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KANSAS CITY’S BRAVEST
(The Taylor Clan, Book #5, copyright 2002)
by
Julie Miller
Prologue
Too late. Too late.
The nightmare's fiery talons cut deep into Gideon Taylor's
dreams.
The impact of raw, compressed air exploding into a ball of
flame lifted him off his feet and dumped him on his backside.
"Luke!" The hoarse shout from Gideon's ravaged throat echoed
inside his mask.
Trapped in the throes of the hideous dream that wouldn't
die, Gideon twisted in his bed and struggled toward consciousness and
peace. But the nightmare wouldn’t release him.
He needed her.
The groans of the ancient rafters in the condemned apartment
building matched the groans of mortal pain sifting through the hiss of
static in Gideon’s ear.
“Luke!” Gideon rolled onto his side, straining against his
heavy gear, weighed down by a fearful extra burden of guild.
It was alive now.
Ignition. Fuel to burn. Oxygen to live and breathe.
A simple yet deadly recipe for fire.
Gideon lurched to his feet. Stooping low, he closed his
grit-filled eyes and concentrated on the sounds that could lead him to
his partner. “Talk to me,” he whispered, 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 into 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 received 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, 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 this lungs,
letting the oxygen pour like a cool compress through his throat. Then
hands lifted 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 flames.
“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 gurneys 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 protection.
“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 way to a dark, moonless night outside. But his body
was burning up beneath the twisted sheets.
He hadn’t had the nightmare for a month. Why now?
He reached out and caressed the empty bed beside him. The
last two fingers on his hand refused to curl into the pillow. But then,
those two fingers hadn’t been able to do much of anything for the past
year. Not since the night of Luke’s death.
Gideon snatched his hand back to his thigh and breathed
deeply.
Meghan was gone.
She’d betrayed him by taking his heart and leaving him with
nothing to hold in his crippled-up hands.
“Meghan.” Whispering her name was a strident cry of discord
to his ear. “What did I do wrong?”
She hadn’t been there for him the night Luke died. She
hadn’t been in his bed for two long years.
When would he get it through his thick heart?
Gideon Taylor faced his nightmares alone.
Question: Which hand of Gideon’s was injured in the fire—right or left?
Enter
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10th
Anniversary!
J
