And I can see Brand.

Like some sort of magnificent and fierce angel, he strides through the dark smoke, and I see him pry the school bus doors open.  He leaps inside, and a scant moment later, he emerges with a child in his muscled arms.   He hands the child to someone, then goes back into the smoking, charred bus. Over and over, I watch this process.

Some of the children he carries out are bloody, some are limp.  But he continues to make the trips.

Finally, he comes out empty handed.

He stands still for a moment, and I see how his shirt is ripped down the front.  I can see a chiseled washboard behind the large tear.  I see how soot is smeared across his cheeks, and the same soot has turned his hair black.

I see him take a deep breath, I see him look around at the carnage on the street, looking for someone else to save.

And then he sees me.

I do need saved.  More than he’ll ever know.

His eyes are a blue so bright that I can’t even name it.  Sapphire, maybe?  They shine through the soot, through the flames.  He focuses on me, then with long steps, he comes to me. Straight to me.  Through the chaos, through the havoc.

“Miss, are you alright?” his voice is husky, probably from the smoke.  I can’t move.

“I’m stuck,” I manage to tell him.  “My legs.”

My legs are beneath splintered boards, boards that used to be a café wall.  As I glance up at Brand, I see my parents on the street, standing with an EMT.  I can see my mother’s frantic arm movements, and I can read her lips.

My daughter.

I take a breath, but there’s no way she’d hear me if I called.  She’ll have to wait.

Brand draws my attention back to him, back to his brilliant blue eyes, by speaking.

“I’m going to get this stuff off of you.  I’ll try not to hurt you,” he tells me calmly.  With muscular arms, he lifts the jagged boards off of me, one by one.  True to his word, he doesn’t hurt me.

When he’s finished, when I’m free, he doesn’t help me stand.

He bends and scoops me up instead.

My head rests against his chest and I can hear his heart as he carries me effortlessly through the mayhem.

Ba-bump.

Ba-bump.

His heart is as strong as he is.

I focus on that, on the strong beats, instead of looking at the people on the floor.  Instead of looking at the blood, or smelling the smoke, or having a panic attack.

“Are you okay?” Brand asks me, looking down at me.  His face is confident, his voice calm.  “You’re going to be all right.”

I nod because I believe him, because how could I not trust a voice that sure of itself?

But then it doesn’t matter.

Because out of nowhere, I hear a nauseatingly loud crack, and all of a sudden, the wall next to us comes down in a mass of metallic shrieks and groans and shards.

It shears my arm, and I can smell the blood.

I’m knocked free from Brand’s safe grasp, yanked from his arms, and I’m falling, falling, falling.

Then it all goes black and stays that way. 
Chapter Two

Brand

Fucking son-of-a-bitch.

White hot pain rips through me, from my hip to my ankle.  I grimace, trying to pull myself out of the wreckage, to no avail.  I’m the one who is stuck now, firmly and painfully in a mountain of broken wood and cinder.

The smoke surrounding me brings back instant memories of Afghanistan, of bombs and blood.  But I shake those images away.  I’m not there.  I’m here.  And I’ve got to keep my wits.

The girl.

The girl I was carrying, the girl with the dark red hair and big blue eyes.  She trusted me.  I saw it on her face.

I twist to find her, scanning everything around me.  And then I see her thin arm, sticking out of a pile of rubble. I know it’s hers because of the turquoise bracelet on her small wrist.  

“Help!” I call out to the EMTs who are now on the scene.  One hears me, and rushes my way, but I wave him toward the girl. 

“Get her first!” I tell him.  “She’s under that shit.  Get her first.  It’s crushing her.”

He does as I ask, and it takes two of them to dig her out.  I watch them carry her out, I watch how her eyes are still closed, I watch them stretch her limp body onto a waiting gurney before they come back for me.

Fuck.

“Thank you,” I tell them sincerely.   They gingerly move the wood and the drywall and the twisted metal that is holding me down, before they roll me onto a stretcher.

“I’m fine,” I try and tell them, as I attempt to get up.

But I can’t get up.  My left leg is twisted beneath me, my foot turned an unnatural way.  I stare at it, aghast and astonished, noticing the way my knee is turned out, while my ankle is turned in.

Fuck.

I don’t feel the pain, so I know I’m in shock.  I drop back against the stretcher, as they wheel me toward a waiting ambulance.

My leg was shattered in Afghanistan.  I had multiple surgeries, months of physical therapy and I was only just starting to walk without a limp.  And for what?  To have it annihilated again?  Here in f**king Angel Bay?

Fucking hell.

They load me up and close the door and I stare at the white metal for a second before I close my eyes.  This can’t be happening.  This isn’t real.

But it’s real.

The sirens, loud and wailing, tell me that.

Numbly, I wait.  Then something occurs to me.  Why are they using the siren for a broken leg?

I barely have the thought before my fingers grow cold, and my thoughts begin to get fuzzy, muddled.

What the hell?

But then it doesn’t matter, because I’m so f**king tired.  Nothing matters, not the pain, or the lack of it, or even the girl.

My arms and legs grow heavy and I close my eyes, a sigh rattling my ribcage.

The girl.  Her blue eyes are the last things I see before I close my eyes.

It seems like only minutes before the ambulance shrieks to a stop and I’m being bustled out.  

I grab one of the EMTs arms as they race me into the hospital.

“What’s wrong?”

He stares down at me as he runs.  “Don’t worry. They’ll fix you.”

I fall back onto the gurney and all I can do is watch everything happening. Waves of utter exhaustion and sleepiness pass through me and all I want to do is close my eyes.

So I do, but I can’t sleep because some damn faceless person keeps asking me questions, all the while other faceless people prod at my leg and cut off my pants.