“Okay, Copeland. What’s it going to be? Blood, sweat, or tears?”

Quinn looked from the GPS on the dashboard of the ambulance to her partner, Parker Drake, a wry smile slipping over her lips despite the fact that they were hauling ass through city traffic in a vehicle weighing approximately as much as a full-grown African bush elephant.

“First things first,” she said loudly enough to compete with the siren. Adjusting her seat belt over the front of her navy blue RFD T-shirt, she settled in against the comfortably familiar backrest of the ambo’s passenger seat. “What are the stakes?”

They’d come up with this game about three months into their now five-year work partnership, and she’d learned early on not to give him so much as a millimeter of leeway. Parker was like the slightly annoying, overly cocky older brother she’d always wanted but never had. At least, that’s what Quinn imagined an older brother would be like. For as much good-natured crap as they gave each other, Parker seemed happy to fill the role. They’d been tight—and platonic, because even though Parker was objectively handsome, ew—from the beginning. Not that Quinn wasn’t close with everyone at Seventeen, because she really was. Heck, she could even get Gamble to crack a smile if she set her sights on it. But her and Parker? God, they’d probably still be riding around Remington, treating everything from hangnails to heart attacks when they were eighty.

Which was totally fine by Quinn, thank you very much.

“Stakes. Let’s see. How about house chores for a week,” he answered, prompting her to laugh.

“It’s so cute how you think I’ll fall for that when I know you’re on kitchen duty this week. I’ve seen that science experiment B-shift has going on in the back of the fridge with that leftover Kung Pao chicken. It’s a total biohazard. Try again.”

“Okay, okay.” Parker lifted his brows, since lifting his hands from the steering wheel was obviously not a spectacular plan. “How about loser takes the next cantankerous drunk who needs a banana bag?”

Cantankerous? Oh, that was just too good to pass up. Not that he didn’t use four-syllable words on a very regular rotation, but hell if she wasn’t going to give him a serving of shit to go with his high-pedigree vocabulary.

“Jesus, Drake. What are you, a Thesaurus with legs?”

Parker, of course, gave as good as he got. Which, come to think of it, was half the reason they worked so well together. “What can I say? I’m not just a pretty face over here. Now are you in, or not?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m in.”

Eyeballing the dashboard display to make sure no new updates had come through from dispatch on the call they were responding to, Quinn took a second to roll through her options and the odds that went with them. A person down of unknown causes could be anything from a sixty-year-old bank CEO who had choked on his caviar at the Plaza to an eighteen-year-old who had OD’d on heroin in a grimy alley, and there were a whooooole lot of in-betweens. She knew, because she and Parker had seen pretty much all of them. Hence the whole reason for blood, sweat, or tears.

To anyone who wasn’t a first responder, Quinn supposed the game might seem uncaring; after all, she and Parker could have someone’s life in their hands—literally—on any given call. But the gravity of those situations was heavy enough to sandbag even the most experienced paramedic. Compartmentalizing so you could stay sane and help people on their worst-ever days rather than letting the job scatter your marbles? Yeah, that was something Quinn had learned to do after her first shift.

She knew all too well how deeply no-holds-barred caring could hurt. And since she wasn’t about to stop caring or taking care of people who needed it, she’d take compartmentalization for the win. Hell, she’d take anything that would keep her on the proper side of sane so she could do her job.

Shaking her head, Quinn re-routed her thoughts. Person down of unknown causes, nineteen hundred block of Maplewood Avenue. Go.

“Okay. The nine-one-one call came in nine minutes ago, so I’m going to rule out blood right off the bat,” she said, thinking out loud. Dispatch stayed on the line with the caller whenever humanly possible, especially if they were right there with the victim. If the person down was bleeding badly, she and Parker would know by now.

“So no traumatic injury.” Parker took a hard left onto Palmer Boulevard. “That leaves sweat or tears. What’s your pick?”

“Hmm.” Sweat was their own personal shorthand for any sort of stress ailment, like an MI or overdose or a seizure. Tears were anything that could be categorized as a mental health issue, because God, of all the calls they handled, those were often the most heartbreaking.

