The Firefighter's Secret Baby. Anna DeStefano
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Dragging.
Her driver’s door would be ripped away!
She fought for control. Blood trickled into her eyes. Pain ripped at her bulging stomach.
It’s not going to end this way.
I’m not going to let it end this way…
Life became a slow motion nightmare. The truck that had cut her off barreled into a minivan. The van swerved in a deadly arc, crashing into her. Her rental car spun like a top while she banked the wheel and shoved the brake pedal to the floor.
More headlights. More rain. More vehicles crashing.
Lightning and thunder.
Terror.
Pain.
Then she was flipping, rolling, over and over. Glass shattering, metal shredding and crushing, while she wrapped her arms around her baby and prayed the seat belt would protect her daughter.
The windshield collapsed inward. Ice-cold rain soaked her. Her world shrank to the pinpoints of light spiraling behind her closed eyelids.
It was forever before anything made sense again. She realized the car was still rocking. Teetering. Her door had become the car’s uncertain base.
Then she realized the pain was gone, too. The labor pains. She couldn’t feel the baby moving, and her daughter was always moving these days. There was nothing left but the roaring in her ears. Her arms and legs were growing numb.
Shock.
She was going into shock.
“Please,” she begged, praying for one more miracle. “Please, just give me one last chance….”
RANDY MONTGOMERY SCALED the pulverized wreck his team was securing. The air at the crash site vibrated with a frantic kind of calm while they prepared to crack the car with the Jaws of Life. The acrid smell of leaking fuel shimmered off everything Randy touched. His guys and several other teams responding to the multiple car pileup had doused the entire scene in fire retardant foam. But with this much petroleum in the mix, an errant spark could still set off a flash fire. It wasn’t the worst scene Randy had triaged, but it would do.
And there had been many others. He’d certified in accident recovery in the first class that opened after 9/11, moving from an engine company to rescue because he’d thought that’s where he could do the most good.
A faint, feminine groan whispered up from inside the vehicle.
He was point. His job was to triage and stabilize the victim for what promised to be a delicate extraction. Advanced life support would follow once his team had secured the vehicle.
“We have a live one,” he called to his crew. “Someone position that spotlight over here.”
Never lose a victim. It was Randy’s mantra. He wasn’t delusional enough to believe he had that kind of control. Still, he fought for every life with everything he had.
He reached through the slit that had once been the front passenger window—now the highest point of the rumpled vehicle. It would be his only view inside until a new one could be ripped open. He draped himself over the mangled mess of metal and fiberglass. There were razor-sharp edges to avoid. Possible weak spots. Stressing the wreck further could compromise the integrity of the safety cage. Randy let his instincts and years of experience guide him as he did his careful work of getting a visual on the victim.
Careful was his forte.
He stayed in control, no matter the crisis. Ice had been stenciled onto his helmet after he’d joined his first engine company, recognition of how hard he’d fought at every scene even as a newbie straight from the academy. His two older brothers, Chris and Charlie, whom he’d followed into fire and rescue, had given him the nickname. The moniker had stuck when Randy transferred to his rescue company.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about his victims. But as the go-to man on critical calls, emotion on the job wasn’t a luxury he indulged in. And off the job…He was the son of a brutal father and an abused mother. Emotional entanglements weren’t something he courted.
Levering as much of his body as he could through the sedan’s passenger window, he took a deep breath and shoved his wandering thoughts away. He owed whomever was inside his total focus.
“What do you see, man?” The floodlights had been repositioned at a more direct angle, illuminating the safety cage that was manufactured into all modern vehicles.
“One occupant.” He strained to see the still form huddled between the bent-back hood, what was left of the steering wheel, and the driver’s door.
The body was covered in voluminous, bloodstained material. White cotton. Arms and legs, neither noticeably broken. The victim was lying on her side. Seat belt clipped into place and still attached. Sandals. One still on, the other lying close enough for Randy to reach.
“It’s a woman.” He cleared the delicate shoe from the field, along with whatever debris he could, transferring them down to waiting hands.
From the size of the body curled in on itself, the victim appeared larger than average weight. Except large didn’t jibe with the slender ankles and calves and arms and wrists he could see better as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. She groaned and shifted, rolling off her side. The car objected, rocking against the stabilization his men had added from the outside.
“Hold still, miss.” Randy kept his voice reassuring. It was good that she could move. There wasn’t as much blood as he’d originally thought. But—“You could have a spinal injury. There’s glass and metal everywhere, and—”
She settled onto her back, still out of it, probably not hearing a word he said. But her protruding belly spoke loud and clear.
“Holy hell, she’s pregnant!” He stretched his arm as far inside as he could, but he couldn’t reach her. “Third trimester, if I had to guess.”
In response to his raised voice, the victim’s head gave an agitated jerk. Her features stayed hidden from him by a wealth of dark hair.
“Ma’am, where do you hurt?” He stared at the way her hands were gripping her stomach. “Are you in labor? Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Randy controlled the instinct to push deeper inside. Forcing a tenuous position would only put his victim at more risk. But a mother in danger—nothing got to Randy faster.
And this mother…
Something about her seemed familiar, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what. He fought the urge to rip his way into the wreck. He forced himself to scan the parts of her body he could see, looking for anything he’d missed. Hair raised on the back of his neck.
His subconscious was trying to tell him something.
What?
“Ah!” the woman cried out, louder than before. “Help me…”
Randy’s trained gaze catalogued each potential injury. It tracked up her torso and arms and shoulders, over the ebony hair framing the face that was finally uncovered.
A lover’s face, not a stranger’s.
“Oh, my God. Sam?” Randy’s focus jerked back to her swollen belly. He’d last seen her in his hotel-room bed in Savannah nine months ago…. “Oh, my God.”
CHAPTER TWO
SAM TRIED TO RUN. She wouldn’t give up. She had to keep fighting, even though a part of her knew that she couldn’t move. There was something precious she had to save. A miracle she wouldn’t let go of.
What was it…
And there was that voice again. The one from her dreams.
She’d run from the voice before, back to the U.S. marshal in charge of her protection.