. Going away from her part of town. Damn it! He might beat them all at this rate. He shot through four different stop signs, hoping like hell no one was walking an unleashed dog in the middle of the night, and slammed on his brakes, halting in the middle of an intersection, running for her building.

Smoke poured out of the basement windows. Fuck fuck fuck. That could make the first floor—literally, the floor itself—a structural nightmare, depending on where the actual fire was. Firefighter mind battled with his lover’s (ex-lover’s) mind and love won out as he sprinted up the steps and felt the front door using the back of his hand. Cool.

Red lights and his all-too-familiar siren sound caught his attention, the truck making its slow turn. “Stanwyck!” someone shouted. Murphy. Dylan waved as felt the locked doorknob, then kicked in the door. A mother with two teens ran past him, followed by a young woman, college-age, carrying a cat and dragging her bike.

Laura. His mind raced, plotting out the scene. No heat—yet—but tons of smoke. Crouching, he found clear air on the ground and began feeling his way to her front door. Just feet away, he felt it; cool. Locked.

“Thank God,” he muttered, two bodies moving past him as he heard the steady thump thump thump of fireman making their way cautiously upstairs. A loud clanging from below; a different crew was sourcing the fire, figuring out the focal point to work on containment and the level of danger.

Kicking in his second door in less than thirty seconds, his heard the splintering of the threshold, bent down again and shouted “Laura!”

No answer. Some memory gnawed away at him, how horrified she’d been (but had tried to hide it) when he’d mentioned fire safety in her building on that first date. Her unease, a pained look in her eyes. Fear? A victim?

Bullhorn. Dylan couldn’t make out the words he heard outside, but he knew the crew worked to remove everyone from the building. He guessed six units, but it could have been more. As he crawled through the tiny apartment he felt a wave of adrenaline, then gratitude, that she lived in such a small place. Finding her would be easy.

But what if you find her dead? a voice crept in. He shoved it away and felt, hand by hand on the wall, along the perimeter of her place. Living room, kitchen, no dining room, a bathroom, and then—bedroom.

“Laura!” The smoke was rising up through vents in the floor, especially near the forced hot water heaters against each wall. As he moved, eyes closed, he cursed himself for not grabbing a mask. Stupid stupid stupid, violating ten years of careful work. Emotions put people in jeopardy, Joe had taught them, and now he was caught in his own emotional turmoil, the blaze endangering them both.

Mike would kill him if he couldn’t save Laura. He half blamed Dylan for Jill’s death anyway, irrational as it was. If something happened to Laura...

Something brushed against him, too small to be human. Cat? She had three cats, right? In the darkness he coughed, then shouted her name again, the cat long gone. “Laura! It’s Dylan!”

“Dylan?” a little voice cried out. Left. It was to his left. Moving away from the wall, he violated what he’d been taught, disorienting himself. The bed, thankfully, was close. Instinct surged within him as she came into view, huddled under the covers, two cats guarding her.

“Get off the bed now, Laura,” he ordered, steel in his voice. The cats scattered. She was trembling and likely half in shock.

“I can’t,” she mewled. How could a grown woman’s voice be so tiny? Something was off, but this wasn’t the time for psychology. He stood, grabbed her, and pulled her off the bed roughly. No time to be kind. Her body fell in a funny way, more awkward and bulkier than he expected.