Page 10 of Corrupted Lies

Opening her eyes, which she hadn't even realized were closed, Alannah looked for Jake. She knew it wasn't him holding her because the person smelled too clean, and both she and Jake smelled like smoke.

Coughing and spluttering, she looked around as she was carried outside the building and into the street, straight over to an ambulance where paramedics were waiting for her.

When she was set down on a stretcher, she saw it was Jax who had carried her out of the burning building as he crouched down so he was able to look her in the eye.

“You okay?” he asked. One of the medics put an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose, the other picked up her wrist and began to check her vitals.

Unable to speak as she continued to cough, Alannah focused on sucking in deep breaths of the oxygen as she tried to look around him.

She was okay, but where was Jake?

She needed to see him, needed to know that he was alive.

What would she do if he hadn't survived?

The only reason she was there right now was because of him. If he hadn't been with her, if she’d been alone in her office, she would have panicked and never figured out a way to save herself.

Her best friend had quite literally saved her life, and she wouldn't survive knowing he’d given his own in the process.

Grabbing the oxygen mask, she yanked it down as panic grew inside her, taking over everything else. “Jake?” she croaked, looking at Jax and begging him with her eyes to tell her that his brother was okay.

“Is going to be fine,” Cade Charleston announced as he stepped into her line of sight.

Not who she wanted to see right now.

She wanted—no needed—to see Jake.

How else could she believe he was okay?

“Where is he?” she begged. If Jake was really okay, why wasn't someone taking her to him? Didn't they know that was what she needed right now? Not paramedics, not oxygen, not her vitals checked, the only thing that was going to help was seeing Jake.

“In an ambulance right beside yours,” Cole Charleston said, stepping up beside his older brother.

Since she’d known Jake and Jax since she was four years old, she’d been around when their dad married the Charleston brothers’ mom. At the time, she’d been thirteen, the same age as the twins Cooper and Connor, Jax had been a year younger, Jake a year older. Cade had been fifteen, Cole eleven, and the baby of the family, Cassandra, was only five. While it had been a rocky start for the family, after learning their parents appeared to be married in name only, all seven of the siblings had bonded and rallied together.

All of Jake’s brothers, biological and step, were like brothers to her, too, and normally she’d feel safe around any one of them.

But not today.

Today she needed only one thing.

And that was Jake.

“I need to see him,” she whimpered as she fought through another coughing fit. Her lungs seemed to want to cough their way right out of her body.

“No,” Cade said firmly, in what she knew was his don’t bother arguing with me voice. “What you need is to sit right there and let the EMTs do their job.”

“Please,” she whispered as tears blurred her vision. The last thing she wanted was to beg, but she also knew that without seeing Jake for herself, she would never believe he wasn't still down there trapped in those horrible flames.

Cade sighed, but his gaze softened, and he stepped away for a moment. Then a stretcher appeared where he’d just been standing with Jake sitting on it.

Just like that, all her anxiety melted away.

Jake’s eyes were open, he was wearing an oxygen mask just like she was, and he appeared to be arguing with the medics trying to treat him.

“Sorry, sunshine. I was trying to tell them I had to see you first,” he told her. His voice was rough from the smoke, just like hers, but they were both alive, and that was all that mattered.

But as her fear for Jake began to recede, a different reality was starting to settle in.

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