Quinn took a slow, deep breath. Looked out the window. Hedged her bets and said, “It’s hot enough out today. My money’s on sweat.”

“Sweat it is. I’m taking tears,” Parker said. “First hell-hot day of the year? Always stirs people up.”

Ah, but he wasn’t wrong. Mother Nature could kill a person in a dozen and a half ways if she put her back into it. This time last year, they’d had to treat a guy whose wife had stabbed him in the neck with a barbecue fork because he’d overcooked the steaks she’d blown her paycheck on.

Okay, so maybe “stirs people up” was the teensiest bit of an understatement. Still, Quinn felt pretty good about her odds, and either way, she’d get to help somebody who needed it. “Sweat versus tears. Deal.”

A beat passed, then one more before Parker asked, “Hey, have you given any more thought to putting in for that lead spot opening up at Station Six next month?”

Her heart sucker punched her sternum at the swerve in subject, and damn it, she so didn’t want to have this conversation right now. Or, okay. Ever. Which he totally knew, otherwise he wouldn’t have blindsided her with the topic when they were on the way to a call and she was a captive freaking audience.

“Trying to get rid of me again?” Quinn finally managed, although the waver in her voice told her she hadn’t quite stuck the no-big-deal landing she’d been going for. Parker had already asked her—twice, but who was counting—about the opening for a lead paramedic at Six. Looked like he thought the trifecta would be the charm. Poor misguided guy.

“Actually, I am. Not that I don’t dig working with you,” Parker quickly added, probably in a pre-emptive strike against the seriously, what the hell? that had just formed hotly on her tongue. “You’re a kickass paramedic, Copeland.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Parker met her frown with one of his own. “That’s exactly my point, though. You’re good enough to be a lead, and spots like the one at Six don’t open up every day. I’m not saying I don’t want to work with you. But I am saying you deserve to run your own rig.”

An odd sensation, somewhere between a jab and an ache, spread out in the pit of Quinn’s stomach. She and Parker had had this conversation six months ago when a position for a lead paramedic had opened up over at Station Twenty-Nine. She was flattered that he thought so highly of her abilities—she busted her ass to be one of the best. But she’d spent her entire five-year tenure at the fire house they’d just rolled out of. She’d found her purpose there, not to mention the family she’d desperately needed when she’d walked in the door on day one. Her answer was still—and always would be—the same.

“I appreciate the atta-girl, Drake. But Seventeen is my home. I’m perfectly happy where I am, even if that means I’m not the lead paramedic.”

“Okay,” he said after a pause. “If you change your mind, I’m cool with writing you a letter of recommendation. I mean, hell”—he flashed her a sly grin while still managing to focus on the road in front of them—“you’re even getting Slater to warm up a little, and that is really saying something.”

Now Quinn’s heart clattered for an entirely different reason. “Slater’s a good EMT,” she said, and thank God Parker was as oblivious as an older brother when it came to things like sudden, out-of-control blushes.

“I’m sure he is. The city doesn’t certify dumbasses, and judging by all the extra shifts he’s taken since he started training, he’s sure gaining enough experience. He’s just a little, I don’t know. Reserved, don’t you think?”

Quinn hedged. It was true that Slater never hung out for after-hours beers at the Crooked Angel with the first responders and cops who frequented the place, just like he’d never gone to the Fork in the Road diner for the post-shift breakfast everyone at Seventeen usually indulged in once a week. Not that his no-show track record had ever stopped her from hoping he’d come around.

“Okay, so he might be a little quiet,” she allowed, because there was no denying that Slater wasn’t exactly the sharing-is-caring type. Still… “He’s not that hard to talk to once you get to know him, though. I actually like helping him study.”

“Do you, now?”

Parker’s dark eyebrows traveled halfway up his forehead, his smile edging dangerously close to smirk territory, and ah, shit. For all his big-brother lack of awareness regarding the fact that she was both female and heterosexual, he wasn’t dense.

And since Slater had neither made a move in the whole seven months they’d worked together, nor given her any overt sign that he’d be receptive if she made a move, it was time to save face by putting a cork in this conversation, stat.

