Razing Kayne

SEVEN



It was close to sunset when the deputy at the roadblock radioed Kayne. “Hey, Dobrescu, you've got a visitor headed your way.”

“What! Who?”

“Uhh...I figured she was your wife. Sexy little thing with kids in a blue Tahoe. She's bringing you dinner.”

“No, no, no! Do not let her down here!” The a*shole had one goddamn job, and he'd f*cked it up when it mattered most. God, it was a f*cking HazMat scene.

“Sorry, man. Crazy stalker chick is already on her way.”

“She's not a stalker!” Kayne all but shouted through the radio. “Idiot!” he added to himself as he glanced in the rear-view mirror in time to see Jessica pulling up behind his patrol car. Son of a bitch!

“What are you doing here?” Kayne demanded, slamming the patrol car's door with far more force than necessary. Jessica's smile faltered. Damned if that didn't make him feel guilty, but Jesus, she of all people knew better than to be down here.

“We brought you dinner.” She held the bag out to him, all friendliness gone.

“Jessica, it's not safe here. That jackass never should have let you through the roadblock.” Kayne took the bag from her and sat it on the trunk of the patrol car. “Come on, I'll walk you back.”

But Jessica wasn't listening to him anymore, she was staring past him, the color leeching from her face as he watched. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. Goddamnit!

Kayne gentled his voice. “Come on, baby, you need to go.” He stepped sideways, blocking her view of the accident scene. “Are the kids with you?”

She merely nodded, trying to look around him.

“Jess, what are you doing here?” Cody shouted as he ran toward them.

Kayne had a funny feeling things were about to go south. As if they already hadn't. “Honey, I'm glad you came to see me, but you need to leave.” Honey? See him?

She ignored Cody too. “That's where Jarred died, saving Grace.”

Saving, Grace? What the hell did that mean? Enough was enough. He had to file that revelation away for later inspection. “Jessica, look at me. Now!” When she did, Kayne softened his tone. “Baby, you need to go. Let me walk you back to the truck.”

She stood there looking helplessly at Kayne as tears began to fall.

“Come on, sweetheart, don't cry. I’ve got you.” He closed the distance and wrapped her in his arms.

“What the f*ck? You son of a bitch!” Cody roared.

Jessica startled at Cody's voice and took two huge steps backward, cowering as if she expected someone to attack her. Without warning, Cody tackled Kayne to the ground. Yep, the situation had officially gone south.

Kayne threw Cody off with little effort and scrambled to his feet. Cody took another swing, but Kayne evaded, standing his ground between the belligerent idiot and Jessica. The little weasel might be no match for him, but Cody could do some serious damage to someone as tiny as Jessica with one misplaced fist.

That bastard, Murphy, decided right then to invoke his law, because it was at that exact moment Sgt. Balentine drove up with the Fuel Recovery Team. He bailed out of the patrol car, stammering into his radio about a fight in progress. Several firemen grabbed Cody from behind as he tried to lunge at Kayne again.

“What the f*ck is going on?” Balentine demanded.

“Just a misunderstanding,” Kayne said, eying Cody.

“Why's your girlfriend on a HazMat scene, Dobrescu?”

“For Christ’s sake, she's not mine!”

“Then who the hell is she?”

“Nobody!” Kayne’s knee-jerk reaction was to deny any association with her. One look at the hurt on Jessica's face though, and he knew that hadn't come out right.

“I'm so sorry.” Jessica turned and ran toward the SUV.

Several expletives rolled off Kayne’s tongue as he followed after her. Though he knew he needed to get her out of there ASAP, he couldn’t let her leave like this. He caught her arm, stopping her as she reached the SUV. “Jessica, wait! I didn't mean that the way it sounded.”

“We were eating dinner, and the scanner was on.” He had to lean in to hear her, her voice little more than a whisper. “The kids realized you were stuck down here, and I just thought...”

“I'm not mad that you brought me dinner.” No one had ever done that for him before, but that wasn't the point. How the f*ck had this gotten so far out of control? “This isn’t a safe place. I don't want you or the kids hurt. Please, let me get you out of here, and we'll talk later.”

She raised her chin defiantly. “There's nothing to say.”

“Jess—”

“I'm fine!”

Did she realize tears still clung to her lashes? “Why don't I stop by when I'm finished?” He didn’t know what purpose it would serve, but he hated to see her hurting.

She quickly shook her head, looking everywhere but at him.

“Call me if you change your mind, okay?”

She nodded, and he opened the door for her to climb in.

