Blaze: A Firefighter Romance

by Lisa Lace

  How had I got myself into all this? This was the last time I did an arranged marriage to a secret agent. I didn't regret marrying Jori, even if he had come with unusual baggage.

  I was so happy I escaped I was practically dancing as I pulled my pants back on. I took off running to find Nathaniel.

  "Jori said you would help, no questions asked."

  "I didn't have any questions for Jori the convict, but I have several questions for Jori the secret agent." Nathaniel stared at me. The morning sun through the porthole lit his face as it rose over the ever-present ocean. We were in the captain's cabin on the Dream, where I had caught them as they were docking. "All this time?"

  "It was an act. He saved those children. He's a hero, Nathaniel. He hated having to deceive you, but he did everything for the kids. We don't have time to talk about it right now. Jori can explain everything once we get him away from Harrington. Can you track him?"

  Nat opened his computer and entered a long password. He pressed his thumb onto a fingerprint identifier, and he scanned his retina. "They're moving him," he said, staring at the screen.

  "Where?" I said, struggling to keep fear out of my voice.

  "They're on the ocean." He turned to me. His expression was concerned. "They're heading out towards The Barrier."

  "We have to catch them, Nathaniel. Can you intercept them before they get to The Barrier?"

  "I don't know, Sam. They couldn't beat the Dream in a race, but they've had quite a head start."

  He ran out of the room, calling for his first mate, Vess, and shouting that all hands were needed on deck. If anyone could get us there quickly, it was Nathaniel with his high-speed ship.

  I remembered Jori had said Harrington liked to drown his enemies. I desperately hoped the Dream would get us there in time.

  JORI

  I was on a ship heading out to sea. They had tied me up and gagged me, throwing me belowdecks. Now some of Harrington's henchmen were dragging me back up onto the deck. I wasn't making it easy for them. One of them kneed me in the guts, taking the wind out of me. Another punched me in the face. I guessed I would have a black eye and bruised cheekbone.

  I wasn't sure why I struggled. I was restrained and couldn't fight properly. Resisting them made me feel better and in control of my situation. They took a few more shots at me and finally pulled me onto the deck.

  Harrington stood there, looking smug and confident. I wanted to punch the bastard's smile off his face.

  One of the men removed the gag. I tried to get some saliva back into my dry mouth.

  "You need to know, Jori, that I am the most powerful man on Vandwa. I've been making my living doing this for years and I've never been caught. A young pup like you is not going to be able to take me down. You're going to die for your trouble."

  "If I don't take you down, someone will," I said, thinking about my tracking device.

  "You have nothing on me."

  "How do you know I haven't recorded our conversations?"

  He rolled his eyes and I knew that I was in bigger trouble than I had imagined.

  "Are you referring to your little tracking device?" he said.

  How did he know about it?

  "How do you think they're going to get the evidence if it's in the belly of a rogahz?" he said, tilting his head and using a high voice. He was mocking me.

  I tried not to show my fear but my heart sped up.

  One of his men stepped forward with a knife. I backed away but I hit the main mast. He held my arm and made a slash across my bicep. I pressed my lips together. I hardly noticed the pain because I was panicking, but I didn't want to let it show. That would only give Harrington satisfaction.

  When I spotted The Barrier coming up ahead of us, I began to hyperventilate. He was going to drop my bleeding body over The Barrier. Any Vandwan in his right mind would be scared now. I didn't want to be torn apart by the sea.

  "That's right, Jori. All your work was for nothing. I'm going to go free. And you're going to suffer death by rogahz."

  Another of his men approached me with a needle. I fought them but ended up with more bruises and ringing ears for my trouble. The men injected something into my thigh and stepped back.

  "What are you doing to me?" I asked.

  "That's VD-162. It takes about twenty minutes for an injection to make someone unconscious. You won't be able to breathe anymore. You'll have time to think about how you're going to be devoured or drown. Maybe both. There will be no one left to protect your beautiful girl."

