Fire Chaser is Free on Amazon for a Limited Time (Excerpt)

Since Fire Chaser is Free through the 7th on Amazon, I thought I would share an excerpt.

Now, Fire Chaser...

“Todd,” he called to his partner with urgency. “We need to get her intubated. Now.” The loud, high-pitched breathing coming from her signaled her distress, and a rush of adrenaline hit him. The young woman was deteriorating rapidly before him. If they couldn’t reverse her condition, she was going to die. Before he could get the ET tube in place, she was unconscious. While Todd had positioned an I.V. access and medicated her, Nathan reached for the ET tube, and secured it precisely in place. As he pumped oxygen into her lifeless body, her color beneath the soot and ash that covered her face, changed from a deep purple to a rose pink, and he took a deep breath as the rush started to subside. “Miss, you’re going to be fine. I’ll be riding along with you to Jefferson Memorial.” “You all right, Dynamite?” Todd looked at Nathan with sincere concern as Nathan nodded yes. “I’m fine. I never get used to it.” “Know what you mean. See you at Jefferson.” Closing them in the ambulance, Todd tapped the door, letting them know it was secure, and the ambulance, along with Nathan, the young woman, and the medic was soon on their short ten-minute journey to nearby Jefferson. 12 For that, Nathan was grateful, the adrenaline that rushed through his body having left him drained. He continued with his assessment of the young woman as she lay there in a medicated sleep. At least one of them was comfortable for the moment. There was no better feeling than saving a life that could have been lost. He wouldn’t trade what he did for anything, but at times, it had become taxing. This young woman was lucky to be taking a breath. Looking at her, he could see a sweet peace rest upon her. It flooded him as he watched the heart monitor as its green streak reflected her heartbeat. Scenes of a young woman from his past laughing, and kissing him on the cheek, on his first day of rescue flashed into his mind. “Hey handsome, you look like the hero of the day.” She playfully tapped him on the chest. “Looking sharp, hotshot. I always was a sucker for a man in uniform.” As tired as he was from his twenty-four hour day at the station, he had gone to see her before he headed home. Picking her up, he swung her around, and she had thrown her head back, and giggled. That had been eight years ago at least, and he still thought of her every day. The doors opened, and the woman was whisked off to the trauma room. Nathan gave a report to the physician as to what had happened at the scene and on the trip there. The trauma team quickly took over the care of the young woman. Standing outside the door, he leaned his head against the wall. The coolness of the emergency room felt good against his hot skin. He had been so busy with her he hadn’t listened to the warning signs coming from his own body, and he collapsed like an accordion to the floor. The next thing he heard was the voice of Todd calling his name. “Dynamite. Hey, it’s time to wake up.” Nathan’s eyes fluttered open to a blurry field of white before he could make out the face of his partner. Looking around, he found himself flat on his back in a hospital room. Raising his hand to push his hair from his face, he discovered not only a bandage on his cheek, but an I.V. in his arm. He let out an exhausted breath, and blinked his eyes before he focused again on his partner. “What happened?” “Heat, dehydration, exhaustion. Take your pick. I thought you looked a little pale at the scene. Have you been taking care of yourself?” “Yes, of course.” “According to the doctor, you, my friend, are suffering from heat exhaustion, dehydration, and just plain not sleeping. What’s going on Becker? You still pining for that woman?” Nathan didn’t answer, he simply let out an irritated growl. 13 “You have to let her go. She’s been gone for seven years; she’s not coming back. Nathan knew what he was saying was true, he just didn’t want to hear it. Allison left years ago, and had no intention of ever coming back. He hoped and prayed, but nothing changed. He hadn’t gotten a single letter or a call since she left. Allison had tossed everything they had away. He hadn’t blamed her for anything, although he should have, she was the one who walked away for no apparent reason. She loved him; he knew she had, no one could fake that kind of affection for someone else. He had known her since they were children playing together in preschool. When they were five, they had been at her aunt’s wedding, hiding under the cake table. They laughed at