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  A man completely crazy over a fantasy woman. Or at least one who would never be in his reality. Cripes! How had he gotten to be this fucked up?

  He padded barefoot through the living room in his boxers, now only sporting a partial pop tent, and snatched up the cordless phone from a nearby table when it rang.

  "Cosmos," he said by way of greeting as he continued to the kitchen in search of a desperately needed cup of coffee. There it was, already made in the pot, hot and waiting for him. Thank you, automatic timers. He snatched a coffee cup from the top rack of the dishwasher and filled it to the brim, strong, steaming, and black. Yum.

  "It's surfaced," the caller informed him, short and to the point.

  Michael paused with the cup halfway to his lips. The voice registered instantly. Narcotics Detective Ford Harris with the SSPD. Immediately on the heels of that knowledge came the definition of 'it'. Opium. Son of a bitch and it's about damn time.

  "When?" He'd actually been waiting for this. He'd put in countless, long hours over the last, what, two months. Geez, did everything in his life these days spiral back to that forty-eight hours before, during, and directly after Hurricane Emilio?

  Michael leaned against the counter, blew into his cup to cool it, and sipped. He'd spent those countless hours tracking down a shipment of drugs he knew existed but had seemingly vanished in the chaos of Emilio. The bastard goons of Cambodian drug lord Veng Kim Phay, who was responsible for bringing the death drug to Michael's area of the Coast, seemingly disappeared, too.

  A drug drop off, a hurricane, the kidnapping of one Timmy Walker in order to draw the former Navy SEAL Ryan Magee for trade, followed by the search and rescue of Magee on a tiny island in the Gulf of Mexico and, through it all, the fuckers still managed to get away. It had been what Magee and his Navy SEAL friends would call a complete goat fuck. Now the drugs had hit the streets. It was both seriously fucking bad and really, really good.

  Opium was not a substance in high demand in South Mississippi. At least it hadn't been. But with the emergence of it now, they could be looking at an entirely new threat. Still, now that it had hit the streets, they would at least have a better chance at tracking the drug back to its source and bringing down Veng Kim Phay once and for all.

  "Early this morning," Harris answered. There was the sound of paper rustling in the background, faint conversation, and the static of a department radio. Apparently, the man was already at his desk in the bullpen at the SSPD. Did he ever sleep? "A routine traffic stop in the wee hours. Officer suspected the driver of intoxication. Roadside tests confirmed suspicions along with a search of the vehicle that turned up several vials of our drug."

  Vials. Certainly not the mother load Michael had hoped for. He pushed himself off the counter, turning to set his coffee cup on the Formica and absently opened the cabinet overhead. "We know for sure this is our stuff?"

  "Got to be. I checked it out in the evidence room before I called. It's pure shit, Cosmos. No way did it come from anywhere else."

  Michael stared into the cabinet, not really seeing the contents. "Any clue as to how the guy your man picked up got hold of it?"

  "He's in lockup. The report just came across my desk. I haven't talked to him yet. I figured you might want to be here when I do."

  Rice Krispies. Michael's gaze focused on the cereal box in front of his nose and Rhonda Ramsey in all her sex goddess glory slammed back into his mind, this time bringing her sweet little boy Lucas with her. Wouldn't you know it? It was Cocoa Krispies in his cabinet this week. They were the kid's favorite. He knew that because he'd been reaching for a box, distractedly taking a call, on his cell and came in contact with Rhonda's hand instead. And, oh look, there was even a Star Wars prize inside this particular box of Krispies. It was Lucas Ramsey's favorite movie.

  Michael felt the sudden longing desire to be a Jedi. Maybe, if he had the Jedi's power of mind control, he could use it on himself to forget his fantasy woman and her Padawan learner. Then again, he could simply throw himself into his work as he'd done since meeting her and at least get his mind off her for awhile.

  "I'll be at the station in thirty," he told Harris. "Don't talk to this guy without me."

  * * * *

  Cory spotted the dark hair and long legs even before he pulled Rescue 4 to a stop on the scene. For the briefest of moments, Rayne flashed in his memory. Not just Rayne, but having her pinned between the wall and his body as he assaulted her mouth with his tongue, as his thigh ground against her sweet heat, as she made those sexy little sounds that nearly made him come in his jeans.

