Okay, so driving the ambulance was just weird. Not that Quinn was pioneering new territory by sliding behind the wheel, because she’d talked Parker into letting her drive way more than once over the last half-decade. But the passenger seat was broken in just the way she liked it, with the perfect ratio of support to cushion, and ugh, how did Parker last for even one shift on this slab of concrete?

Quinn let out an exhale and tamped down her inner voice with a steady shot of suck it up, buttercup. Yes, she hated that Parker was hurt, and yes, she really hated that there was nothing she could do to help him. She had to focus on what was in front of her, though, which meant taking care of whoever was on the other end of this call with Slater as her partner.

The thought made her belly tighten with twin feelings of excitement and curiosity. She’d known he’d probably take the assignment to ambo as seriously as he took everything else—which was to say that on a scale of one to ten, he was going to clock in at about a forty-two. What Quinn hadn’t been expecting was the reveal on his sister, which—while it wasn’t some huge go-viral-on-the-Internet-style bombshell—still had to make her wonder.

What other surprises was he hiding beneath that wickedly sexy turnout gear and serious ice-blue stare?

“Isn’t engine supposed to go with us on person-down calls?” Slater asked from the passenger seat beside her, and okay, she needed a super-sized reality check. For God’s sake, she’d been around turnout gear on a regular basis for the last five years straight. Never once had the word ‘sexy’ entered the equation.

“Not always,” Quinn said, and at least her voice was normal even though the rest of her had clearly filed for temporary insanity. “They’ve almost certainly got their hands full with that brush fire, and we’re not headed to a rough part of the city.” If the call had come in from North Point, dispatch would’ve either sent them with a police escort or pulled the guys from Station Twenty-Nine to back them up, just in case. Granted, this one looked like it was a bit close to the fringe, but she’d been on a bazillion medical calls with no backup, and had never had so much as a hiccup.

“Most person-down calls are no big deal anyway, especially in heat like this,” she continued. “Someone probably just got a little dizzy mowing their lawn or taking a jog. Fifty bucks says we get back to the house before engine does.”

Slater gave up a half-smile that did nothing to un-sexy the whole turnout gear fantasy in her head. “I’m going to hold you to that, just so you know. But in the meantime, what should I be doing here?” He gestured to the dashboard unit, which was currently giving them an ETA of seven minutes.

“Just keep your eye on any updates from dispatch. They’ll come through on the screen. Anything urgent will come in over the radio, just like on engine. But other than that, just be ready to grab your first-in bag when we get there.”

“Copy that.”

Quinn navigated their route according to the GPS, her brain adjusting to the new punch list of being the lead paramedic even though the rest of her wanted to give the idea the finger. Guiding the ambulance down a long stretch of road lined with boarded-up warehouses and storefronts that looked like they’d been long-abandoned, she finally pulled to a stop in front of a plain, two-story building flanked by an alley on one side and a pair of industrial garage bays on the other. A weather-faded sign marked the place as HENDERSON SHIPPING AND SUPPLIES, a much newer-looking one warning that trespassers would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Quinn scanned the scene, her pulse doing its usual get-up-and-go despite the deep breath she took to set her focus.

“Okay. Looks like this is it. Eleven-forty Beaumont,” she said, triple-checking the crooked black numbers nailed beside the front door, then grabbing up the radio to call in their arrival. “Ambulance Twenty-Two to dispatch. We are on-scene at eleven-forty Beaumont Place. Over.”

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

Slater sent a wary look through the windshield. “Are you sure? This place looks totally abandoned,” he said, and funny, Quinn couldn’t disagree.

Still. “Could be kids who were messing around in one of these old buildings and got hurt. Or a squatter who OD’d, maybe. But someone called for help. We just need to figure out who, and why.”

She got out of the ambo, heading to the side storage compartment for the first-in bag she’d thankfully stocked just before they’d hauled out of the fire house. Slater was on the ball enough to have mimicked her movements on his side of the ambulance—nice—and they met up behind the vehicle.

“You want to take the gurney in?” Slater asked, but Quinn eyeballed their surroundings in a brisk assessment and shook her head.

“Getting it over this gravel will slow us down too much. Let’s see what we’re dealing with first.”

He swiveled a stare over the building, his blue eyes narrowing in the over-bright sunlight beating down from overhead. “Copy that.”

They fell into step together, their boots crunching and popping over the rough gravel path serving as a walkway through the weed-choked grass. A sheen of sweat formed on Quinn’s brow before they’d even reached the battered steel door to the building, and she pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from the stash in her pocket before pushing her way inside.