“Don’t.” Quinn punctuated the word with her very best glare. “Or I’ll be forced to tell Gamble you’re the one who ate the last of the lasagna rolls Kylie brought in during last shift.”

Parker’s grin went on an instant sabbatical. “You wouldn’t.”

Okay, she probably wouldn’t. But a girl had her pride. Mostly. Sort of. Okay, fine. She was completely prideless when it came to her one-sided girl crush on Luke Slater. “Do you really want to try me?” she bluffed.

“It’s not my fault Kellan’s sister is an amazing chef and Gamble’s too slow on the uptake with the leftovers. Those lasagna rolls are ridiculous,” Parker pointed out.

“Are they worth Gamble’s wrath? Because slow or not, I’m pretty sure he’d—”

“I get it, I get it!” Parker said with a laugh that was half humor, half holy-shit fear he was trying to cover up with humor. “No questions about you and the rookie.”

“Because there’s nothing to question. I’m just helping him study,” Quinn said with finality. Sitting back against the contours of the passenger seat, she checked the dashboard screen one more time before looking out the window at the downtown buildings flashing by.

Nothing to question, her ass. He might keep to himself more than the rest of them combined, but Luke Slater was sexy as strong-and-silent sin.

Heat crept over her skin as an unexpected pull of attraction settled low between her hips. Quinn had heard enough horror stories from first responders at other houses to know that crossing the streams between work and play probably had “bad idea” scrawled all over it in permanent marker. But between Slater’s broad, muscular shoulders and the killer combination of his light brown skin and piercing blue eyes that were gorgeous enough to render a girl’s panties useless, she really couldn’t deny the truth.

The longer she and Slater worked together, the more she wanted to turn that bad idea into a very. Very. Good. Time.

The ambulance slowed, and the change in velocity kicked Quinn’s pulse into a completely different sort of go-mode. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, even pain—they all fell by the wayside when she was working a trauma, as if her physiology just seemed to know that it was more important for her to take care of a kid who had been hurt in a car crash than to distract her with something as lame as a stomach rumble or a yawn.

“Okay, here we go,” Parker said, pulling to a full stop in front of a trendy-looking café with an overhead sign that read BREWED AWAKENING in big, bright red letters. “Nineteen-twelve Maplewood Avenue.”

Per protocol, Quinn confirmed the address with a fast but careful glance at the dashboard screen. “Copy that,” she said, her heartbeat accelerating in an ingrained physical response her body knew all too well as she reached for the two-way radio that linked them to dispatch. “Ambulance Twenty-Two to dispatch. We are on-scene at nineteen-twelve Maplewood Avenue. Over.”

“Dispatch to Ambulance Twenty-Two, copy your location. Over.”

Snuffing out the very last of the well-hello-there tingle that had accompanied her illicit thoughts of Slater, Quinn got out of the rig and locked all of her attention on the scene. Coffee shop, busy part of the city, a hundred and fuckteen degrees outside…God, this could be anything.

Engine Seventeen rumbled up behind them, the heavy thump of four sets of boots sounding off against the pavement just as she popped the handle on the ambo’s side storage door.

“Hey, you guys,” Quinn said over her shoulder, grabbing her first-in bag and tugging a pair of blue nitrile gloves from the side pocket, snapping them quickly into place. “Sorry for cutting your drills short.”

Any time engine wasn’t already on a call, dispatch tended to send them to accompany her and Parker on reports of a person down, just in case they needed help getting past a sticky obstacle in order to reach a victim. Falling out on this one must have given them a hell of a run for their money, considering they’d been harness-deep in rope drills when the all-call had gone off.

Funny, Shae—who just so happened to be not only Quinn’s station-mate, but one of her closest friends—just grinned and shook her head as she stepped up next to Quinn on the pavement. “Ah, Slater’s got to learn rescue skills on the fly, and it gave the rest of us some good practice at making fast work of things.”

Quinn shut the compartment door just in time to see Slater and Kellan arrive behind Shae, the latter sporting a small, freshly formed bruise just below his right eye.

