Chapter 1
Chapter One
PRESENT DAY
Hunter
“Checkmate.”
“Wait, you can’t do that!” Spencer yelps, then picks up O’Connor’s chess piece and moves it back to where it was.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sink further into my usual armchair and close my eyes, waiting for the imminent fallout.
The move O’Connor pulled wasn’t a legal move, but I’m not going to tell them that.
I don’t want to get involved. Their recent fascination with chess has ended up with the two of them arguing every time or, in some cases, with the chess pieces ending up scattered across the floor of the firehouse.
They don’t know how to play nice, and soon I’m going to need to pull the dad card and take it away from them and throw it in the trash.
“I think you’ll find I just did,” O’Connor quips, and Spencer’s face turns red.
They proceed to argue the rules of chess, and I let out a heavy sigh.
It’s been almost forty-eight hours since I got a wink of sleep, and the pounding behind my eyes is a sign I’m going to be paying the price until—or should I say if—I can catch some shut-eye later.
We’re only three hours into our twenty-four-hour shift, and I can almost feel the phantom softness of the mattress against my skin.
For some reason, I sleep better here than I do in my own home.
Maybe it’s due to having to be constantly alert.
Always ready for a call to come in, and strangely, that allows me a sense of peace to sleep.
It’s been my default since I was eighteen when I enlisted with the Navy and is now second nature.
I can’t remember the last time I slept for longer than four hours. It must have been at least seven years. Since the day I got the call about Duncan, most likely. But I don’t want to think too hard about that. It opens up wounds that I’d rather not touch.
“Fuck’s sake,” Spencer grumbles.
I open my eyes at the sound of the table scraping across the concrete floor as he stands abruptly and ends up knocking all the chess pieces over. “Stupid fucking game.”
My gaze flicks to O’Connor. His lips tip into a smug grin before he quickly looks over to me.
I shake my head. Don’t do it, I silently plead. But he ignores me anyway.
“Just because you suck at chess doesn’t mean it’s a stupid game,” he says, full of the snark he knows will get under Spencer’s skin.
As expected, Spencer rounds the small games table and shoves him hard enough for the chair to topple back. O’Connor lands in a heap on the floor and bursts into laughter, which only gets louder as Spencer jabs him in the ribs.
“Knock it off, kids,” I mutter under my breath. “I didn’t know I was running a day care center instead of a firehouse.”
Spencer snaps his head at me and points an accusatory finger at O’Connor. “He fucking cheated.”
“I don’t fucking care,” I argue back, then press my fingers into my temple as the pain radiates down my jaw. Damn, this is going to be a long shift if this doesn’t ease up. “I’m gonna throw that thing in the pit if you keep it up.”
He actually rolls his eyes, like he’s five years old instead of thirty-one, and heads toward the kitchen.
Snickering to himself, O’Connor pulls himself up off the floor, straightens his long-sleeve T-shirt, and follows close behind.
They wind each other up constantly, but they’re always in each other’s pockets.
And although they frustrate me sometimes, it must be nice having that level of friendship where you can be at each other’s throats one minute and laughing the next.
I used to have that in the military. My SEAL team members were my brothers. But there comes a time when you stop letting people in—after you’ve seen the life drain from your friends’ eyes one too many times.
And after you received a phone call letting you know your husband had died, and your entire home you built together was destroyed.
It changes something in you. Rewires your brain where it becomes too risky to allow anyone to get close. It becomes this fragile thing, waiting to be detonated. I don’t think I could handle losing anyone else, so it’s better for everyone this way. Safer.
I’m about to shut my eyes again when a cup of coffee appears in front of me. I glance up to see one of my crew members, Lucas, wearing an understanding smile. “You look like you could do with this.”
I accept the steaming mug and murmur a tired “Thanks” as he drops a bottle of pain relief into my lap with his other hand. I quickly take two capsules and wash them down with my coffee.
He takes a seat next to me, silently sipping on his own drink.
Lucas is a quiet guy. He joined us here at Engine 3 about ten months ago after he moved from Los Angeles Fire Department.
He’s a hard worker and tends to keep to himself a lot.
There’s one thing he always picks up on, though, and that’s when I haven’t been sleeping.
Although, he never brings it up. He just silently takes care of me, whether it be supplying me with a cup of coffee, handing me a bottle of pain relievers, or telling the others to be quiet when I do find some time to put my head down.
I’m about to ask him about his holiday plans with his boyfriend, Daniel, when the call alarm blares. Someone groans from the kitchen, but we make our way out onto the main floor, all listening to the dispatcher read the alert out over the intercom.
“Elevator entrapment at four zero two East Wacker Drive. Special extraction equipment needed.”
