“Me?” Deo laughed. “You know that’s not my style.”

“Don’t pull that attitude with me,” Nita said gently. “I know how brave and caring you are—even if you try to hide it.”

“What?” Deo’s voice caught. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are. I see you looking after Joey. I see you out there in this miserable, dangerous weather, hour after hour, helping everywhere you can.” Nita could still feel Deo’s pain when she’d told her about Gabe, and that other storm, and all she’d lost. “I know how much you care—you never told your family what really happened that night with Gabe. You took all the blame.”

Deo jerked. “Who told you that?”

“Pia.” Nita tightened her grip when Deo tried to pull away. “Don’t be angry with her. It just came up.” She laid her cheek against Deo’s,

• 245 •

RADCLY fFE

her mouth close to her ear. “I think you’re wonderful.”

“Yeah?” Deo relaxed in Nita’s arms. “It matters, what you think.

It matters a lot.”

Leaning back so she could see Deo’s face, Nita read the questions in Deo’s eyes. Questions Nita knew the answers to but feared to say. A loud crash sounded somewhere outside. The fl oor vibrated and shutters clattered. Deo was about to go back out into that angry night, and Nita couldn’t let her take all the chances. “You matter to me, Deo. You matter a lot.”

“That’s good,” Deo whispered. “Because I’m falling in love with you.”

Nita didn’t know how to believe her, wasn’t sure she dared. She had never been enough for anyone—not enough for Sylvia to choose her over the privilege of a life that was a lie, not enough for her family to stand by her against the brotherhood of blue. Why should Deo change her free-wheeling ways for her? Nita’s voice shook. “I didn’t think that was your style.”

“Neither did I.” Deo smiled a lopsided smile. “But I think you hooked me the fi rst time I saw you at the clinic. You were cool and beautiful and a little pissed, and I fell a little bit in love—”

Nita pressed her fi ngertips to Deo’s mouth. “I should tell you not to say that. Hell, I should probably run.” She moved her fi ngers and kissed her. “But I’m not going to. Call me when you get a chance. I need…I need to hear your voice.”

“You won’t change your mind, will you?” Deo eased free of Nita’s grip and backed up a step. “You’ll be here?”

When their bodies separated completely, Nita ached. She wanted to reach out and grab her, hold her there. Keep her inside, out of the storm. Inside with her. Nita shivered. She wanted her inside her.

“I won’t go, Deo,” Nita said just as Deo started to turn away. Deo looked back, the questions still in her eyes. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“Then like I said before, I’ll be back.”

Nita watched her until she disappeared with another group of excited men and women. She recalled the suffocating loneliness she used to feel watching Sylvia drive away. She didn’t feel that way now.

She missed Deo immediately, but unlike with Sylvia, the ache came from something she had found, instead of lost.

• 246 •

Winds of Fortune

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Pull up onto the sidewalk over there,” Deo told Joey, pointing to a ring of emergency vehicles parked haphazardly around the mouth of a wide access alley that led to one of the huge wooden piers in the far West End. A commercial fi shing building on the end of the pier was burning, and the fl ames and the refl ections from the light bars on top of the police cruisers, rescue rigs, and fi re engines shimmered eerily through the inky rain.

“They’ve got a lot of boats up in dry dock,” Joey yelled, yanking on the emergency brake. “If the pier collapses and takes them too, it’ll be a hell of a loss.”

“Raise the other guys on the walkie-talkie,” Deo said, already out of the truck, hard hat in hand and a Maglite under her arm. Frigid rain lashed the back of her neck. “Tell them to get out here with hydraulic winches and joists. We’ll shore it up if we have to.”

“I’m on it.”

Deo ran down the pathway, struggling for balance as her boots sank into the saturated sand. Closing in on the confl agration, she skirted thick coils of fi re hose and mounds of equipment that suddenly loomed up out of the darkness like predatory beasts. Even fi fty yards away, the heat from the burning building caused sweat to stream down her face.

Squinting through the billowing smoke, she spied Reese.

“Reese!” she shouted above the roar of the inferno. “How bad is it?”

“Might save the building,” Reese yelled back. “If the pier doesn’t collapse. Incident Commander’s down there now checking it out.”

“Let me go see what he needs.”

Reese lifted the restraining tape that Bri and Allie had used to cordon off the area, although there were no gawkers to discourage.

“Got a radio?”

• 247 •

RADCLY fFE

“Yeah.”

