He didn’t even realize he’d nudged Cleetus into a run until they were bolting into the clearing.

“Remi? Baby. Are you hurt?” He dismounted and strode toward her. The foot of snow barely slowed his progress.

“Ugh,” she groaned from against a boulder. “Only my…pride.” The wheeze in her voice scared the life out of him.

She climbed to her feet slowly as he approached. She had a scrape on her forehead that was bleeding. One on her chin, too. But she was alive.

“Why did it…have to be you?” she grumbled.

“Where’s your inhaler? And where’s your fucking phone?”

“Language, young man,” Ben barked. The man was bundled in a winter jacket and blanket, wearing Remi’s hat and eating fucking cookies out of a Ziploc bag.

Remi, on the other hand, was wheezing like a deflating bagpipe.

He patted her pockets and found four hair ties, a phone charger, and a wad of tissues.

“Where’s your fucking inhaler?” he demanded.

“Forgot it,” she said. The strain it took her to force out the words caught him by the throat.

“Sit the hell down and stay there,” he ordered, pushing her back to the ground. Keeping her in his line of sight in case the woman somehow managed to start an avalanche or spontaneously catch fire, he moved over to examine Ben and pulled out his radio.

“Both victims found safe,” he reported.

“Thank fucking God,” Chief Ford responded. “What’s your location?”

Brick gave the coordinates while watching Remi’s chest rise and fall through labored breaths.

He spent the next three minutes glaring at her while he waited for the EMTs to arrive.

“Here comes the parade,” Ben said cheerfully as three snowmobiles broke through the trees and raced toward them.

Brick stomped over to meet them and grabbed the paramedic. “Got a bronchodilator on you?”

Edison McDonough, island native and twenty-year emergency medicine veteran, had red hair going gray that peeked out from under a thick ski cap. He glanced in Remi’s direction and reached into one of the dozen pockets of his bag.

Brick fought the urge to snatch it from the man’s hands and shove it into Remi’s mouth himself to put an end to her torture…and his. There was a protocol to be observed. Rules that existed for a reason.

“You check out, Mr. Kleckner,” Edison told Keisha, the other EMT. “I’ll deal with Chief’s kid.”

“You got it,” Keisha said, grabbing her bag off the back and heading for Ben. “You got any cookies for me, Mr. Kleckner?”

“Remi Ford. Still getting in trouble, I see,” Edison teased, kneeling down in front of her.

Brick positioned himself at her back, standing guard.

She wheezed out a laugh. “You know me. Always…dying to be…the center…of attention.”

“Can we hurry this along?” Brick snarled, ignoring the looks they both shot him.

“Well, since I’m here.” Edison pulled his stethoscope out from under his coat.

“Is Mr. Kleckner…okay?” she asked, peering over the paramedic’s shoulder to where Keisha was coaxing Ben onto a sled behind one of the snowmobiles.