  I lunged at him but one of his minions stopped me and threw me to the deck, kicking me three times in the stomach. I felt a stab of intense pain and knew that I had broken ribs. He walked over to me and squatted down. I held my sides, trying to get air into my lungs.

  "I'm going to find her, Lachlan. I'm going to hurt her. I'm going to enjoy her body. In the end, I'm going to drown her, just like you. You won't be able to do anything to stop me because you'll be dead."

  He smiled.

  "Good-bye, Jori. Nice try."

  Three of his men grabbed me. I struggled against them. They were too strong for me, and I was still tied. They lifted me over the rail and dropped me like a bag of garbage. I fell and hit the ocean with a hard belly flop. I sank beneath the waves on the wrong side of The Barrier.

  I flipped my inner eyelid and took a deep breath through the skin of my torso. I could see brown liquid seeping from the wound on my arm and I knew it was only a matter of time until a rogahz or something more terrible beyond The Barrier consumed me. I settled on the bottom of the ocean and tried to calm myself. I could see the shadow of the ship's hull moving away.

  All I could think about was Sam. She had been brave going into the manhole and climbing out the window. She was scared out of her mind, but she took action. That was real courage.

  I remembered how she moaned and writhed beneath me when I made love to her. I remembered her eyes when I had told her that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life.

  I had been with her up until the last few hours of my brief lifetime. My only regret was that I didn't get to tell her I loved her. I should have told Nathaniel the truth about me. I felt sleepier and sleepier as the minutes ticked by. I fought to stay awake until I saw dark forms approaching me from the depths of the ocean. I let the darkness take me. It was better to be unconscious when the animals ripped me limb from limb.

  SAMANTHA

  I was monitoring Jori's tracker when it did something odd that I didn't understand. Nathaniel was on deck with Vess attempting to squeeze every last little bit of speed out of the wind. I don't know how they did it, but we were moving over the water faster than I ever had before.

  "Nathaniel!" I yelled as loud as I could. He was down the stairs in a heartbeat.

  "What is it?" he said. "Is something wrong?"

  "I don't know. The monitor did something strange."

  He moved closer and examined the screen. He looked frightened for a moment, but his expression changed almost immediately. He tried to make it seem as if I shouldn't worry.

  "Look, it's no big deal. He's at the bottom of the ocean."

  "No big deal?" I said, my voice rising.

  He winced.

  "Sam, calm down. He's Vandwan. He can breathe underwater."

  "Jori told me that Harrington drowns everyone. Even Vandwans. He must have a way."

  Nat raised his eyebrows. "Well, if we're unconscious we can't breathe underwater," he said. "I suppose he could knock everybody out before he tosses them overboard."

  "Fuck," I said. I felt tears starting to form in my eyes.

  He looked back at the screen. "It appears they've dropped him over The Barrier."

  "The Barrier? The one that keeps out all the dangerous sea life?"

  Nathaniel nodded. "I hope he's not bleeding," he said, heading back up on deck. I heard him giving orders. I'm not a religious person, but that's when I started to pray.

  It seemed that I watched Jori's blinking
dot on the computer screen for an eternity before I felt the ship slowing down. The blip turned yellow and I went up on deck to ask Nathaniel what it meant.

  "Are we there yet?" I asked, finding Nathaniel in the middle of a group of scurrying sailors.

  "We've reached his coordinates."

  "What does it mean if the dot turns yellow?" I told him.

  His face went white and he started pulling off his shirt. "It means he's unconscious." Nathaniel was clad only in his boxers. A knife appeared in his hand by the time he hit the rail and dived into the ocean.

  "Where's Nat," Vess, the first mate asked, coming over to me.

  "He jumped overboard," I said. "Jori's unconscious."

  Vess was out of his clothes and into the water as quickly as Nathaniel. I ran to the railing, peering over the edge, trying to see what was going on. There were dark shapes under the water and it seemed there was fighting going on. After a minute, three people broke the surface of the water. A shout went up among the sailors and they pulled in Jori first, followed immediately by Nathaniel and Vess.