“Kayne!” Gracie squealed. “Hug, hug! Huuugg!” She strained against her car seat.

He glanced back to realize she only had the two little girls with her. “You left Maddy and Ash home alone?” He couldn’t stop himself from voicing the accusation.

“They're fine for a few minutes.” Finally, she was showing a bit of spirit. “I was babysitting when I was Maddy's age!”

“Hug, hug!” Gracie’s tone warned that a two-year-old meltdown was imminent.

Kayne opened her door and quickly hugged her, allowing her to kiss his “owie.” He’d probably have a bruise where Cody slugged him come morning. He glanced at Isabelle, her large verdant eyes silently pleading for attention that she was too shy to request. He walked around the car, ignoring the dozen people looking on with avid interest. “Hey, 'Sabella, you being Mama's helper tonight?”

She simply nodded and hugged him tighter. Man he did not need this. He didn’t need to feel this connection with these children or their mother.

Kayne radioed the deputy to confirm he could send Jessica back north in the southbound lanes and prayed to God the idiot could at least get that right.

He leaned in the driver's side window, cupped the back of Jessica's neck, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I'm sorry.” Kayne brushed his lips across her temple. She smelled of almond and vanilla. Subtle, like shampoo, and woman. Hot desirable woman. “Be careful.”

He felt her nod in response. Unfortunately, a part of his anatomy was thinking about doing some nodding of its own, and his lack of control made him angry. The words came out before he could stop them. “Get going before you cause me any more paperwork.”

Jessica gave him a hard glare and put the SUV in reverse, slowly backing through the maze of vehicles. Angry was good. Angry would keep her from wanting to get close to him, and he seemed to have no willpower where she was concerned.

Kayne returned to where Balentine, Cody, and several other firemen, including Joe Sutton, still stood openly watching him. Balentine pointed toward Kayne’s chin. “Am I arresting the fireman?”

“No.” Kayne really didn’t care about Cody. He was too busy trying to figure out what the hell to do about Jessica or the revelation that Gracie had been rescued from a car accident the night Jarred Hallstatt died.

“Stay away from her!” Cody’s shout brought Kayne’s thoughts back to the present.

Yeah, probably a good idea, but damn, now his mind was whirling with insane possibilities. “Or what?” Kayne didn't understand why he was pushing Cody. He wasn't one for fighting these days, and he already planned to stay away.

Cody took a threatening step forward. “I swore to her husband I'd take care of her, and I'll be damned if I let someone like you get near her!”

“Actually what you said—” Joe began.

Cody turned on Joe. “Shut the f*ck up, Joe.” He swiveled back to Kayne and shoved a finger under his nose. “And you! Stay away from her!” He stormed off without waiting for a response.

The fact that Cody had to look up a good four or five inches to threaten Kayne made his threat laughable. Kayne looked at Joe. “Is he normally that cheerful?”

“He's kinda had a thing for Jess since we were all in high school.” Joe pulled off his Payson Fire Department baseball cap, only to put it right back on. “But there's nothing going on there, no matter how much Cody wishes there were. Jarred, he...” Joe stopped, shrugged, and looked away. “I was with him the night of the accident.”

“What happened?” Kayne wanted to understand how Gracie factored into this.

***

Joe rarely talked about the night Jarred died, but he'd seen Jess at the picnic last Sunday. He’d watched Dobrescu interact with her and her children. It had been the first time Joe had seen her genuinely smile in a long, long time. Maybe even before Jarred had died. He’d also witnessed the longing in Kayne’s eyes, and the pain, when he'd held Jess's little girl. Joe recognized the look of a man who'd lost everything. Though it had been fifteen years, he still saw traces of the same emptiness looking back at him in the mirror.

Pushing away those dark thoughts, he focused on Jarred, remembering his dying wish.

“Jessica said Gracie was saved that night?”

“Yeah. Total miracle she survived.” Joe could still picture that tiny, perfect baby that he'd pulled out of Jarred's fire jacket.

“What happened?” Kayne asked, seeming truly interested.

“Cody was supposed to be working that night, and I think that's why he's so touchy. He had an old girlfriend show up and wanted to get laid, so Jarred covered for him. Survivor's guilt is an ugly thing.”

Kayne nodded his understanding. Joe swore he could still hear the echo of that call if he listened hard enough.

***

“Medical, Engine 111, mile post 247.5, State Route 87. Single vehicle roll over. Witness reports vehicle through the guardrail, down the embankment. Turtled.” Turtled—great. The vehicle was on its roof. Joe threw on clothes and raced out the door as the on-duty battalion commander.