  The legs in the mile high heels didn't belong to Rayne, but a different woman frantically pacing the sidewalk outside the office building of Sunny Homes Realty. Engine 1 was right behind him and he met the crew as they got out and rounded the trucks. The woman turned on them, spinning on one heel with the practice and ease of a professional female, one hand methodically massaging her temples as she briskly headed their way. Behind her, another woman, this one a few years older and wearing flat soled shoes, came out of the office's front door. She had one hand braced on the wall for balance but appeared as though she could take a fall at any second.

  "You take the babe," Terri Vega told him, speaking out of the corner of her mouth so not to be heard by anyone else. "I'll get the broad. Bet you dollars to donuts there's a CO leak in there."

  Yeah, given first observation, he'd take that bet. Especially as he reached the babe—he supposed Terri's term for the fairly striking woman was apt—just in time to keep her from falling on her face. A face, he noted in a flash, that he recognized. "Whoa! I've got you, ma'am."

  "Dizzy." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  It was labored, too, Cory noted as he helped her to the rescue truck. "It's okay. I've got you," he said again, holding her steady with one arm and reaching to open the back doors of the truck with the other. "What's your name?" It was there, somewhere in his frozen memory, but he couldn't place her.

  "Lacy Fergus."

  Ah, yes, he remembered a stylish, ebony-haired beauty dressed to the nines at the captain's wedding. She'd been there, too, when the Abbott house had caught fire a couple of years back. "You're Veronica Abbott's friend."

  Lacy nodded weakly. "Veronica Wolcott now."

  "Can you tell me what happened? Is there anyone else inside?"

  "I don't know what happened. God," she swore and held her head in both hands, "this headache is ferocious! Mr. Morley is inside. He's passed out. Suzan is still in there. She's too nauseated to move and her head, if it hurts anything like mine, is about to explode. Nancy is in there too and I think Carla came out after me."

  Cory got an oxygen mask out of the truck and flipped on the switch to the tank as he held the mask over her nose. "Is that everyone?"

  Lacy nodded, took a deep breath of the oxygen, and choked.

  "Shallow breaths," Cory instructed and held the mask to her face again when the coughs subsided. "Take it slow." He keyed up his radio and spoke into the mic strapped to his left shoulder. "914 to 906," he used his radio call number to direct the contact to Ryan Magee who would take incident command of the scene in the captain’s and lieutenant’s absence. "We've got three victims, one male and two females, still inside. The male is unconscious and the others are suffering from severe headaches and nausea. Sounds like a carbon monoxide leak, Magee."

  "Copy that, 914. 933, get some ventilation going in here," Magee ordered Bailey Lamont. "921, let's get these people out of here, Graham. 950, check around back and see if you can find a shutoff valve for the gas."

  "Copy that." Thaddeus Carter's voice came back, serious and clipped. Cory still thought of him as the new guy despite the fact that he'd been on B shift for nearly six months.

  "I'll call dispatch," Cory said. "We're going to need at least one ambulance here."

  "Carbon monoxide poisoning?" Lacy pushed the oxygen mask away to ask. "Oh, my God. How? Mr. Morley, will he be okay? He's in his sixties and he has
a bad heart."

  He certainly wouldn't feel like a spring chicken when he came to. If the old man came to. Cory didn't say it aloud, but the effects of carbon monoxide on a person could be fatal. For a man in his sixties with a weak heart, those effects were ramped up to seriously dangerous levels.

  "I'm sure he'll be fine," Cory lied smoothly. He keyed up his radio again, quickly requested the dispatcher call two ambulances to respond to the scene, and then chuckled to himself as he listened to the EMTs in nearby stationed areas jockey for position. Poor bastards sitting bored out of their minds in a parking lot somewhere waiting for a call to help pass the time.

  Nearly an hour later, Cory leaned against the front fender of the rescue and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. The four occupants of the realty office had been taken to Silver Springs General for treatment of CO poisoning. The elderly Mr. Morley didn't fare as well. He'd suffered a heart attack as a direct result to the prolonged exposure to the CO and died before Magee and the other firefighters were able to get him out of the building.