  I went to Jori immediately, scared out of my mind. Nathaniel was beside me in a heartbeat, dripping everywhere. When I touched Jori's hand it was cold and lifeless. I sucked in a breath. Under the bruises, his face was pale and white. Had he left me already?

  Nathaniel leaned over me and checked to see if Jori was breathing. He wasn't.

  I covered my face with my hands and wept.

  Chapter Twenty

  SAMANTHA

  The pain in my heart made me deaf to the shouting around me. I couldn't breathe. The feeling of losing Jori was suffocating me. Someone pushed me aside, and I let them go by, not caring at this point. I was lost in the agony because it was my fault. He trusted me to save him. I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't good enough.

  Through the fog of my misery, I heard my name, and it pulled me out of myself for a moment.

  "Where's Samantha?" I heard Nat shouting. Then I heard him swear. I took my hands away from my eyes to see him kneeling beside me.

  "There's a chance. Don't cry. I know he looks bad, but he wasn't underwater for a long time."

  I stared at him. Was Jori dead or not?

  "The medic says they might be able to bring him back. They think he was only out for a minute or two before we pulled him up. They're going to start working on him now.

  Before he finished, I was on my feet and running to Jori. There were two people next to his body, the medic and a sailor who had first-aid training. Everyone else stood a respectful distance away.

  I dropped down beside him and touched his hand. The medic had resuscitation machines hooked up to Jori's body. All I could do was wait. I watched his chest, praying for him to breathe.

  Please come back to me, Jori, because I don't think I can live without you.

  I stared at his chest, willing it to rise. When I saw movement, it was difficult to believe. The medic smiled. Nat let out a whoop. I sat still.

  I almost lost the love of my life before I had a chance to tell him how I felt.

  JORI

  I woke up feeling disoriented. The last thing I remembered was going unconscious and waiting to be eaten.

  When I remembered Harrington said he was going to hurt Sam, my eyes shot open.

  "Sam," I yelled. Or tried to. My voice wasn't working regularly. My cry came out as little more than a croak.

  "She's okay. Don't worry, Jori."

  It was Nathaniel. My vision was blurry and I waited until I only saw one of him.

  "Hey, man," he said smiling. There was a glimmer in his eyes I hadn't seen since I was a boy. He finally knew the truth. He wasn't disappointed in me anymore.

  "Did Sam tell you," I asked.

  "She told me some things. But I'd like to hear it from you. The short version, if you don't mind. The medication appears to be clouding your mind."

  "The government approached me to work for them in high school. When you thought I was going to university, I was in training at the same time."

  He shook his head, an incredulous look on his face.

  "It was crazy. They offered me a job as a secret agent and I took it. I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world." I stared across the room.

  "I guess it turned out differently than you imagined," Nat said, watching me carefully.

  "If you take losing my name, my family's trust and a normal life together, it wasn't ideal."

  "How did you end up in jail?"

  "One of my buddies that I was close to — all a part of my undercover work, of course — set me up to take the fall. Harrington tipped you off that I was involved. You know the rest of the story."

  "I'm sorry," Nathaniel said.

  "No," I frowned. "I'm the one who's sorry, Nathaniel. For lying to you all these years. For making you think I was a big asshole and acting like such a jerk."

  He looked at me with compassion. "It was all an act?"

  "Every second."

  He took my hand. "You're forgiven. You didn't have a choice, little brother."

  I drew in a shuddering breath. I wasn't going to cry. This was good news. Nathaniel had forgiven me; I hoped Freya would too. It was overwhelming to have only the truth between my brother and me.

  I smiled. "You don't know how long I've waited for you to say that, Nathaniel," I said, giving his hand a squeeze.

  "Hey," he said, changing the subject before we both broke down. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

  "What's that?" I said, curious.

  "Well, Ash and I were thinking about your future. What are you going to do for a job?"

