Last Mission
Author
Lisa Childs
Reads
16.9K
Chapters
27
Even the best-laid plans can go up in flames… Mack McRooney is retired from military special ops, but there's one final mission he has to take on — catch the saboteur targeting his brother-in-law's firefighting team…even if that means becoming a firefighter himself. Partnering with state trooper Wynona Wells, however, was not part of the plan. Mack and Wynona are fighting their fiery attraction to one another and a deadly saboteur. And if they lose this fight, they might just also lose their lives…
Prologue
The flames consuming Charlie Tillerman’s corner tavern lit up the whole town of Northern Lakes, Michigan. The fire cast a sunrise-like glow over Main Street. The arsonist had struck again, setting the bar on fire where it was well-known that the Huron Hotshots, a team of elite firefighters, hung out. That son of a bitch had been coming after them for the past six months.
But some damn firebug wasn’t going to beat them. They got out while making sure the other customers got safely out as well. Except for one...
Nobody could find the superintendent of the hotshot team. Not that everyone was trying to find him. Someone would be damn happy if Braden Zimmer was never found.
The hotshots were out on the street now, hooking up the hoses, working together to put out the flames before they spread to the other buildings on the block. The noise of the engines was loud, so loud that this particular person didn’t immediately hear the shouts. Then they turned and saw hotshot Ethan Sommerly barreling out of the smoke, carrying a small blonde woman over his shoulder. Owen James, the paramedic on the team, rushed forward to help, pressing an oxygen mask over the woman’s face.
“Braden’s in the alley!” Ethan yelled.
The woman, the arson investigator, pulled down her mask and shouted, “Get in there! Please, save him!”
She wasn’t the only one yelling, though. Another hotshot, Michaela Momber, emerged from the front of the building. She was dragging the bar owner, Charlie Tillerman, out with her. “Clear!” she yelled. “The building is about to collapse!”
Just as she said it, the structure shuddered and imploded on itself, sending out flames and a thick cloud of acrid smoke.
This was it.
An eerie silence fell like the building just did. Everybody had to know. There was no way that even the great Braden Zimmer could have survived a building collapsing on him.
But then someone gasped and pointed to the alley between the burning remains of the Filling Station Bar and Grill and the building next to it that had flames licking at its roof and walls. From that narrow space and all that thick smoke, a man emerged. Like Michaela had carried Charlie, Braden was carrying someone, too. The body of Matthew Harrison, that damn kid who’d wanted so badly to be a hotshot, too. He was the arsonist. He had to be the person who’d targeted their team and Braden specifically for not hiring him for the last open position on the Huron Hotshots.
Owen and Ethan and the others rushed forward to help Braden and the kid. While the paramedics treated them, the other hotshots stepped back and cheered and applauded. Tears rolled down soot-streaked faces, tears of relief that their fearless leader was okay.
Everybody was so happy—everyone but one person.
While the others were happy about Braden, they were probably also relieved that the arsonist targeting the Huron Hotshots team of elite firefighters was going to jail. The team should have been safe and might have been if the arsonist was the only one after the team, the only one trying to hurt them.
But there was someone else. And while the arsonist was going to spend a lot of his life behind bars, this person had no intention of ever winding up there and had no intention of ever stopping either.
They weren’t going to rest until the Huron Hotshots team was destroyed, even if they destroyed themselves in the process...