  "Tough break." Terri leaned against the truck next to him and chugged half a bottle of water.

  "You okay?" Cory shot her a sidelong look.

  Her hair was a short bob of blond ringlets, matted with the sweat from their recent exertion. She wore the standard navy SSFD t-shirt with EMT added to the Maltese cross on the left breast, tucked into a pair of black cargo pants that fit her trim but muscular body like a glove. Her skin was a deep tan from hours in the sun, the tan complementing her sea green eyes. Eyes that seemed tired, weary, and just a bit sad. He knew she took it hard when anyone died on their watch even if they hadn't stood a chance in hell of saving them, as had been the case with Mr. Morley.

  "I'll live. Points for me, huh?" She laughed but the sound held little humor. "How about you? Did you set up a date with the babe effective as soon as she's released from the hospital or are you planning to visit her there later?"

  Cory smiled and let her have the change of subject. They'd been EMT partners for years. He figured he knew Terri probably better than anyone. Right now, she'd want to get her mind off the recent tragedy. Her favorite ways to do that would be to needle him or talk about sex or both. Terri's world revolved around sex. As she told him often over the years they'd worked together, she enjoyed sex, enjoyed men, enjoyed having sex with men. What was wrong about that?

  From Cory's point of view, absolutely nothing, but he knew a lot of people on the department didn't see it that way, even the guys who'd slept with Terri. And becoming involved, even if for only a night, with someone she worked with was where Cory believed she'd gone wrong. To the guys on the department, she was no one’s girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, or sister. That made her fair game. But fraternizing rarely proved to be a good idea. The only woman he'd seen pull it off successfully was Bailey Lamont who'd recently married the B shift former lieutenant now district battalion chief, Tripp Barrett. But look at the fiasco they had gone through to get that far.

  "Neither." Cory laughed when Terri shot him a ‘Gee, you're hopeless look’. "I wasn’t interested."

  "You weren't interested," she repeated slowly. She eyed him as she drank the rest of her water. "Care to tell me why you weren't interested? She was hot, classy, and literally fell in your arms. Geeze Louise, Nox, she had the whole damsel in distress thing licked like a pro."

  "Maybe I don't want a damsel in distress." What he wanted was an incredibly sexy photographer and her silly black dog.

  "Who is she?"

  "Who's who?"

  Terri narrowed her eyes. "Someone's got your attention. Otherwise, you would've made a play for the babe."

  "That was Lacy Fergus. She's a friend of the captain's wife."

  "And? Okay, she was upset about her boss's death. Understandable, but you could've offered her a shoulder. You're a sensitive guy." She playfully bumped her shoulder into his. "But I still think someone else has caught your eye. So, I'll ask again, who is she?"

  Cory glanced around. He and Terri were in limbo now that the victims had been transported to the hospital. The engine crew was busy checking out the building, determining the cause of the CO leak and wrapping up the scene. "I met Rayne Jasper last night," he said conversationally. "She's moving in across the hall for awhile. Seems she had a house in Billings that sustained some pretty bad damage in the hurricane."

  "Rayne Jasper moved in across the hall. As in Max's sister Rayne, as in moved into Max's apartment."

  "As in." Cory nodded but didn't meet Terri's gaze. "She's, umm, pretty." And wasn't that the understatement of the century?

  "And?" Terri prodded.

  "Her name is actually Jacobs. I guess she was married before.”

  “But you didn’t get the scoop.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What else did you find out about her?”

  “She's a photographer. She's planning to swing by the station to talk to the captain and the rest of us guys." He told Terri about the calendar.

  Terri smacked her lips. "A firefighter calendar with the B shift hunks. Oh, yum. You can bet I'll buy a half dozen of those."

  "What would you want with six calendars?"

  "One for every room of my house."

  "You have a one bedroom apartment with a kitchen, living room, and a bath."

  "And a huge walk-in closet," Terri added, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "Plus, I'll need one for my car."

  Cory chuckled. "You're hopeless."