“Hello?” Her eyes struggled to adjust to the shadows of the space. “Did someone call for an ambulance?”

Annnnd nothing. The building, which appeared to be some sort of warehouse, opened to a large front room littered with old wooden shipping crates and enough trash and empty beer cans to make Quinn’s radar ping.

“Keep your eyes open for squatters,” she murmured, and Slater nodded from beside her.

“Paramedics” he tried, his deeper voice echoing eerily off the walls and the dust-encrusted windows set high above ground level. “We’re here to help. Call out.”

“Stop right there and let me see those hands. Right fucking now.”

The words were so incongruous with anything Quinn had ever heard that for a second, her brain straight-up refused to process them. Then she turned and saw the snub-nosed gun in the man’s hand, the blood covering his once-white shirt, the wild flash of menace in his pitch-black eyes, and fear turned her blood to pure ice.

“I…I…”

The man took a swift step toward her from his spot behind a shipping crate, reducing her stammer to a strangled cry. “I didn’t say you could talk, bitch. Now shut up and let me see your fucking hands!”

Quinn’s arms complied, raising out of sheer survival instinct. Oh God. Oh God, oh God.

“Radios,” the man bit out, the thick black ink of the snake tattoo on his forearm flexing over his dark brown skin as he jerked the gun between her and Slater. “Both of you. Nice and easy, or I’ll blow your goddamn heads off.”

She chanced a fast, shaky glance at Slater, who had angled himself slightly in front of her on the dirty concrete floor.

“Quinn.”

His voice was quiet, barely a breath in the tight space between them. Yet somehow it managed to penetrate the fear keeping her rooted into place. With trembling fingers, she lifted the radio strapped to her shoulder, ducking out of the thing and tossing it to the ground.

Think, think. She had to stop panicking and think. “Are…are you hurt?”

A muscle in the man’s jaw ticked, and he thrust the gun toward her with enough intention to make her pulse go ballistic in her veins. “What did I tell you about not talking?”

“She’s just trying to help you,” Slater said softly. “If you’re bleeding, we can take care of that. No questions asked.”

The man dropped his chin, the mention of the blood making him even more agitated even though Quinn couldn’t detect any visible injury to attribute it to.

“You’re gonna take care of it, alright. See, this blood ain’t mine. It’s my brother’s. He got shot, and you’re gonna fix him up.”

“Okay.” Slater’s voice was low and steady, right there next to her, and the sound of it allowed Quinn to exhale, just the tiniest bit. “We can do that. You don’t need the gun.”

The snake tattoo jerked again, harder this time. So much for being able to breathe.

“Yeah, I do. Because my brother is at a safe house, and this here is a kidnapping. You’re both comin’ with me, and you’re either gonna save his life, or I’m gonna end yours.”

Fear climbed the back of Quinn’s throat, hot, involuntary tears burning behind her eyelids. But Tattoo Guy either didn’t notice, or—more likely, since he was, you know, pointing a freaking gun at her—didn’t care.

“Listen real careful, ’cause I’m only saying this once. The three of us are gonna get in that ambulance of yours and put it in the alley beside this building, all nice and out of sight. Then we’re gonna take a ride in my car, and you’re gonna patch Jayden up real good. You even think of bein’ a hero”—he paused to nail Slater with a glare that made Quinn’s hair stand on end—“and I will shoot her in the face so many times, her dental records won’t even have a prayer of holding up. And if you run”—she felt Tattoo Guy’s stare on her like a living, slithering thing—“I’ll do the same thing to him. You hear me?”

Quinn nodded. Slater must have, too, because the next thing she knew, Tattoo Guy was ordering them to turn around. Stepping up behind them, he pushed the gun between Quinn’s shoulder blades. The cold, unforgiving press of steel made her flinch as her heart slammed even faster, but she forced the thought of the gun and the images that went with it all the way out of her brain.

Okay. Okay. This is still a call, with a patient who needs help. You know how to do this. You can do this. You’re going to be fine.

She repeated the words in her head with every step toward the ambo even though she knew deep down they were a lie. She’d been around patients who were combative. People who had tried to hit her, bite her, and threatened to kill her if she so much as laid a pinky finger on their pulse point. But this was different. This man had a gun jammed directly over her spine, just behind her heart.

