Finding Chris Evans: The 9-1-1 Edition (2 page)

Chris cursed as the blood seeped through the napkin. “Who’s already where?” He grabbed gloves and gauze from one of his pants pockets, glad he was in uniform and had some basic supplies in the huge pockets.

“9-1-1,” the man said.

“They’re already where?” Chris asked, also pulling out steri-strips that might hold the gash together long enough to get the guy to the hospital for real stitches.

“Ducky’s.”

He should have guessed. The bar on the other end of the block. Chris hadn’t noticed sirens, but this close to the hospital they were a regular occurrence. He wouldn’t have necessarily paid attention to a rig rolling by.

“Can you get more napkins?” he asked Ellie.

She bounced up, as if eager to get away. “Of course.”

“And some ice,” Chris added.

She hurried to the counter, and for the first time Chris noticed the rest of the café patrons were watching with expressions that were a mix of interest, concern and discomfort.

“Let me look at your nose,” Chris told the man as he continued to press gauze against his head.

He moved his hands. The bridge of his nose was crooked ,and the area on either side was swelling. Chris prodded it gently. The man had no reaction, but his blood was mostly whiskey at this point. Which also meant that a concussion screening might not be all that accurate.

“Broken,” Chris told him grimly.

The man nodded. “Yep.”

“What happened?”

“Beef.”

“Beef?” Chris repeated.

“Big, dumb guy. Owes Duncan money. I god ’tween ’em. Then Les jumped in. Fucker. The whole place was goin’ crazy.”

Fists—and beer bottles—flying wasn’t an uncommon occurrence at Ducky’s. In spite of the lighthearted name, the bar was not a nice beer-with-friends-after-work place. It was a rough place full of guys who loved to drink and fight and who tiptoed along the fine line between legal and illegal activity. The first responders knew it well. There was a lot of blood—and God knew what else—on Ducky’s floor.

Ellie handed Chris the extra napkins and ice. He gave her a smile, then frowned when he saw her face as she looked the man over. Chris started to reach for her, but her eyes got even wider at the blood on his hands. Right. He held them up. “Maybe you should sit,” he suggested. The last thing he needed was for her to faint and crack her head and become another patient.

She nodded and reclaimed her chair, but Chris saw her eye the door almost as if contemplating her escape.

“You okay?” Chris asked her, applying the ice to the man’s nose.

She nodded but the smile she attempted was weak.

The people handing him supplies when his hands were bloody were usually part of the crew, and he was so used to having them around that he sometimes forgot that regular people didn’t take blood and broken bones in stride. All four female paramedics on his team were gutsy girls who never shied away from a situation no matter how dangerous or grisly. He admired the hell out of them and loved working with three of the four. Because those three were smart and careful and composed at the scenes they covered. The fourth—well, Britt was smart. But careful and composed were not on the list of words he’d use. Words like energetic and loud and unrefined and frustrating and hot and mouthy and gorgeous were however.

“Hey! Ow!”

Chris snapped his attention back to the man he was treating.
Dammit
. He spent more time wondering about that woman than he did thinking about almost anything else. And he was sick of it.

“Sorry.
Shit
.” He let up on the pressure on the man’s face.

“S’okay. Whiskey helps.” The man peered around Chris at the rest of the café. “They have whiskey here?”

“Black coffee,” Chris told him. “Or water.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Might ruin my buzz.”

Right. Wouldn’t want that. Chris lifted his hand. The head wound was still bleeding. Then he remembered the guy had also been holding his side. “What about that?” he asked, gesturing at his ribs.

“Fell on a table. Hurslikehell.”

“You can actually feel that?” Chris asked.

“I’m assuming.”

“Got it.”

An ambulance pulled up out front, the lights flashing through the window. “Your ride’s here,” he told the man. “How many other people were hurt at Ducky’s?” He wasn’t convinced the guy could give him the most accurate account, but if he said “a bunch” Chris might need to head down there and see what was going on.

“I donknow,” the man told Chris. “I go’ the hell out when da cops showed.”

“The cops are there?” Chris asked, lifting a hand to greet the paramedics who’d just come through the door.

“Ah man,” the guy said when he saw Chuck and Dean. “Shoulda stayed at Ducky’s. The hot brunette is there.”

