Chapter Twenty-Two
Jaxson
Her faint scream brought me back and focused. I lifted my gloved hand, latching onto the mask around my face, and yanked it off.
“You need to lay back down,” the paramedic said as he hovered over me.
“The hell I do.” I coughed as I pushed him away and stood up, watching the ambulance tires spin on ice and snow before flying down the mountain road. “You’re not… where are you taking her?” I took several deep breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth. Already I was doing better, more alert, less cloudy. Whatever had been in that canister, it wasn’t oxygen. They’d tried to drug me.
Two firefighters were dousing the smoking remnants of the cabin, keeping it from lighting ablaze again. They were chatting amongst one another; I couldn’t hear them over the rush of water pounding the rubble.
The paramedic had to know something. He must have been involved. He didn’t seem the least bit stressed or surprised that his vehicle had just been stolen with a woman in the back, screaming for help. I landed a forceful blow to his face, wrestling him to the ground, pinning him down, keeping his hands far from his medical bag just a few feet away. I didn’t know what he had in there, whether it was a gun or a sedative, but I would not let him touch me.
Another firefighter came up from behind the paramedic with a spotlight. He turned on the light, the brightness forcing the paramedic to shield his eyes, blinding him as I kept him pinned to the snow.
“Get off me!” the paramedic shrieked. “You’re crazy.”
“You ain’t seen crazy,” I spat.
“What the hell is going on?” the firefighter asked. “You’re not local EMS. You okay, Sir?” He kept the spotlight on the paramedic, but his attention was now trained on me.
He tossed me a set of zip ties from his pocket. He recognized something was amiss as well. There was only one ambulance in all of Breckenridge. The Adams family ran the EMS unit, and being a member of Eagle Tactical, I knew every one of the Adams’.
“I will be.” I rolled the assailant around onto his stomach and tied his hands together before I stood. “What do you want with Ariella?” I yanked him around, making him sit in the cold, mushy snow.
“There’s a bounty on her head. She’s just a payday.”
How many people were after her?
I pulled my phone from my pocket, dialed Lincoln and the rest of the Eagle Tactical team. I patched them through on a conference call together.
“Hey, what’s going on, man?” Lincoln asked.
I’d left him at my house, just a few yards away, and he didn’t know what had just transpired.
“Yeah, where are you?” Mason’s asked.
“Ariella’s house burned down. We got caught up in the smoke and someone posing as a paramedic forced her into the back of the ambulance and took off with her down the mountain pass,” I said. I further went into detail, demanding for them to call the local Breckenridge sheriff’s office and block off the road.
“I’m on it,” Declan answered.
“I also need a sheriff’s unit brought up to the old cabin, the one Ariella purchased. One guy pretending to be a paramedic is in zip ties.” I didn’t have cuffs handy, and while I could have easily dragged his ass down to the station, I needed to get to Ariella and protect her.
“You going to question him?” Lincoln asked.
I wanted to strap him down and interrogate him, shove the barrel of my gun against his bare skin. That would take time, and it wasn’t something I had a lot of right now. “I’m leaving that up to the sheriff.” There were too many witnesses with the fire department standing just a few feet away. The type of interrogation I wanted to do would be off the books and highly illegal.
* * *
I rushed back between the tree line and over the bridge, skirting the house. The smoke had diminished. Lincoln approached the car. “I’m driving,” he said.
I started the engine with my key fob and climbed into the passenger seat. Lincoln didn’t miss a beat, hurrying into the driver’s side. The moment he shut the door, he had the vehicle in reverse and whisked us away from the house.
I yanked the seatbelt, securing it while Lincoln rushed us down the mountain pass, the road slick and wet from ice and snow. My stomach sank at the danger that lurked ahead.
“We’ll get to her in time, don’t worry.” Lincoln’s hands were tight on the steering wheel.
My foot tapped against the floor mats, anxiety creeping in, making the drive seem longer. “Were Izzie and Skylar okay?” I hadn’t forgotten about them back at the house.