  Terri sighed. "Yeah, I know."

  There was a sudden wistfulness in her tone that had Cory following her gaze. He tipped his chin at Engine 1 engineer Thaddeus Carter. "Got the t-shirt yet?" he asked, knowing the ‘been there, done that’ would be implied by his question. If he were correct, aside from the captain, himself, and possibly Jason Graham, Thad remained the only man on B shift Terri hadn't slept with. A fact that surprised Cory considering Terri usually jumped on the new guys within the first month. Cory and his roommate often joked it was B shift's very special welcome to the crew.

  Thad Carter had been hired on straight out of the academy as the Engine Co. 1 engineer when Magee had been promoted to lead nozzle man shortly after the hurricane. Nearly six months had gone by and he'd yet to be welcomed to the crew. What was up with that?

  Terri sighed again. "No, and it's not because I haven't been shopping."

  "Maybe he's concerned about the fit," Cory suggested.

  Terri grinned. "Then he should try it on for size."

  Cory laughed and shook his head. "He will. He's interested. He's only looked over here a thousand times in the last two minutes." It was an exaggeration, but he had seen the firefighter checking out Terri.

  "You going shopping for a t-shirt with Rayne?"

  "Naw, I figure I'd rather get her out of her t-shirt."

  It was Terri's turn to laugh as she pushed herself off the truck. "Better not let the lieutenant hear you say that about his sister. Don’t you guys have some kind of rule against that?"

  "The lieutenant gave me permission."

  "Oh, well, in that case you better get to work, hot stuff."

  "I've already started." And next time he'd be sure to leave the dog with Max, so he could finish.

  * * * *

  Rayne got held up. It was the story of her life, always running behind, never on time for anything. Max often kidded she would be late for her own funeral. Although, come to think of it, her funeral was one event she wouldn't mind missing all together.

  Her meeting first thing this morning with the beady-eyed, forty pounds overweight, baggy faced insurance adjuster was one she probably could've skipped, too. Likely, it would have returned the same outcome.

  Premiums. She'd paid them for three years without fail so that, in the event of a tragedy like, oh say, a category three hurricane, her home and all her belongings would be protected. Okay, maybe she'd been late a time or ten on her payments but not six freaking months! She wondered idly what would've happened if sh
e'd taken as long to pay the insurance company as they did to pay her. The answer was a no brainer. They would've dropped her like a hot potato.

  She tried looking on the bright side. Step two in the seemingly endless struggle to get the money to repair her sweet cozy home was now complete. Onto step three. Whatever the heck that was. All she found out after over an hour and a half spent with Mr. Baggy Beady Eyes A.K.A. Deshan Minh was that he would contact her when the insurance company decided to make the move.

  She'd left Mr. Minh and his unswerving politeness and bottomless promises for a planning discussion with the printer of the calendar. That meeting, thank you God, had gone much more smoothly and optimistically. The printer seemed as excited by the project as she. She should get started right away. He, in the meantime, would set up the layout, ready to plug in her photos as soon as they were taken and processed.

  Off to the SSFD she had gone, a much brighter smile on her face than the forced one she'd sported a mere hour before only to have the wattage dim when she arrived to find most of the B shift were out on a call. She'd needed to speak with Captain Dean Wolcott. Instead, the only men present had been the two-man crew of Ladder Co. 12 and her brother, HAZMAT engineer and lieutenant, Max.

  She'd seen enough to conclude that David Karlston and Kyle Shannon with all their ripples of hard muscle and tanned flesh were definitely calendar material. As for Max, whom she'd managed to avoid since their pizza dinner the previous evening, he couldn't wait to rag her about Cory. Considering she laid complete blame at his feet for the fact that she'd been unable to get Cory out of her mind for more than three seconds since that amazing, nearly orgasmic kiss in the hallway, she'd been in no mood to talk with Max.

  She skipped out instead and landed here, at the mall scoping out the two-for-one sale at Victoria's Secret. Her body burned for new sexy silk. Her wallet screamed at her to run like hell. So far, her body was winning, right along with her mind that continued to betray her with constant thoughts of Cory Nox.