I step into my turnout gear that’s conveniently placed by the rig and climb into the passenger seat. Within a minute, the station doors are up, and Charlie drives out onto the street, flicking on the siren. We pull up in front of the hotel/residence high-rise three minutes later and all jump out.
Glancing up at the building, I inwardly groan.
It’s one of the newer skyscrapers that’s been built in the last couple of years, and is at least a hundred-stories high.
If the elevators are down, we’re going to need to take the stairs with all our gear, and depending on which floor the elevator is stuck, it’s going to be a shit journey up.
“Damn.” O’Connor lets out a low whistle, then echoes my own thoughts. “It looks a long way up.”
“You’re gonna feel it more after shoving that slice of cake into your mouth before we left,” Avi teases.
“Hey! I needed the sugar boost after kicking Spencer’s ass at chess.”
“You did not kick my ass. You cheated,” Spencer argues.
Leaving my crew to unload the equipment, I head toward the doors as an older man in pressed pants and a blazer steps outside. Hopefully, I can get an idea of what we’re dealing with while they’re busy bickering with each other.
“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Bowen with Engine 3,” I say as I approach the man. His shiny name badge reads Lawrence. “We’ve received a call about someone stuck in an elevator? Can you tell me how many people are stuck inside?”
“Just the one. We lost power for about twelve minutes. We tried to initiate the recall, but it just made this whirling sound before halting again,” the guy says with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“How long has the elevator been stuck since the power outage?”
“About thirty minutes?” he replies with a slight shrug, and his complete lack of concern irks me.
Why didn’t you call us sooner? is on the tip of my tongue, but there’s no time to argue. Someone’s been trapped for over forty minutes now, and I don’t want to keep them waiting any longer.
With my crew behind me, I head inside and go straight to the elevator banks. Three of the four display screens above the doors show active movement, but the one on the far left seems to be stuck on forty-seven.
“Do you know where it’s stuck?” I ask. I don’t want to presume, but also, this guy isn’t filling me with much hope.
“Um, below the forty-seventh floor, I think,” Lawrence sniffs, a hint of boredom in his tone. “It’s part of the residency floors.”
My head snaps toward him with a frown. How can he not be sure? One of his residents is trapped, and he can’t have the decency to get all the facts together to help us do our job more efficiently? What an ass.
I try to keep the frustration out of my voice when I ask, “And where is your maintenance team?”
“He’s out of town.”
Is this guy serious? A building of this scale shouldn’t be reliant on a single person to manage their maintenance. I have to take a deep inhale through my nose, and one of the guys behind me mumbles, “For fuck’s sake.”
I ignore the incompetent man and march over to the fire service elevator. Once the doors are open, I use a key to activate it and let part of my crew step in with the equipment and send them up first.
By the time I step out onto the forty-seventh floor, Charlie and Spencer are making quick work of opening the elevator doors. The power must have gone off shortly after the car left the floor as there’s around a two-foot gap between the hallway floor and the top of the car doors.
I squat down to take a look inside to see whether the person inside will require medical attention before we extract them, but nothing could prepare me for the sight of the man sitting on the floor.
Elliot.
Bent knees pulled tightly to his chest, the fingers on one hand tapping a nervous rhythm against his shin, as the other picks at the skin around his nails. The whole time, his eyes are fixed on a spot on the mirrored wall in front of him. Not blinking.
Without a second thought, I throw protocol out the window and shrug off my turnout coat.
“Avi, get the oxygen ready and prepare to do an EKG,” I say, low enough so he can’t hear me.
She gives a firm nod, and I turn back to the elevator.
Dropping to my knees, I carefully slide through the gap into the car.
I keep a firm grip of the floor until my feet are only inches away from the floor of the car and land softly so as not to jostle it.
His wide eyes haven’t shifted from the spot on the wall, and I take that as my cue to slowly kneel in front of him.
I take in his flushed skin, shiny with sweat.
His jaw is clenched tight, and the quick, shallow breaths he takes through his nose are ragged.
A heaviness settles in my chest at the sight of him.
He always has this exuberant energy, even when he’s trying to hide his nerves.
He’s become a permanent resident in my brain for the last fifteen months, since that day we met at the Thunder fun day.
He’s brought this new wave of light into my life, even though we’ve only crossed paths less than a handful of times.
I’ve bumped into him while I’ve been jogging and he’s been walking his dog in the park near the firehouse, then again at this year’s Thunder family day, and when he stopped by the other month to buy one of our station T-shirts.
But the terror in his pale green eyes is something I never want to see again.
“Hey, Elliot? It’s me, Hunter. You’re alright, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you,” I tell him, because even if we do barely know each other, I know for certain I’ll do everything in my power to protect him.