Quinn knew the sort of damage the weapon would inflict. She knew it would rip through flesh. Bones. Organs. She knew it could take long, terrifying minutes to bleed out from even the deadliest of wounds. She knew, because she’d seen it happen.

And now it was going to happen to her.

* * *

Luke lay on the floor of the black Cadillac Escalade he’d been forced into at gunpoint and wondered if he was going to die today. It was a fucked-up thought, but the abstract weirdness was the only thing between him and pure panic.

And wasn’t that just even more fucked up? But when life went on a bender of bad and nasty, Luke buckled down. He put things at arm’s length. He took care of business and fixed things. He didn’t feel. Just did.

He couldn’t die today. He couldn’t leave Momma Billie and Hayley. Not when they depended on him so much. He couldn’t die, and he sure as shit couldn’t let Quinn die.

Not. Goddamn. Happening.

Luke pulled in a deep breath and took in his surroundings as best he could, which—considering current circumstances—amounted to jack with a side order of shit. After they’d successfully hidden the ambo, their kidnapper had forced both him and Quinn into the back seat of the Escalade, then instructed them both to lie on the vehicle’s floor. The wedge of space was barely big enough for Luke’s six foot one frame alone, so he’d sardined himself into it as best he could and let Quinn lie curled in at his side. Her heart was beating against her chest, and therefore also his, like a fleet of hummingbirds, her breath moving against his neck in shaky, frightened bursts, and the feel of it would rip his guts out if it wasn’t so busy making him angry.

Yeah, he needed to lose all this emotion before it got him into trouble. Or worse.

Releasing the air from his lungs, he flattened his palm against Quinn’s back. He couldn’t risk actually saying anything to her with their kidnapper only a handful of feet away in the driver’s seat. The guy might have nine kinds of psycho in his dark, don’t-give-a-shit stare, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. He was covering his tracks to get them where he needed them to be.

Which didn’t really bode well for what might happen after they were done.

He shoved the thought aside, concentrating on the feel of Quinn’s back against his hand. Luke knew she was terrified—Christ, at this point, he was pretty fucking scared, too. But they’d both need every last one of their wits if they were going to live through this, so he channeled his energy into slowing his breathing so she might feel it and slow hers, pressing his palm over the damp cotton of her T-shirt to hold her close.

He should’ve asked her out. No, screw that. He should’ve kissed her, deeply, relentlessly, the way he’d wanted to since the minute he’d seen her that very first time in Station Seventeen’s common room.

The Escalade slowed marginally, taking a series of turns that told Luke they had to be getting close to their destination. Quinn’s body—which had gone a bit more lax against his—snapped right back to bowstring status against his rib cage.

It’s okay. It will all be okay. Hoping the message came through in his touch was a last-ditch effort, and a crazy one at that. But since he was fresh out of options, Luke would scrape for anything he could to get them through this.

“Don’t move,” their kidnapper said, pulling to a stop. He hadn’t let go of the gun during the drive, keeping it out of sight in one hand while steering the vehicle with the other. Now he trained the thing back on them with just as much menace as before, so Luke lay still and waited for instructions. The reality was, if the man’s brother was injured badly enough to kidnap two paramedics, then he needed them. At least for a little while.

“I’m gonna open the door, and you’re both getting out, nice and slow. We’ll get your fancy bags from the back, and then you’ll go inside and fix my brother. You got me?”

“Yes,” Luke said, and Quinn echoed with her own affirmative. The guy scrambled out of the driver’s side, tugging the door behind it open a second later. He swung a wild gaze over the surroundings Luke couldn’t yet see before motioning with the gun for Quinn to get out. A few awkward movements later, the two of them were standing in the driveway of a small, run-down house clearly in the heart of Remington’s North Point.

“Go.” Grabbing Quinn by the back of the shirt—shit, Luke wanted to throat-punch this guy into next week just for putting that look on her face—he shoved the gun against the back of her ribs, forcing her toward the back of the Escalade while effectively keeping the gun from plain view.

“We’ll do what you’re asking,” Luke said, trying like hell to keep his voice venom-free. “You don’t have to do that.”

As if he’d sensed Luke’s desire to put the focus on himself rather than Quinn, the guy pressed the gun into her back even harder. “Shut up and get the bags, hero. You’re wasting time, and that makes me antsy.”

