willing the collapsing fortress to reveal its secrets.
The mournful howl of iron girders buckling from the intense heat taunted him from above. An invitation.
The tornadic gasp of air currents, rising and gusting ahead of the flames hit his chest and pushed him back. A warning.
The wheezing rasp of his best friend, urging him away from the heart of the fire where he lay dying, cried in his ear.
His destiny.
Gideon’s internal radar tuned in to that last, weak sound. He made the world go quiet inside his head. He forced his pounding heart and his own ragged breathing into silence.
He zeroed his horrible sixth sense in on Luke.
There.
Gideon plunged into the wall of smoke, lengthening his stride as much as he dared. He strode into the belly of the fiery beast to retrieve his friend.
“Taylor! Redding!” The order from the receiver inside his helmet went unheeded. “I said clear out!”
“Luke’s down.” Gideon’s brief reply spoke volumes.
He didn’t spare another breath to argue Deputy Chief Bridgerton’s orders. The chief would understand. A firefighter wouldn’t leave a man behind.
Feeling his way along the wall, Gideon tripped through the remnants of the blasted doorway into the boiler room and dropped to the floor. One knee hit concrete.
The other hit something softer.
Luke.
Gideon took his hand and squeezed it tight in his fist, offering a silent promise, trading an unspoken comfort. He stretched out beside his partner on the floor, peering through the six-inch window of clear air next to the floor. Luke was flat on his back. The burning bramble of rafters and twisted metal had pinned his right shoulder and chest to the floor.
“I’m here.” Gideon barely heard the words himself. “You with me?”
Luke’s helmet rolled back and forth as he tried to shake his head. “No good. Get— Sumbitch—”
“You insulting me?” Gideon crooked a smile as if Luke could somehow perceive it through his closed eyes and pain-filled delirium.
Gideon hooked his arms through Luke’s elbow and around his knee and pulled. Trapped.
He needed a pickax. A crane. Two more men.
If God was listening, he needed a miracle.
“Honey?” Gideon moaned out loud, desperate to escape the certain doom that awaited him in his dream. He needed to hear that taut, sexy voice—full of spunk and sass one minute, full of vulnerable tenderness the next. He reached out for her.
Gideon pulled his hand away from the metal framework. Sticky strings of melted rubber glommed onto the tips of his gloves, snagging his fingers in a deadly web.
Gideon swore. One vivid word that gave voice to his frustration and alerted Deputy Chief Bridgerton to the deadly danger they were in.
“Taylor! I’m counting you down in seconds now. Get out!”
Feeling Luke’s still form beneath him, Gideon resisted the urge to share the last breath of oxygen from his tank with him. He needed that air if either one of them stood a chance of getting out.
Gideon reached out and grasped the heavy metal bars, softened by molten heat, in both hands and rose to his feet. Spurred on by determination alone, he lifted the ceiling wreckage and shoved it off Luke into the ravenous mouth of black smoke. As the debris disappeared and crashed to the floor, Gideon’s glove went with it.
He breathed in deeply, absorbing his tank’s last hiss of clean air.
Then he was on his knees and lifting. Shoulder to gut. Hand behind knees. He pulled Luke’s arm around his neck and rolled to his feet, staggering beneath the weight of a full-grown man dressed in heavy gear.
“Chief!”
He was up. He was moving.
Gideon lurched down the hall toward the busted-out hole through which he and Luke had first entered the blaze. He leaned against the wall and followed it with his elbow. And when that ran out he followed blind instinct and stumbled toward fresh air and freedom.
“Taylor!” Gideon’s lungs fought for air, but there was none to be had. “Take him.” His knees buckled.
Bridgerton’s commands echoed through the blackness closing in on Gideon.
Before he hit the ground, the burden on his shoulders lifted. Hands were there to help him. To hold him up. To take Luke from his grasping arms.
Someone snatched off his helmet and his mask. His oxygen tank vanished. He was sucking clear, cold night air into his lungs, letting the oxygen pour like a cool compress through his throat. Then hands were lifting him, pushing a small plastic mask over his nose and mouth.
He saw flames—white and orange and laughing with victory—consume the midnight sky above him. The blackened skeleton of the condemned building was silhouetted against the blaze for one instant before another explosion rocked the earth and it crumpled into a heap of billowing smoke and flame.
“We’re clear!”
Those were the last words Gideon heard before he surrendered to the darkness.
When he came to in the swaying ambulance minutes later, he knew all was lost. The silence of the paramedics told him the truth. Luke was gone.
Still, he reached across the gap between their guerneys to touch his friend. “Sorry, buddy. I was too late. Too late.”
“Christ, Taylor. Your hand.”
It took one endless moment for Gideon to pull his gaze from the peaceful expression on Luke’s ashen face to focus on the blackened tips of the fingers on his left hand.
Shock gave way to pain as the flaking layers of seared skin registered with his brain. “No—”
“No—” The hoarse cry from his nightmare took shape and sound as a shard of phantom pain in his left hand woke him halfway toward consciousness.
He reached for comfort. Reached for solace. Reached for light and life and loving perfection.
“Meg?”
He held a cold pillow in his arms.
Full consciousness crashed in on Gideon with a cruel force as violent as the nightmare itself.
The bed was empty.
He stilled the needy grasp of his arms, breathing deeply to silence the pounding of his heart. He sat up and pushed the fingers of his right hand into the sweat-streaked hair at his temple. The damp sheet slipped down his naked chest and pooled around his hips.
The air-conditioning ran on high, and the humid city air of daytime had given
