Read Online In the Line of Duty: First Responders, Book 2 by Donna Alward - Free Book Online

vehicles, okay?” The last thing she needed was someone else getting hurt. Heart pounding, she ran down the sloped ditch to check on the victims.
    The man in the first car was injured but awake, pinned inside the vehicle and unable to get out. “Are you okay?” she asked through the window.
    He nodded.
    “I can’t get you out,” she called. She’d have to leave that to the fire department and paramedics. She could already hear other sirens in distance. “But help is on the way.” She went to the other vehicle, a small compact car with the front end obliterated from the head-on crash. Inside was a young woman, her body strangely twisted even though her seatbelt remained fastened.
    Kendra forced herself to breathe, but when she did so she could only smell rubber and metal and something else she recognized and hated—blood. She swallowed against the sudden taste of bile and carefully opened the door. “Okay, darlin’, help’s on the way. Stay with me now, okay? You stay awake.”
    The rain had stopped, and the only sounds now were the wet shush of the odd car passing them on the highway and the drip of the water from the nearby bushes. The woman’s eyes opened and Kendra felt panic thread through her veins. God, she couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. “What’s your name?”
    The young woman’s lips opened but no sound came out. Kendra’s panic threatened to overwhelm her, and she knew she had to keep it together. “The ambulance is almost here, darlin’. You a student at the university?”
    She gave a small nod, hardly noticeable except Kendra was searching for any sort of movement or reaction. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”
    The girl’s eyes closed and she went very still. Kendra reached in and felt for a pulse. “Come on now, they’re almost here! Hold on, okay?”
    But there was no beat against her fingertips.
    Maybe it was just thready and she wasn’t able to feel it with her fingers. The ambulance pulled up and Gabe Brenner hopped out, followed quickly by another paramedic, Mike. It was immediately followed by the first fire truck. She looked up as they approached. “Hurry, Gabe, I can’t get a pulse.”
    “The other car?”
    “He was trapped but stable when I checked him,” she answered as Gabe rushed down the ditch.
    She stepped back to let Gabe and Mike in. While they examined the girl, Chris Jackson hurried to her, big and bulky in his gear.
    “The other car,” she said shortly. “He’s pinned in. You might need to cut him out, Chris.”
    He spun and called up to the other guys on the truck before running to the car. Kendra needed to slow down her heart rate and take a breath, soothe the adrenaline shooting through her veins. But there wasn’t much chance. Gabe and Mike turned around to face her again.
    “She’s gone,” Gabe said, strain showing around his eyes. “Sorry, Kendra.”
    With the image of the girl’s still face behind her eyes, Kendra turned around and threw up in the tall grass of the ditch.
     
    The pub was quiet for a Thursday evening. The thundershower earlier had kept people from stopping on their way home, Jake supposed, and things were pretty relaxed behind the bar. The staff joked with each other and the few patrons sitting at the table, and Jake told Marlene, the cook working the kitchen, to give everyone dinner during their break.
    The lot of them were just having a laugh as Marlene told a story about her youngest grandkid when the door opened and Kendra walked in. She was in full uniform right down to the vest and sidearm, but Jake knew the moment she stepped across the threshold that something was wrong. He left the group and got as far as the end of the polished counter when she stepped up and sat on a stool.
    “I’ll have a shot of…” She faltered for only a second. “A shot of rum.”
    Jake’s jaw nearly dropped at the request. What the hell? Then he looked at her face. He recognized that look and his heart—what little bit he