knot in her stomach loosen. The people inside had known where to go and had taken cover in time. Thank God.
“The Methodist church was hit,” Frank went on. “But only three people were there, and they headed for the basement. They’ve been dug out. There are some homes still being checked. There’s roof damage all over the place, lots of trees down, power lines down in this part of town. Every cop, EMT, and firefighter has been called in, and they’re going neighborhood to neighborhood until you and Chief Mitchell make a plan,” Frank said, referring to their chief of police. Who just happened to be Jake’s dad. Avery was a little surprised he wasn’t already there.
Avery blushed hard, the knot tightening again. She’d been half-naked under a blanket in the shed behind the school with Jake while her firefighters and EMTs had been called into action and people had been dug out. She was proud of her team. Of course they were already on the job. She wouldn’t be surprised to find that several had been out long before they’d been officially called on duty.
In a small town like Chance, fire departments were largely volunteer. She was the only full-time person in the department, and she had a lot of duties beyond putting out fires. She had two part-time guys on her team, and the rest were volunteers. They all had other jobs in and around Chance, and even in other towns and cities. It wasn’t like they all hung out together at the firehouse during their downtime between five-alarm blazes. In fact, Chance had never had a five-alarm blaze. Weeks went by with no calls for fires whatsoever. Much of Avery’s job was administrative and focused on training and preparedness as well as being in charge of all emergency-management activities in town and serving on a couple of committees for the county.
But when there was a need—a fire or a motor-vehicle accident or a natural disaster—her guys were on the job and were some of the best she’d ever worked with. She was proud to call them her crew.
“I swear to God, I’m about to start looking into the ancient burial-ground nonsense.” Frank ran a hand over his face. “Chief Mitchell is on his way over here. I want to talk to you both and put our immediate plan in place,” Frank told Avery.
“Of course.”
“Maybe you want to get some clothes on so we can get to work,” Frank said.
He had noticed. Avery felt her face begin to burn, and her mind spun with excuses to give her boss. My dress got caught on a nail. We needed my dress for a tourniquet. We needed it to . . . But it seemed that not talking about it was the easiest way to get away from the topic entirely. Forever.
Avery squirmed in Jake’s arms. “Let me down,” she hissed.
“I’ll take you to your car.”
“Jake—”
“For the same reason I picked you up in the first place,” he said firmly. “You can’t go walking across all this crap.”
She sighed. That was, in fact, very gentlemanly. Dammit.
Practicality was always the right decision. She pointed toward her Ford Fusion. Jake started in that direction.
“By the way, your sergeant voice isn’t going to work with me.”
“Is that right? You might be surprised what I can get you to do with my sergeant major voice.”
She hated the way her heart thumped when he said stuff like that. Feeling like a pouting child, she didn’t talk again until they reached her car.
Where she realized she didn’t have her keys. They were inside the school, in her purse—with her phone. And with the fictional condoms.
She sighed heavily.
Chance was a small town, but it was big enough that you locked your car when you were going to be away from it for a while. With a population of more than five thousand, it seemed that everyone knew someone who knew everyone. Still, she kept her laptop with her at all times and had tools in the trunk that she didn’t want curious teenagers to have access to.
“Want me to get you in?” he asked.
She had to have her clothes and better shoes, and she couldn’t drive home now and leave all of this—and the mayor—behind.
“Yes.” Dammit.
Jake set her on the hood, then looked around and easily located a heavy piece of metal something or other—like it mattered—and smashed through her back passenger-side window, grabbed the duffel bag on the seat, and presented it to her with a