Luke didn’t wait. Reaching into the back of the Escalade, he grabbed his first-in bag and the portable monitor they’d liberated from the back of the ambulance. Quinn shouldered her own bag, reaching into the pocket of her navy blue uniform pants likely out of sheer habit, and no, no, she needed to stop before—

Their kidnapper snapped the gun from her shoulder blades to the back of her neck in less than a second. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Gloves!” she cried out, holding them up as proof. “If I’m going to treat your brother I need gloves!”

He bit out a nasty curse. “Don’t be makin’ no sudden moves like that.”

“How else am I going to do my job?” Quinn snapped. Her defiant tone shocked Luke firmly into place, but not before making his gut bottom out somewhere in the area of his shins. “Judging by the amount of blood on your shirt, I don’t think you want me to take my time, so yeah. I need to glove up now.”

Their kidnapper’s eyes went wide, but only for a split second before his gaze turned feral. “You’re gonna want to keep this bitch in check,” he said to Luke. “Before I decide I don’t need both of you.”

Luke didn’t pause. Didn’t think. Just stepped into the man’s line of sight and stayed there. “I can promise that you do. Now do you want to scare her so badly she can’t work, or do you want to show us where your brother is so we can start helping him out?”

The cadence of his words was steady even though his hands were shaking too hard to control, but the shift in focus did the trick. The guy strong-armed them over the cracked concrete driveway, past a row of anemic shrubbery to a front door that looked better suited for a bank vault than the dilapidated rancher it was connected to.

“It’s chill,” he barked out a second later, when a man in a backwards baseball hat welcome wagoned them by raising the gun in his grasp. Christ, these guys had a lot of hardware. “It’s me. Damien. I brought help for Jayden.”

Baseball Hat gave Luke and Quinn a once-over and frowned. “Boss Man tell you to?”

For the first time since he’d jumped out from behind that shipping crate, Damien paused. “I had to do somethin’, man. Jay’s my brother.” Poking his gun back into Quinn’s spine, he ordered, “Walk. Both of you. That way, down the hall. Stop when you get to the first bedroom.”

The directions, it turned out, were totally unnecessary. A steady trail of blood led the way, some in tiny drips, some in bigger, oily-looking puddles, and Luke’s shoulders took an involuntary trip around his spine. His heart slammed despite the deep breath he’d just sent down the hatch, but he forced himself to focus. He’d worked in life and death situations before. Run into burning buildings. Scaled rooftops. Pulled mangled bodies from car wrecks. He could do this. If it would save his life—Quinn’s life—then he would buckle the fuck down and face whatever danger was in front of him in order to help this guy.

Luke stopped just outside the bedroom door. His boots squeaked and slid over the blood spattered on the floorboards, but he didn’t have time to let the grisly details sink far enough into his brain to scare him. Damien called out, pushing both Quinn and Luke forward at the same time. Since Luke’s only options were to open the door or be crushed up against it, he went for Plan A and twisted the knob, stumbling his way inside the room.

“Damien.” A huge hulk of a man dressed in head-to-toe black pushed up from the chair beside the bed taking up most of the space in the room. His body coiled in an immediate and utterly menacing defensive stance, his shoulders snapping into place around what would be the guy’s neck, if he had one. Instead, they simply went from those linebacker-esque muscles right up to the back of his shaved head, his nearly black eyes glinting in the daylight fighting to get past the window blinds. Luke’s boots slapped to a halt at the sight of the guy, who—of course—had rested his hand on the gun prominently visible at his hip.

“You have guests,” the man said, his voice sending frost over Luke’s spine. His tone of voice suggested that a) he was as surprised to see Luke and Quinn as they were to be there, and b) said surprise was taking a backseat to his extreme irritation.

Damien, however? Didn’t seem to get the memo. “Jayden needs help,” he said, his agitation visibly growing at the sight of the young man lying on the bed, bleeding freely from a wound in his chest. The kid’s chest rose and fell in rapid, wheezing breaths, and if he was conscious, it was only just. The dirty-copper smell of too much blood hung heavily in the air, punching Luke in both his throat and his fear center simultaneously, and shit. Shit, this was bad.

Damien rambled on. “You said no hospitals, so I got the next best thing. I ain’t letting my brother die. Especially not by the hand of no fuckin’ Scarlet Reapers.”

The big guy’s stare turned cold and flat as he moved it first over Luke and Quinn, then back to Damien with a frown. “Let them get to it, then. In the meantime, get someone in here to watch them work. You and I need to have a word.”

Forget bad, Luke thought as Baseball Hat stepped into the room and Damien and his boss stepped out. This was going to end horribly.

Luke just didn’t know for who.