Page 43 of Tasting Fire
She was talking, so that meant her airway and breathing were okay.
“Ma’am, just lay back.” Cash put his hand on her shoulder and tried to soothe her. “Let me help you and then we’ll get you out of here as soon as we can. Are you hurt anywhere besides your leg?”
Her eyes widened and she suddenly went limp. A pulse check told him she’d simply passed out, which wasn’t a bad thing. He checked for both an entry and exit point, but she’d been lucky not to take an actual bullet. Still, he used a pressure dressing to cover the flesh wound. He spoke into his radio mic as he checked for other injuries, mindful of the mistake Jackson had made in the training exercise. “One to transport. Is the ambulance here?”
“Two minutes out.”
So Cash placed his Sked litter beside the woman and maneuvered her onto it so she could be pulled out quickly when the other medics arrived on scene. “How’s your patient—”
Aboomwent off, and one of the operators stumbled back into the room. He weaved and crashed down face-first, his helmet making a sickening thud on the discolored linoleum.
“I’ve got him,” Cash told Emmy, then called out, “Officer down!”
He’d barely had time to check the operator’s ABCs when a tall, skinny guy carrying a .357 Mag darted through the same door. His eyes held a wild glint, and judging by the sores all over his face, he was a monster meth head. “My kid. Where’s my kid?”
His frantic gaze landed directly on Emmy, who was kneeling over a preteen whose dirty Pumas were splayed in opposite directions.
The guy pointed his gun toward Emmy, and as tweaked out as he was, his aim didn’t waver. If he pulled the trigger at this close range, he wouldn’t miss.
Oh, fuck no, dude.
“What are you doing to my kid?” he yelled at Emmy.
“Sir, he’s hurt, and I’m trying to help him.”
“Give me my kid.” The meth monster didn’t seem to pick up what Emmy was putting down because he grabbed the boy under the arm and tried to haul him up, but he was like a limp fifty-pound sack of rice.
In the struggle to pick up his kid, the guy’s hand lowered. Cash grabbed the SWAT operator’s beanbag shotgun.
“What did you do to him?” the meth monster screamed at her as his gun started to come back up. “Bitch, I’m gonna—”
BOOM.The bean bag hit meth monster in the wrist, drilling his arm against the wall, and his gun thunked to the floor. Emmy swooped it up and efficiently unloaded it.
When the other SWAT operators swarmed into the room, Cash still had the shotgun trained on meth monster, who’d was now sitting on his ass and wailing as if he’d been peppered full of holes instead of hit with a pouch filled with lead pellets.
As soon as it was apparent the team had him under control, Cash handed over the shotgun and Emmy did the same with meth monster’s revolver. He glanced toward Emmy. “You okay?”
“Just concentrate on your patient.”
Now that the scene was secure, the other medics poured in, and within minutes, the two victims and the operator were loaded up.
Meth monster would get transported to the hospital in the back of a cop car. Before they hauled him out, Emmy hunkered down and palpated the wrist joint, and the guy—already yammering nonstop—howled.
“Ninety to one it’s broken.” She cut a quick look at Cash, and he couldn’t tell if this might mean he’d just eighty-sixed his spot on the team.
By picking up the operator’s shotgun, he’d broken normal protocol. But he’d do it a hundred times over if it meant keeping Emmy safe. Fuck the job. Fuck the team.
Just fuck it.
The adrenaline drained from Cash, and he suddenly felt as if he’d been on a physical and emotional obstacle course for hours. Once the entire team had gathered back outside the house, the captain announced they would be debriefing in the sheriff department’s conference room in half an hour.
When they were dismissed, Cash tried to catch Emmy’s attention, but she was all eyes front and serious face as she marched toward her SUV.
When he arrived at the debriefing, she was already there, sitting at the other end of the room. If he wove his way toward her, it would be obvious.
The captain quieted everyone and began talking through the call-out. Any time things didn’t go as planned, which was in the vicinity of 99.98 percent of the time, they walked through the entire call-out and asked the hard questions about why and how they’d fucked up.
Yippee, let’s take a ride on the merry-go-round, why don’t we?
