Fuck.

I drop to a knee beside the woman and shake her. She doesn’t wake up, and the deputy’s blood pools beneath them both.

“Help! I need some fucking help in here!”

My bellow carries over the cacophony of noise in the ER, and within moments, someone drops to their knees beside me. One of the ER docs who was with Commodore.

“Jesus Christ. What the hell happened?”

“I have no idea,” I tell him.

He feels for a pulse on the nurse and then the deputy. “He’s breathing, but she barely is. Fucking Christ.”

I spy a syringe on the floor a few feet away and scramble over to pick it up. “Could she have been drugged?”

I hold it up and the doctor looks at it and then to the bed.

“This was your brother’s room, right? He was restrained?”

I nod. “Yeah, but he’s clearly not anymore.” I look at the deputy’s belt. He’s missing his service weapon. “And now he’s armed and fucking dangerous.”

“We have to get them both out of here,” the doctor says. “Everyone has to go. They say the wind’s picked up and shifted, putting us directly in the path of the wildfire if it crosses the river, which they’re predicting it will. It’ll take us a couple more hours to evacuate the hospital, and the forest service told us we need to be out in ninety minutes.”

This is the first I’ve heard of a specific timeline, and the gravity of the situation hits me hard.

“What can I do to help?”

“Find me some help. I need to stabilize both of them before we can get them out of here.”

“Got it.” I pause at the doorway. “What about the surgeries in progress? What if they can’t be wrapped up in time?”

The doctor looks at me, his expression grim. “They don’t have a choice, unless they all want to die.” He turns away from me and opens a drawer to pull out supplies.

As soon as I step out of the room, I grab the first medical professional I see. “Doc needs you. In there. Please.”

The woman’s brows dip together. “But I’m—”

“Please,” I repeat. “He’s trying to work on two patients who were attacked, and he needs help.”

“Yes, sir.”

As she rushes into the room, I yank my phone from my pocket and call my office. One of the assistants answers the phone.

“Is everyone evacuating?” I ask in lieu of a greeting.

“Yes, sir. Everyone’s out of the building and loading up their cars.”

“Tell them to stop at the hospital on the way out of town. We’ve got people who need rides.”

She goes quiet. “You want us to . . .”

“Send every single person with an open seat to the hospital, right now. We need all the help we can get. Otherwise, these people will be trapped here.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll spread the word.”

My next call is to my sister.

“Thank God, Lincoln. I just heard from Cricket Gable. Is it true Harrison started the fire?”