The Heat Is On (Boston Five Book 1) by Poppy J. Anderson Page A

him an even wider smile. “Mom says you need to keep an eye on me.”
    “I already promised her that on the phone yesterday.” He rolled his eyes, which Kyle answered with a loud laugh.
    “She also told me to remind you about Aunt Maggie’s birthday, which is tomorrow, and you’re supposed to call her.”
    “Good God.” Heath sighed, taking Kyle in a playful headlock. “Does she also put your clothes out in the morning and a slip of paper in your lunchbox that tells you when you need to go pee?”
    “You’re just jealous she doesn’t make your lunch anymore.” Kyle patted his backpack and said, “If you want, I can share mine with you.”
    “You paramedics are such sissies.” Heath gave a theatrical snort. “We firefighters, however, we don’t need our mothers to make our lunches. We cook our own food. And if you ask nicely, you may even get a plate today.”
    “I’m familiar with your cooking skills, so I think I’ll stick with Mom’s roast-beef sandwich, thank you very much.”
    Heath ached to ask how their mother really was, what was going on in the family, and whether Kyle had talked to Hayden recently, but he didn’t know how to go about it without embarrassing himself. The alarm saved him the trouble.
    When both his company and the ambulance were requested, he placed a hand on his little brother’s shoulder and said, “Stay close to Owen, and duck your head when things get rough.”
    As he slipped on his work boots and put on his turn-out gear and his helmet, he watched Kyle drive off in the ambulance. Then he climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and switched on the siren.
    Even before they reached the scene of the accident, Heath suspected Kyle’s first call would be no picnic. It wasn’t a tree-climbing kitten this time, nor was it a routine house fire or traffic accident. Several construction workers had fallen several yards from a collapsed scaffold, and it was the team’s job to rescue them—or recover their bodies. This was the type of operation that caused nightmares for months to come. Heath would gladly have spared his brother the sight of lifeless, mangled, or smashed bodies on his first day on the job, and he hoped Kyle would be able to handle it all.
    At the site, a policeman was waiting to receive the rescue team. As soon as Heath heard a report on the situation, he delegated the recovery of the buried victims to different parts of the team. Four of the five construction workers had been struck dead by heavy parts of the scaffolding. The corpses had to be extricated from the mess. The fifth had survived his fall, but was critically injured. The site looked like a giant game of pick-up sticks, which meant they couldn’t simply push away the rubble to get to him. Everything could slide and tumble further, making it a risk that they’d bury him under even more heavy steel beams. Heath also had to keep the safety of his team in mind, for they could be injured, too, if they started pushing beams aside at random.
    He had just radioed for heavy machinery, so the site could be secured with the aid of a crane, when Owen alerted him that the vital functions of the surviving workman were sure to be deteriorating.
    “I’m sure he’s got some internal injuries and bleeding,” Owen explained. “We have to get him out of there right now.”
    “I know.” Heath pushed his helmet back and ran a hand through his hair. “But we can’t get him out of there just like that. Those beams are likely to crash down on him or us, if we aren’t extremely careful.”
    “He needs an IV to stabilize his circulation.” Owen nodded in the direction of the mountain of rubble. “If we don’t do anything, he’ll be dead within minutes.”
    Kyle looked his brother in the eye and nodded confidently. “I could climb in there and start the IV.”
    Heath was the leader of the team, so both the rescue of casualties and the safety of his men were his responsibility. But the big brother in him would