Kansas City's Bravest

He’d tried to harden himself against her independent spirit that desperately needed someone to care. He’d tried to focus on the woman who worked overtime to pretend that she didn’t need anyone at all, not the world-weary soul underneath who needed someone to love her more than she’d probably ever admit to herself.

He wouldn’t deny the physical attraction that sparked like kinetic energy between them. But she wasn’t the woman he’d loved two years ago. This Meghan was tougher, stronger—and yet more vulnerable.

He was her friend. Her protector. Nothing more.

Except he was dangerously close to becoming the man who loved her.

Again.

Kansas City’s Bravest

Julie Miller

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Miller attributes her passion for writing romance to all those fairy tales she read growing up, and to shyness. Encouragement from her family to write down all those feelings she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where she serves as the resident “grammar goddess.” This award-winning author and teacher has published several paranormal romances. Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Ms. Miller believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

Born and raised in Missouri, she now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and smiling guard dog, Maxie. Write to Julie at P.O. Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162.

THE TAYLOR CLAN

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Gideon Taylor—It’s up to this arson investigator to figure out who’s burning down Kansas City one building at a time. But can he uncover the truth before the arsonist destroys a very special woman from his past?

Meghan Wright—Hot to the touch. Gideon once taught her about love and fighting fires. Now that a madman has her in his sights, she returns to the one place she feels safe—with Gideon.

Daniel Kelleher—The owner of four properties destroyed by fire is wondering if he made an unfortunate investment—or if the destruction is something personal.

Jack Quinton—Is the former convict back to his old tricks? Or is he passing on his fiery skills to an apprentice?

Saundra Ames—This reporter has the hottest story of the summer.

John Murdock—Is Meghan’s partner watching her back just a little too closely?

Dorie Mesner—For years she has taken in troubled children.

Pete Preston—The memory of that monster just won’t go away.

Alex—A former Westside Warrior. Who is a young man supposed to trust?

Edison—Just don’t call him that. He’s pretty darn smart for a ten-year-old.

Matthew and Mark—They are too young to understand the truth.

Crispy—Just like Meghan and her “boys,” this pooch wants a real home.

With thanks to

Germane Friends and Michael “Fireplug” Jordan of the Kansas City Fire Department for answering all my questions and sending me the wonderful pictures of real KCFD firefighters.

Any mistakes are mine.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

Too late. Too late.

The nightmare’s fiery talons cut deep into Gideon Taylor’s dreams.

The impact of raw, compressed air exploding into a ball of flame lifted him off his feet and dumped him on his backside.

“Luke!” The hoarse shout from Gideon’s ravaged throat echoed inside his mask.

Trapped in the throes of the hideous dream that wouldn’t die, Gideon twisted in his bed and struggled toward consciousness and peace. But the nightmare wouldn’t release him.

He needed her.

The groans of the ancient rafters in the condemned apartment building matched the groans of mortal pain sifting through the hiss of static in Gideon’s ear.

“Luke!” Gideon rolled onto his side, straining against his heavy gear, weighed down by a fearful extra burden of guilt.

It was alive now.

Ignition. Fuel to burn. Oxygen to live and breathe.

A simple yet deadly recipe for fire.

Gideon lurched to his feet. Stooping low, he closed his grit-filled eyes and concentrated on the sounds that could lead him to his partner. “Talk to me,” he whispered, willing the collapsing fortress to reveal its secrets.

The mournful howl of iron girders buckling from the intense heat taunted him from above. An invitation.

The tornadic gasp of air currents, rising and gusting ahead of the flames hit his chest and pushed him back. A warning.

The wheezing rasp of his best friend, urging him away from the heart of the fire where he lay dying, cried in his ear.

His destiny.

Gideon’s internal radar tuned in to that last, weak sound. He made the world go quiet inside his head. He forced his pounding heart and his own ragged breathing into silence.

He zeroed his horrible sixth sense in on Luke.

There.

Gideon plunged into the wall of smoke, lengthening his stride as much as he dared. He strode into the belly of the fiery beast to retrieve his friend.

“Taylor! Redding!” The order from the receiver inside his helmet went unheeded. “I said clear out!”

“Luke’s down.” Gideon’s brief reply spoke volumes.

He didn’t spare another breath to argue Deputy Chief Bridgerton’s orders. The chief would understand. A firefighter wouldn’t leave a man behind.

Feeling his way along the wall, Gideon tripped through the remnants of the blasted doorway into the boiler room and dropped to the floor. One knee hit concrete.

The other hit something softer.

Luke.

