Page 137 of Knotting the Cowboys

But the crying gets louder, more desperate, and I'm already moving. "Protocol didn't account for a fucking child. Rodriguez, Chen, with me. Everyone else, establish a water curtain at the stairwell."

The third floor is hell. Visibility zero, heat so intense it feels like my gear is melting onto my skin. We move by touch and instinct, following the sound of terror through a maze of smokeand flame. I find her in a back bedroom—maybe four years old, curled in a closet, clutching a stuffed elephant like a lifeline.

"Hey, sweetheart," I remember saying, trying to keep my voice calm despite the ceiling starting to buckle above us. "We're gonna get you out of here."

She couldn't have weighed more than forty pounds. I cradled her against my chest, her face buried in my shoulder to protect her from the smoke, and gave the order that haunts me still: "Straight line exit, no deviations. Move!"

We made it halfway.

The collapse started in the northeast corner—a grinding, shrieking protest of metal and wood giving way. The floor beneath Chen disappeared first, just vanished like a magic trick, taking him down to the inferno below before any of us could react. Rodriguez tried to grab him, overbalanced, and followed him down. The chain reaction rippled outward, supports failing in sequence, and I had a split second to choose: follow protocol and try to save my team, or get the child out.

I ran.

Made it to the stairwell just as the third floor ceased to exist, rode the collapse down two stories on a prayer and adrenaline, somehow keeping the kid safe in my arms. She lived. Smoke inhalation, minor burns, but she lived.

Chen and Rodriguez didn't.

"You did what any of us would have done," Captain Morris told me later, after the funerals, after the investigations, after the sleepless nights replaying every second. "That building should have been demolished. No one could have predicted a catastrophic failure like that."

But I knew better.

I'd felt the weakness in the structure, heard the warnings in every groan and crack. I'd made a command decision that savedone life and cost two others, and no amount of rationalization changes that math.

Willa makes another small sound, her hand coming up to rest against my chest, right over my heart. The gesture is unconscious, trusting, and it brings me crashing back to the present—to this truck, this parking lot, this woman who's depending on me to keep her safe.

Just like my team depended on me.

The parallel is a knife between my ribs.

Once again, I'm in a position of protection. Once again, I'm letting emotion override logic—kissing her in public, claiming her like some caveman, making decisions based on what feels right instead of what's tactically sound. The way she responded to Blake, the fear in her eyes, it triggered the same protective instinct that made me charge up those stairs.

And we all know how that ended.

I look down at her sleeping face, peaceful despite the exhaustion written in every line, and feel that familiar weight settling on my shoulders.

She trusts me. They all do—Cole, River, Austin.They trust me to be smart, to think three steps ahead, to keep everyone safe.

But what happens when keeping her safe requires the kind of choices that got my team killed?

What happens when protecting her means breaking all my rules?

My phone buzzes against my thigh, and I'm grateful for the distraction from this spiral of guilt and what-ifs.

Careful not to wake her, I fish it out one-handed, squinting at the screen in the growing dusk.

The past might be carved in stone and blood, but the present is still mine to shape. And right now, the present is Willa warm against my side, trusting me even in sleep, needing the kind ofcare that has nothing to do with tactical decisions and everything to do with being human.

Maybe that's the lesson I never learned from that night—sometimes the right choice isn't about protocol or logic or minimizing casualties.Sometimes it's about recognizing that certain people are worth any risk, any consequence, any amount of carefully maintained control shattered on the altar of keeping them safe.

I press my lips to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of honey and exhaustion and something uniquely Willa, and make a promise to ghosts who probably aren't listening:

This time, I'll get it right. This time, I'll save everyone.

Even if it means saving them from myself.

I angle the phone screen away from Willa's face, dimming the brightness with one thumb while using my pinky to steady it—a maneuver I've perfected during too many late-night stakeouts where light discipline meant the difference between success and blown cover.

Cole's name flashes on the screen, followed by a string of messages that started ten minutes ago.

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