Chris froze. There were two brunettes. Lucy was a redhead and Dawn was blonde. But Britt and Tara both had dark hair. And Tara wasn’t working today.

Fuck
. He’d thought Steve’s crew would have been dispatched to Ducky’s. They must be out already.

Chris moved out of Dean’s way, giving him a quick report. “Can’t evaluate concussion status, but he’s been conscious the whole time. Couldn’t stop the bleeding from his head. Nose is broken. Possible rib fracture.”

Dean replaced the blood-soaked gauze Chris had applied. “Got him.”

“So, brunette, huh?” Chris asked the man as Chuck wheeled the stretcher into the coffee shop. The rolling stretcher would be faster and safer than walking the guy out, and they’d want to strap him down so he didn’t fall and get injured further.

The man nodded. “Feisty little thing. Came barrelin’ through the door. Cops tried to stop her, but she went straight for Booker. Shoved Pete outtatheway like he was nothin’.”

The guy was still slurring, but Chris had no trouble believing what he said. Sounded just like Britt. Chris gritted his teeth. “Who’s Booker?”

“The guy that was stabbed,” the guy said, swaying slightly as he stood to get onto the stretcher.

Chris steadied him with his hand on his shoulder, trying not to grip too hard as he imagined Britt charging into the dive bar, not knowing—or taking one fucking minute to find out—what was going on inside.

He let out a breath. “There was a knife?”

The man lay back on the stretcher with a seemingly contented sigh. “Yep. Maybe two. Those guys are all bigan dumb.”

Chris felt cold drip down his spine even as the heat of frustration shot through his gut. Even if Tara had been working, the words “feisty” and “little” would have made him sure it was Britt down at Ducky’s. Even without the story about how she didn’t
think
before going in.

Tara was 5’9” and had ice in her veins. Britt, on the other hand, was maybe 5’2” and had a temper. Or, if he wasn’t pissed at her, he probably would say she had passion. If there was a stabbing victim inside the bar, she wouldn’t hesitate to shove people out of the way to get to him. She’d told him once that if she ended up shot or stabbed, she knew that her crew would take care of her, so she didn’t worry.

Which was fine. Chris worried enough for both of them. And it made him fucking crazy. He didn’t worry about anyone else on the team. He was the boss, the one in charge, and he took that seriously. He cared about every one of them. But going into potentially dangerous situations was the job. They all knew that. They did it with full knowledge that things could, and did, go bad fast and that they were taking risks every time they rolled out of the ambulance bay.

But he
worried
about Britt. She didn’t seem to care about herself or believe that she could actually be hurt. Now she was at Ducky’s. And Britt had never ever diffused a tense situation. Probably in her life.

“So, she—” Chris realized he was gritting his teeth too tightly to talk. He took a breath. “She went in alone?” He followed beside the stretcher as they rolled it out onto the sidewalk toward the rig.

“Some guy came in behind her. And the cops.”

The cops were
behind
her?
Son of a bitch.

The ambulance went out when the fire trucks were dispatched, but the firefighters let the cops secure the scene if there was no fire or rescue needed. Injuries went to the EMTs first. Chris swore under his breath. He was going to chew her ass. Maybe this time he’d suspend her.

He should have kept her as his partner. He could handle her. Her current partner, Lance, was too laid back.

Chris had seen the signs of her recklessness early on in her training, but he’d immediately known he couldn’t partner with her. She was too…exasperating. Interesting. Distracting. Tempting. And he couldn’t be anything less than one hundred percent on the job.

Britt was a great EMT, but she didn’t listen worth a shit and she didn’t take the rules seriously. And she came to work with glitter in her hair.

He shut down that thought quickly. The last thing he needed was to go down
that
mental road. Again. Where did the glitter come from? What was she doing before work? Did it involve a pole and lots of one dollar bills? And then he’d remember that she did always seem to have a wad of ones in her pocket when she got coffee or soda or candy from the vending machine.

Jesus. Knock it off. For fuck’s sake
. Chris shoved a hand through his hair.
This
was why he couldn’t partner with her. He could barely lead the crew she was a part of without going completely nuts.