Gideon took his hand and squeezed it tight in his fist, offering a silent promise, trading an unspoken comfort. He stretched out beside his partner on the floor, peering through the six-inch window of clear air next to the floor. Luke was flat on his back. The burning bramble of rafters and twisted metal had pinned his right shoulder and chest to the floor.

“I’m here.” Gideon barely heard the words himself. “You with me?”

Luke’s helmet rolled back and forth as he tried to shake his head. “No good. Get— Sumbitch—”

“You insulting me?” Gideon crooked a smile as if Luke could somehow perceive it through his closed eyes and pain-filled delirium.

Gideon hooked his arms through Luke’s elbow and around his knee and pulled. Trapped.

He needed a pickax. A crane. Two more men.

If God was listening, he needed a miracle.

“Honey?” Gideon moaned out loud, desperate to escape the certain doom that awaited him in his dream. He needed to hear that taut, sexy voice—full of spunk and sass one minute, full of vulnerable tenderness the next. He reached out for her.

Gideon pulled his hand away from the metal framework. Sticky strings of melted rubber glommed onto the tips of his gloves, snagging his fingers in a deadly web.

Gideon swore. One vivid word that gave voice to his frustration and alerted Deputy Chief Bridgerton to the deadly danger they were in.

“Taylor! I’m counting you down in seconds now. Get out!”

Feeling Luke’s still form beneath him, Gideon resisted the urge to share the last breath of oxygen from his tank with him. He needed that air if either one of them stood a chance of getting out.

Gideon reached out and grasped the heavy metal bars, softened by molten heat, in both hands and rose to his feet. Spurred on by determination alone, he lifted the ceiling wreckage and shoved it off Luke into the ravenous mouth of black smoke. As the debris disappeared and crashed to the floor, Gideon’s glove went with it.

He breathed in deeply, absorbing his tank’s last hiss of clean air.

Then he was on his knees and lifting. Shoulder to gut. Hand behind knees. He pulled Luke’s arm around his neck and rolled to his feet, staggering beneath the weight of a full-grown man dressed in heavy gear.

“Chief!”

He was up. He was moving.

Gideon lurched down the hall toward the busted-out hole through which he and Luke had first entered the blaze. He leaned against the wall and followed it with his elbow. And when that ran out he followed blind instinct and stumbled toward fresh air and freedom.

“Taylor!” Gideon’s lungs fought for air, but there was none to be had. “Take him.” His knees buckled.

Bridgerton’s commands echoed through the blackness closing in on Gideon.

Before he hit the ground, the burden on his shoulders lifted. Hands were there to help him. To hold him up. To take Luke from his grasping arms.

Someone snatched off his helmet and his mask. His oxygen tank vanished. He was sucking clear, cold night air into his lungs, letting the oxygen pour like a cool compress through his throat. Then hands were lifting him, pushing a small plastic mask over his nose and mouth.

He saw flames—white and orange and laughing with victory—consume the midnight sky above him. The blackened skeleton of the condemned building was silhouetted against the blaze for one instant before another explosion rocked the earth and it crumpled into a heap of billowing smoke and flame.

“We’re clear!”

Those were the last words Gideon heard before he surrendered to the darkness.

When he came to in the swaying ambulance minutes later, he knew all was lost. The silence of the paramedics told him the truth. Luke was gone.

Still, he reached across the gap between their guerneys to touch his friend. “Sorry, buddy. I was too late. Too late.”

“Christ, Taylor. Your hand.”

It took one endless moment for Gideon to pull his gaze from the peaceful expression on Luke’s ashen face to focus on the blackened tips of the fingers on his left hand.

Shock gave way to pain as the flaking layers of seared skin registered with his brain. “No—”

“No—” The hoarse cry from his nightmare took shape and sound as a shard of phantom pain in his left hand woke him halfway toward consciousness.

He reached for comfort. Reached for solace. Reached for light and life and loving perfection.

“Meg?”

He held a cold pillow in his arms.

Full consciousness crashed in on Gideon with a cruel force as violent as the nightmare itself.

The bed was empty.

He stilled the needy grasp of his arms, breathing deeply to silence the pounding of his heart. He sat up and pushed the fingers of his right hand into the sweat-streaked hair at his temple. The damp sheet slipped down his naked chest and pooled around his hips.

The air-conditioning ran on high, and the humid city air of daytime had given way to a dark, moonless night outside. But his body was burning up beneath the twisted sheets.

He hadn’t had the nightmare for a month. Why now?

He reached out and caressed the empty bed beside him. The last two fingers on his left hand refused to curl into the pillow. But then, those two fingers hadn’t been able to do much of anything for the past year. Not since the night of Luke’s death.

