It’s my turn to save him.
My turn to help him.
That’s what we do, we take turns saving each other.
“It’s my turn!” Seizing in Alex’s arms, I flip and scream for my freedom, but he refuses to let me loose. “Kane! No. Alex. No!” I shoot off bullets with the gun still in my hand. Uncaring for anyone’s safety, wildly aiming for Abel but missing him by yards, I shoot off every round I have until the gun stops firing and seizes up. I throw it as hard as I can, and yet, it lands just fifteen feet away. “Let me down, Alex.” He drags me away from Kane. “Alex! Let me go!”
He drags me through a long hall clogged with black smoke. He refuses to let me go, even when I lose sight of Kane and my fighting intensifies. Oz sprints along the hall with his gun in hand and a shirt tied over his face, and when he reaches us, he helps Alex with my weight.
Two grown men struggle to drag me out. “Jess!” Alex’s voice is broken and scratchy from the smoke. His eyes water and his muscles bulge from adrenaline, but he doesn’t let me go. “Jess! He’s gone. We gotta get out.”
Sections of the ceiling fall in, and each fiery piece of metal that rains down on us burns our backs and arms.
Like the hallway that just won’t end, the smoke races for the exit just as fast as Alex and Oz drag me. Bursting into sunlight, remembering it’s the middle of the morning, and not the night that it feels, we explode into a parking lot filled with police cruisers, fire trucks with men racing around and preparing hoses, and four ambulances.
My brother, myrealbrother, sweeps me up from Alex’s grasp and runs clear across the street. Dropping to the ground and rolling over me, he slams blankets over my legs to smother the flames I forgot were eating my skin.
In an instant, Kari stops at my side and slaps a mask over my face, then Luc pulls out a pair of scissors and works through the thick denim sticking to my blistering skin.
I swing my gaze around like I expect Kane to run out and help me. I stop on Laine, who sits in the back of an ambulance with her face in her hands, and Angelo, who stands guard with that gun still in his grasp.
They should’ve disarmed him already, but the police belong to us and they were busy pulling me from a burning building.
Tears burn my eyes, like acid on sensitive skin, and they dribble onto my oxygen mask as I bring my eyes back to watch the club doors.
He’ll come out soon.
He will.
I know he will.
He’s the big grizzly bear that needs to make a scene about how mad he is that I put myself in danger. He’s just in there taking care of Abel, but he’ll be out in a sec.
Fire crews run around the outside of the double story building. They unravel hoses and split into teams to work on opposite sides of the warehouse. They shout orders between themselves. They decide who’ll go inside and who will work the ladders.
Alex skids down by my side in just a tank and with burns on his arms. Kari presses the mask to my face, because each time she relaxes her hold, I bat it away.
My right arm burns, and when I drag my eyes away from the club entrance, I stop on the divot in my skin. A channel where flesh used to be, but now blood oozes as a different EMT works to push my skin back together.
With white gloves on his hands and the concentration a man possesses when he knows he’s working on his co-worker’s little sister, he wraps a bandage around my arm and calls for a stretcher.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday! Everybody out, now!” Shouts rocket into the crowded space as a fire chief stands at the front entrance with his radio pressed to his lips. Three loud horns boom from the biggest truck. “Command to all units, evacuate the building. Company officers begin roll call now!”
“Engine one checking in.”
“Engine two checking in.”
“Fuck.” Like the airhorns mean something to them, Alex and Luc pick me up while I simply concentrate on breathing air that’s not completely smoke. The firemen that ran in only a minute ago now turn on their heels and sprint toward the exit. I watch on in horrified hope as they drag a man by the arms the way Alex and Oz carried me.
My heart beats faster with relief.
Here he comes.
He needed to be saved.
He needed help.
Fire hoses are retracted the way the power cord snaps back into the body of a vacuum cleaner as three firemen and Kane race down the hall that never ends.