“Mmm. Some of us got more practice than others.” Despite the sarcasm in his tone, Kellan smiled and fell into step with the rest of them as they hustled toward the back of the ambo for the gurney. “Speaking of which, if you need backup on this one, I’ve got dibs. McCullough owes me for the shiner.”

Quinn couldn’t help but go brows-up. “Do I even want to know?” she asked Gamble, who stood sentry at the ambulance’s open rear doors while Parker unlocked the gurney with a loud clack.

“Do you even have to ask?” Gamble capped the question with a shake of his dark head, and even Shae lifted her hands in concession as they got the gurney to ground level and cut a brisk path over the city sidewalk leading up to the coffee shop.

“Probably not,” she said.

Parker let out a short-lived laugh as he moved past one of the glass double doors leading inside, guiding the foot of the gurney while Quinn maneuvered over the threshold from the other end. “Okay, then. If we need an assist, Kellan it is.”

Taking a few seconds to allow her eyes to make the adjustment from the bright sunlight outside to the much more dimly lit interior of the coffee shop, Quinn scanned the cozy L-shaped space. “Did someone call for an ambulance?”

“Yes! Over here!” called out a worried brunette wearing thickly rimmed glasses that matched her cherry-red apron. “Please, hurry.”

Quinn’s breath kicked slightly faster through her lungs, and yeah, the woman didn’t have to tell them twice.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Parker asked the brunette while Quinn sighted in on the lifeless figure slumped over the floorboards alongside the bakery display case. Female, late twenties-early thirties. Unconscious. No visible signs of trauma. Go. Go.

She knelt down before she was even aware of the command from her neurons to move, pressing her index and middle fingers over the woman’s neck with one hand while using the other to stabilize her spine. Relief splashed through Quinn’s veins at the thump of the woman’s heartbeat, strong and slow against her fingers.

“I’ve got a pulse.” At least that was a win. The rest of this situation? Not so much.

“She was waiting in line.” The woman in the apron, whose name tag read “Annie”, stared down at them, her eyes as round as a pair of dinner plates behind her glasses. “She was standing right there when all of a sudden she…I don’t know. Just kind of collapsed. One of the other customers caught her on the way down”—Annie pointed to a man kneeling on the floor by the woman’s side, across from Quinn—“but she was out cold, and she’s been really out of it since then. I called nine-one-one right away.”

“So she didn’t hit her head when she fell? You’re sure?” Parker asked, and the man nodded, moving back to give them room to work.

“I’m sure. I was next to her in line when she passed out. She went down like a sack of potatoes. One minute, she was standing there, the next…” He trailed off, gesturing to the floor. “I did manage to get ahold of her and slide her to the floor, though.”

Another win, although Quinn did a quick check for a head injury the guy might have missed, just in case. Good Samaritans might have kind intentions, but what they usually didn’t have were medical degrees. “No sign of head or spinal trauma,” she confirmed.

“Okay, let’s get her on her back for an RTA,” Parker said. “On my count. One, two, three.”

Working in a rhythm she knew as well as her own signature, they rolled the woman to her back on the floorboards. Later, Quinn would probably have bruises on her knees, she knew. But right now? She didn’t even feel the slightest bite of the hardwood on her skin. Her brain caught clips and snippets from her peripheral vision as she prepped for the rapid trauma assessment. The dozen or so onlookers Shae and Gamble had corralled by the tables in the back of the shop. Kellan standing by the gurney, his sharp stare on both the situation and the scene. Slater, who was watching with enough quiet intensity to sink a battleship. Quinn had been trained to always be aware of her surroundings in case they became dangerous. But right now, in this moment, the only thing she really saw was her patient.

“Ma’am?” She curled her fingers into a loose fist, placing her knuckles over the center of the woman’s now-loosened blouse for a nice firm sternal rub. The woman stirred, but barely. Shit. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

“Heart rate is sixty-two, pulse ox is ninety-nine percent,” Parker said, and damn, he’d been fast with those leads. The portable monitor beside him flashed as the numbers registered, the woman’s vitals beginning to scroll over the screen.