“Engine 111, enroute,” Jarred reported.

“Battalion One, enroute,” Joe radioed as soon as Jarred un-keyed his microphone. Even though Jarred was engineering 34,000 pounds of fire truck and equipment across snow and ice-packed highways, Joe was responding from the far north end of town.

Jarred advised they were on scene. “We're seeing smoke. I can hear a baby crying.”

Several long moments later, the rookie—Joe couldn't remember the guy’s name—radioed in. “Hallstatt’s grabbed a medic bag and gone over the embankment.”

“Who’s on backup?” Joe radioed.

“Negative, Captain. I’m pulling gear, but he’s already over the ledge and working on extrication.”

Joe blinked. The crazy f*cker had slid down a near-vertical hundred-foot drop, and made it in one piece.

“Engine 111, I’ve got a male driver deceased, and the passenger side windshield’s been shattered. Standby,” Jarred’s voice echoed through static.

“Copy Engine 111, standing by.”

No sooner had Dispatch responded than Jarred keyed up again. “I’ve located the female, also DOA. Still no signs of the…son of a—” Jarred’s transmission cut off mid-sentence.

“Jarred, I see flames!” The rookie’s warning came just as Joe cleared the top of Oxbow Hill.

“I've got the baby. Just drop the f*cking winch. Do it now!” Joe heard something in Jarred's voice that he'd never heard before—fear.

Jarred's microphone stuck open, and Joe heard him whisper to the baby. “Stick with me, sweetheart, I'll keep you safe.”

Joe bailed out of the battalion truck as the rookie shouted, “The damned thing isn't working!”

He could smell the gas and see the flames. F*ck, f*ck, f*ck! “Get a goddamn rope!” Jesus Christ it wasn’t rocket science.

The rookie pulled a rope off the truck and handed it to Joe as he passed by. “Hang on buddy, rope’s coming down, now,” Joe yelled so Jarred could hear him, a second before he tossed one end down the embankment. “Tie off, and we'll pull you up.”

Joe turned his back to feed the rope through one of the eyes on the front of the fire truck, intending to use it as a makeshift pulley

“The baby’s under my jacket!”

Before Joe could respond, the scene exploded into a fireball.

Mother of God!

Joe froze for several heartbeats, unable to believe what he was witnessing. Vehicles exploding on an accident scene were Hollywood myth. It rarely happened. Yet what was left of the car was fully engulfed, and Jarred lay in a fetal position, against the rock wall, unconscious. A huge chunk of burning debris covered his legs and lower back.

Joe barked orders, even as he grabbed a medic bag, ready to plunge over the edge. He glanced up at the sound of squealing tires. Cody Johnson. Cody could command the scene from up top and get them the hell out once Joe had Jarred ready to move—he wasn't f*cking waiting around for equipment. With a salute of acknowledgment, Joe bailed over the edge to save a brother.

Joe fought to free Jarred from the debris. His heavy-duty fire turnouts had been ripped by shrapnel from the explosion. Third degree burns and blood covered most of his back and legs. But the baby, the perfect little baby, was unharmed. Jarred had curled himself around her, sheltering her with his body.

With the help from the crew of a second engine company, Joe was able to get both Jarred and the baby packaged to travel and top-side in a matter of minutes.

Jarred coded as they loaded him in the ambulance, but they brought him back. “The baby?” he panted between moans of agony.

“She's fine. You saved her. Just relax.”

Jarred nodded once.

Joe glanced at Cody as he rechecked Jarred's vitals. Joe slammed fluids in as fast as the large bore IV would let him, to partially compensate for the extensive blood Jarred was losing.

“Did someone go get Jess?” He wasn't willing to say it out loud, but Jarred's odds weren't good.

Before Cody could answer, Jarred said, “No. Don't let her see me like this. Tell her...” He paused, gasping through a wave of pain. “Tell her…I'm so sorry I wasn't a better husband—”

“Whoa. Tell her your goddamned self. You're not going anywhere!” Joe was not letting Jarred give up. Not yet.

Jarred ignored him. “Had a fight. Asked for Divorce. Tried to love her; never meant to hurt her. Want her to be happy. Tell her...find someone...who deserves her. Not someone...like us.” Jarred made eye contact with Cody.

And yeah, Cody was an alley cat who'd had the hots for Jess since high school. Everyone knew it, but Jarred had been the one to win her heart.