Gideon snatched his hand back to his thigh and breathed deeply.

Meghan was gone.

She’d betrayed him by taking his heart and leaving him with nothing to hold in his crippled-up hands.

“Meghan.” Whispering her name was a strident cry of discord to his ears. “What did I do wrong?”

She hadn’t been there for him the night Luke died. She hadn’t been in his bed for two long years.

When would he get it through his thick heart?

Gideon Taylor faced his nightmares alone.

Chapter One

Red and white lights swirled into the interior of the five-story warehouse, flashing in through broken windows and shattered doorways to glance off the walls of smoke and flame and imminent destruction.

A torrent of water rained down over the heads of firefighters in black pants and coats. Their thick, black boots splashed through the flood gathering at their feet.

Though the sirens had been killed, the cacophony of dry, brittle timbers snapping beneath the heat and the thunderous rush of water limited communication to the tiny microphones and receivers mounted inside their clear face masks. But a faint sound, high-pitched and more frantic than the rest of the chaos reached Meghan Wright’s ears.

She handed off her hose to the giant of a man who stood behind her and dashed toward the sound.

“We don’t have containment yet. Get your butt back here.”

Meghan ignored her partner’s warning and plunged into the thick, gray smoke. “I know I heard something, John. I’m checking it out.”

The familiar rhythms of her equipment jangled against her back with each step, drowning out the faint, repetitive tapping sound she’d heard. Wearing more than forty pounds of protective gear didn’t slow her down the way it once had. Though smoke was rapidly filling the open areas of the building, the fire itself hadn’t yet reached the main floor. She trailed her hand along the cool wall and hurried down the corridor toward the tier of offices at the south end of the warehouse.

One choice expletive echoed in her ear. But she heard the relenting sigh in John Murdock’s deep bass voice and knew he was already maneuvering to back her up as she took point on the search and rescue. “Report your twenty every minute.”

“Roger.” She butted up against a wall and halted, orienting herself before choosing which hallway to follow. “I’m heading left. That’s east, going toward the outer wall.”

“Copy. Be careful.”

“You, too.” The gray and black wall of smoke lightened into a misty, translucent haze, rewarding her choice of direction. “Good girl.” She rubbed her gloved hands together at the small victory and moved on. She trusted her instincts now.

That hadn’t always been the case.

Four years ago, at the age of twenty-two, she’d been too broke to finish college. Needing a job that required little more than her ability to pass a physical, she’d enrolled in firefighter training. But the work proved hard, the challenges grueling. The sniping put-downs from some of her classmates had sent her home in tears or temper more than once. She’d been all set to fail.

Just as she’d managed to fail the other big challenges in her life.

But then Gideon Taylor had stumbled into her life, literally, tripping over the hose she couldn’t quite roll and carry on her own. He’d taken her under his wing and taught her confidence and patience. He’d taught her tricks to compensate for a lack of physical strength. He’d taught her to love the job.

He’d taught her to love, period.

Talons of flame shot up through the floorboards at Meghan’s feet, calling her wandering thoughts back to the present. The fire that had started in the warehouse basement was slowly climbing its way up toward the rafters. Gideon would tell her to keep calm. To tune out everything but the fire itself.

Let the fire talk to you, he’d say. It’ll tell you what to do.

Meghan tried to listen. The tapping sound had disappeared. She tried harder. She tried to remember everything he’d taught her.

Gideon.

She leaned against a wall and clutched her stomach, feeling an almost physical pain at the rush of memories that threatened to consume her.

She’d found a way to fail, after all.

“Meghan?” John’s sharp warning reminded her of the time.

She gathered her wits and pushed away from the wall. “I’m okay.” She scanned her surroundings and reported in. “I’ve gone about twenty paces. I’ve got flames up through the floor spaces, but it hasn’t caught yet.”

“Have you found the vic?”

“No victim yet.” A sharp, high-pitched cry turned her attention to the wall above her. “Wait. I’ve got something.”

It was the sound of fighting to survive against impossible odds. Meghan knew all about that kind of struggle. Staying alive was one of the few things she had managed to accomplish.

“I’m going up to the second floor,” she reported, keeping John apprised of her location.

The twin beams of the flashlights mounted on her helmet shimmered in the distortion of overheated air that rose and filled the old building. She quickly eliminated the old freight elevator as a means of transportation to the upper levels. A zigzagging series of ramps and stairways that led up to various loading and storage platforms would lead her back into the heart of the smoke.