“Okay, sweetheart. Let’s figure you out.” Quinn’s brain spun through the most likely suspects. Airway was clear, heart rate was normal, albeit on the low side. The woman had gone lights out with no warning…

Of course. “Diabetic shock,” Quinn said, just a nanosecond before Parker did. Reaching for her first-in bag, Quinn liberated the glucose test kit from the pocket where she always kept it, the sharp, familiar tang of alcohol pinching at her nose as she swiped a pad over the woman’s middle finger and completed the test.

“Whoa. Blood sugar is thirty-four.” No wonder this lady was so unresponsive. Anything under seventy was considered low. Thirty-four was in the freaking basement. But at least subterranean blood sugar levels were a relatively easy fix.

“Starting an IV,” Parker said, although his hands were already halfway through the process. He’d always been a wizard with starting a line. He hadn’t earned the nickname Ace for nothing. “Pushing half an amp of D50 and running normal saline, wide open.”

Quinn eagle-eyed the woman’s vitals for another minute before placing another sternal rub over the center of her chest, right between the leads. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

The woman’s eyes fluttered, and Quinn exhaled a little easier. Right up until she swatted at Quinn’s hands, anyway.

“Okay, it’s okay.” She dropped her voice to its most soothing setting, trying to reassure the woman. Judging by her dazed/panicked expression, Quinn was doing a piss-poor job.

She tried again. “Ma’am, my name is Quinn and I’m a paramedic. Can you tell me—”

The woman lifted her lids again in a series of heavy blinks. She took another swat—this one with a little more oomph—at Quinn’s hands, the sloppy movements tangling her IV tube.

Quinn’s pulse jerked in a reminder that her adrenal gland was fully functional. Coming around from diabetic shock was a slow road, and waking up to a gaggle of first responders all up in your personal bubble had to be a little frightening. But keeping this woman calm was key if they wanted to keep helping her, so Quinn mentally crossed her fingers and hoped the third time would be the proverbial charm.

“Ma’am, please. I need you to—”

The woman’s hand shot out, connecting with Quinn’s upper arm in a solid, ow-worthy thump. Her heart slapped faster in her chest, and even though the response was pure physiology, it threatened to upend the composure she needed in order to do her job.

Nope. Not today.

“Okay. Take it easy.” Quinn gripped the woman’s forearm in an effort to steady her. If that IV blew, she wouldn’t get the fluids she needed, and they’d have no way of getting more meds on board if her blood sugar took another belly flop. The woman struggled against Quinn’s hold, her free hand flailing in a series of wild, broken motions that meant nothing good for where they were headed.

“Copeland.”

Quinn locked eyes with Parker, a nonverbal conversation moving between them in less time than it took to sneeze. Parker passed the IV bag to Kellan, who had been standing behind him, ready to assist as promised, and circled his fingers carefully but firmly around either one of the patient’s forearms.

“Ma’am, I know this is scary, but we want to help you. We’re going to give you something to calm you down so we can treat you and make you feel better, okay? Quinn, draw up two milligrams of Ativan.”

“Wait. She doesn’t need Ativan. Stop.”

Quinn was so stunned to hear Slater’s words that she actually hesitated with one hand on the vial.

Parker shook his head, adamant. “No. I get that you’re fresh out of EMT training, Slater, but this isn’t my first rodeo. We need to skip the pleasantries before this woman yanks out her IV or becomes more upset. Or worse.” He turned back to the woman, his tone unyielding but not unkind. “Ma’am, please. You need to stop fighting us, okay? We don’t want to have to restrain you.”

But rather than standing down, Slater stepped closer, until he was less than an inch away from Parker at the woman’s side. “If you restrain her, she’ll only fight harder. And she doesn’t need the Ativan to calm down.”

Parker’s brows winged up in shock, and didn’t that just make him and Quinn a pair of freaking bookends.

“Slater,” she started, but his determined, ice-blue stare made the rest of her words crash to a halt in her throat.

“Your patient isn’t trying to fight you, Quinn. She’s trying to talk to you.”