Duty To Protect. Beth Cornelison

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СКАЧАТЬ that section of the women’s center, fueled by the oxygen pouring through the car-created hole in the siding.

      Chances were slim anyone could still be alive in that office.

      But for Riley, a slim chance was good enough. His heart kicked, and his pulse thrummed.

      He spun toward the frantic woman. “What’s her name?”

      “Ginny. Ginny West. Oh, please, help her!”

      Riley shoved his breathing apparatus over his nose.

      Captain Shaw caught his arm, growling, “Sinclair, the building’s too involved. I can’t order anyone to go in.”

      Riley nailed his boss with a stubborn glare. “Then I’m volunteering.”

      The captain scowled. Sighed. Nodded.

      Gritting his teeth, Riley hurried across the lawn, already adjusting the valve to start his flow of oxygen.

      As he approached the smashed sedan, Cal was coming out, shaking his head. Cal turned toward Riley as he raced up. “There’s no one anywhere in or around the car. Whoever was driving is gone, vanished. He—”

      “There’s still a woman inside!” Riley interrupted. “Get the imager. I’m going in.”

      Cal muttered a curse as he charged toward the fire truck.

      “I need a hose down here! Cover me!” Riley shouted to the men on the nozzle.

      They aimed the hose’s spray toward the gaping hole in the wall. Riley picked his way over the pile of rubble and followed the veil of water inside. Dropping to his knees, he scanned the interior of the office, but thick black smoke obscured his view. “Ginny!” he shouted. “Ginny West!”

      He listened for a reply, a groan, a whimper. Anything.

      Only the roar and crackle of flames answered him.

      Riley crawled forward, feeling his way, peering intently into the dense smoke. Only murky forms took shape.

       Where the hell was Cal with that imaging camera?

      “Ginny West!”

      He found a desk and felt under it. Beside it. Nothing.

      Shoving a toppled chair aside, Riley crawled deeper into the room. Flames danced around him, pushing him back. Only a tiny corner of the office hadn’t yet been swallowed by fire. A large rectangular object—a filing cabinet, perhaps— seemed all that blocked the inferno’s path.

      “See her anywhere?” Cal called from behind him.

      “Not yet.” Riley grabbed the thermal imaging camera Cal shoved toward him and scanned the unburned corner of the room. Designed to detect a person’s body heat when smoke was too thick for firefighters to see, the apparatus was often the only way to find persons trapped in a fire.

      Riley studied the screen as he aimed the camera in methodical sweeps over the floor.

      “Ginny West!” he shouted again. “Ginny, can you hear me?”

      A blob of yellow and orange appeared on the screen. His adrenaline spiked. “I’ve got something!”

      Cal crawled up beside him. “Is that a foot?”

      Heart pumping, Riley nodded toward the downed file cabinet. “Someone’s behind there.”

      Across the room a support beam collapsed from the ceiling amid a shower of sparks and flying embers.

      “It’s getting hot in here.” Cal snatched the camera back. “Haul ass, partner.”

      As Cal shouted for more water support to cover them, Riley scrambled ahead. He plowed his way over the crumbled debris toward the file cabinet where the camera had detected a source of heat. Body heat.

      A shower of sooty water sprayed down around him, partially clearing the smoke, clearing his vision.

      He circled the fallen cabinet, his heart in his throat.

      Please God, don’t let me be too late.

      Not again.

      His young sister’s ashen face flashed in his mind, and bile surged up his throat. More snapshot memories followed, clicking in his brain like a slideshow. Children he’d been too late to help, old men who’d suffocated in their beds…and Erin, who’d survived, but not thanks to him.

      Shoving the haunting images out of his mind, he felt along the floor to the edge of the cabinet.

      And found a woman.

      Chapter 2

      Another curtain of water doused Riley. For a few seconds, the smoke cleared enough for him to assess the situation.

      The woman’s arm was pinned by the file cabinet. And she wasn’t moving.

      His gut tightened.

      “Ginny? Ginny West?”

      No response.

      He pressed his hand to her throat, feeling her carotid artery for a pulse. A gentle throbbing met his fingers, and relief swelled in his chest.

      “Cal, she’s alive, but she’s pinned down!” He shoved his shoulder into the file cabinet. It rocked—but not enough.

      “Walters!”

      Cal appeared through the smoke. “Right here.”

      Another fire-weakened beam collapsed near them. Riley averted his face from the blast of heat and sparks. Glancing up, he found the beams overhead equally eaten by the fire. They could come down any second. He and Cal were working on borrowed time.

      “She’s under here!” Riley plowed his shoulder into the cabinet again, and Cal pulled from the other side. This time the heavy unit toppled aside.

      The woman’s arm, free now of the cabinet, was bent at an unnatural angle. Riley’s gut pitched.

      “Help me get her up. Watch that arm!”

      He climbed over her still form while Cal positioned himself to help lift her carefully over Riley’s shoulder.

      After draping her limp form into place, being as gentle with the woman’s injured arm as time would allow, Riley headed out. “Let’s go!”

      As they picked their way through the rubble, a loud creak rent the air above them.

      “It’s coming down! Go! Go! Go!” Cal shouted.

      Riley staggered out of the building, the woman over his shoulder and his partner on his heels, just before the roof collapsed. Flames ravaged the corner by the fallen cabinet.

      Captain Shaw rushed toward them. “That was a little too close for comfort, Sinclair.”

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