Deo didn’t see anything at fi rst except the burning building, and then she caught the wink of a fl ashlight under the pier and followed the blinking pinpoint of light. Soon she came upon three men standing ankle deep in water underneath the 200-year-old pier. The tide was out or they would have been up to their thighs in sea water. The creosote soaked pilings supporting the pier would not burn easily, but they would burn. Unfortunately, time and weather and ocean salt had weakened some of them already. Above their heads, the fi re raged.

Recognizing Alan Peterson, the fi re marshal, Deo sloshed over to him. “How does it look?”

Peterson spared her a glance as he hammered a metal temperature probe into one of the horizontal joists. “We’re okay for now, but if we don’t contain the spread mighty fast, we’re going to lose this pier. Some of these beams are going to go up like kindling.”

“We can probably jack it up in enough places to buy you some time,” Deo said. She’d only worked this close to a fi re once before, and that had been nothing near the scale of this one. The sound of air being sucked into the building to feed the fi ery furnace was like an enormous dragon breathing in huge rasping gusts.

“If we don’t do something fast, it won’t make any difference,”

Peterson yelled back. “I’ll have to pull my team out of there and let it burn.”

“I’ve got a crew on the way. Five minutes.”

“Okay, you’ve got fi fteen.”

“I hear you!”

Deo ran toward the street and met Joey coming down.

“They’re here!” Joey exclaimed breathlessly. “They’re offl oading gear onto the Jeep and will have it down here in just a couple minutes.”

“Let me show you what we’ve got,” Deo said, grabbing his arm.

She guided him back down the circuitous path, tugging him along when he slowed to gape at the fi re.

“Holy cripes,” Joey shouted. “They’ll never save that building.”

“Let’s worry about the pier.” Deo shone her light over the ancient timbers. The sky overhead was now a rosy grey. The fi re above them was closer. “We need to get supports under here to shore up the joists, every twenty feet or so.”

• 248 •

Winds of Fortune

“Man,” Joey said, gazing upward. “It’s almost right on top of us.”

“We’ve got a little time,” Deo assured him. “Come on, let’s get our crew down here.”

Deo turned and sprinted, slowing when she realized Joey wasn’t with her. She looked over her shoulder and saw that he had stopped to stare at the burning building again. “Joey, move it!”

He turned, his back to the pier and the pyre above, a look of innocent amazement on his face. He didn’t see the section of roof above him break free and start to fall. Deo didn’t even have time to scream.

She launched herself at him and struck his chest with her shoulder middive just as the world erupted in fl ame and fury.

❖

“Tory,” Chief Nelson Parker said in a low urgent voice. “I just got a call from Bri. She says casualties from a fi re on one of the piers are coming our way. ETA two minutes.”

“Did she give you anything else?” Tory swallowed back a wave of fear. Why had Bri called? Why not Reese? “God, Nelson, we’re not set up for major trauma here.”

“At least one serious. The others didn’t sound too bad—a few burns, couple lacerations.”

“All right.” Tory motioned to KT and Nita to join them as she continued thinking aloud. “We’ll stabilize here and transport anyone who needs it. Nelson, I need a vehicle standing by that’s capable of getting out of here, no matter what the roads look like.”

Nelson grimaced. “I’m not sure we can do that. Route 6 is pretty much underwater.”

Tory shook her head. “I don’t care if you have to pull a boat out of the harbor. If I have injured that need transport, I want them transported.”

“Trouble?” KT asked, her demeanor nonchalant but her eyes sharp and intent.

“What’s going on?” Nita looked from Tory to KT, her expression turning to alarm.

“We have incoming,” Tory said, hurrying towards the treatment area. “Nelson, get some people to clear a path through the lobby up to here. And ask Sally to come up.”

• 249 •

RADCLY fFE

“I’m on it,” he said.

“KT,” Tory said, automatically assuming the role of team leader.

It was her town, her clinic, her call. “You’re the trauma surgeon. You’ll get the most serious. Sally, Nita, and I will take the others. If you need help, call me.”

“Pia can give me a hand,” KT pointed out. “She’s an excellent assistant.”

“All right, fi ne.” Tory surveyed the corner of the room where they had piled their emergency medical supplies and instruments. “Hell, we don’t even have treatment tables. Keep the patients on the gurneys they come in on and treat them there.”

“This reminds me of operating in Southeast Asia when I was a resident and I did that charity tour,” KT said, her eyes bright with adrenaline and anticipation. “Remember, Vic? I told you we had to work with fl ashlights when the generators went out.”