one another as they fed each other a piece of cake that neither of them was meant to have. Through the years, they had spent memorable moments together. He had seen her at her worst, and she in turn had seen him at his many times over. Nathan didn’t offer a reply to his partner, and merely shook his head in acknowledgment. “If you’re feeling better I’ll see about getting you out of here.” Shaking his head once again, and signaling with his hand, “whatever,” he tried to drive her from his mind . Picking up his hand, he ran it through his already disheveled hair. “Yeah, Yeah. Let’s go.” Todd walked out of the room in search of someone to release his partner home. Allison’s perfect, green catlike eyes came to Nathan’s mind. He remembered how she made him feel each time she entered a room. He never got used to how overwhelmed he became at her entrance, once he discovered girls were more than just one of the guys. The first formal date they had gone on, he was fourteen. As many years as he had known her as a friend, it was difficult to ask her to go somewhere with him in a different capacity. He was awkward as a teenager, with braces, clumsy and unsure of himself, full of testosterone, and that wasn’t helping his situation. He never felt he was a catch. He was a technical geek, and sports freak. He loved sports, but he had played them little. He spent time trying to come up with new computer programs and games, or burying himself in a book. Not your normal thriller or history, he liked science and technology. When he finally decided he was going to ask her out, he worried himself to death for a week. He kept running it through his mind, wondering if she would reject him. The week before the junior high spring dance, he had asked her if she was going. In her soft tone, she answered, “The person I want to go with hasn’t asked me yet.” She looked down at her feet, blushed, and looked 14 back up at him through her long lashes. He had almost talked himself out of asking her, when she looked at him and grinned. He had been rewarded with her beautiful smile the night he had picked her up. Nervous wasn’t the word he could use to describe what he felt. He felt as if he had a pavilion of butterflies in his stomach, as her father called her downstairs. Waiting at the foot of the stairs, he had watched her in awe. Where a tomboy of sorts should have been, stood a beautiful young woman. She had waited for a moment before she descend the staircase. Her very grown-up look was conservative in respect to what most would be wearing. Striking her at the knee, her emerald green dress matched her eyes perfectly, taking his breath from him. The Marilyn Monroe look from The Seven Year Itch, was eye-catching, but he could tell she didn’t seem to be comfortable with the low-cut to her dress, or her long legs. With her Lavender bouquet, she had requested a single piece of Lavender as a boutineer for his jacket. It looked more like a purple weed to him, but if it made her happy, it was all good to him. Taking her hand, and wrapping it through the crook of his arm, he had escorted her to the dance. It was a night he would never forget. “Mr. Becker?” Breaking him from his past, Nathan looked up to find a brown-eyed angel standing over him. For a moment, he was speechless, and then he gathered his senses. “Feeling better?” “Yes.” Nathan had been dumbstruck for a moment. Despite having been there hundreds of times over the last seven years, he had never seen her before. “My name is Constance, I’ll be taking care of getting you discharged.” She smiled at him, and her brown eyes gleamed as she removed his IV from his arm. “You look a lot better than yesterday evening.” “I’ve been here since yesterday evening?” She giggled as she continued with her duties. “Yes, Mr. Becker. I took care of you last evening when you brought in the fire victim.” He swallowed hard as he thought of what they must have done to him, and for him, since he collapsed the night before. “You?” Looking down, he finally figured it out. He was no longer in uniform, but the hospital’s famous air-conditioned nightwear. Great, she most certainly had seen him in, um… his most vulnerable state. “You took care of me?” “Yes, is there something wrong, Mr. Becker?” 15 He hated to admit it, but he didn’t particularly like the idea of a woman, especially a beautiful, and strange woman, seeing what God himself had given him. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his body, he was a private person, and knowing that more than likely she had seen him completely, well... that wasn’t exactly comforting.

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