That left the wrought-iron ladder that had been mounted directly into the brick facade. She reached for the rung above her head and gave it a solid tug. Dust and mortar bits snowed down on her helmet. When the downpour stopped, she pulled herself up onto the first rung and felt the give of anchor bolts popping out of the wall above her head. She ducked and held her breath. But the ladder settled and clung fast to its shaky mounts, supporting her weight. For once her trim build would work to her advantage. “I’m climbing.”

Hand over hand, foot over foot, she ascended the ladder. Though she was only a slender five-foot-five, she trained hard to maintain peak physical conditioning. What she lacked in strength, she made up for in speed and agility. As long as the fire cooperated and stayed below, she’d have no problem locating the victim and clearing the building with time to spare.

Meghan reached the second floor and swung her legs over onto the platform that ran the length of the dockside wall. Ages ago this building had been used as a storage and distribution facility for large bales of cotton to be shipped on the river. A giant iron hook and rigging attached to a support beam was still in place beside a boarded-up opening.

These days, though, the warehouse was nothing more than a hangout for teens with too much time on their hands and not enough direction in their lives. Or it served as a makeshift shelter for homeless vagrants looking to escape the dog days of August’s summer heat when the local shelters were full.

During some of the blackest moments of her life, Meghan had been a teen in trouble and a homeless runaway. She knew that whoever had come up here to escape the fire was scared to begin with. “I’m here to help,” she shouted, taking note of the smoke creeping into the open corridor below her. “Where are you?”

A plaintive cry answered and she drifted closer to the sound.

At the end of the platform was a boarded-up office. The door behind the crossed one-by-fours was closed. The window beside the door was boarded over. How could someone have gotten in?

She already had a suspicious feeling when she knocked.

The whine became a sharp, piercing bark.

“Oh, no.”

The Kansas City Fire Department made every reasonable effort to save pets and livestock involved in a fire. But extreme means of rescue were reserved for people, not strays.

“John? It’s a dog.” She reported her location and situation. “I’m here. I might as well get him out.”

She knew her partner wouldn’t appreciate endangering herself on behalf of a stray. But he was an innocent victim of this blaze and she didn’t intend to abandon him yet.

“Move it, Meghan. We’ve got fire on the main floor. We’ll lay down water at your end to try to suppress it.” He, too, knew it was too late to argue. “I’ll notify Animal Rescue.”

“You just lucked out, furball.” She spoke through the door to the creature inside, hoping to calm him. “The cavalry’s here.”

Meghan made a quick scan of her escape route and noted the accuracy of John’s report. The floorboards at the base of the ladder were burning now. And while brick didn’t burn, it could become too hot to touch. And the metal itself would conduct heat and soften, making it impossible for the ladder to sustain its own weight, much less hers and a dog’s. She needed to act fast.

“How’d you get in there, boy?” The answering cry from the other side cut straight through to Meghan’s heart.

She squatted and reached beneath the bottom board. But the door had latched and couldn’t be pushed open. “You closed it yourself after you crawled in, didn’t you?” The dog called to her again. “I’ll get you out. Don’t worry.”

Meghan reached behind her and lifted her ax from its shoulder carrier. She wedged the head between the door frame and the middle board and pulled back, using her own body weight as leverage to pry the board loose, then toss it aside.

She removed her insulated glove to check to make sure the door and knob were cool before she reached inside to open it.

A blur of tan and black shot out between her legs. “Whoa.”

Meghan danced to one side as what looked like a pintsize German shepherd dashed toward the ramp he’d undoubtedly followed to get up here in the first place. “Hey, come back. Here, boy.” She whistled. But the dog ignored her. Meghan shook her head. “There’s gratitude for you.”

It was time she made a hasty exit herself. She put on her glove and radioed in. “The pooch is on the loose, John. Let me know if he shows up outside. I don’t want him to get caught in traffic after going through all this.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

“I’m on my way down.”

“Negative.” John’s order halted her from stepping onto the ladder. She shook it, testing its reliability. More mortar disintegrated and blew out in puffs of dust that vanished into the smoke clouds being pushed through the corridor ahead of the hoses. “Visibility is zero from our end. I can’t tell if the floor’s stable.”

While she watched her escape route being gobbled up by the smoke, a sudden movement in the corridor below caught her eye.

“Damn dog.”

Had she risked her life for nothing?

Her stomach clenched into a knot as she fought to control the instinctive response that boosted her pulse into overdrive. Meghan blinked and squinted through the haze. Something dark, darker than the smoke itself, darted back across the opening. “Did you see…?”

It was gone.

It had been little more than an after-image imprinted on her retinas. Had the pooch made it down the stairs that quickly? Though it seemed to have more mass to it than the dog she’d seen, the black shape hadn’t been bulky enough to be a firefighter in full gear. And it had moved so quickly.