“Ha! You stick around you son of a bitch, or I swear I'll make a play for her the moment you're gone,” Cody said.

Jarred flipped him off, a tight smile tugging the corner of his lips. “Someone else...at...accident...didn't see...only heard...ran—” Jarred struggled to put words together, but they made little sense. His voice trailed off, and then so did his vitals.

Jarred coded a second time as they pulled up to the emergency entrance. They offloaded him, wheeling him through the doors, Joe straddling his body and doing chest compressions. Cody rattled off a status report while he worked the ventilator mask in time with the compressions. They wheeled him past the nurse’s station and a hysterical Jessica. Jess wasn't stupid—if she'd been standing there any length of time, she'd heard their inbound report and knew this wasn't his first code. Goddamnit!

By the time Joe handed off compressions to a trauma nurse, Cody was already standing outside the room consoling Jess. After Cody's threat in the ambulance, seeing him holding Jess pissed Joe off, but he said nothing, and, a moment later, Jess moved away from Cody and into his arms. She'd always been like a little sister to him, and he could feel her heart breaking as they stood there watching. Waiting. How could Jarred have treated this wonderful, gentle woman so badly?

Several minutes later, one of the nurses shouted, “He's back!”

“When can that whirly-bird fly?” Dr. Mark Oberly demanded. Because of the storm, the helicopter had been grounded. The closest trauma and burn center was more than a two hour drive in an ambulance, and Jarred didn't stand a chance of making that trip.

“They’re saying four to six hours minimum. And yes, they know it's one of ours,” the nurse said.

“Pansy-ass-motherf*ckers. This weather is nothing like what we flew through in A-stan,” Dr. Oberly muttered.

After a string of curses that echoed Joe's own thoughts, the doctor barked orders, requisitioning blood, prescribing medications, dictating surgical instruments, and calling for an operating room. “Okay boys and girls, these wounds are no different than those we saw sustained from an I.E.D. So...we're gonna do the dirty work and let the city boys pretty him up later. A dozen faces turned to the doctor with expressions that left no room to doubt they thought he'd lost his mind. Payson's hospital wasn’t equipped to deal with Jarred's injures, but Mark was. And those who'd ever served in the military knew that being prepared to improvise, adapt, and overcome created survivors.

A woman shoved her way forward, snapping on gloves. “Five years as a trauma nurse at Lennox Hill—where do you need me?”

Joe couldn’t remember her name. She'd only been in town a few weeks, and Joe had only ever said a word or two to her, but in that moment, he fell a little bit in love.

Two others—the on-duty anesthesiologist and a male nurse—stepped forward, both ex-military too. The rest of the staff quietly backed out, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. Joe knew he shouldn't be angry, but, God, if this had been their husband or brother lying there, they'd do everything they could, to hell with the consequences.

“Jessica?” A nurse walked up, holding the still-crying baby who was now wrapped in a blanket. “I need to go help Dr. Mark. Will you watch the baby? She checked out fine. Just needs to be held.”

Jess, who'd been one step shy of a hysterical meltdown, reached for the baby automatically. She immediately started rocking her, comforting her, and in the process, comforting herself. Joe had been about to protest, but realized the nurse knew what she was doing. Jess needed something to focus on other than Jarred. The baby, who'd been crying non-stop since they'd put her in the second ambulance, took one look at Jess, curled up against her chest, and fell asleep, one tiny fist resting over Jess's heart.

“Joe! I need another set of hands. Get your ass in here!” Mark shouted.

Joe rushed forward, thankful to be in the action instead of on the sidelines, because Mark hadn't been the only one who'd served in the Middle East.

After hours of balls-to-the-wall surgery, watching Mark pull every goddamned hat-trick he knew, and inventing a few he'd never dared before, Dr. Mark Oberly made one of the toughest calls of his career.

“Time of death?” he asked.

A nurse read off the time.

Sunrise.

A time meant for beginnings.

***

Kayne watched the emotions play across Joe's face as he finished his story. Finally, Joe turned to Kayne and said, “I was with Jarred in the ambulance that night. His final wish was for her to find someone who deserved her.” He pinned Kayne with a silent challenge which said far more than Cody's belligerent threats. If you're not good enough, leave her the hell alone.

With that, Joe walked away.

Which is exactly what Kayne needed to do with Jessica. Walk away. God knew he sure as hell wasn't good enough. But good God. Gracie, who looked so much like his deceased daughter, was an infant found at an accident scene about the time his infant disappeared. Was he crazy to even imagine the possibility?