  "I hadn't thought that far ahead." What was he going to say?

  "Ashlyn and I need someone trustworthy to manage the projects in the Northern Isles. Do you think you might be up for it?"

  Nathaniel trusted me again. He was talking about his baby. His life's work was the housing project. He had rejected countless applicants because they weren't right and he wasn't sure if they would do the job properly. Maybe I couldn't hold it together after all.

  "I might be," I said, grinning and blinking back the tears. "I might just be."

  SAMANTHA

  I sat by Jori's bed at Nathaniel's house. They had brought him back here for recovery. There was already a doctor in the house looking after Kathryn, so Nat thought it would be best to bring Jori to a familiar place rather than the hospital.

  He slept most of the time and we hadn't talked since he had nearly died. It was the fourth day already. I was trying to be patient.

  On the first day, I was content to sit and watch him breathe, happy that he still could. On the second day, I held his hand all day long, glad that he was warm, dry, and safe. On the third day, I started getting restless. How long was it going to take? Today, I thought I wouldn't be able to stand it if he didn't wake up and talk to me.

  I knew that Nathaniel had caught Jori in a lucid moment and Jori had told him the truth. Why wouldn't he wake up so I could apologize and beg him for forgiveness?

  I got up from a chair that sat by his bedside and paced back and forth around the room. I stood by the window and looked out at the beautiful, dangerous sea. The thought of Jori's near demise made me shiver.

  "Sam?" Ashlyn poked her head into the room. "How are you doing?" She came over to the window next to me.

  "I'm okay, I guess. I wish he'd wake up and talk to me, so I can be sure he's okay."

  "I know it's hard to wait. Soon he'll be back. Everything will be back to normal."

  "I don't know, Ashlyn. I let him down. He trusted me, and I let him die."

  "Sam," she said. She sounded anguished. "You saved him. You escaped and found Nat. You got there in time. You did a good job, Sam. What do you mean?"

  "If I'd been there sooner, it wouldn't have been such a close call. If I had climbed down the tree more quickly, or run a little faster, or not hesitated to crawl through that dark little hole, Jori would be fine right now." I stared out the window, frowning as I remembe
red how long it had taken me to work up the nerve to crawl into the tunnel again.

  Ashlyn held up her hands.

  "Wait a second. Are you saying that you climbed down a tree? How tall was it?"

  "Two stories."

  "And you crawled through a hole? I thought you were afraid of heights, Samantha," she said.

  "I wouldn't call it afraid. They make me nervous."

  "Sounds the same to me," she said. "And I thought you hated small spaces because of the accident you had when you were little."

  "I do hate small spaces, especially when they're dark and underground." I shuddered, remembering.

  "You're a brave girl, Samantha. The Samantha I knew would have stayed locked up instead."

  "I had to, Ash. I was the only one who could fit through the bars."

  "You must love him," she murmured.

  "But don't you see, Ash. I almost let him die. Look at him now," I said, gesturing to where Jori lay on the bed, his face mottled with bruises.

  Jori's eyes opened. He looked right at me.

  "I'm going to be fine, Sam. Stop worrying," he said. His voice was hoarse.

  Ashlyn smiled at me. "I'll check on Kathryn. She's doing much better today, and she will be waking up soon."

  She ducked out of the door, shutting it firmly behind her. I stared at Jori. All the pain, worry, and love for him mixed around inside me and wanted to escape.

  "Come here," he said. He didn't take his eyes off of me as I walked over to the bed and stood away from him.

  "Were you listening to us?" I said in a small voice.

  "I heard enough," he said, lifting his hand weakly. "Come here, Sammy. I want to touch you and make sure you're near me. Are you sure you're not hurt?"

  "Why would I be hurt?" I said, sitting down on the bed. He took my hand and interlaced our fingers. "My arm was bruised, just like you said. I recovered days ago."

  "Harrington told me he was going to hurt you and then kill you." His eyes clouded. "It was the last thing I thought about before passing out."