They loaded the man in the back of the ambulance and as the door slammed shut, Chris turned in the other direction. Toward Ducky’s. And Britt.

He needed to back his people up. And he needed to yell at Britt as soon as he had the chance.

Chapter Two

He was going to bench her, he decided as he stormed down the sidewalk. Maybe he’d make her work with Tara. Tara was the Ice Queen. And she always followed protocol.

Chris got to the bar and saw his friend Reed, one of the cops on the scene.

“Okay to go in?” he asked shortly.

“Sure. Britt’s got the main guy stable. They’re loading him now.”

Of course she had. When it came to the actual work, she was awesome. “Stabbing?” Chris asked.

Reed shrugged. “Guy should be glad it wasn’t a gun. These guys all carry something.”

“Where was he stabbed?”

“Right shoulder. Guy was going for his heart.”

Chris frowned. “On the right side?”

Reed grinned. “None of these guys are in MENSA, you know?”

Chris shook his head. “You got the guy.”

“Oh yeah. He’s totally sorry,” Reed said drily.

“That he’s in handcuffs?”

“That he tried to kill his brother.”

“Jesus.” Chris turned for the door and headed inside. He was trained to take in lots of details quickly and noted it looked like a tornado—or a fight between about ten big tough guys who weren’t afraid of arrest—had hit the place.

But it was quiet now. Relatively. Some of the guys still stood around watching the paramedics load the main vic onto a stretcher for transport.

Chris’ heart thumped when he saw Britt. As always.

Fuck, he hated that too. Just looking at her filled him with a mix of frustration, fascination and—he couldn’t deny—lust. The month of training her had been the longest of his life. He’d never taken that many cold showers.

And did she have glitter in her hair now?

Of course his head went there. The glitter mystery was making him crazy. And then there were the glimpses of ink he’d seen here and there. On her right arm under the edge of her sleeve, along the side of her neck, in the V of her shirt above the buttons and arching to the left. Over her breast.

Her breast. One of the two most spectacular he’d ever seen—at least from how she looked in her uniform shirts. He wasn’t going to think about how they’d appeared in his dreams. But the hints of the tattoos made him just as itchy around her as the obvious things like her breasts, her ass, her…smile.

Her smile. Damn. It was big and came fast and easy. It made him think she would do the same. Come big, fast and easy.

And those were exactly the kinds of things he could
not
be thinking about one of his crew members. His employees.

He stalked toward her. “Britt.”

She looked up. “Chris.” She didn’t look happy to see him. And why would she? He was always barking at her and chewing her out. He really hated that he’d never seen her big smile directed at him.

“We need to talk.”

She frowned. “Not really a good time.”

“Get him loaded,” Chris said.

“And then we’ll take a leisurely stroll back to the hospital together?” she asked. “Maybe get some tea. Window shop. I’ve been wanting to check out that antiques store on Madison.”

Yeah, sure, Britt was an antiques’ kind of girl. And she needed to ride back, unload, brief the docs, do her paperwork. She was
working
. And while he was her boss and he intended to talk to her about her work performance, he needed to let her do the rest of her job first. This was all a perfect example of how nuts she made him. She made him lose his cool and act like an ass.

“When you’re done with your shift, don’t leave,” he said.

There. He’d yell at her off the clock.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, making the light glint off something sparkling in her hair.

Glitter.

Chris gritted his teeth. “Immediately after your shift.”

“
Okay
.”

Insubordination. He could probably make that stick. “Britt—”

“Holy shit!” A woman pushed between them, going for the stretcher. “Booker! Oh my God! I’m going to kill that son of a bitch! What did he do?”

The woman started to lift the edge of the dressing on the victim’s shoulder.

“Hey, you can’t do that.” Britt caught the woman’s wrist. “We’re taking him to the hospital. You can—”

“Get off me, bitch!” The woman jerked back and then shoved Britt.

“Hey!” Chris stepped forward. But so did Britt.

“You can’t mess with the wound,” she told the woman. “You’re going to—”

“Back. Off.” The woman shoved Britt again. The back of Britt’s shoe hit Chris’s boot and she pitched backward. Chris lunged to catch her, but his grip slipped off her arm. She hit the floor with an
oomph.